General Itinerary

Now that it's only two weeks till I leave, I'm finalizing a lot of little details, most importantly the time between the 16th and the 1st of July when I will meet Josie and Belfast.

So...
-16th of June, I'll leave the US and fly to London
-17th I'll arrive in London and stay with my "uncle" Greg Barry
-18th-19th I'll be staying in the countryside with parents of a neighbor, which is all based on good luck and relationships for me.
-22nd I'll fly to Belfast - staying in Belfast and Derry for about a week and a half, meeting with some people who I know through a professor and doing more research for my novel. Finally seeing where the story actually takes place. Staying in hostels.
-1st of July, I'll meet Josie in Belfast
-2nd, we'll take buses west to County Donegal where we'll be living on a farm outside of Moville, Ireland for three weeks, exchanging labor for room and board. It's a little town on the sea, and we'll be 4 miles away with what looks like a great family working on their farm and in their farm store in town.
-Around the 26th of July, we'll go back to Belfast and fly to Basel, Switzerland, where we will then take a train to Bern and meet my friend Megan and her Swiss boyfriend. She is living with him for the summer, and they have so graciously offered to let us stay with them in his family's summer home in the Alps for a couple of nights. There we will hike and relax.
-By the 1st of August we will be in Gallipoli, Italy where we will be at a B&B exchanging our labor for room and board once again, only this time we will get every afternoon off to sit on the beach and explore the ancient city. We'll be there until the 15th.
-15th-31st, we'll travel north through Italy, seeing Florence and Rome, go through southern France to Nice and Avignon. Spend some time with Josie's friend's aunt on her farm in the countryside, then stay in Paris for 3-4 days. The only real major thing we have to do in this time is make it to London by the 31st to catch our flights home.
-6:08 PM central time, August 31st, I land, exhausted and jet lagged, ready to start school in a few days!

Finally, I feel like I can start getting excited. Josie and I talk nearly every day, keeping each other pumped because for obvious reasons, we're probably the only two people who can really get legitimately excited about this whole thing. For now, I am trying to stay present with my friends, working as much as I can to make little extra money, and doing last minute planning.