Maps
Our days in Asia our numbered, 4 to be exact. And the next stop is Europe. The following plan is what happens when you are confronted with a map of many places you have imagined, yet never been to and have to decide which ones to visit.
It still looks manageable when you look at it like this. Everything in Europe seems trickily close together and so you make the above plan. Then you put in on the calendar and realize that we were in Southeast Asia for 7 months and saw 3.5 countries. And now we are planning to see 12 countries in about 1.5 months. Hopefully we will not die from exhaustion. Likely at the end we will sleep for 1 week.
A few more notes on the trip. We are actually flying to England on Thursday where we will spend a week traveling aimlessly, seeing a few people, possibly Jordan's sister if she sees fit to respond to our emails. Then we are spending two weeks at a Christan community in southern England. After a few days visiting some game developers in Cambdridge for a Game Jam we will be starting our trip to continental Europe on what looks to be July 18th. We were really hoping to continue overland from Istanbul to Amman, Jordan, our final destination, but it looks like traveling through Syria is an unlikely possibility. Upon arriving in Amman in the middle of September we plan to stay put there, perhaps until summer time.
And amazingly that is our life plan beyond just tomorrow, which should make my mother rest a bit easier.
A little interactive map of our Taiwan journey. Click on green circles to go to the corresponding photo album on flickr; blue circles will take you to their corresponding blog post.
If you find this interactive visualization interesting or helpful, please leave a comment, so that I can better decide whether or not to make similar maps for future countries--thanks!
So we bought this sweet thing the other day. In fact, Jordan had wanted to order it, but didn't, and then we magically found it in the one electronics store we went into. We took this as a sign (or at least, I took it as a sign and told Jordan) and bought it. I guess they make all the GPS devices in Taiwan, so that's why it's here.
Anyway, it's name is igot-u and it's a GPS tracker. This means that we velcro it to the backpack, walk around, and it sends a message to a satellite and tracks where we go. Then we go home and upload it to the internet, and you can watch us walk! Woohoo! I know you are very excited.
Here is a map I made. This is just a lame, small map. If you click on it it should take you to a new page. There you should click on the 3D view. Notice in the top left corner that you can push play, and also you can push the faster button, so it doesn't take too long.
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Let us know how it works for you.
Here is another map, from another day.