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Showing posts from March, 2014

Charlotte's Web (?)

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The other day, as I was settling back in at home after weeks of traveling, my small friend Samantha came to visit me.   I can always tell when she’s been missing me; she finds reasons to simply sit in my house.   Since I wanted nothing more than to bathe, I asked her to leave and that I would see her later in the evening.   As she walked out of the house, she casually mentioned that there was a spider on my wall.   When I walked outside to look at what she was referring to, I was panged with a sudden jolt of fear.   This was no ordinary spider.   This thing was about the size of my hand.   Its colors shimmered in the setting sunlight: a brilliant orange and a black so dark that it appeared purple.   I instinctively put my arm between Samantha and the spider (even though the thing’s web was stretched across the span of my roof, and nowhere close to us), and she started giggling and asking if I was scared.   To try and appear brave I flexed my eyebrows together, pursed my lips, and

I'm moving to El Salvador

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I just received notification that I have been accepted to serve as a Peace Corps Response volunteer in La Palma, Chalatenango El Salvador!   My official title is “Youth Outreach Music Coordinator”.   My assignment will be to work with local stakeholders and citizens within the community to strengthen a music program that keeps youth from delinquency and gangs.   I am so delighted that I can hardly contain myself! So basically what this means for my near future is that I will have the opportunity to finish Peace Corps Botswana as a Community Capacity Builder on June 10 th .   I’m hoping to fit one last adventure in with Duncan to Cape Town for a few days, and then I’ll fly back to the United States.   Once in Tucson, I’ll have an opportunity to quickly readjust to the fast-paced life in America: visit my little brother’s graduation from the Air Force Academy, spend some much-needed time with friends and family, etc. Then, just when I’ll have caught my breath, I’ll be flying

New Year, New Beginnings

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I have been extremely negligent in keeping up with the blog…so I apologize first for the length of the following post, but also for the amount of information I’m about to dispense.   In order for me to be able to successfully portray the past few months to you, I’ve decided to provide a photo diary of major events that have occurred. I’ll elaborate when needed, but bear with me.   Alrighty so in October of last year, a close friend of ours (Cassie) completed her full two year Peace Corps service and so we had about a week-long celebration to bid her farewell.    First we went camping in the nearby village of Lepokole and enjoyed the ancient, secret cave paintings, baboon sightings, delicious bar-b-que, and each other’s company. This moment struck me as being particularly significant because not only was it overwhelmingly exciting for Cassie but it was the first time I officially started visualizing what it would mean to leave.   Next, I was fortunate enough to have some