Andrew Morgan’s Application

Kids in Other Countries Hate Homework Too

College

Typing, breathing, and digesting dinner.

For a job? I'm teaching English in Japan. I've been here almost two years now and, despite the fact that I love Japan, I'll be leaving in July to start my trip.

From a friend

In September of 2007, I will embark on a two year bicycle trip. I will ride alone and unsupported, possessing nothing more than my bike, a bag of supplies, and a steel cargo trailer. I’m going to ride south from New Jersey, America to Buenos Aires, Brazil. From Buenos Aires, I’ll connect via plane to Cape Town, South Africa and ride north to Cairo, Egypt. As I ride, I’m going to visit schools along my route, make presentations to students about my trip and the cultures I encounter along the way, and, with the help of documentary filmmaker Landon Van Soest (director/producer of Walking the Line), I will videotape the children and teachers I meet.

To get footage and connect with teachers and students, I will volunteer as an English teacher at schools along the way (five schools a year, one to two weeks at each school) and, resources permitting, meet up with Landon at numerous points throughout the trip. When I return to America to teach, I’m going to use this video in public school presentations and my own lessons as a tool to help students cultivate tolerance and respect for other cultures.

If kids can meet other kids around the world through video and firsthand travel accounts, they can personify global issues and cultures that previously seemed distant and too-confusing-to-approach.

My adventure will take place in a bunch of countries in North/South America and Africa. I picked these areas because they are very different from my home country of America and they are accessible by bicycle (well...most of them are) from my starting point---the New York metro area. I also picked these countries because they are foreign to me. I went to Costa Rica while in university, but other than that, Central / South America and Africa are filled with countries I've never been to.

My mother thinks I'm crazy for risking getting Guinea Worm and Malaria to do this trip, but I feel antsy when I'm not traveling or planning to travel, and I know that my trip will benefit the children I speak to. Only through learning about or meeting people who do inspirational things can children feel inspired and dream big. I was inspired by a world traveler that visited my classroom in junior high school. I know how powerful firshand travel accounts can be for young students. So I'm going. Guinea Worm be damned!

Start date:

Mid-September 2007


Length of Trip:

2 years


Amount of time future students and I will benefit from the trip:

As long as my vocal chords keep vibrating and my projector keeps projecting. When I get back to the states after the trip, I plan to teach high school again and make presentations about my trip to area public schools (I'm a certified high school English teacher and taught for a year in Montclair, New Jersey after university before coming out to Japan.)

If all goes as planned---yes! I'm currently sending my mission statement to different organizations and non-profits to try to secure some funding to help finance the filming and editing of the trip footage (the filmmaker is helping me with this at the moment by helping me find interested organizations and film supporters---we're trying to get funding to fly him down to meet me at certain points throughout the trip to film as well as help with editing costs). As I ride, I will link up with schools to volunteer, and, based on the blogs I've read of other native-English-speaking long-distance bike tourers, I am confident that I will have no problem volunteering to teach English along the way--often schools small and large are desperate for any additional help they can receive from native speakers in the area of English instruction.

Solo with the exception of the few times, resources permitting, that the filmmaker will meet up with me at certain points along the way to shoot.

Total Trip Cost: $20,000

In this figure, the following expenses are included:

Bike / Camping and travel gear: $2,000

Vaccinations: $500

Plane ticket from Buenos Aires to Cape Town and plane ticket from Cairo to New York: $2,000 (hoping for cheaper, but planning for the worst here)

Travel Health Insurance for Two Years: Roughly $1,000

Considering the above expenses, and working with the $20,000 figure, I will have a daily riding budget of $19.86 to cover food and lodging. I plan to cook and camp as much as possible and am confident, based on the blogs I've read of round-the-world-cyclists, that this amount will be sufficient for the trip.

How do I plan on obtaining $20,000? I came out to Japan with the hope of saving money for this trip. By the time I leave, I will have saved a little less than $15,000 based on the budget I'm currently (and have been) living on. The remaining $5,000 I plan to raise through fundraising efforts.

