That's right, today 35 of us we're sworen in as Peace Corps Volunteers in the beautiful country of Guinea. We've officially started our 24 months of service! Crazy stuff. I'm really excited and nervous at the same time to be off, literally in the middle of nowhere, for a good while. We're chilling for awhile now, but I'll be off to my site for good on the 15th. This means a couple of things for you, random reader of the blog. First, I'm only going to have internet access once a month at most from now on. Second, you should send me real mail to communicate with me and to keep me sane. And third, you should me packages to keep me sane AND happy. :) These can get pricey very quickly though, so be careful. ... read more

Doing great, 2 weeks left of training. Visited my site this week. Wonderful. If you want to know where exactly ask my Dad, Nina, or Claudia. More random exerts: Sunday January 20 A Day in the Life 8:37 AM - Leave Counterpart Workshop in Bush Taxi with two other trainees and two of our Guinean Counterparts 8:45 AM - Lost my counterpart 8:50 AM - Stopped by driver's house, not saluated, not offered any rice. We're all offended. 9:04 AM - Stopped to get tires. 9:13 AM - Counterpart shows back up. 9:20 AM - Nick & Neil randomly find us. I meet my counterpart's brother. 9:30 AM - Leave Mamou! 10:22 AM - Breakdown outside Bouliwel. 11:45 AM - Tune up/bathroom break outside of Pita 12:30 PM - Made it to the PC office in ... read more

So the illness set in a little sooner than expected, but that's life. I'm doing better already, running at about 80%. Not to shabby at all. I'm hoping for 100, because in the morning we're moving in with our homestay families. For our first and last days in Conakry we've just been meeting all of the staff and getting the basic overview of all that we'll be doing for the next three months. There are currently volunteers going through Training will us, so that has been extremely helpful. They've been answering our endless questions that range from "How do I get a dog?" to "How do I wipe my ass?" The past two nights we went out of the compound as a treat. Last night we went to a Middle Eastern restaurant that was very fancy ... read more

So after surviving the longest roadtrip ever, Barry (my car) called it quits on what was suppose to be a short trip to Columbus. So here I sit, in url=http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?searchtype=address&country=US&addtohistory=&searchtab=home&formtype=address&popflag=0&latitude=&longitude=&name=&phone=&level=&cat=&address=&city=bowling+green&state=oh&zipcode=Bowling Green, Ohio waiting for a new fuel pump. I had to stay overnight waiting for the part to come in, luckily my mechanic, Julian, was a really nice guy and dropped me off at a motel yesterday. I was feeling really grumpy because of the whole situation so I really didn't do much exploring. But Bowling Green appears to be your normal Midwest town: there's a university here with a pretty popular football team and it seems like overall there are more cars than people. I sort of w... read more

After a wonderful breakfast with Mas, I headed North for a last minute detour to Baltimore. Baltimore is home to the great and amazing Adam G. I hadn't seen or spoken to Adam in almost four years. Before that though, we use to write long letters to each other, talking about life, our significant others, and how incredible the other person was :) Baltimore turned out to be the highlight of my entire trip. I wish I could've stayed for weeks, but unfortunately I was scheduled to be in Pittsburgh for the night so I only got to stay for a couple hours. After all these years, Adam remains one of the most amazing people I know. Everyone should pick up the next edition of W Magazine in which there is a portrait of an up ... read more