ideas for cheap stuff

Preparations are underway for my travels (ha! ya believe that you’ll believe that pigs can fly, oh, or maybe I can interest you in joining a pyramid scheme I’m running?), so finally I’ll be using my very wonderful site again! Background will soon be updated with a new photo (thanks Kev!) Though, in all fairness, that’s only if I actually send him off some.

For the moment I’m attempting to get my head in the preparation game. It’s all coming up so quickly! I’m finished work with Openet next Wednesday, but I’m off to Copenhagen (yeah, gonna see Anne & Kris!) this weekend, and then my sis is home the bank holiday weekend, that weekend is also my Openet “get lost” party, and possibly camping & hiking combo (read: nothing will get done till there are only 48 hours to departure) Haven’t got my stuff packed up in the house, or organised my Hasta luego party with Tongie, or got people solidly organised to live in my house/have the house registered properly/mirrors put up/…yep, the house is pretty much up in the air, though it’s got curtains!

So to the travels! Well a general outline of it anyway. I’m leaving Dublin with my good friend Tongie (Lisa Tonge, you’ll probably never see her real name on this site again, so now’s the time to memorise it) on 14th May with a stopover in Madrid for the night before heading on to Cuba on 15th May. We’ll get to see Cuba right before it gets taken over by multi-nationals. Raul’s given people un-restricted access to mobiles since late last month, so it’s gonna change incredibly fast. Then we’re going to be travelling around the country for 3.5 weeks, hopefully meeting heaps of locals via CouchSurfing and improving my horrific (its like a car crash in slow motion – new mantra “must apply myself”) Spanish, before heading to Costa Rica for a month. We’re going to volunteer with a sustainable community there that I found through CS for a few weeks and travel about, hopefully taking in some of Nicaragua. We’re at our leisure till end of July when we’ve to meet friends in Bolivia and prepare for the Inca Trail on 11th August. LTD (Lids, Tee (me) & Dee for those of you just joining us) of course will be on the trek, along with my boyfriend Jonathan, Fee, who lived with Lids and I in Melbourne, Colma a friend who has helped me get some discounts on malaria tablets and thankfully was on the ball to get us booked on the Inca Trail, or there’s no way we would’ve been doing it together! Tongie and I will visit a friend of hers who is living in Peru and then we’ll head up towards Ecuador. Tongie’s leaving in September, and I’ll be making my way back down to meet Lucia in Uruguay in October. Jonathan’s also planning to come over to Sth America again around this time, so we’ll probably all travel into Argentina together. Then I’ll have decisions to make about whether I’m staying till February or going home in December. Christmas and New Years’ in Buenos Aires and then Carnival in Brazil are feeling like a complete must though. Hmm…we’ll see how it pans out after November anyway. Don’t bother asking what I’ll do when I finally come back. Maybe this trip will inspire me to a new path, or jolt me onto a **shock horror** career path!!!

Updates in my world are that time is increasingly fleeting, can’t believe how fast it’s gone! On the home front since my Puzzle Party in January, I’ve hosted PJ girlie parties, movie nights, random limbo nights, my garden’s been beautified and the lettuce are coming along nicely, so too the rhubarb. Also, figured out why there was a bad smell coming from the downstairs toilet. It was due to a sand and cement blockage in the sewer. God bless Pops who cleared it out. That man deserves a Blue Peter badge! My sis Shelly and her Sprogs were over from Munich for Paddy’s Day and Easter. Have to say, Paddy’s Day this year was every bit as good, if not better than last. Particularly since I had my nieces and nephews at the Ceile Mor. That was stupendous! Been on radio twice in the last 2 weeks! Firstly a snippet on Morning Ireland and then last Thursday I was on Phantom FM for a near 10 minute interview. The second one was really exciting/nerve wracking as they brought me into their studios with the microphones, headphones and everything. Deadly! Hmm…a lot really did happen, but I’m not up to waxing lyrical about it right now due to my synaptic pathways being hampered by a head cold.

I shall update the site soon as I can with Hasta luego party details. Till then, eh, hasta luego!?!