Happy New Year everyone!

Well, only two weeks to go until we're off on our travels! Flights are booked (airport strikes cancelled!), money almost saved, rough planning complete and bags eagerly awaiting packing. Seems to have taken forever to come round, but it will definitely be worth it!

Just to give you an idea of our plans, here is our flight itinerary:

20th January: Edinburgh - London - Los Angeles

21st January: Los Angeles - Auckland

24th February: Christchurch - Melbourne

5th April: Cairns - Darwin - Singapore

23rd July: Bangkok - London - Edinburgh

Keeping in the traditional spirit of New Year, here are some of our resolutions for 2008:

• Work less and lie on the beach more
• Discover if our names are really pronounced Bean and Sheeauna in New Zealand
• Swim with dolphins (Sheona)
• Get over an irrational fear of dolphins (Ben)
• Eat BBQ'd steak at least once a day
• Bungeeeeeeee jump (Ben)
• Hold a toilet roll and fresh pants at bottom of jump (Sheona)
• Learn to cook a mean Thai curry
• Drink copious Singapore Slings (... in Singapore)
• Conduct extensive research into the disease commonly known as 'Traveller's Diarrhoea'

We're off to get organised. See you in a few weeks for some haka and hangi!

-B&S

(P.S Thanks go to Hamish McTavish for lending us a picture of his house...)