A Plan Emerges

      After sitting down and talking with my girlfriend, Becca, the other day we've come to a decision (sort of). We are going to shoot for New Zealand. If we have enough money we'll go there, and if not we will go to Europe. In either case the plan is the same. We are going to try and do some volunteer work to provide affordable housing for ourselves.
      We have two sort of unspoken goals that we are trying to accomplish while on our travels. One of them being that we want to travel while we are there. We recognize that this is probably the only time in our lives that we will be able to travel like this so we want to take advantage of it. The way we plan to do that? Go to an area that is pretty unlikely we will ever be able to travel to again, the other side of the world. We would like to sort of island hop and see how many different cultures we can experience.
       Our second unspoken goal is that we want to immerse ourselves into a culture. We aren't really happy with just being tourists which is why we shied away from Europe. We see Europe as a place where it is easy to be a tourist, and we don't want to get sucked into that mentality. Instead we want to learn another culture and make our lives that much richer.
        In both of these goals a volunteer program like workaway can be really useful. Because it can provide affordable living and a sort of home base to come and go as we please. We really want to find an opportunity that will take us as a couple, provide room, board, and a small stipend.
      I'll let you in on a bit of a secret, I really want to find a job while we are over there. Living abroad for a small period of time would provide us with a different way to live and look at life. One that is not American and will help us better determine what sort of way we want to live our lives, providing us with more options than how we were raised at home.
      This is such a different experience than most graduating seniors develop for themselves and I am honestly quite excited just because it is different. I fear that I may look back on this blog post and find that I am a bit naive in my excitement but that's fine for now, how else would I learn from the experience?
      I have figured out a little bit of my budget and am anticipating some graduation money as well. Next step is to look at the visa information. More updates on my early retirement to come!