Travels: The Planning Begins

Until tonight, I was apprehensive about the almost-imminent fun half of my gap year because my plans were aimless in the extreme. Now, however, I'm still mildly apprehensive but also quite excited. After a conversation with a friend in a similar but less advanced state of disorganisation, we have decided to team up and have picked a start destination of....New Zealand. After that it's anyone's guess, but it's good to have a starting point. Yes, I'm aware that this information is not interesting to anyone except myself but this is not one of those posts that you can read and will thereafter be enlightened in the ways of life - this is a post for me. It helps me to write stuff down (or, you know, type it), so that's what I'm doing.
So, THE TRIP so far (very, very roughly):

• New Zealand
  
• Australia
  
• Canada
• USA
• Iceland

You may look at this list, as I have, and think that it appears to be a list of English-speaking countries with a weird one tacked on the end for the sake of diversity. I was trying hard not to notice this, but now that I've mentioned it it seems too late not to analyse these odd choices. Basically, I struggle to see how I could visit the first four of these countries without having a good time. The fifth one is on there because whenever I see Iceland on TV, it looks desolately beautiful, as if it were the image in God's imagination when he made North Wales, but couldn't quite do it justice. That sounds like a dig at North Wales, but it's not. I love North Wales. I digress. Yes, I have picked four English-speaking countries and if these five countries represented my whole trip, people would probably say 'um.......that wasn't very adventurous, was it?', and I would look all hurt. But....perhaps instead of breaking it into five like that, I should break it into four like this:

• Australasia
• North America
• Iceland
• Some other place TBC

That list's only half English-speaking (providing I don't pick South Africa or Eire or somewhere for my last one) although admittedly, if I do it in that order, the people I encounter won't stop speaking English until I've gone most of the way round the world and am not far off the coast of Scotland. The truth is, although it appears to be the law for gap-year students to visit Thailand or India or South America, I'm not really sure I want to - I think it's that simple. I like to know vaguely what I'm going to be doing when I get somewhere, and in the places on My List, I do know. I realise that seasoned travellers are probably shouting at the screen because I've missed the point of travelling, but I am not a seasoned traveller - I'm a shy bloke who wants some guaranteed fun. I'm sure I'll still have lots of adventures, and remember, the list isn't final...