We have made a big decision that will be changing the path in our journey.  Last week we put in our 2-month notice at EF, which means we will be leaving China 6 months early.  The job, the city hasn’t been a right fit for us.  Since our travels have been our true goal we have decided to just get started doing what it is we really want to be doing. We will be done working by mid-July, then have a couple weeks to travel in China and then start our round the world travels in August.

We are about to purchase our flights for the first leg of our trip.   We wanted to share our general path for the first six months as people have been asking.   We will spend August to the beginning of January in Southeast Asia.  We will start by flying to the Philippines, staying for 3 weeks.  Then we will head to Nepal for probably a bit over a month with a quick 3-day stop in India to see the Taj Mahal.   The next 3 or so months will be overland travel between Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Malaysia, and Singapore. The beginning of 2014 we will head to New Zealand.

Beyond excited is how we feel to finally be realizing this long-term goal of ours.  The dreaming, planning and saving has been a long process.   Our China experience has been part of the adventure even though it has not been what we expected but that is the beauty, right?   Our journey was to be flexible and to embrace wherever it takes us.  We are confident this is the direction we are supposed to go.

The next 2 and half months will be filled with continued exploring of Shanghai, a hiking trip to Yellow Mountain, a week trip to Guilin and hanging with the cool group of friend we teach with.  Many of them are also only here for a bit longer as we have 8 other teachers leaving in next 2 months between both of our centers.  That should help explain the low morale and dislike of this job!  Thanks for everyone’s thoughts and support through this.   It has been a roller coaster journey and we won’t have it any other way.