This is a test email post, to ensure that I can actually update my blog without going through the administrative interface. It’ll be much easier to post this way when I go abroad in a few days, so gotta work out the kinks now instead of later.

Attached to this email you should see a map of The Gambia, the West African country I’ll be going to with the Peace Corps next week.

for grins: italicized, bold, underlined

One measly week until I leave for Philly, and then The Gambia. That’s not very long, and time seems to be accelerating pretty quickly. There’s still a lot I need to do before I leave, although I got a lot of it finished up today. Most of the things I need to still do involve last-minute purchases (like, fresh boxers for instance cough), and doing things that I won’t be able to do while I’m over there (mostly this involves hanging out with friends, going to Montreal (Quebec, Canada) this next weekend for some real night life (sorry Burlington, you’re great most of the time, but ya just can’t compete).

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It’s been months since I last had anything to report on as far as official correspondence with the Peace Corps goes. The last thing I received from them, in fact, was my Invitation, back in mid-February. Well, I just received in the mail my Staging Kit, which has - yep, you guessed it - more paperwork to fill out (apparently, it’s just stuff verifying that I’m still legal to serve), as well as instructions to call the Peace Corps travel office to arrange for plane tickets to Philadelphia on July 3rd. I’ll be spending about three days in Philly where I’ll take part in a sure-to-be-intense orientation, before I, along with the rest of my team, hop onto a trans-Atlantic bound for West Africa.

So it looks like this is basically it! T minus three weeks and counting to blast-off!

Matt’s current mood is: 30% WTF am I doing???, 70% crazy-excited adrenaline.