99.9% of the visas for Central and South America are easy to obtain either at border crossings or in capital cities prior to entering a country.

In Africa, visas are also easy to obtain but simply require a bit more planning---some countries require that you obtain visas a bit beforehand, so I will have to predict my arrival-at-the-border day from a major city in a neighboring country to set the visa start date correctly. Again, based on blogs I've been reading, this is easily possible and simply involves visiting an embassy in advance.

I could be faced with bike problems. Most long distance bike tourers complain of worn tires, broken spokes, and bent wheels. I'm going to be using 26 inch wheels (mountain bike wheels) on my bike. In even the most impoverished countries, these types of wheels can be purchased. I also will carry a bike repair kit and will use a steel-framed bike (steel can be welded easily in most countries in the world.)

I could get robbed. I was robbed once before in China. I dealt with it---life goes on! If it happened on the trip, I would file a police report, take out some of the money I had stashed in my seat post or under my shoe sole, and then I'd go to an internet cafe to cancel my credit card and notify my bank.

I could get sick. Thankfully, medication and hospital visits in many of the countries I'll be visiting are cheap. If I get sick, I'll go to a doctor and get treated. Because I'll be biking, I'm going to need to be hyper-aware of my health and treat ailments immediately because sickness can affect my ability to bike. Drinking filtered water, sleeping under a mosquito net and covering up at dawn and dusk, and avoiding over-exertion by eating well and resting will be key practices I plan to use to help keep my body in good shape.

I could get kidnapped. If this happens, there's not really too much I can do other than sing pop songs to my kidnappers because pop songs sedate people. Once my kidnappers are drooling and wide-eyed with visions of a scantily clad Britney clogging up their cognitive pathways, I'll make my tip-toed escape and disappear into the dark of night.

An appreciation for traveling was instilled in me from a young age. My parents took my sister and I on two cross-country road trips in America when we were in elementary and junior high school. Although my parents think I'm old enough to start considering "settling down," we joke about how their teaching gave me the confidence to travel that I feed on today (the same confidence that has made me allergic to "settling down"!)

I guess the biggest boost to my traveling psyche came when I was 20 years old. I paid two-months worth of rent in advance, told my job I'd be back in the fall, and set off to Hawaii and Australia for a couple of months.

When I arrived in Australia, I got a job on a sailboat and ended up sailing up the eastern coast of Australia for four weeks. I had never sailed before and, by the time I stepped off the boat, I felt as if I had learned enough about sailing to manage my own sloop on the open water.

Egged on by the skipper's advice, I tried to ignore the fact that I had never hitchhiked before and decided to hitch from northern Australia back down to Sydney to catch my return flight. After 43 rides, two overnight stays with kind drivers, and three weeks of hitching and sightseeing, I made it to Sydney. I returned from this trip feeling like the world was visit-able. To this day, I appreciate the experiences I enjoyed on the trip and realize how important that single trip was to my passion for traveling.

I will be honest with you: I haven't read the Delaying the Real World book. But I want to!

I just found out about DTRW recently and haven't had a chance to check it out of a local library. The local library near me only carries trashy English books from the late 1970's and worn copies of Shakespeare-Made-Easy.

I love the idea of DTRW and I felt compelled to fill out the application because the ideology behind DTRW is something I believe in and something I frequently try to communicate to my friends. Rushing into a career half-heartedly seems irrational to me.

After reading through the website information, I think Daniela Papi is most inspiring for me. My co-worker completed a fundraising trip for The PEPY Ride last year and met Daniela in Cambodia. She was inspired by Daniela's enthusiasm and motivation to do positive things with her life. I also appreciate how Daniela is using cycling as a catalyst for change.

I visited Cambodia last year and taught English in a small village outside Battambang. I saw firsthand how urgently the Cambodians need improvements to their educational system. I respect the work she is doing combining volunteering and children and hope to follow in her footsteps...or tire tracks rather.