Ready?....Set?...No!

You know that saying "Be careful what you wish for.  It just might come true"?  This has been a common theme for me this year and somehow each time something comes my way, I am still utterly shocked and ill prepared. despite wishing for said thing to happen. 

I turned our application in for the grant to go to Thailand in January.  I placed that large leaning tower of paperwork in a crate, and quite frankly dove into our huge human body unit, not really giving Fund for Teachers, Thailand, or Earthwatch much thought.  It was a healthy choice given that it would not have done much good to invest time in planing for, what at the time seemed like, an "imaginary trip." 

Well, now it is real, and not that far away, and my list of things to do has more question marks rather than periods.  With all that said, I feel alive when I dive into the details, the specifics, the big picture.  I can feel the winter cobwebs of my brain clearing as I use parts of my drifter skills that have been suppressed by life in suburbia. 

With all of that said, what I do know, is that we have a ton of stuff to do in LESS THAN 2 MONTHS!  When I looked back at the program briefing this weekend it started with what we needed to do 90 days prior to the expedition.  Oops, guess we will need to do that list and the 60 day list very soon. 

Here are the must do logistics:

1. Physician appointments to make sure we have a personal first aid pharmacy with us.
2. Vaccines:  Typhoid, Japanese Encephalitis ?, Determine Malaria risk, Tetanus booster, Hepatitis A.B Booster
3. Learn basic conversational Thai
4. Check state department alerts for Thailand (yes they have them for Bangkok)
5. Figure out travel arrangements (while we can look now, we cannot finalize anything until we have access to the funds)
6. Sign power of attorneys
7. Determine if the grant will cover everything, or if we will need to fundraiser for the reminder
8. Update filed work clothing wardrobe
9. Fortunately we both have up-to-date passports

Then, there are the exciting things we get to learn and think about:

1. Looking through Thailand field guides (yest I did stay up until 2am on a Friday night reading Lonely Planet Thailand)

1. Learning everything we can about elephants
2. Scouring pictures of Thailand on Pintrest
3. Deciding on what touristy things we might also be able to do while there
4. Creating a blog to document our adventure

I think for now, we are both going back and forth between excitement, shock and trepidation, along with a "Oh my! Are we going to get all of this done in time?" 

Fortunately, we both know how to work under pressure, get huge things done, and we love learning.

Coming soon, what we will be doing and why a pair a teachers should be doing things like this.