Planning Calendar

by Carrie (Flagstaff, AZ)

Any trip or vacation inevitably requires a lot of planning.  When you’re going to travel for an entire year on very little money it means even more.  Filming a documentary about the experience adds some more items to the to-do list for sure.  Oh, and you’re trying to raise money beforehand for the making of said documentary?  Hope you love that planning and organization!  Here’s a tentative checklist I just thought out about what we need to do each month before the three of us hit the road (err…sky) in October!

January:  Film the trailer when Melissa comes from Ohio to visit Zach and me in Arizona.  Decide on a fundraising goal.  Save $ and study Spanish.  (23rd-Zach's Birthday!)

February:  Edit and complete the trailer.  Create a kickstarter.com page and start bringing in that money from those arts supporters!  Save $ and study Spanish. 

March:  Continue kickstarter campaign.  Extend our publicity to facebook, twitter, youtube, and anywhere else we can think of.  Get a real website or at least buy our own domain name for this one.  Save $ and study Spanish.  (9th-Melissa's Birthday!)

April:  Read more about South America.  Continue raising money.  Make some awesome promotional materials like stickers, posters, etc.  Save $ and study Spanish.

May:  Read more about South America.  End our kickstarter campaign and assess how we did and how much more money we need to raise.  Save $ and study Spanish.  (18th-Carrie's Birthday!)

June:  Buy our flight tickets from Columbus, Ohio to Medellin, Colombia.  Develop more story ideas for documentary.  Save $ and study Spanish. 

July:  Finalize a (very) rough itinerary.  Buy rest of video equipment like batteries, cases, hard drives, memory cards.  Save $ and study Spanish. 

August:  Zach and Carrie quit jobs at end of month, arrange friends to crash with in Ohio.  Zach and Melissa get shots.  Save $ and study Spanish. 

September:  Zach and Carrie go to Burning Man (!!!!!!!!) then road trip back to Ohio.  Finalize packing list.  Buy any equipment still needed.  Film preparation.  Join WWOOF and find a first host farm in Colombia.  Study Spanish.

October:  Finalize arrangements for financial obligations/storage of stuff.  Find a couchsurfing host in Medellin for our first few days.  Hope we know enough Spanish to survive.  Pack and say goodbye to friends and family!  LEAVE ON OUR GRAND ADVENTURE!!!!!!!!!!

That's all really rough and I know I'm going to think of tons more things we need to do.   But writing it out in calendar form like that actually makes it all seem doable.  Not everyone works like me, but I always do much better when I have things planned out far in advance.  This breaks it into reasonable chunks.

So as for the two recurring themes of this list...anyone have any ideas other than kickstarter for fundraising?  And does anyone have any suggestions for good Spanish practice books and websites?  (I have Spanish for Dummies and Rosetta Stone but I need some more worksheet-type practice I think.)

The Idea

by Carrie (Flagstaff, Arizona)
Hellooooooo blogland! This is Carrie, one of the three co-conspirators behind La Aventura Project. Since my cronies, Zach and Melissa, are lagging slightly in joining this online escapade (WRITE YOUR BIOS PEOPLE!!!), I decided I'd jump on in and whip up the first blog entry!
So what is this all about?  Well, basically, we are just three friends who need an adventure.  Here's my side of the story:
I returned to the US in March 2010 from being a Peace Corps Volunteer in Tanzania.  That was an experience that rocked my world so much, and if anything, made my desire to "settle down and get a grown-up job" even weaker than it had been.  So my boyfriend Zach and I started brainstorming.  We knew we wanted to go somewhere for a long time in order to stay in each stop along the way for weeks and really learn as we travelled.  South America just made sense.  It's relatively inexpensive to fly there from the US, it would give us the chance to learn Spanish, and there are a plethora of volunteer opportunities.  Not to mention the continent offers remarkable adventures in unexplored wildernesses, urban metropoli, and everywhere in between.  So the destination was set.  Next we asked our friend Melissa if she'd like to join.  She shouted (well, shouted via text message) "hell yes!" without a second thought, as we knew she would.  And our little posse of three was born!
This fall we will each pack a backpack and set off, me with my camera in hand, on our adventure.  We don't really know what exactly we will do or discover, but we bet it's going to be exciting.  My hope is not only to create an interesting travel documentary, but to go on a journey where we have new experiences each day, where we can let go of the pressures of American young adulthood, and truly open ourselves to unknown places, cultures, and people.
Although we want our trip to remain mostly unplanned and open-ended, there is still a lot of pre-planning involved in abandoning everything here and taking off on this excursion.  So until we get on that plane in just nine more months, this blog will document our preparation, as well as our expectations, thoughts, fears, and anything else we find interesting!  (And yes, there will be a VIDEO TRAILER coming sometime next month.)  So welcome to the ride!