The eve before departure

I'm so nervous and excited in the eve before my adventure begins as a peace corps volunteer in paraguay! i had a fantastic going away party down by the river in my neighborhood, with my family and friends this weekend. it was complete with a taste of my soon-to-be life with power outages, no running water, and a torrential downpour. fun!

I wanted to give you all my address that I will use to start in Paraguay which is:

Cuerpo de Paz,
Chaco Boreal 162,
Asunción, Paraguay

Please be aware that the mail will get to me a little slower - but by using the Peace Corps address and a courier like Fed-ex for packages, it shouldn't be a problem reaching me.

I leave for Miami tomorrow for staging - where I will meet the other 49 volunteers I am going to Paraguay with, 25 of which are other Agricultural Extension volunteers. From Miami, we will fly together to Paraguay (which goes to Buenos Aires, then Asuncion) on Wednesday evening. I will be meeting my host family who I will live with for the 11-weeks of training on Friday! I hope to have internet at some point to update you all on what my life is like during training- and where I will be living the next two years!

Lots of love and so much thanks to all those who have been giving me love, support and encouragement in my departure. I will miss everyone dearly, and cannot wait to share with you my experiences. Thank you again and see you on the flip side!

xo

sunrise...sunset...

I just got back from a trip to Acadia National Park with my family and I'm so glad I finally got to Maine before I leave for Paraguay :) I think I'm only missing a handful of states in the continental US and I really would like to get to all 50 while in my 20s - Alaska and Hawaii may have to wait a while though. It was a wonderful vacation; totally relaxing, gorgeous views, awesome hikes, and we had quality family time that was long overdue! It's been a while since I've taken a trip with my parents and brother (and our dog, jade) and we had to rent a mini-van to fit all of us and our stuff we schlepped up to Acadia. It was well worth it since it came with a DVD player - although the 12 hour drive today was a bit much even with three movies. The weather was insane on our drive back - news and warnings on tornadoes, a pretty heavy rain storm, bad car and truck accidents - was a bit frightening. Makes me realize that extreme weather events are probably something my generation is going to see a lot of from climatic changes. But that's for another rainy day to discuss...

Back to vacation - here are some snapshots from the trip - my brother, dad and jade and i when we first arrived in acadia, me at 6am for the sunrise over cadillac mt, and sunset on top that same day, and family shot at jordan pond. I'll admit that getting to the top only meant getting in the car since you can drive up. Made me feel like a bit of a cheater- but it was an incredible view at both times of day.

There are many more photos (we took hundreds) and I'll create a Facebook album to show a larger smattering of our family times in Maine. I'm glad to be back home in NJ and am excited to see some familiar faces very soon, I've missed people here so much!

I hope that everyone back in California and the west coast is doing incredibly well - I am missing everyone! It's been really great to be back home for this month though, it's helping with me transition and get ready for leaving. Although it's hard to reconnect with old friends just to leave so suddenly. I hope that through blogging and emailing and some internet connection I will be able to stay in touch with everyone as much as possible :)

Sending all my love! xo