Hey everyone! Alex here.

I’ve been pretty silent on the blog front a while now, but the pressure is on now, and we’re in a bit of a tight spot.

The good news is that we have essentially all of our gear, and have paid the last month of rent before we move into her father’s house. The bad news is that we still have over $3,000 before we reach a required deadline of $7,800 total on the 25th of this month. If we miss this, we can still go, but we get rescheduled to a later time in the year. Neither of us want that.

I’ve been avoiding making a post like this because no one honestly likes asking others to just give them money. It’s counter to my pride, and even though it’s only a request, it still feels almost rude or impolite in some way. But I have to get over myself, because my pride is mostly foolishness.

So here’s me asking you to give. I don’t believe in “give ’til it hurts”, but if you can budget us in, I implore you to do so, right now if possible. This is what we’re looking at exactly: We’re up to $4,380 of $7,800, and the 25th is 16 days away. That’s a need of $213.75 donated each day for the next 16 days. I want to ask you to donate that ‘daily need’ amount if you’ve been waiting to donate, or if you’re willing to donate again.

To me, that seems like a ton of money to give away. But maybe it’s not so big for you. If you’ve been waiting to see if this trip is really happening, to see if we are indeed in earnest about raising all this money and going on this huge trip for nearly an entire year, well, this is it. We’re for real. This trip is for real. But we can’t go if we don’t raise the money. So you help make it real for us, and I will be incommunicably grateful.

One last thing before I hit post: Thank you if you’ve already donated. And a few of you have donated more than $213.75, so thank you. You’re making it real.