Since Last We Spoke

So I haven’t been great at keeping in touch with everyone. My apologies. The following is a mighty quick version of my life since I graduated.

I'm in Latrobe, PA at home with the 'rents right now, but I leave for Chile on Friday. So let's see... I probably saw you over the summer, when I was on a tricycle... Well, I made it Seattle no worse for the wear! Finished up the bike trip 66 days after leaving Boston, still rode ~3200 of the 4000 mile trip even with shattering my shoulder. After a few days in Seattle, I flew back home to PA. I spent the month of September earning a Wilderness-EMT certification up in New Hampshire and then moved out to Portland, OR and lived with Veronica for the fall.

The plan had been to work as an urban EMT with my shiny new certification, but alas, archaic Oregon-state bureaucracy meant receiving reciprocity for my NH and National Registry certifications took months ...and by the time I actually arrived, the city of Portland had filled all vacancies for EMT-Basics anyway. Soooo I started the job search. After yet another rejection following a promising interview (at a running store this time), I decided to count how many applications I had sent in. 59. Despite the pride in having put up such a big number in only five weeks, 59 was, in fact, a really depressing number of times to have been rejected, and I decided to quit looking for jobs and spend the rest of the fall just burning money and enjoying myself. The following morning I got a call from Kiddie Kandids to come work a part time seasonal position in their baby photography studio.

Since the baby photography was only part-time, I caved and decided to work part-time as a street canvasser for Children International at least until the photo job kicked in. The canvassing was a really interesting experience. Few times in my life have I ever been as exhausted as after my first day of standing downtown for 8 hours, excitedly greeting people, and trying (unsuccessfully) to get them to sponsor a child for $22/month. My whole body and soul (and especially soles) ached, buuut I also go paid $10/hr. It was an interesting group that I worked with: everyone I worked with was young and had a huge personality, and badly needed money – a couple were even homeless. It turned out that I had the social chops to do the job, but I lacked the tenacity or theatrical flair that helped coworkers really excel at selling sponsorships. Meanwhile job security as a canvasser is a non-entity – miss your daily quota and you're gone.

On the other front, while my photo experience landed me the job at Kiddie Kandids, I did essentially no photography as an employee. As a seasonal hire with no previous child or studio photography experience I was relegated to the sales computers, where I cropped and edited photos, designed Christmas cards, and sold the photo packages. In comparison to the canvassing though, work at Kiddie Kandids seemed idyllic – I got to work inside, and sit down, and most importantly, the customers had already come to the store with the intent of purchasing what I was selling. Actually the exact opposite of canvassing. After three weeks of working both part-time jobs, I quit canvassing and enjoyed having some greater free time.

In December, I put in my two-weeks-notice at Kiddie Kandids and retired as the store's top seller. The week before I left, Portland got hammered by a snowstorm – a whole inch and a half fell in one night. Oh wow. But sure enough, the next day major highways were closed and the entire city called in sick. The uncleared snow had turned the streets into sheets of ice after being driven on for 24 hours. It turns out the City of Portland doesn't use salt for environmental reasons, doesn't own plows, and instead requires that all vehicles use chains as they wait for warmer weather to come melt the snow. Well, instead of warming up, Portland was subsequently blanketed in over a foot of snow. It was amazing! Veronica and I rented Nordic skis from REI, and used them to get all around the city – the streets were incidentally groomed by the remaining auto traffic and were rendered wonderful ski routes. We spent a couple days just having fun skiing down around between the skyscrapers.

As Christmas approached, I got everything packed back up and shipped to Pennsylvania. On Christmas Eve, I hopped a flight back to Pittsburgh. The flight boarded on time, but de-icing the plane delayed the take-off by an hour. So by the time we landed at our layover in Las Vegas over 90% of the passengers on our plane had missed connecting flights – including me. Being Christmas Eve and all, the airlines had no additional flights until the next morning, but generously put us all up in hotels. Christmas in Vegas, baby! I made lemonade of the situation and headed out on the town with another stranded traveler. It was a fun night, but my god, Vegas is one of the most depressing places I’ve ever been. Instead of turning the lights and fanfare into a holiday extravaganza, Las Vegas was nearly devoid of any signs of Christmas cheer. I can guarantee that I wouldn't ever plan to do it again. My family picked me up from the Pittsburgh airport, and we had a nice dinner and opened presents that evening.

The vast majority of my time since I've been home has just been getting ready to head to South America. I have everything just about packed, but I wish I could find a way to leave another 20 pounds of it out of my backpack. I arrive in Chile on January 17th and will be joined by two college friends (Jon Stone and Justin Bates) within a week or two. We're volunteering down south in the Patagonia region, helping to build a new national park by ripping out old fences and any other artifacts of the mega-ranches that had used the property.

After two months in Chile, Jon and I will head up to Ecuador and visit Chris Beeler at his Peace Corps site. He started the 27-month program last June and is spreading the basics of Western medicine to far-flung villages in the jungles east of the Andes. He's having a pretty good time – the scenery is stunning, the job is exciting, and the language barrier is beginning to crumble. After spending three weeks with Chris in Ecuador, Jon and I will bounce back up to Los Angeles on our way to New Zealand. In New Zealand, we'll spend a month in a wildlife refuge on the North Island and then another month trekking our way through the national parks on the South Island.

I arrive back state-side June 10, but plans from there are up in the air. I will most likely either head to Switzerland with my sister or buckle down (finally) to study for the MCATs. This next year I would like to find a job leading trips for troubled teens or teaching at a mountain school or some other job in the outdoor industry. I think I'll probably plan on heading to med school fall of 2011, which means beginning the application process in June 2010.

Well that’s the quick version. Hopefully, I’ll see you soon enough and you can pull some more stories out of me over a couple drinks.