Thank you.

Recently I had my "thank you" party to my team mates and my sponsors for the Philadelphia Triathlon. We raised close to 3000$ to fight cancer and for that I am eternally grateful to them. After the race I wrote a reflection of the race and then used it as part of a thank you speech so without further ado: 

I have been humbled by many things in my life, beauty, athleticism, intelligence, but I rarely am humbled by, and the one you all showed to me,  humbled by kindness and generosity. Please allow me to be vulnerable with you for a moment and share with you something I wrote hours after the race was over and I had time to reflect on everything.

I sat down in the shower, exhausted beyond belief, relieved and sad.  and I thought back on everything that had happened. I saw the race stretched out from end to end. I remembered the anxiety at the beginning, of being the last group and having no friends to see me off. I remembered the hectic-ness of jumping into the water and taking off. My legs even went numb thinking about it as I watched water swirl down the drain. I was scared at that moment. I don't know of what, I wasn't tired, I wasn't hurt, I was just scared. This was it and I couldn't get my rhythm in the water, I couldn't breathe right. I remembered not being able to walk to my bike after the swim, but slowly steadying myself. I remembered feeling like the hills had gotten longer and steeper. I remembered on the second loop I was one of the only people left. I remembered the run which stretched out in the heat, the sun beating down, without any shade. That run was my entire life. And then I looked further back, I remembered the faces of my team mates, and the practices we had together and I was sad that it was all over. and then I remembered back the further yet. I remembered my mother weakened by cancer when I was in middle school. I saw all this laid out before me and with the water falling on my head, I cried. I cried, and the emotions I felt were so conflicting that they only made it worse. I remembered the news that my mom was diagnosed and I remembered how helpless I felt and how helpless I was and then I thought how the money I raised might just save someone else's mom, somewhere, anywhere. And maybe we were a little less helpless now. I felt exhausted and sad that I didn't do as well as I thought, but deep down I felt pride for what I did. I felt pride for me and I felt pride for my family who stood by and waited at the finish to tell me how proud they were. And I cried because I was so happy, I was so happy that I got to have this experience and got to do all this. and I was so happy that my friends believed in me so fervently and so generously that I was able to raise so much money. I wish I could be as generous as them, and as selfless because in my eyes they are saints. 

When I finally got myself together, I finished rinsing off and I fell asleep. I was awoken by my family hours later with pizza and I cried again because I realized how lucky I was and how incredibly life can be. So thank you for helping me get here, thank you for everything.

One month.

Started packing, the leaving part has not sunk in yet. I've been slowly amassing a small mountain of things that I want to keep with me while I am down in Venezuela.

There's medicine, and international documents and teaching books and manipulatives and random accessories and doohickies. I know it looks messy but there is method to the madness. Mostly just figuring out what I need to take with me on the plane, what I can keep in luggage, and what I will be sending after the fact. I am taking many journals and my fiddle. I was told that Ciudad Ojeda can get boring at times so I need to entertain myself. It is a city of around 125,000 but due to the heat the streets are pretty vacant. From what I've heard life in western Venezuela is a lot like life in Philadelphia, in the summer, when weather edges towards heatwave status. It is 95* and humid almost every day.

This is my greatest fear. Heat. Not kidnapping, not their Rodents Of Unusual Sizes, not the banana spiders, or anti american sentiment. I fear the heat and I will miss the winter. Albert Camus once wrote:

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. It's a very beautiful and poetic line but I resonate with the opposite. Winter is my season, I like the cold, I like layers, I like snow and the kind of silence that only snowfall brings. To give this up for a year will be torture but there is little growth in comfort. I am hoping that this adventure across the world will live up to my dreamers expectations.

I will most likely bring some TP with me as there has been a recent shortage in the country. You read the right, they have a shortage on toilet paper. More on this later.

I've started spending a few hours a day studying Spanish. I took Spanish classes from 7th grade until my sophomore year of college so I am not going into this completely unprepared but I realized the other day that I kept telling people I was leaving in "Una mesa" which translates to "One table". So I also have my work cut out for me. I have 28 days until I leave and I plan on celebrating and saying goodbyes. Much time and little to do. Wait. Switch that.

I am going on an adventure!

