For those of you who know me really well and have followed my life in the past few years, then you know I love to travel (see: Facebook photo albums).  I have loved traveling since I was a little kid and y parents took me all over the place, but in the past few years my passion has just grown more and more – probably a lot due to the fact that I can now travel on my own (Sorry mom and dad! But don’t worry; we definitely had far too many crazy fun trips!).

After our month-long trip in Central America and ”Big Trip” during high school, then it was various trips around the country, a couple trips to Mexico, our family trip to Italy (minus Jeffrey) and the biggest of them all – Semester at Sea, during my junior year spring semester.  Senior year it was an 11-day trip in the Galapagos Islands and Ecuador (which was beyond amazing), and ever since then I’ve been just craving to go out again into this amazing world.

Here I am a year later and I am going to be fulfilling that passion!

In February of this year I will be moving to Guatemala for 2 months to live and serve in an internship position with the Social Entrepreneur Corps (click to learn more).  I will be volunteering my time in the cities of Nebaj and Panajachel in Guatemala.  The first part of my trip will be spent being trained in, as well as taking Spanish language classes, and the following weeks will be spent volunteering and learning more about the business practices that take place in a developing country and how to help improve the lives of others.

As I’m sure you can guess, I’m extremely excited to return to Guatemala after we spent 2 weeks there during The Big Trip in high school (If you don’t know about the big trip, feel free to ask! It’s a long story…).  I have wanted to go back ever since and after stumbling upon the opportunity in December, applying, and receiving acceptance into the program, I have been on Cloud 9 ever since.  Of course, this will mean I will be leaving my family, my job, my city and my country.  But I couldn’t feel more prepared and happy to escape embark on this journey!  Many more updates are to come, but I figured I wanted to get this post up and running, and really restart my blog again.

Any tips, tricks, Guatemala/Central American connections and more are welcome!  Although I have been to the country before, and even the exact city, I would love to be over-prepared as I step off that plane in Guatemala City in February!  Feel free to Facebook/e-mail me with questions, comments, suggestions, donations… This is an unpaid internship after all! Haha I’m kidding. Well kinda. It is unpaid. But no need to send donations. Unless of course you feel led. In which case I would kindly accept them…

Prayers are also welcome! (To help calm my nerves — but mostly my mom’s!)

Also, here are a couple pictures from my last trip to Guatemala. Circa 2007 — aka 2nd semester of my 10th grade year in high school – and not 6th grade, contrary to popular belief…

#1 – Allie’s and my room in Antigua, we stayed in host’s Rony and Teri’s home for 2 weeks

#2 La Iglesia de Antigua (Church of Antigua)

#3 The Lake Atitlán hot springs with our guide, Hugo