Short update

Zili Bo?

Sorry for the long delay.  Not too much internet round these parts.  So I don't have the time or desire to do a full posting but I will just give a brief update.  Next time I come to town in a week, I will give you more and some pics too. 

So Cristine and I basically owned Italy and the Pope.  We did I we set out to do, drink lots of red wine, eat lots of carbs, see the sights and groove to some funky italian tunes.  We stayed in Rome for 3 nights, drunkenly stumbling upon such things as the pantheon and trevi fountain in the dark nighttime streets of rome.  Of course we saw all the alluminati altars of science and had our picture taken with the pope.  All of this is fully documented by film and will at some point make it on here.  Then upon the suggestion of our bed and breckfast host Giodiorno, we spent 2 nights in the coastal pirate town of sperlonga.  It was magical.  Now im in Malawi, eating lots of avocado and tangerines.  Ok my knight has arrived, so I must leave you in suspense until next time.

The plan...

Welcome, so here's the plan.  Well first, let me set the stage.  I am just finishing my first year of grad school at Indiana University's School of Public and Environmental Affairs.  I have one year left.  Before grad school, I spent a year in mid-coast Maine, Boothbay Harbor to be exact.  I did shellfish & water pollution stuff with surrounding communities.  Before that I was in the Peace Corps in Malawi for 2 years doing community environment stuff.  Before that I was working on my undergrad degree in Biology for something like 10 years.  It was a really hard degree to get, being a slacker for much of that time.  BTW, this was in Texas at Dallas, Denton and Austin.  I graduated high school in the mid 90's and have had the same favorite band since 1994, Ween.  And before everything, I was born in Las Vegas, Nevada to a cowboy blackjack dealer and cocktail waitress at the Golden Nugget.  

So here I am now, ready for a new adventure and a bit of an old familiar one.  I leave May 6th for Rome, where I will meet up with one of the hippest moon lovin chicks eva.  We have zero plans except for dancing under the moon, drinking lots of wine, checkin out the sights and snackin on gelato, pizza and pastries.  Unfortunately this will be only a 5 night booze fest because she will move on to a festival in Lebanon while I fly via egypt, nairobi and dar es salaam to Blantyre, Malawi.  From this point I have no set dates for coming and going but eventually I will make my way up to tanzania then to Kenya.  In Malawi, I will visit old friends, kick back at lake malawi, and visit my favorite forester on Zomba Plateau.  I'm not sure what I will do in Tanzania except sloth around on the beaches of zanzibar.  Then in Kenya, I will do some work at the Kenya Forestry Research Institute followed by a 5 week course in Environmental Impact Assessment at Moi University in El Doret.  Finally, I will go back to Rome for my last 3 nights before heading to Chicago to spend a few days with my favorite and only normal relatives.  

Although caring for this amazing planet is important, I feel what is monumentally more important is enjoying this short life and my way of doing that is sippin red wine (and an occasional tasty brew), snackin on carbs mostly, and snuggin loved ones.