cats out of the bag

A little cloud of guilt has been hanging over me. And when I say little, I mean little because it's sort of an inverted cloud. A cloud completely silver lined (coloured in with the stuff) and simply lined with a little guilty dark edging, if you will.

The source of this supposed guilt is that I have failed to properly tell all of you about my traveling plans. I've uttered murmurs over the past year and a half about my plans to explore the USA in my gap year and after months and months of saving the time has finally come to pack up and be off. Along with my friend Joanna (you may have seen her craftily smoking out of the window and preparing our meals in the Paris photos further down..) I'll be spending just under 7 weeks on the other side of the pond.

We're going to be using Couchsurfing.org (which has raised eyebrows and vague concerned of chopped up bodies amongst many people when I've told them) as a way of meeting lots of interesting people in various cities who will kindly host us for free and with luck be game to interesting conversations. It's also a great way of penniless younguns like ourselves to experience more. The whole ethos of the site is really interesting and such a refreshing concept, a kind of back to basics community approach which (while of course having your head screwed on and applying common sense) champions actually having some faith in strangers.

I digress..this is what our itinery is like so far..

Arriving in New York on Monday and spending just under two weeks there.
Moving onto Philadelphia
Annapolis
Washington DC
Charleston, SC,
Savannah, GA
Down through Florida to Miami
and long trek back to the Deep South
Atlanta, GA
through Alabama
to Tennessee
and through Mississippi onto New Orleans
a move towards California (via god knows where. Texas somewhere..)
San Diego
LA
Coachella Festival
and a final stay in San Fransisco before flying back to London.

It's ambitious for 7 weeks but hopefully doable and please, please do leave suggestions if you have any recommendations or must see places. Our general attitude favours meeting a variety of people and getting a real feel for places rather than just sticking to hotfooting it between various tourist spots. Think lots of exploring, photograph taking and culinary experiences punctuated with long journeys on the Greyhound and much time getting through the thick piles of American Literature we're taking with us (I'll be studying American Studies at Manchester University come September-I've just accepted my place! And Joanna is ridiculously smart and well read so it's a neccessity for us both.)

As far as the blog goes, I'll be visiting an internet cafe once a week anyway purely to keep up with my finances and shoot my Mum 'hey, I'm alive' emails and intend to chart my progress here while I do. I've also prepared some posts which will automatically post because I am super, super cool.

Packing for 7 weeks is so bloody tricky, I've settled on taking about three outfits as I'm dreaming of the prospect of cheapy thrift stores to make the most of. (On that note, if any of you have dirt cheap thrift store references, please spill, I promise I won't tell anyone..)

I shall leave this novella of a post here for now. I leave on Monday but will post tomorrow before the adventure begins. The prospect of being in limited touch with the internet is embarrassingly scary, I'm relying on all of you to keep my abreast with the goings on of the fashion world! Do feel free to fill my comments box with random references and new trends as they surface. 'ladies facial hair', random blog address, that kind of thing. Also depending on the price of using internet from my phone abroad I'll be tweeting along the way.

Phew, that's your update. Would be really lovely to meet some of you along the way if we're passing your hometown and you're legit and fancy a cuppa and a chat about anything from Chloe Sevigny to Sue Sylvester or Mad Men to Modern day Feminism?