T minus 15 days

15 days and I'm going to Rwanda! CRAZYNESS!!

So this past week as just flown by.

Good News: On Friday I found out my teaching placement for the next year! I'm going to be teaching at an all girl's boarding school, and I have been requested to teach chemistry (of course that could change once in country..). Wohoo! Now when I first looked into this year program in Rwanda I was excited that it was for teaching math and science, but I was still unsure what exact subject I would be teaching; so finding out that I will get to teach chemistry is really exciting. As dorky as this is going to sound, the first thing I did once I found out about the chemistry was to go into my basement to go through my boxes of all my school papers from the past 4 years. I immediately grabbed my course notes from my chem 111 and 112 class, their respsective quizzes and exams, my ACS study guide book, and my chem 108 course notes that I had when I tutored. At first glance I was like sweet I want to take all this with me, but I know that I can't...grr. how am I going to decide what to take? The only thing I can come up with at this time is that I'm going to try and fit in as much as I can. Obviously I will also be bringing my Chemistry text book. Although I have been told the students would have text books and there is a set curriculm for me to teach any type of supplemental stuff I could bring myself would be helpful, so I really do want to bring what I can. I am also considering bringing my atom/molecule set because that could be a fun thing to use with the students, or even just to make something and have that sitting on my desk..not to mention it would give me a reason to play with it myself..haha, side note: I still have my 'pet' from orgo, do you?

Since I only have 15 days left this week is my last chance at shopping for anything/everything else that I could possibly still need. Oh and not too mention its also Christmas shopping time...

Aside from getting myself ready to leave for a year I am also getting ready for Christmas, which in my family means A LOT. Today we went tree shopping. We picked out a tree pretty quickly, I think it only took us about 45 minutes. And believe it or not this year our tree is one of our smallest in years. I would hazard a guess the tree is around 7 ft, compared to our normal 12 footer. So we got our tree set up and its chillin to let the branches lay down so we can put up the lights and all the ornaments tomorrow. The rest of the day was spent putting up outside lights. Now that was some fun.
This coming week will be filled with packing and cleaning and baking and hopefully some quality christmas music! I can't wait for all of it.. especially the baking, or maybe I'm just excited for the eating that comes after the baking. Either way it should be an exciting week, which hopefully will be culminating with one sweet going away party I am throwing for myself. :)

T minus 20 days

I can't believe that I am finally saying this, but in 20 days I will be leaving for Rwanda.. CRAZY. right. yes. I am a total mix of emotions. I am so excited to go and finally get out of my house and start something new, but of course I am also a little nervous since I don't fully know what is in store for me.

In the last few months I have been trying to do as much as I can to prepare myself so that the next 2 weeks will be as easy as possible for me..

Obviously before going to any country one would like to be informed about that country, so I have tried to read as much about Rwanda as I can handle... Everything from tour guide books to personal blogs, essentially anything that could give me some insight to not only what the culture is like, but also about the history and present.  I think like many Americans there is one major thing that comes to mind when one hears Rwanda, so of course I read about the Rwandan genocide. I figured that if I am going to be there I have to read about it and try to gleam even the smallest understanding for myself.  Now as much as I 'liked' these books I must say most were at times 'difficult' to read, as in I found myself choked up or crying as I read, but that shouldn't and wasn't a reason not to read them.

Now on the other side of being prepared to go somewhere comes the packing..

What will I really need to bring with me for the next year? This is the question that I have asked myself many times over the past few months, and this is the question that has made me write many a list to try and answer it. Being who I am, I have tried to buy and organize everything I could, as much as I could over the past few months so hopefully this coming week will make packing 'easy' (somehow I don't think it will end up easy).  Now since I have been gathering up what I think I will need I will admit I have made some 'fun' purchases.(please note how the fun is in quotes because that fun is my fun, not your fun most likely)... Being the dork that I am I could only but find myself excited to buy and get my handcrank LED flashlights that are seriously the coolest thing I have seen in a while, not to be outdone by my handcrank/plug in/ solar cell speaker I got. So essentially I couldn't wait to use them, so I use them around my house now, cause come on they are the coolest... unfortunately I am pretty sure that is all the fun I am going to get out of packing for the next week because I am of course trying to stay not only as compact as possible(as in # of bags) but also as light as possible(as in I'm gonna be the one carrying the bags)...so here goes me wishing myself luck in packing.

The only other thing that I would like to prepare before I go is the material I could use while teaching. As of right now I don't know what subject I will be teaching, but hopefully in the next week or so I will find out my exact placement so I can then go through all of my lovely text books and figure out a way to bring one or two of them with me.. cause come on if this isn't a reason to use my trig,geometry,calc,physics, or a chem book I don't know what is :)

but seriously I do hope to bring one of my own books not only as a supplemental resource to use in the classroom but also because I am already familiar with it..(guess all that reading the book when the prof said to could actually come in handy..)

Other than that I am just trying to think of some fun stuff to bring that could amuse me and possibly high school kids... I was thinking like twister or travel scrabble or even a domino set.. who knows.. I'm guessing that stuff like that will come down to how much room I have in my bags... 

lets just hope I pack like a jackson and not a palladino...

Another Year Gone By

Buon Compleanno A Me!

Having my birthday provided the perfect opportunity for me to think back upon the last year.  So many things changed and happened over the last year , so that at times its weird to even try and think about just one thing.  I know that it is trivial to say, but the last year really changed my life.  Up till now I would have said that the only other year of my life that has such an impact on my life was my senior year of high school when I lived in Italy through AFS.  Which I guess in hindsight shouldn't really surprise me all that much that me senior of college would also have a profound impact on my life.   And I guess it won't surprise me a year from now when I look back and say that this year has been another life-changing experience.

For the longest time I really only had one goal: to graduate from ud and to go to grad school.  Now don't get me wrong, the past four years at ud were awesome.   I loved my major and my friends, and my life.. and I was so sure I knew exactly what I wanted, but as it normally goes, it wasn't meant to be.  At this point most of my friends have started new jobs and are off to their new lives.  Part of me is envious of them because they have the next step of their lives planned out.  In a blink of an eye they went from engineering student to working for some company or in some lab... and then there is me.

Although I have not given up the idea of going to graduate school and pursuing my ultimate goal of being a prof, I realized that it was not the right rime for it. So now I find myself two months away from moving to Rwanda for a year.  Considering 'recent' history many people have asked my why, but what I really want to say to all of them is why not?

I know that the next year of my life will be full of surprises and that most likely anything that I could predict might happen won't, so I'm not even going to try.  But I can say that I haven't had anything this exciting before me in a while, and I haven't felt this kindof anticipation in a while.

Either way all I know is that since I have graduated I have become just one little CHEG in a big big world :)