Admittedly, I didn't plan on blogging about this year. That may have had something to do with the fact that for five months I was meant to be living in a bamboo house on a remote island with no Internet. Things, rather evidently, didn't go to plan.
But perhaps, I'm getting ahead of myself. Hi, I'm Zoë, I'm an Australian and 2015 is my gap year. The original plan was meant to be teaching at Level Mission Primary School on Pentecost, Vanuatu for five months, from February until July. After that I was coming home for a whole ten days before flying to Scotland, staying with family for three weeks, give or take, before visiting 16 countries in 16 weeks with one of my friends.
I made it to Vanuatu and everything was going well, I absolutely loved it, even if teaching was sometimes a little frustrating, then we had a run in with Cyclone Pam and things went downhill pretty quickly. The long story short here is that after a week of being "missing", I was emergency evacuated in a helicopter from my school to Port Vila. A little over a week later, I was on a flight back to Australia. Now I'm trying to get back there.
Love From Me and My Backpack started because I'm on the phone with my insurance company because I have to put a claim in, somehow my backpack survived the cyclone and the aftermath, only to have the attachment nicked off it on the way home, you can talk to me about irony later. We're up to 20 minutes on hold for this call. I'm not sure I'm ever going to get to talk to a person.
Depending on what happens in the next few days, there'll be posts about what I did in Vanuatu the first time around, what's going on with planning for Europe, and if the stars line up and the gods are kind, what happens when I get back to my bamboo hut after I've been there again. Stick around for the ensuing hilarity, tales of bush knifes and island food, and of course stories from my backpack.
Love From Me and My Backpack
"When you give yourself to places, they give you yourself back"- Rebecca Solnit
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