The i-to-i Chalkboard online travel community - Meet. Share. Travel with Purpose

Ok, so everything is getting a lot closer now and I don’t know about anyone else, but the panic is beginning to return. Eep! I know life is for living, it’s all going to be a phenomenal experience which I will look back on with pride and/or be able to tell entertaining stories of the series of mishaps/unmitigated disasters that will inevitably happen to me. I also know that the whole reason I’m doing something...

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I am excited. I think that’s partly because it’s Friday and I don’t have to process any more ISA’s until Monday. It's not much, but I am really massively happy about this! Anyway, as I say, I am excited. More excited than I have been about China since I signed up, because then it was a heady mix of terrified “oh god, what am I doing”, anguished “do something Clare, ANYTHING will do” and elated...

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Since my last post, my mum has had a major operation and as I’m living at the nation’s expense right now I can look after her and generally make myself (and my working core muscles) useful. However, playing housewife temporarily has definitely re-iterated that although I am perfectly capable of hanging out a line of washing, making a mean goulash and whipping round Sainsbury’s like a pro, I REALLY don’t want to as a career!...

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There’s a saying about learning something from every experience isn’t there? Today I came face to face with the greasy, buck-passing, noncommittal face of English bureaucracy; but then I remembered that I’m going to China and just went and (reasonably calmly) made a cup of tea instead of spitting expletives. Thank goodness China has a lot of tea. The upshot of all this is that, as I apparently need a higher level of security clearance...

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"Clare, when you're off travelling, DO NOT SCRIMP ON TICKETS - I spent a three day train journey sat on a Chinese man's lap. THREE DAYS!" What a way to start Friday morning! I admit, I cannot (yet) top this story... but it does sound like a challenge :)  So far, my 'best' travel story involves me being hospitalised in Albania, mostly for the look of shock on people's faces when I open with that line, but actually,...

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No, this post isn't about grammar - I am making a *hilarious* tense based pun! (apologies, I've been wrestling with Checkpoint Three ALL DAY and I'm exhausted - Achilles Hell...er Heel, thy name is grammar and the phonetic alphabet.) Dear readers, this is about aspirations and fears and motivations. A continuous, perfect, future... I suppose that's putting all my rice in one bowl, but that is what I'm gunning for. I don't mean that I think that this...

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This morning (I say morning... it's a weekend and I still relish not working at weekends so actually more like lunchtime) Chinese For Dummies was presented to me by my Dad as I crunched through my Special K. "Thank you Dad" I said "You're welcome Clare" he replied, "I thought you'd like some reading material, and look, there's a CD in the back that you're brother never touched..." (Some background information for you: my older brother went with...

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