Leaving May 20

After Skyping with my parents for about an hour and a half, being on the phone with Delta for a while, and doing some number crunching, we found a way to get my flight for dirt cheap using miles, and my dad still has enough miles leftover to come visit me! He's going to have to play some more soccer and start running, as we are going to hike the Inca Trail, a four day hike through and Andes on original Inca trails (hence the name) leading to Machu Picchu.

I will be leaving at MSP at 11:30 am on May 20 and arriving in Lima, Peru at 10:50 pm with a two hour layover in Atlanta. The return flight is booked for November 16. That leaves all of you exactly 181 days to come visit!

Before I leave, my to-do list still consists of: setting up new checking accounts, closing my old account, setting up my roommate Greg with the bills (I'm done with those!!), finding a subleaser, graduate, as well as actually figuring out what exactly I'm going to be doing when I'm there. As I get more details, I'll be sure to fill you in.

¡Voy a Perú!

My original and ideal plan for this coming summer was to prepare myself for medical school. I was hoping to go to the University of Minnesota for another four years, or else move to another city for school such as Chicago, Boston, or Washington D.C. That plan didn't work out for me, and as I've heard from just about everybody, "Everything happens for a reason." That phrase gets pretty annoying, as you only hear it when something bad happens. I guess it may be for the best though, as now I have the opportunity to travel to Lima, Peru to conduct research, volunteer, teach English lessons, as well as (hopefully!) becoming fluent in Spanish.

The plan right now is to travel down sometime around May 20, which is just a week after my "final final" as an undergrad. When I arrive I will be taking Spanish classes and having my sister show me the ropes. My sister, Katie, currently lives in Lima right now and will be there until the end of May. You can follow her travel blog on her blog. When I went down to visit her with my other sister, Annie, in January, I never thought that I'd be coming back down so soon to live there! The tentative plan is to come back in the middle of November for med school interviews, Thanksgiving and Christmas, and even catch the final weekend of deer season! If my research is going well, I will plan on going back after New Years and stay there until next May, when I will need to be around for Katie and Seth's wedding!

Once I know more, I will fill you in with details but for now, plan on saving up and coming to visit me this Summer or Fall!

That's all for now.