Get ready, set: Meet, Plan, Go!

On October 18th, 2011 in the city that never stops dancing, eating,  singing , and mostly drinking we’ll be hosting Meet, Plan, Go! Meet, Plan, Go! will be hosting their second annual nationwide event in 17 cities to inspire people to fulfill their career break and long-term travel dreams. The event will offer participants the opportunity to MEET inspirational speakers and like-minded travelers; get motivation, contacts and resources necessary to PLAN the trip of a lifetime; and start taking concrete steps forward to GO on that global adventure. Meet, Plan, Go! is a nationwide event created to inspire and encourage Americans to take a career break, a sabbatical, or just to go out and travel for an extended time. The idea being, that taking time in your life to explore and live in another country and culture is not a career breaker but a career and life enhancer!

Tickets are on sale now! Limited space available so reserve your tickets today!

Go check out the facebook page we’ve created for the New Orleans group, and if you’re not in the Big Easy check out an event close by!

We have some amazing panelists gathered for this event, let me introduce them to you!

Meet our Panelists!

Kelly Lewis: Founder of Go! Girl Guides, Kelly is a writer, a dreamer and an avid traveler. Originally from Hawaii, Kelly lived in New Zealand for a year before traversing through South America and the South Pacific. After a prophetic dream in late 2010, she started Go! Girl Guides, the world’s first series of travel guidebooks made just for solo female travelers. Go! Girl Guides: Thailand debuts this fall.

http://www.gogirlguides.com

Twitter: @gogirlguides

FB: facebook.com/gogirlguides

Kirsten Alana: is driven by an intense wanderlust, never feeling more at home than when boarding a plane or living out of a suitcase. She is addicted to the butterflies that occur right before an unknown, becomes known!

It wasn’t always like that, at 28 during bitter divorce proceedings, she decided she would change her life for the better and follow her wanderlust wherever the wind blew. More than a year of traveling has taken her to Mexico, France, the Bahamas, Argentina, Uruguay, western Canada and a dozen US states. A career and life break has helped her grow and sharpened her focus. Now, she plans to make a home in NYC where flights are easy to catch and the wind is very multi-cultural. She writes and shares her photographs at “Aviators and a Camera” hoping to inspire others to realize how important travel is to a well-rounded life.

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Meet Plan Go! Take The Trip Of Your Life/Career!

Have you ever just wanted to just pack up and catch a plane to some far-flung location? Stand up in the middle of your cubicle farm and announce that you’re going across the ocean to your bleary eyed co-workers? Or even just wanted to unplug and see what the world has to offer for just a few weeks? But how can you? You’re working, you have families, bills, mortgages, pets, RESPONSIBILITIES! Well gather around folks, we’ve got something to tell you…Career Breaks!! It’s not only possible but will most likely be the best thing that has ever happened to you and even to your career.

Career breaks are fairly common across Europe and Australia but have are just begging to be seen in the United States and Canada. What is a career break? It’s basically just what it sounds like, taking a break or sabbatical from your career, in most cases to travel.

Last year several seasoned travelers and career breakers created Meet Plan Go! An online career break site full of articles, tips, and insight about traveling and taking a career break from people who are or have done it. Not only do they have a great site, but last year they created Meet Plan Go! Events across 13 cities with over 1500 attendees all on the same night! Read what the NY Times had to say about it.

This year the event will be held in over 17 cities across the U.S. and Canada. And for the first time there will be an event in New Olreans, hosted by yours truly! Leaving our old life behind to go traveling wasn’t easy, but doing so not only gave us amazing expereinces and memories but have absolutly made us better people all around. It gave us the confidence to come back and start our own company in a new city, something we had wanted to do in our past life but was too uncertain to try. Taking the time to travel opened so many unexpected and amazing doors, and now we want to share this passion and experience with others. We want to nudge those who might be just “daydreaming” into taking the next step!

Does the idea of taking off and exploring the world get your blood pumping and nerves tingling? If so here’s where you can find out more:

Meet Plan Go! Website

Meet Plan Go! Facebook

Meet Plan Go! Twitter

Sign up for the informative and fun Newsletter

See all the cities and hosts for the event!

Early bird tickets to the event will go on sale at a discounted price in May, don’t wait to the last minuet as last year several hundred people were on the waiting list.
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Road Food Festival Video!

Though you may not be able to smell the aromas here’s the next best thing, a little visual tour of the New Orleans Road Food Festival!

New Orleans Road Food Festival

New Orleans Road Food Festival!

Today John and I hopped on our bicycles and rode down town towards the French Quarter on this sunny, gorgeous 81F day. We were not just riding down to the French Quarter to browse along the cobble stone streets, we were on a mission. This weekend, six blocks of Royal Street was shut down and taken over by gourmet food trucks and vendors from New Orleans and around the country. Some 50 stalls were set up, offering everything from  Oyster Po’Boys, Crawfish Sausages, to Fried Aligator on top of Grits. We met our friend a few blocks away and with cameras in tow began working our way up the crowded street trying to pick one stall to stop in, only to be distracted by the offerings of the next stall! We ended up having to compromise, grab a cold beer in a “go-cup”, and view every stall before being able to pick one to return to.

Royal Street Meets Road Foodies!

We had hoped to get to see and taste the “worlds longest oyster po’boy” but got to the festival a little to late to grab our own free sample! Here’s a mouth watering excerpt from the festival’s website about the po’boy:
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Japan: Why The Sun Will Rise Again

We Heart Japan

On March 11 at 2:46pm Japan was hit by a 8.9/9.0 magnitude earthquake. While the country has built up and trained for earthquakes this one was a monster, unleashing a massive tsunami upon this island nation. The destruction was both immediate and horrific. Yet, it could have been worse had the Japanese people not been Japanese.  This post celebrates the Japanese character and to highlight that glimmer of a silver lining  in hopes of encouraging those affected and to share the lessons with the rest of the world.

Having grown up in Japan I know that it’s lands are alive and tumultuous. Typhoons, volcanoes, earthquakes and finally tsunamis are realities you learn about early on.  As kids in rural America have tornado drills we would have earthquake drills. I recall countless typhoons, a few minor earthquakes where I lived, the massive earthquake in Kobe, and a eruption of a volcano while in Japan. But never in the scale that it is now.

What doesn’t surprise me, however, has been the amazing reaction and actions since the disaster by the people of Japan. This is what my friends in Japan and I would like to share with the rest of the world.

This is my translation of a post my Maiko Ida, a business analyst who was struck by the reporting of foreign media of the crisis. An inside out look of how the foreign media helped her see and appreciate her culture during this crisis.
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