First stop: New Orleans!
Friday, May 21st was the last day of work for both of us!
We decided to “shake things up,” like this little Lego man, by quitting our jobs and traveling for a year. Just as for many others, traveling is the dream! We all have a running bucket list of places to visit, delicious food we want to eat, iconic sights to see, thrills to experience. But beyond all the dreaming, hoping, and making lists, how many actually do it and go travel? For us, after a few conversations of talking about our hopes for travel, our passing thoughts like “I’ve always wanted to go to Greece.” “Whenever we visit Italy, I definitely want to learn how olives are harvested and made into oil.” turned into, “Should we make this happen?” What if we traveled for a year?” “Let’s do it!!”
We loosely started to make plans in 2020, but the COVID pandemic was not showing signs of slowing down. We had to shelter-in-place, shift to working remotely, and with each passing month, it was unclear when the pandemic would end. But we set May 2021 as our estimated departure date, and we put our lists together, researched travel restrictions, read about WWOOF (more to come on this), and reflected about why we want to travel. Knowing that everything was unknown, we decided anyway to plan for the best case scenario: that vaccination rollouts would happen quickly and effectively, that COVID surges wouldn’t be happening, and that traveling would be safer. By contrast, if we wouldn’t be able to travel, at least we would have a plan for the future.
Fast forward to February 2021 — The COVID vaccines were developed and tested as efficacious. Vaccines were available to the most vulnerable populations, but rollout of vaccines for individuals under the age of 65 and without chronic conditions was unknown. Thankfully, between February and May, vaccines became increasingly available to the general population and COVID surges were not as frequent as before. Vaccine availability in other regions around the world were – and still are – not as fast as in the United States. Access to vaccines is a privilege we were able to benefit from. Traveling is a privilege and we are grateful for the conditions that allow us to more easily travel – citizenship status, language abilities, financial means, and our health.
So here we are now: our first stop out of Austin being New Orleans!
We enjoyed meandering around the French Quarter, open-air market, and of course getting coffee and beignets at Cafe du Monde!
Join us on our year-long journey of traveling! You can follow our blog by subscribing for email updates. To stay connected, you can follow us on Instagram at @vidaborikor too.
Vida BoriKor 