The end/beginning is in sight!

I've received some requests from family/friends to maintain a blog about my travels to South America, and decided to start/restart this one. I had a started a blog earlier, but decided that I didn't particularly like what I wrote the first time around. I'm new to this whole blogging thing, so we'll chalk it up to working through the learning curve.

Considering what's about to go down in my life right now, I figured that now would be an appropriate time to start properly documenting my little adventure. I suppose it will begin in about 2 and a half weeks when I leave Minnesota and begin taking the scenic route to Chile. First I'm going to hit up Chicago and crash on some yet-to-be-determined friend's couch before I fly out of O'Hare to Philadelphia. In Philly I'm hoping to catch up with an SIT (my semester abroad program) friend of mine before making my way by bus to NYC to see some college buddies for the weekend before flying to Miami to meet up with the rest of my volunteer teacher colleagues for the group flight to Santiago. There are a couple days between Philly and NYC that I have yet to fill...I'm sort of going with the flow and seeing who I can meet up with.

Once in Chile, I'll spend most of February in training in Santiago before moving in with my host family in time for March classes. "Where will you be living/teaching?" you ask? I'll know in about 2 weeks. I made my preferences as clear as possible: Valparaíso/Viña del Mar (where I studied abroad and still have contacts) is my first choice, Santiago (where around 40% of the country lives) is my second choice. If they really decide to screw me they'll send me to Concepción. Why do I feel so strongly against Concepción? I guess I don't really know. I know practically nothing about the city itself. I did hear some not so good things from Anna's sister though. I guess I'd just much rather live in Valpo or Santiago.

I'm really excited to get going. Don't get me wrong, it's been nice living closer to family and not having to deal with Carleton classes, but with only a few notable exceptions my life's been fairly dull since graduation. My job has been at best a somewhat-bearable insult to my intelligence and at worst...well....it's been bad. I've really been going out of my mind...haha. Definitely time for something new. And as much as I like to joke that I plan on stopping the aging process at 26, the odds of pulling that off aren't the greatest. I guess I'll have to settle for this one chance at life and one chance at youth...and try my hardest to come out of it in once piece with an interesting story to tell.

19 days left and counting...not very much time to get everything in order!