Off off and away!

Hello friends and family!

As most of you have heard by now, we are planning a year plus excursion around the world. We've been talking about it for years and are actually making it happen! Tickets are purchased, house is rented, backpacks ready for stuffing. The big departure is set for October 7th at 7:15pm. AAHHHH! Just under a week to go until we're dirty and smelly and seeing amazing sights!

We've set up a travel blog where you can track our progress, view pictures, and send us messages. We'll post pictures and written updates, as well as a map showing our whereabouts....where in the world are Courtney and Jeremy?? The address is www.buddsabroad.com. If you want to contact us directly, we'll be checking email regularly: jeremy.buddress@gmail.com and courtney.buddress@gmail.com. We've also set up a Skype account for those of you techy types to keep up with us on....we have yet to figure out how to use it though!

To answer the usual questions we've been getting....we've rented the house to a mother and daughter who just moved to town from Ashland. We're confident that they will take great care of things and that the house will be in good hands. Our cat Sasha will be temporarily adopted by our friends Tanan and Michael, who have an older male cat. We're sure they will get along swimmingly! Courtney's car (2005 Acura TL - great shape, low miles - SHAMLESS PLUG!) is yet to sell - unfortunate timing with our economy - so let us know if you're interested! Our last day of work was last Friday, the 26th. It's so crazy to think we're off the grid for at least a year! The plan is to be gone for 12 months and possibly as long as 15. If we can manage to make the funds last that long, we'll meet up with family and friends for Christmas/New Year's in Paris!

The first stop is New Zealand. We have a one way ticket to Auckland, the first 3 nights booked at a nice family-run hostel, and a car rented for touring the country for about a month. From there we'll move on to Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, SE Asia, China, India, maybe down into Africa, a little bit of the Middle East, and all over Eastern Europe. We'll dip into Western Europe just a bit, meeting up with Courtney's family in France at the end of June. Our itinerary is pretty bare-bones so that we have the freedom to take other travelers' advice, veer off course, stay longer if we fall in love with a place, or just go wherever the wind takes us! We'll stay in hostels and camp most of the time, but will splurge a bit in places where the dollar still holds value. :)

We'd love to have visitors along the way, so let us know if you're interested in meeting up somewhere exotic! We also welcome any advice on places to stay/things to see/friends to meet up with/couches to crash on, etc! Other than that, we've officially changed our address so that mail goes to Jeremy's parents (Lee and Jan Buddress) at:

8 Offenbach Place
Lake Oswego, OR 97035

We hope you'll all be well in the coming year... We'll miss you and if we don't see you in a foreign land, we'll have MANY pictures to share in 2010!!

Much love,
Courtney & Jeremy