Well, 42 days and counting until I take off for my trip. Seems like just yesterday my msn name said 80 days and counting so time is flying by, yet it still seems like something thats going to happen in the future...reality I don't think will sink in until I arrive at the airportin Germany. I'll be staying in Frankfurt Germany for a few days before I fly to South Africa. I'm just going to check outthe city and attempt to get over some jet lag while there.

My days here in Riverview since getting back from my holiday trip to Ontario have been filled with fundraising. I've been emailing and calling organizations, businesses and corporations asking for sponsorship. So far I've raised $525 through doing this. It's definately time consuming, but hopefully it'll pay off.

I've also recently got my placement in south africa set up...and it has held a few surprises. I'll be volunteering at an environmental and wildlife sanctuary for the mouth (at least) of March. The unexpected side note to this is that, Jocelyn, I girl I met in my 1st year of school had also gone to south africa about a year ago so I email her to ask her about her trip. Well, as it turns out she went and volunteered at the very place that I'm going! Such a small world indeed. This has been pretty fortunate for me as I've been able to get all the juice on the placement and on south africa in general.

After souh africa its off to Kathmandu, Nepal where I'll be volunteering in an orphanage for a month and then taking off to backpack around for another month, which will also involve a trek to Tibet and back. And then when that is all said and done it'll be off for 2 weeks of backpacking in Europe before I fly home to Canada on July 15th!

...42 days and counting...