Planning

Oh job interviews.  Some people hate them while others, like myself, thrive in them.  After getting back from our long-term trip, Angie and I began looking for jobs in our respective fields and we knew that accounting for our career break was something that we were going to have to talk about with just about everyone we spoke with. But what we didn't anticipate was just how wide the question types would be.   From the standard and predictable to the down right weird and off the wall, we quickly realized that we had to be prepared for just about anything.

The following are eight of the favorites that we have encountered.

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Before heading off on our 15-month long-term trip, I had traveled quite significantly with not even a blip on the trouble radar.   Where this may give some travelers a false since of protection, I follow enough blogging friends who travel full-time to know one simple truth: the more you travel, the odds of something bad happening go up.

This may happen to you on the very first day, six months down the road, or not even for several years. Regardless of the answer to “when,” odds are with you that at some point in time trouble is going to find you.

On this long-term trip we had trouble find us quite a few times, and I am incredibly grateful to have had the foresight to buy long stay travel insurance from World Nomads. Reviews said they were great in filing a claim, and we have to say, in the end they really saved the day.

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Long term travelers are forced to deal with a lot of challenges while on the road: dealing with bureaucracy, finding accommodations, navigating locales without knowledge of the language, and more.  The difficulties begin even prior to traveling in figuring out what to bring on the road as a traveler's entire life can be fit in the contents of a 45-90 liter pack.

Going into the pros and cons of packing any item can be a headache, so it is almost easier to just pack the travel supplies you are comfortable with and go from there, regardless of what other people say.

Still, every item in your pack will have a shelf life, a period of time in which they can be reused over and over. This could be re-wearing of clothes, depleting a bottle of shampoo, or even the inevitability of electronics breaking. During the course of my travels I've been keeping track of my habits of product usage and come up with some good rule of thumb for many items that you might take with you.

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In all of my travels, I never carried a phone.  I'm going to repeat that to let it sink in.  Out of the 66 international countries I've visited, totaling well over 700 days of travel, I never once used a cell phone.  In fact, even when I was at home I never even owned a smart phone.  Crazy, right?

Call it a mix of wanting to save money and not getting hit with roaming charges when abroad, but the truth of it was that I never had any desire to be that connected.  When I was out exploring I didn't want any distractions, and I loved every second of it.

But now that I use a phone when traveling, I wanted to have data on the go. Naturally, I purchased my first smart phone with a Simple Choice plan- a T Mobile international data plan with data and text included in 200+ countries.

If I'm going to do it, it will be done right, and with a starting price of $50/month I was sold.

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