Dear Friends and Family,

There is a good chance that I have not talked to many of you for a while. After graduation in June, my parents were very willing to house their college graduate back in Nebraska for the remainder of the summer. There, I volunteered at the Nebraska State Coalition for Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault and an organic farm. I sold flowers at a local market a few times and made practice ACT tests for a guy that has a private ACT/SAT Prep class in Lincoln. I then moved out to Leavenworth, WA (a German Bavarian [tourist] Village on the eastern side of the Cascades) for a few months. There, I lived with R Kelly's son, Kelly, Maxwell Silverman and Kyle. They taught me rock-climber lingo and once in a while there was something easy enough for me to learn the beta to. I had a few different jobs, but the two most influential were my job as a gingerbread house construction worker at The Gingerbread Factory and as a soap maker/cash register runner at The Bavarian Soap Factory. I frolicked in the snow, did yoga on a nearby beach of a river, did some late season farming and even learned a little bit about logging from a tremendous individual and his son.

In terms of present day life - I leave for Miami tomorrow, January 23 at 6:25 am. From there I go to Cochabamba, Bolivia on the 25. All of the Peace Corps Volunteers train together in Cochabamba for the first 12 weeks while living with host-families. There we'll take classes in cross-cultural studies, technical skills, language, health and safety. From there we are each assigned to a specific location and will live with a different family for the following two years. I am doing agricultural work. This could mean small scale organic farming, llama or alpaca herding, animal husbandry, land conservation, agricultural marketing, bee keeping, etc...

I am keeping an open mind and simply feeling honored to have the opportunity to travel to another part of the world and moreover to return to the rich and inspiring culture of Latin America.

I know little more than this about the adventure that I am about to embark upon. However, recently the unknown has been more exciting to me than the mundane comforts of conformity and habitual routine.

I look forward to many exciting conversations with the other peace corps volunteers and members of the communities that I enter in Bolivia. I will be sending pictures when I get the chance and updating this blog periodically.

Please keep in touch and send letters, pictures, books, magazines or other small packages (not money or valuables though :)). When I get my address I'll send another exciting mass email. I apologize in advance for the mass emails. However, I don't know how frequent my internet usage will be while I am in Bolivia. If you want to keep in more constant contact you are going to have to pick up a writing utensil and some paper.

Peace and goodness to all.

Besos y abrazos,
Erin

The pictures that I have posted are (in order)

The first - Leavenworth

The second - Me climbing in Leavenworth (with help from Kelly)!!

The third - My sister and I at home for the holidays