A RTW trip has been a dream of ours for the past several years. It does seem slightly crazy (even to us) to leave our careers and “normal” life for an unconventional one, but it also seems crazy to look back on your life and have regrets. While there is never a great time to drop everything to travel for a year we think that there is no better time than right now. 

The Backstory

I (Shelby) always dreamed that I would teach abroad after college graduation. I had everything in place to do just that. I was terrified to go teach in a foreign country, but I was more terrified about losing the things that I would have to leave behind. Most importantly I was afraid of losing Scott. I know, I know…that was gag worthy, but stick with me on this. We had not been together for too long, but I did know that I would be stupid to not give it a fair shot. 

After my plans of teaching abroad fell through the both of us got to talking and we came up with this grand idea for a RTW trip. We would pinch our pennies for the next several years and travel and experience the world together! Experiences are best shared anyway 🙂 We got hitched in September and decided to follow our dreams of traveling soon there after. 

Commitments (or Lack Thereof)

We just got married! Shouldn’t we want to buy a house with a white picket fence, settle down, and have kids? Isn’t that is what the American Dream is all about? Of course these are things that we dream of having one day, but we are in no rush to get there. The lack of these commitments makes now a perfect time to go!

We do have some commitments. We have pets, a house full of stuff, a lease…the list goes on. We just have realized that the more time goes on the more commitments you have. We would like to take the opportunity to go while our list of obligations are at a minimum. Luckily we have some pretty great people in our life helping us with these commitments while we are gone and we are so thankful!

I cannot lie to you and tell you we won’t miss these two faces everyday:

Vacations

We will always travel. When we are gainfully employed once again and are given two weeks of vacation a year you better believe we will be using every last drop of it! Traveling with such a strict timeframe is really hard. We usually only have a long weekend. In order to make the most of your time it all has to be planned out…how many days in each city, which activities are you planning on doing, and how are you getting to and from each place? This is totally necessary to plan a kickass vacation. We usually try to see and do too much and always come back exhausted.

This trip however is different. We aren’t going to have everything planned out. At best we might have accommodations or travel to the next one or two locations prearranged. We want to take this opportunity to travel in a way that a vacation doesn’t allow whether that be volunteering along the way, taking the overnight train ride instead of a short flight, or just stopping somewhere because we are tired or simply because we found a place we fell in love with and we are not ready to leave.

The World is a Big Place

The world is a big place and our list of places we would like to see in our lifetime is really long. There is no way we can see the whole world or everywhere on our list (obviously), but this trip will allow us to experience many different things in a short amount of time while we are young and able. Life is unpredictable and I cannot tell you how our life will look years down the road.

As we get older the way we will experience places will change. We will be less excited about sleeping in a hostel in Cambodia lacking air conditioning and will become more interested in staying in a Tuscan villa. I mean we aren’t getting any younger…

All of our dreaming and planning will all be a reality August 2016. We are nervous, anxious, and SO incredibly excited!