Savez-vous planter des choux?

I wooff

You help X

He finds a crew

  

  

And what do WE do??

Mongolian "Let's stop here" style

If the first plan was to backpack randomly in Latin America, we quickly realized that being a tourist over there is slightly different than being one in Mongolia - setting up our tent wherever we want it is not an option anymore...
Still, one of our goals is to dive into the multiple cultures of Latin America. Therefore, we aim to live within families and to learn another way of going through life.

Excellent question!

We will:

• Wwooff, which means working on organic farms
• HelpX, in another word, being part of projects of any kind
• and be part of a crew! Yes, you get it: we will be sailors bab'! Well, no doubt more dish-washers than sailors :-)

For all this, we won't be paid but the owners offer us food and bed.

Perfect to learn a lot, at any level!

Each of these worldwide organizations provides - after subscription and / or payment - a list per country of the families, associations, companies etc. working within their structure. Time then to have a date!!

Byebye Atos

As part of the mental preparation of the departure, like this blog, I recently have started the process to quit my job at Atos.

One of the things I have planned is to have a talk with HR for advise.
For now I have collected the following information.

Write and sign resignation letter and send to manager.
Resignation period: 2 months Date of resignation: Thursday 31 January 2013 Last day of work: Friday 21 December 2012.
Return the following

• IT equipment

• Atos entrance card

• Lease car: ask Rob Oosterveer about the rules regarding the fine

• Business creditcard

Holidays remaining: 32Holidays to sell: 2x 3 holidays is a good deal, because of 150% payment rule at the PeoplePoint portal
Holidays planned to use:

• 02 dagen: Radiohead

• 02 dagen: Birthday Claire and Fabrice

• 04 dagen: 24 t/m 31 december 2012

• 22 dagen: 1 t/m 31 January 2013

Request declaration of work at Atos (in English).Request declaration of damage free driving.

It feels good to do this, but outch, I have still quite some time to go...

Wish me luck!

T - 6 MONTHS!!

We have a fridge.

And like most fridges, ours has a door - quite useful to keep the cold inside, you know... And like many doors fridges, we stick things on it, use magnets to attach these essential messages that brings sun to your everyday life (promotion on flight, restaurants, shoarma...).

And, of course, we also write on the door of our fridge!!!

So last April, Arthur decided to make our trip more substantial, more real, concrete, in adding to the amount of mess on our fridge the most important timeline ever:

TADAAAA!!!!! Our first planning!!!

Jumpstart to Maryland first?

Yesterday Anaelle and I have discussed and research the possibility of visiting my host family called The Dixons in the USA before going to South-America.

We noticed that not only retour flight tickets are cheaper than single way tickets, but also, that flying from Amsterdam to Washington to Bogota (Colombia) is cheaper than flying directly to Bogota from Amsterdam.

So... let's see what The Dixons say of our possible visit. :-)

My visit in 1996:

My visit in 2005:

Spanish lessons

Anaelle and I are slowly preparing ourselves for our amazing trip to South-America.
One of the things we are preparing is speaking the Spanish language.

I have bought my Spanish lessons at Comunicando in The Hague for just €100 (25 lessons of 1,5 hour - thanks GroupOn). The following books have been ordered at bol.com.

• Caminos text book
• Camnios work book

After thinking about this, creating a todo list might be a good idea.
Check, check, check...