It’s Been Awhile

So, I haven’t posted on the site in over two months. There have been a lot of things going on in my life keeping me away from posting as well as a lot of planning going on about future posts and upgrades to the website. Not to mention a whole bunch of new features have been added to the site and I kinda wanted to wait to start posting again until it was complete and I could show it all off! So let me tell you a little about what I’ve been up to, when I’ll be traveling next, and what you can expect on the site in the upcoming months as well as some new features that have been added.

First off, what the hell have I been up to? I have been working… Working a lot more than I ever have in my life, and have been saving up for all of the traveling I plan to do in 2011. Even though travel to lots of places can be really cheap, it still takes something! I’ve been teaching LSAT classes in Orlando (where I live), Gainesville, and Tampa, Florida and have been doing quite a bit of driving to get to all of those classes. I spend most of the week doing this and have been spending the weekends indulging in the world of college and pro football as well as continuing to pretend I’m in college. My UCF Knights are ranked for the first time in school history and I’m excited I’ll still be in town to catch any of the post season games they might get a chance to play in. On top of all of this I’ve also begun working on a few new online projects with a friend from college. I hope this project will one day supplement my normal income and allow me to travel more often, and a bit more stress free.

So when is this travel blog going to get some more travel posts? Right now my next planned trip will start January 6th of 2011. I am going to return to Central America and explore some new countries (El Salvador and Nicaragua) and also a little bit of my favorite country from my trip this past summer (Guatemala). I’ll be spending roughly two months (maybe a little more) on this trip and will be taking it a bit slower then I have in the past. I’ve got a start date and an end date, but no definite dates for places to be in between. I’ll be posting an itinerary post soon to give a few more details on all of the places I hope to visit.

Later in 2011 I hope to find myself in Europe. This is a very loose plan right now, as there are quite a few contingencies, but at this moment I am working on potentially moving to London for work. If this works out I’ll only be working a couple of days a week and will spend the rest of my time their exploring the UK and the other surrounding countries. Ryan Air (and their super cheap flights) will become my best friend. We’ll just have to wait and see what falls into place.

Last, what’s new on the site and what can you expect in the coming months? To start off, lets talk about all of the new features. My web designer has changed up a few things as far as the layout and functionality of the site goes.

-First, As you may notice in the sidebar of every page I’m displaying my content a bit different so that there is more emphasis on pictures and other cool things. I’ll continually change what is featured in those areas.

-Second, my “Where I’ve Been” page now features an interactive map that allows people to go and view content specifically from a certain country. So if you are traveling to Guatemala, and really want to read posts just from Guatemala, all you have to do is just click on Guatemala on the “Where I’ve Been” page! It’s as easy as that.

-Third there are going to be some additional pages on the site in the coming months that will focus more on travel resources for the specific countries I’ve visited. So lets say I’ve got the email of an awesome tour guide for Tikal in Guatemala (which I do), this would be the section where you can find that info!

-Fourth, I’ll be adding more media to the website soon and will be creating pages dedicated to showing all of my videos and all of my photos so they are easy to locate and enjoy.

-Finally, there has been a significant increase in the amount of user friendliness and ease of finding the exact content that you want to view. Each trip I take will have posts separated into their own timeline so if you want to read just from that trip you can simply hit next and skip over other posts and keep going right along with the story for that trip. If you just want to click through some of my featured photos then you can just click next photo on one of those posts and you’ll be able to do just that. And last, most of the photos I put on my site from now on will be able to be clicked on and enlarged to make for better viewing, which I am really excited about.

So that is everything that is going on for now. I’ll be posting a trip itinerary for my upcoming trip next Tuesday followed by some posts I’ve been meaning to do from my last trip so there will be a decent amount of stuff going up over the next month. I hope everyone has a great holiday season and a great end to 2010!