Hello everyone,

In preparation for moving abroad for at least two years, and after much deliberation, I finally decided to create my own blog, albeit at 2 am in the morning.

All these years I have wanted to somehow and someday live in Africa and the time seems to have finally come. I have known and been waiting for almost a year to start my Peace Corps journey in Senegal, West Africa, and through that time, my excitement has only increased. With my loves for international development, people, culture, travel, and languages all combined, I cannot be more eager in my anticipation for all this to begin.

I am officially leaving for Philadelphia, PA on March 13, 2006 for orientation and then will fly straight to Dakar, Senegal on March 15. A two hour bus ride later, I will arrive in Thies, Senegal, where I will begin two months of intense training in all I will need to be a successful preventative health educator. It should be really interesting being back in 8am classes after almost a year of no school.

What's also interesting is imagining me pack for all this. For me, packing seems to also always entail a major cleaning of my room as I am a huge pack rat. Add to that the looming prospect of not being able to see my family, friends, and all the people I have met and come to know recently, for a really long time, and it makes for a heavy bag of hugely mixed emotions. But if I'm to be a nomadic oyster, that may be the price I have to pay. Therefore, thank goodness for internet and blogs, no?

I know this first post is a bit boring, but this blog is here for you to read up on my sporadic updates on my life and work in Senegal per your whim. Hopefully, I will have occasional access to the internet, even if it means a bike marathon into the nearest town (that is, once I'm finally assigned to my permanent rural site after training ends), but I will do my best. Unfortunately, I do not have a digital camera, so there may not be much more, if any, pictures to spice up this blog. The picture in this posting however, is one I took this past summer in Venezia. I like it because I like alleys and I like alleys because you never know what's at the other end and it requires exploring. So for me, Senegal and the Peace Corps is one big alley and hopefully at the end of it, there'll be a big fat pot of coffee waiting, over which you and I can one day exchange stories in person.