Welcome friends!

Welcome to our blog! We haven't left yet, but we're getting very close. Our place is almost entirely packed up, we've started to move some boxes to storage. We say farewell to our dog, Cheyenne, tomorrow, which, as hard as that will be, will be good for her since she's had to live like a mouse in a maze for the last week in our box strewn apartment. She's been staring at us like she knows something's going down. But she's going to our friend Clay's house for while we're away, and she always comes back from his house a little fatter and plenty happy. I think she likes his greyhound more than she likes us, anyhow.

We've gotten all of our vaccinations (seven, in all), took care of all of visas (Russia put us through the ringer. Thanks alot, spies), and charted our course (kind of). We're going to try and keep up with this blog as much as we can, though we're not exactly sure how much access to computers we'll have in certain places. Don't feel like you have to comment on our posts, and if you feel like this blog is too self-indulgent (as we do a little bit), feel free to not follow it. It won't hurt our feelings. We just felt that this was the best way to stay in touch with you all and to give a sense of what we're so lucky to be able to see and do for the next five months. We'll try to upload some pictures when we can, too.

Take care, everyone. We look forward to seeing you down the road...

A few weeks to go

We are in the last stretch of our planning for the big trip. In the next few weeks we have to pack up our apartment, finalize some of our stops, coordinate a few more travel visas, finish (and start) our packing, and say some of our last goodbyes. This includes saying goodbye to our greyhound, Cheyenne. She's pretty aloof, so it will probably be much harder on us than on her. We finally took care of our visas for Vietnam and Russia, which required way more hassle than we anticipated. The Russians took particular delight in denying us and asking for more money and paperwork. The consulate office was decorated with such warm signs as "Being quiet will make the line move faster."