Plans Changing...

I'm going to take another pause from the normal blogging updates to write about a very significant event that happened yesterday and the ramifications it will have on my trip. Yesterday, my invitation to the Peace Corps finally arrived! The low-down skinny is that I will be a "rural development extensionist" in some super-rural community in either the north-central highlands or the pacific lowlands of Nicaragua. Orientation starts on May 12th and, from the looks of it, I'll be heading out to Nicaragua on the 13th or 14th to begin the three-months pre-service training. The service period will be August 1, 2009 through July 29, 2011. So if you want to come visit, do it in between those dates (plenty of time, right?).

From what I can gather, rural development extensionist basically means I'll be working with families to develop their agricultural gains, build community, teach lifeskills to kids, and generally help them improve their quality of life. According to the pamphlet, it's an "overarching approach" that involves everything from value-added techniques to agribusiness to integrated patio management, and I'll probably be responsible for working on all five project areas at the same time (which hopefully doesn't mean I'll be spread too thin to actually make meaningful change...). There are currently 35 volunteers that work on the project, so I'll have 34 americans around the country to keep me from going totally native.

I don't know what else to say about the assignment right now. I've got a lot of reading to do about the country, the program, the preparations and whatnot, maybe once I get through all that I'll have formed better opinions on the whole plan and hopefully will be less anxious about what comes next. My dad overnighted the packet to my cousin at Stanford, so I'll pick it up there for further reading.

Which brings us back to this road trip I'm on now. Seeing as how I ship out eight weeks from today, I need to get back to Ann Arbor asap to get all my preparations ready, tie up my loose ends and say goodbye to all my homies. So it looks like I won't be able to make it all the way up to Canada, much less the Pacific Northwest more generally. Instead, the plan now is to spend the weekend in the Bay area and start heading back East on Monday. So the planned drive back will start with a night in Vegas, a night at some national park in Utah, then Boulder, Omaha, and Chicago before heading back home (maybe visiting my bro in Allendale on the way). I'm gonna try to keep at a fairly quick pace too, since I would like to be home before the end of March. Gotta get my ducks in a row!

Oh and also, now that I know I'm going to a spanish speaking country, I really gotta get back to working on my Spanish. So I'll actually listen to the Michel Thomas CDs I put on my iPod on the drive back. Español, here I come!

Ok, my computer battery is about to die so I'll leave it at that for now. Wish me luck, and if you have any advice for stops along the drive back, let me know! Ciao for now...