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As you all probably know by now. I am going on an adventure. I am leaving the country on July 30th to teach at the Escuela Las Morochas in Ciudad Ojeda of Venezuela. Which prompted me to resurrect this tired old blog. I am hoping to keep a record of my journey here not only as a personal keepsake for the memories but also as a way to keep in touch with friends and family. Though if you know me, I tend to ramble so I am sure these posts will be chock full of random theories, weird quotes, daily musings, and the stuff that  makes people in conversations kind of tilt there head slightly look at you with a tiny bit of worry and just go "huh..." For now though I am still in the process of saying good bye to friends and gathering stuff together to bring down there. This contract is for a minimum of one school year but can be extended indefinitely as long as the country stands. 

I hope to talk about:

The experience of it all

How I ended up finding this job

Why james hasselman is the most underrated zombie suvivalist group member I know on the planet.

and so so much more

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But regardless of everything.

I had a weird experience the other day talking to a friend of mine. We just couldn't match up time schedules to see each other. Finally, he shrugged it off and said, "Well, whatever, next time." And we both kind of paused, the feelings sort of lingered, in that moment we both kind of realized a new thing that we took for granted. There might not be a next time. And I'm not trying to scare anyone, I fully intend on coming back to the U.S. specially for some holidays and over the summer but I am not sure how long this is experience to last. The way I see it, there is three options that I'm willing to entertain for the end of next year. 1) I love it, love the school, love the country, stay on for another year. 2) I like it, hate the school, love the country or culture, go find another school around the area or in another country and keep going around. or finally 3) I hate everything, I'm a spoiled pampered brat and I come home after one year and sulk, lick my wounds, and say that was a failed experiment. As long as I'm not bitten by a banana spider (more of those later), kidnapped, or I don't succumb to the heat, I really doubt scenario three will happen. I just want to use the time we have left, I leave one month from tomorrow. I value the friends I've made and wish that life could have us all work together, live together, be together always but sadly it's not the trend. I will miss all of you, but missing is for after the fact and enjoying is for now. So let's see each other. Mark your calendars for the goodbye celebration July 26/27th. Not sure where but we'll make it happen.

FINALLY, a thing many of you don't know is that in my spare time, I work on music with the very talented, very beautiful man Angel Ramos of The Elevated. And many of our friends (Kevin O'toole, Peter Goebel, Keith Wadsworth, Mike Taylor, Meghan Leigh). As a hobby and something that we love to do. I remember we got to a point in working where we asked the question: What is the point of music if people don't hear it? It's kind of a selfish thing. So with that in mind we have decided to release a collaboration mini-album of what we've been doing. Part spoken word, part soft rock. You can give it a listen, all songs are free to download because we want anyone who wants to enjoy them to be able to, there is also a donation link if anyone wants to monetarily support our ventures. Despite that I am going to Venezuela we plan to keep working together. If anyone has some feedback please e-mail me about it, I love making music so I am always looking for constructive criticism.  LINK to music and such.

So if you are interested you can subscribe if not you can drop in. I won't be blasting this on facebook because, quite frankly, I think I did that enough over the past 6 months with fund raising. So cheers, I hope to see people before I leave and I hope you come along virtually for the adventure.

oh yes I forgot

PS Adventure Juice studios may just be back in action.

(Nothing to do with CC contest though)

Things are going slowly

Hey all,

Recovery is going well, I get to use a cane to stabilize myself which gives me a very teacher-esque persona (oh and it makes me look awesomely cool). Which is a good thing becausssssse I am a substitute teacher. Speaking on the subject I have been given a couple of options for my future in terms of jobs in the past week I don't want to talk about them too much for fear of jinxing the possibilities but I will post on here when something... anything is confirmed. I have not officially started the diet yet but I have been checking calories and devising a suitable plan, I probably won't start that until I get back to running in 5-7 weeks. My goals are broad street in may and marathon next November and then I don't know.

Going to physical therapy, twice a week. It feels good to be back in a gym after so long.

I'm scared for the first day back when I put my running shoes on.

Catch you all later.

God I wish I had more time for Minecraft and Reach

Recovery

It's a lot quicker than you think.

sorry for tweet-esque post, started a long term sub job and things are moving.

And so it starts.

I feel I've used this title before or something similar but no matter. This is it, surgery in the morning. Fasting 'til then. The only thing that makes me uneasy is the fact I will be going under and while probability would state that I have little to worry about its just the idea that, there is where the potential is, since the operation and pretty common. I get to rock a cool cane afterwards though so be a smidge jealous. Gotta get to sleep though so one final thought.

I don't going under also because when you're coming out of it you are bound to act stupid and tell embarrassing stories and such I don't want to give examples, maybe if we talk in person. Okay internet?