San Francisco: Packing up the house and finalizing travel plans

We've lived in Bernal Heights since 1997, and we've accumulated a bit of stuff in that time period. It's been a big project to go through all our stuff and decide what to keep. Fortunately for us, our friend Alice had recently moved and gave us all her empty boxes, bubble wrap, dish sleeves and tape gun. Here's a picture that shows some of the boxes of stuff that we're keeping - we have about 80 boxes in total.

We loaned out or sold a lot of our furniture, keeping just 2 bed frames, 2 desks and some bookshelves. The challenge with the cast offs is to try to find a new home for stuff we don't need. We learned about SCRAP from our friends Mary and Heather, and we've donated all kinds of art supplies and materials. Here's a picture of the pod storage where our stuff is loaded - it's 18 feet long, 8 feet wide and 8 feet tall. Tomorrow it will be picked up and taken to a climate-controlled warehouse.

Our plane departs tomorrow night at midnight. We've been finalizing our 2013 Roadmap, and have included the following countries that we want to visit:

Month	Month	Highlights
Jan/Feb	India - Middle Land, and Nepal	Buddhist pilgrimage, Meditation retreat in Bodh Gaya
Feb/Mar	South India - Kerala	2 week bicycle tour
Mar	Sri Lanka	Elephants at the Uda Walawe Nat'l Park
Mar/Apr	Thailand	scuba diving, meditation retreat, Thai New Year celebration
Apr/May	Laos	old capital of Luang Prabong
May	North Vietnam	Hanoi
Jun/Jul	Indonesia	scuba diving, Bali - we hope some friends will visit!
Aug	China - Sichuan	4th Ancestor of Zen temple, Yangzi cruise
Aug	China - Shanghai	Amazing city and sights
Sep	Hong Kong & Guangzhou	like NYC!
Sep/Oct	Japan	Patty and Bill visit us in Kyoto
Oct	China - Beijing	Great Wall
Oct	China - Gansu, Qinghai & Silk Road	Dun Huang Buddhist carvings
Nov	South & Central Vietnam	Cynthia visits us in Vietnam and Cambodia
Nov	Cambodia	Angkor Wat temple
Dec/Jan	Myanmar	Meditation Retreat

Our next post will be from India!