This is who we were when our trip started in April of 2009.

 

Rhys worked for AT&T for eight years in a variety of roles.  His last job was as a sales representative, but he spent the majority of his time in a call center in a leadership and training role.  He is a movie aficionado and a total nerd.  He’s generally conservative and is eager to see what exists outside of Northeast Oklahoma.  Rhys is 28 years old.

 

Indi was a project manager for AT&T, which is a fairly comfortable job. She is also a nerd, overweight, and an aspiring writer.  Her liberal beliefs often conflict with her husband, but that makes life interesting.  Indi spent a year in Japan during college and world travel has always been a life goal for her.  Indi is 30 years old.

 

We're not terribly athletic, active people. We make enough money to know where our next meal is coming from and to keep a roof over our heads. We have credit card debt and a mortgage, just like most others in America.

 

In other words, we are a normal, too-normal, young American couple who spend most of our time just getting by. Neither of us have ever really done anything crazy in our entire lives. We are ordinary.

 

That's all about to change.

 

We have decided to jettison everything we own to follow a dream. Our nice suburban middle-class house, our carefully arranged furniture, all of our belongings were sacrificed to make way for uncertainty and excitement.

 

We will travel around the world on what is currently an impossibly shoestring budget, depending on the kindness of others and relying on our tenacity to find cheap accommodation. We will visit as many countries and cultures as we can, gathering stories from people we meet and experiencing the world with fresh and novice eyes.

 

We want to write a book, or series of books, about these places and people – we believe every person has a story to tell. We don't know where we'll end up, or how exactly we'll get from place to place – a sudden and terrifyingly exciting departure from the rigidity that has defined our existence. We hope to be gone for more than a year.

 

While abroad, we intend to take only a large backpack each, containing only the bare minimums, plus a camera and a netbook. With these tools, we will compile stories and experiences which we intend to update throughout our journey with pictures, videos, articles and journals.

 

Our project is unlikely to be just about who we meet and where we go – we expect that we'll be writing our own story through our eyes and footsteps.