Pre-Departure

Hmmm...well this is my first travel blog post and I'm not really sure where to start. I've been traveling for about 3 years now and never though to document it until someone asked me if they could follow my blog. I told them that I didn't have one and they looked at me as if I had grown two heads. Apparently, you aren't a truly well-traveled (or is that travelled...oh well, don't judge me. I grew up with spell-check) if you don't blog about it. I'm not going to spend time catching everyone up on my trips to Belize, Argentina, Finland, DC, or New Mexico (which is a foreign country in itself geographically when you've lived in Georgia most of your life). So here goes...

In 3 days I will be in Nicaragua for 5 days, then I'm headed to Peru for another 5 days. It's the first year I'll be spending my birthday away from my mom...I'm not sad. Should I be? I don't think she is either though LOL. I started a nonprofit organization about a year ago called MODEL26 (Making Opportunities by Developing Emerging Leaders. 26 for Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), and a goal of one of our programs is to connect youth ages 18-27 with international volunteer opportunities and to provide financial assistance for minority and low-income students that can't afford to travel to the volunteer sites. There are tons of organizations out there that have great programs set-up, but students just don't know they are out there, so we're the middle man between the orgs that need volunteers and the students that don't know where to start looking. Our goal is to send our first students to volunteer in the summer of 2012 (if we're all still here, of course. Apparently the world is ending any day now), so I want to spend the next few months traveling to different volunteer to sites to meet the staff and check out their programs, living accommodations, etc. before we send folks down there. I remember being on a program and getting dropped in a small Mayan village with no real instructions on how to behave, what was expected, where I'd be sleeping, what I'd be eating, etc. I made it through, but when the program coordinator told me that they hadn't sent anyone to actually meet the people we were living with and she didn't really know what to expect either I thought, "WHAAATTTT DO YOU MEEAAANN??? O_O" So we don't want kids to feel like that when we are sending them out to the middle of nowhere. MODEL26's focus is education and women's empowerment, so we also want to make sure the programs our partner orgs are running fall under one of those categories. We don't want to send a student to a country where they think they'll be doing one thing and they get down there and they're doing something totally different. That wouldn't be cool either.

So in Nicaragua I'll be in Chinadega with Amigos for Christ and I'll be in Trujillo, Peru with VEN Peru. Amigos for Christ? Is M26 a religious org? Nope, not at all. But a lot of the students we work with put a large importance on their faith, so we like to have organizations in our database that cater to all types of students. Sooo anyway, raise your hand if you're excited to spend 10 days meeting amazing people and volunteering abroad! *raises hand*

My goal is to do at least 3-4 posts while I'm down there, but no promises! Also, don't judge me if there are typos, etc. If there is one thing I hate in this world, it's proofreading, and I refuse to proofread my travel posts. They're supposed to be fun!

The next time you'll hear from me I'll be in Central America. Till next time...

<3 D