2(nine) & Thirty

(29) My sister and her boyfriend let me harass them and their lovey-dovey dog all weekend.  Good times!

(30) How many cheesecakes does it take to celebrate my 24th birthday? Three, apparently.  I am okay with that :)

2(six), 2(seven) & 2(eight)

(26) The journals and SD cards for Snapshots of Service!  Getting it all ready to go!

(27) My birthday is on Sunday.  Right now I am in Tampa visiting and misbehaving with my sister.  She gives me the best birthday cards of randomness.

 

(28)  Went to Fort de Soto with my sis and her boyfriend (along with their puppy) to see the water and let the dog run around.  Had fun taking pictures!

Snapshots of Service

Now that the travelling journal project I am putting together has a name, it also has its very own corner of the web located at http://pcsnapshotsofservice.blogspot.com/

Getting this thing started up is a lot of work!  I foresee more work on it in the horizon now that I have been easily convinced by my local PC recruiter at UF to expand it to 50 PCVs in 50 countries (yay 50th anniversary!).  Thankfully, she has offered to help me find people willing to do it via her magic PC contact skills.  My to do list for this in the near future includes: compiling an easy-to-copy-and-paste address book (in addition to my handwritten back up), finding someone willing to help with the second journal that will be going around, update Google map, finish tabs on Snapshots blog, and most importantly is to get the first journal ready to go! But it is a cool project and I think it is going to be worth it.   It is leaving on Monday for Zambia with miss Jessica (who I also still need to dig out a Microsoft Office key for!).  

 I have really appreciated all of the great feedback and comments, so thanks everyone!

Twenty-Four & Twenty-Five

(24) What happens when you have some downtime and a brand new Sharpie pen?  This. And yes, that is a smiley face on my thumb nail :)

(25) So I have spent the past couple of hours working on this journal project.  Addresses are hand written in case of computer mishap, but I still need to do an electronic version.  Map is also put together, but still rough since I don't have everyone yet.  It was incredibly hard hunting down where PC headquarters are for each country!  I think I got it though.

C/SA, Pacific Islands, Caribbean, Asia, and Eastern Europe Invitees, WHERE ARE YOU!?

I am not trying to discriminate again Africa volunteers (you are welcome to sign up!), but they are dominating the journal project thus far!  It would be great to get PCVs from multiple countries in each region where possible. Here are the countries that have a PCV signed up:
Africa: Botswana, Zambia, Rwanda, Malawi, Senegal, Uganda, Cameroon
Central/South America: Panama, Ecuador
Central Asia/Asia: Kazakhstan, China
Eastern Europe: Ukraine, Romania

I have loved the enthusiasm about this endeavor and I cannot wait to get things started!  We still need 11 more PCVs.  If you are interested in this little art project, please E-MAIL me with: Your assignment, departure date, country, last name, e-mail address that you will use during service, and your training address (usually found in your Welcome stuff!).  It is too time consuming to track down all of your information via blog!

Thanks!
Note to self: Buy journal this week!

Twenty-Three

Something a little different today: My first ever video! I have forgotten for so long how to do video on my D-90 that I was pretty excited to figure it out :)  This will be my Day 23 in lieu of a photo, which I can do if I want to! I had a pretty sweet day hanging with my sisters.  We did some baking (Oreo-filled Chocolate Chip Cookies) and some dinner making (sun-dried tomato fettuccine alfredo with blackened chicken).  Then we followed things up with a little Wii with the little brother :)

I had a pretty awesome weekend off of work.  Yesterday was uneventful during the day, but at night I went to Gainesville for a Peace Corps Bowling Social at UF thrown by the wonderful campus recruiter Amy Panikowski.  I got there a bit late, so I didn't actually get to bowl which is fine since I had a good time talking to Liz and Jessica while messing with Jessica's bowling score via distraction.  It was nice to get out of the house for something other than work or going to hang out at my mom's house.  Jessica was awesome enough to invite me to hang out with her and some friends afterward which was also enjoyable and reminded me how much I like small get-togethers and drinking games.

Once again I didn't feel like proofreading.  Sue me :)

Let's do a project!

After talking with some other Future PCVs, we decided it would be kind of awesome to compile a notebook between PCVs in different countries over the course of two years and have each person do their thing in the book twice during their service. What each person decides to put on their pages is up to them, the point is for it to be a snapshot of the volunteer's life at that point in time.  Pictures, anecdotes, poems, drawings, whatever floats your boat!  The notebook I have in mind is this one and it has 100 pages, so I was figuring each person would get 2 spreads of two open-faced pages each (I hope that makes sense!) over the course of two years. Since shipping between countries can take awhile, I'd like to limit the book to staying with each person for 2-3 weeks if possible!

Basically, I want 23 people going to 23 different countries (if possible) to volunteer for this project!  Ultimately, it would be great for something like this to be out there via scanned copy for future volunteers or even an actual published version :)  So if you are leaving for service in 2011 and have an invite already (or have already left) and want to be a part of this yet-to-be named project, then e-mail me at:
 k i m b e r l e y r o s e p h o t o @ g m a i l . c o m (no spaces!) with your name, country, and departure date.  As soon as you have a training or permanent address for service, you must let me know!

I will keep an index of all the addresses and send everyone the address that they will need to ship the journal to next.

If you have any other suggestions as to how to make this even better or smoother of an idea, please let me know!

**It may be a bit pricey, so keep this in mind! Luckily, you will only have to ship twice during your two years of service

:)

List of participants