The blog is back!

Ladies and gentlemen,
I'm pleased to announce the resurrection of what was formerly referred to as "Chelsea's so-called 'blog' that she supposedly 'updates.'"  Welcome all to the page!  If you are here for the first time, you really haven't missed much.  Since the birth of this page in 2007, I have updated everyone a whopping nineteen times.  I have resolved to change my ways!  This post marks the beginning of a new era:

The Chelsea Joins the Peace Corps Era!
(big text and hype really necessary?  Yes, yes it is.  This is serious.)

A quick update on where I've been for the last year and a half:
I lived, worked, played, traveled, and sometimes slept in Colombia until December of 2009.  Bogota was my home-base and I dove head first into everything I could, from salsa dancing to playing ultimate with a team of women that played in nationals in Medellin.  I came home for Christmas with every intention of returning to Bogota to continue life there, but wanderlust reminded me that I just wasn't quite done moving.  What was originally planned to be a three week visit to Mexico (I had a friend there doing a Fulbright) on my way down to Colombia became a two month stay.  My good friend Meredith and I roamed the country and ended up spending a few weeks wwoofing in a small town near Guadalajara.  I left Mexico on March 10th, stayed a couple nights in Miami, and arrived in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on March 12th to begin a month of voluntarily shoveling and wheelbarrowing rubble in Leoganne, the town that was the actual epicenter of the earthquake.  Describing Haiti in this blurb would be impossible.  For more info on the project I was on and the beautiful people who run it, check out All Hands Volunteers.

I left Haiti with the need to sit still for a while, re-think, re-group, and recover from what had been a pretty non-stop year.   The goal was to get a job while I plotted my next move.  I lasted three weeks before I was breaking the news to my parents that I was applying for the Peace Corps.  My mom's response was: "Duh."  They knew this was coming.  In October I accepted my invitation to serve as an English teaching volunteer in Panama, beginning in January of 2011.  In the meantime, I've been in the real world as a loan assistant with a small business lending organization, ACCION.  They are fabulous and were so supportive as I left them for the PC. 

Chances are most of you already know all or part of this story.  Chances are some of you know the better details or were with me for the juicier parts.  But I'm a fan of recaps, especially when there's this massive time warp between posts, and I wanted to give a sense of the journey I'm coming from so you all can come with me on the one I'm heading into.

I leave for our staging event in Washington, D.C. in roughly 36 hours and have been overcome by anxiety surrounding everything that I have left to do during my last day in Albuquerque.  As per my usual style, I have left too much until the last minute.  I will say that it was worth it for the playing, visiting, and overall hootenanny-ing that I got to do whilst procrastinating.  So long and may you get more sleep than I will in the coming nights!