Here We Go

Welcome everyone! Where do I ever begin? I have accepted an invitation to serve in the Peace Corps for the next 27 months as a youth development facilitator in Azerbaijan.

I've started this blog as a way to share my experience with my family and friends. Many of them are Married with kids and have all the responsibilities of life and can't take two years off to travel to the other side of the world so I want to allow them the opportunity to experience it through me.

I debated for a long time if I wanted to journal online. When I thru-hiked I decided not to because I was scared I would write for the audience rather than write my true feelings so I kept a personal journal instead. But I realized afterward my family and friends didn't get the full experience from a few e-mails and phone calls. Dave who hiked with me for a hundred miles and Mom who was my resupply, support person, and rescuer from the unrelenting rain got a closer idea but many of you only got a glimpse of what the experience was.

I also think this is a way to achieve the third goal of the Peace Corps. Peace Corps' mission is to:

1. Help the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.

2. Help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.

3. Help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

As a note of forewarning I'm not writing this blog as evidence of my extensive literary abilities so there will be many misspellings, grammatical errors and I'm sure many times will make no sense at all.