One week until I leave for staging!

Well, I have finally gotten around to setting up this blog. It took me long enough, considering that I started telling people that I would be doing this at least four months ago. Dara's procrastination strikes again!

Before I go any further, let me say a little bit about the purpose of this page. I will be serving for two years (well, two years and three months to be exact) with the Peace Corps in Ghana. I am creating this blog so that I can tell friends and family a bit about what is going on with me as I serve in the P.C. This way, if a friend wants to contact me by email, I am hoping to be able to spend more time on personal correspondence, instead of having to fill all of my emails with different versions of "well, this is what has been happening with me for the past three months..."

Also, the P.C. has three main goals;

1. To help the people of interested countries in meeting their needs for trained men and women;

2. To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served;

3. To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of all Americans.

I am hoping that this blog will help serve the third goal through giving those reading this blog a better understanding of the people and culture of Ghana.

I am very excited to be leaving for Ghana next week - and getting pretty nervous... not nervous in the way you would expect, but just with the realization of all that I have to get done before I can leave. I pretty much have been pushing the BIG SCARY thoughts out of my head as much as possible. I am not very good at anticipating things ahead of time, so it probably won't hit me very much until I am over there that I will be so long away from family and friends, surrounded by a culture and languages that I don't understand.

So, anyway. I just thought I would get this thing started. I don't know how much access to internet I will have over there, or how often I will be able to update it, but I am hoping that at least once a month I will be able to let people know what is going on. And I will post pictures as I can.

Pray for me as I go into my new adventure!