A Going Away Party

First things first: This is our travel blog and this is our first entry. There are more entries to come to be sure.

We plan to use this blog to keep all of our friends and family informed about our whereabouts, our expeditions and our exploits. At the very least, we can keep ourselves entertained!

For those of you who aren't completely sure what we're up to, we plan to fly to Mexico and travel through Central and South America. We have no set plan and no itinerary - our intent is a healthy wandering. We land in Mexico City on Thursday (March 25th, 2010).

We plan to be gone for about a year, which sounds like a lot of time, but if you consider that the life expectancy for the average US Citizen is about 78 years, that's really only 1.3% of our expected lifetime! Chump's change if you ask us...

Why are we doing this? That depends who you ask; some people say we're crazy, some people say we're lucky, but to us, we see the cliched opportunity to have the experience of a lifetime. Both of us have traveled a bit before, but the opportunity to immerse ourselves in a language and culture for an extended period of time is simply too good to pass up.

We worked extremely hard for this opportunity and could not be more excited. Hey, if we hate it, the worst that can happen is we come home and live with our parents...... on second thought, we'll stick it out for a while!

If you're worried about our safety, Rich is a hockey player and Kendra has a masterful wit. We promise to travel as safe and as smart as possible. =)

But on to what we consider the first real part of our trip: On Saturday, March 6th, we held a going away party for ourselves and our friends at Delilah's, our favorite bar in Chicago. The drinks were cheap and plentiful, and our friends turned out in droves to wish us happy travels. We didn't imagine we had so many great friends until we saw you all together.

To see photos from our party and our trip, click the "Our Pictures" link on the left. Feel free to comment on any post by clicking "Comments" below, and become a follower on the bottom right!

Thanks to our friends and family for your support, and yes, your worry. We know we won't see you for some time, but we will see you sooner than you think, maybe at the center of the labyrinth.

Nos vemos!