Here's of my little backstory to give everyone some perspective on what lead to this decision. I moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma about six months ago to start a new job; helping out with the operations at my parent's granite business. I was born and raised here, so initially it felt good to be back home. However, as the weeks became months, things in Tulsa took a turn for the boring. I realized that while this was a great place to grow up, and it would also be a great place to raise a family, it doesn't have much to offer 20 somethings.
Now, between my previous job and this one, I took a two and a half week road trip through the southwest US. I tramped the dunes in White Sands, drove the Pacific Coast Highway from San Diego to San Fransisco, climbed to the rim of Yosemite and hiked down into the Grand Canyon. It was an incredible experience. Wanting to get back into go and do as you please that lifestyle, I began considering a much longer trip, and to someplace more exotic.
The more I thought about it, the more I liked it. I had a bit of money in the bank from my last job and I wasn't really tied down; I wasn't married, didn't have kids, no mortgage, and my current job wasn't going to be my career. After deciding this was something I wanted to do, I realized there was still a lot to figure out. How long would I go? Would a month be sufficient? Six months? A year? And where would I go? I've heard good things about Central and South America, and Southeast Asia is supposed to be beautiful. How would I pay for it? Could I save enough beforehand, or would I need a job? The one thing I was sure about was that I wanted my girlfriend, Stephanie, to come with me. Now I just needed to talk to her and hope she felt the same way..
As it turned out, obviously, she did. Her job wasn't turning out like she had hoped, and she felt equally blasé about Tulsa. We also both agreed it was unlikely we'd have another opportunity to simply pack up and do something like this. As we began to talk about potential destinations, we realized that my initial ideas might be a little...aggressive. To varying degrees, we figured there would be difficulties with transportation, language, and the inevitable job search once we ran out of money. After some discussion, we decided that Australia would be pretty much perfect for us. It's a huge place, almost as big as the contiguous US, but we'd be able to get around easily via planes, trains and automobiles. The lack of a language barrier would make it easier to find work when we needed it, and the culture is similar enough to the US for us to be comfortable, but still different enough to keep things interesting. On top of that, some of Stephanie's step-family lives in Australia, and she's always wanted to go there.
As for New Zealand, a couple of well traveled friends told me that if I was going to Australia, I'd be crazy not to spend some time in NZ as well. I was sold after spending, like, 10 minutes looking at pictures of the place.
And thus, the decision was made. All that was left to do after that was telling our friends and family, getting passports/visas, arranging flights, getting to do lists together, budgeting/saving, etc. You know, the easy stuff....
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