My preparations

After telling you what the big plan is, it is time to let everyone know what's up at the moment. Before you go on a trip, you have to prepare. You have to have shoes on your feet, good socks in them to prevent blisters, you have to find light weight clothing, stuff for personal hygiene, stuff for personal safety, stuff for personal entertainment, for personal cultural enrichment and something to put all that stuff in. So last week, I took my mum to a camping shop. No just kidding, she took me, I hate driving. I bought a pair of good light weight walking/multifunction shoes, a lowe alpine travel trekker nd60 backpack, a transport cover, a pair of little locks for on my back and a lock with a retractable iron cord, to put through my transport cover or door or to attach someone annoying to a tree or whatever I can think of. Last wednesday, a friend took me to a shop and we bought a basic first aid kit and some extra blisterpatches, a late birthdaypresent. So if I cut a major artery on the way, I can help myself, at least hopefully long enough to take me to a hospital.

This will take me pretty far, but I still need more stuff. So I'm still looking on Ebay for the cheapest microfibre towels. And when the sale comes, before the summer, I have to buy new trousers. At the moment I only have very heavy thick jeans, not suitable for traveling. But for the rest I think I'm pretty well equiped. And of course, everything in South-Africa will be cheaper than in the Netherlands.

Then entertainment stuff: I just bought new earphones for my mp3/mp4 player, because I killed the left earphone of my old ones, and I'm left-eared, so I constantly had to put the right earphone in my left ear and enjoy the monosound. But music on the road is not really important. You only need music and very good earphones, if you want to lock out the rest of the world. But the goal of travelling is letting in the rest of the world. That's why I'm busy reading my lonely planet cape town, and when I'm finished, I have the south-africa lonely planet waiting for me. Provided by my best friends for my birthday.

One thing that is still missing, is the money. Luckily we have this subsidy in the Netherlands. It's for people between 12-30 years. I applied, and hope to be invited soon and of course, hope to be granted the subsidy. It is for people who will be doing voluntering work, and is between €1000-€1500! So definitly worth the try. I had to send my cv, motivation and a plan how I'm planning to reach 150 people when I get back. Sounds really easy, but you have to meat them real life and get an autograph for proof. And it has to be original. I contacted the Africa museum near my city and they said I could have a presentation after my journey. I also contacted Mondiaal centrum, that does different things with awareness for milleniumgoals and stuff, and they also promised that I could do something there. Now I'll have to wait and see if the subsidy people think this is good and original enough.

I'll let you know more when I've heard more about this!

WELCOME on my first entry of my first blog ever!

Let me start with telling you, what I'm up to. In july I will make my first big trip. And not just any trip, I decided to make my first big trip alone. This trip, I won't have my parents, schoolmates and teachers or my friends with me. It's just me. I have to arrange everything, book the flights, pay the bills, decide where to go. And I have decided. I am going to...South-Africa, a country almost 10 000 km away!

Well, first I go to Amsterdam. There I will hop on my first plane. It promised me to take me to London Gatwick. There another plane is waiting for me. That one, is supposed to take me to Dubai. I believe I have to hop on another plane there, and that one, that one will take me to Cape Town. On the airport, people from Aviva will be waiting for me. That's an organisation I paid, so I can do work for no salary. They will take me to the volenteers house, give me a day of rest and than show me to the place where I'll be working in the next 4 weeks: Magiscine children's home. I'll be working there for 3 days in a row, and then have 3 days off.

In the days of, I'll have time to visit Cape Town, to visit the surroundings and to go on trips with Aviva. They have organised a Peninsula tour, a cultural tour and a winelands tour.

On the days that I work, Aviva will drive me to Mfuleni, where the children's home is. There I will be preparing bottles, cooking, feeding babies and toddlers, changing nappies (have to go on a training first I think, never done that before), doing the laundry and when there is time left on 7 till 7 days also play with the children. I will stay intern on those 3 days of working there, and then they'll ship me off to the volenteers house again.

After those 4 weeks, I'll probably be very sorry that I have to leave already, at least, I hope;) But then another, maybe more challenging adventure is waiting for me. First I have to find my travelbuddy: an Italien guy I met on the lonely planet forum. We decided to go travelling together. I have no idea yet how we are going to organise it, but we have a couple of months left to make more detailed plans. For now the plans excist of: buying a ticket for the Bazbus, travel to Krugerpark, then to Jo'burg, take the train to Cape Town again and fly home. I have 3,5 weeks for that, so we still have to fill in the blanks. What I just said are actually mainly my plans, the Italian guy decided to go with me, and therefor he has to follow my plans. But I believe he liked them aswell. And I'm up for a change, as long as it still includes seeing more than just Cape Town and a visit to Kruger. A trip of approximately 3 000km!