Wanderlust

It was the brightly coloured stalls of the school's careers convention when I first started to think about taking a gap year. They all told me that a gap year would be wonderful and not stressful and a great way to make money. From then I toyed with the idea of being an Au Pair, until I realised that you needed to jump through hoops of fire, NVQs in childcare and endless DBS checks, and I thought no no I'm going to university and starting proper adult life as a student nurse.
This all changed in one fleeting moment in a 50's diner in Cardiff with my best friend. We were chatting about how scary it is to think that university is just around the corner and how we both don't feel quite ready. We jokingly said how we should run away to Paris for a year and Ta-da!- the gap year idea was born! It was not, however, that simple from then on. We both jumped from one idea to another, amazed by the range of ideas that (seemed) available and a huge list of places we wanted to go. It wasn't until late December when we actually made a plan on a pizza hut napkin, over a large plate of nachos.
Our initial idea was to live with a friend in California for 6 months, spend 3 months in Australia, travel in Thailand then do something until August when we'd finally come home. This plan was going great, we were all ready to book our Round The World ticket until it came to researching how to get an American visa, and it all fell apart. Successfully getting an American visa is as common as human sacrifice, or so I've found.
So currently, me and my friend are desperately trying to re-think our plans.
To stop this from happening, I thought I'd make this blog post and give you some great gap year websites and books which I've been using.

• Lonely Planet's 'The Big Trip' book- This book is my gap year bible. It is stocked full of information on everything you can possibly imagine in a really friendly and simple format. I have already colour-coded each chapter that is useful to me. They also have a great website  which I would definitely recommend! 
• Gap Year 360- this website is fantastic, and offers a wide range of options from volunteering to paid work abroad. 
• Cool Works - If you're looking at summer/ski season jobs, then this is the place to be. 
• BUNAC- Another massive range of options, with a really well known organizer (may pacify nervous parents who seem to assume that your gap year will only involve you becoming a skint criminal)
• GapYear.com- This is a brilliant website which talks you through everything, with a massive range of articles, advice and forums with helpful people. 
• STA Travel- I've recently discovered these guys and they've been great. A friend used this and said it was great, what more do you need to be convinced?
• The Guardian have done some articles as well which may give you some ideas
• One World 365
• If you are looking for Au Pair sites, then greataupair, aupair-world and newaupair have all been good (even though I didn't go down that route)

Those are the ones I've cherry picked for you, and if I think of anymore, I'll update this list!

This process is scary, so don't be worried if you find yourself thinking 'oh my god can I actually do this? I MIGHT DIE' or 'WHY DID I CHOOSE TO DEFER'. As long as you can happily explain why you want to go both to yourself, your friends and your overbearing family who mean the best but would really rather prefer it if you didn't, then you'll be fine! 

Best of luck, and feel free to comment/tweet/message me on tumblr if you get confused or want advice or even have advice for me!

Thanks for reading,
Kitty x