Welcome (or bienvenido)

Tomorrow my short vacation at home on Maui comes to an end, and I'm off to a new adventure. Looking at my itinerary, the sheer distance I'll have to travel over the next few days has suddenly dawned on me. Kahului, to San Francisco, to Los Angeles, to New York; an international flight to Bogota, Colombia; then finally my destination and home for the next four months: Caracas, Venezuela. This one might actually beat my 30+ hour odyssey from Japan to Nova Scotia... not too excited about this part.

First a brief background on the trip, since I haven't explained to most people why I'm going where I'm going. I decided to do this months ago when I realized that, after graduating in December, I had an entire semester free before moving on to start a career. So, I figured, I can spend five more months suffering through another brutal Ithaca winter, or I could get out and see another part of the world. After a little research I settled on becoming an ESL teacher, and decided this was a great chance to try my hand at independent, extended overseas travel (which I've been reading about obsessively recently, via Tim Ferris and Rolf Potts), where I would be forced to adopt a new language, adjust to a change in lifestyle, and integrate myself into a completely foreign culture. Venezuela was the first offer I got and a perfect match: the only thing I know about the country is that they speak Spanish, which I've been meaning to learn. If all goes well, for the rest of my life I'll know I have what it takes to just take off to a place I know nothing about for months at a time. And that, I think, is worth more than anything I could learn or accomplish by spending another five months at school.

I'll be using this blog from time to time to let friends and family know I'm still alive, reflect on my progress in language acquisition and cultural assimilation, and maybe recount some stories about the inevitable battles with TD (you SASers know what I'm talking about) or other unexpected events that come my way. I plan to have many more extended trips like this over the course of my life, so this will serve as a kind of test run to learn and experiment with. Thanks for reading, and leave some comments - I'd love to hear from home!

P.S. For those of you who have no clue what or where Venezuela is (like me a few months ago), here's a cool map.