isthmus? what's that you say?

Definition: An isthmus is a narrow strip of land that is bordered on two sides by water and connects two larger land masses. It is the inverse of a straight (which lies between two land masses and connects two larger bodies of water).

54 days till departure...to Panama that is. The glorious isthmus separating Central and South America. I'm moving down there for a total of 27 months, if I make it that is. The Peace Corps had given me the title of Environmental Health Extensionist...whatever that means.

Before I get into some speculation on what I might be doing with my life in the next two years, let me tell you how I came to wanting to serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and the 22 month long journey that got me where I am today: venturing to Panama to conduct research and eventually gain a master's degree in Environmental Engineering.

I started studying environmental engineering my freshman year at the University of Delaware for one reason only, clearly, to save the world. My childhood years of building forts in the backyard and playing in the mud, along with an uncanny expertise in calculus brought me to the small field of environmental engineering which seems to suite me perfectly. However, my internships in my college years ran me around Boston doing some mindless tasks that in my opinion did not require my degree or were really helping people.....the main things I was after within a job. For example, monitoring groundwater wells that pumped petroleum contaminated groundwater buried under cement below a shut down ExxonMobil station. Now, the EPA requires ExxonMobil to clean up their mess, which makes perfect sense, so EM would hire my company to do this. However driving 45 minutes in traffic to read a monitor from a pump that was pulling groundwater out from under a rundown gas station on Rt.9, nowhere near a source that would eventually feed into human drinking water, scribbling down a few numbers and wasting gas back to the office hardly fell into the category of saving the world. Didn't need my college degree, wasn't helping people or animals......sooooooo I was done with that....and that type of worker bee tech job, forever.

The following fall at UDel I was unimpressed by joining the rat race like my fellow engineering students and applying for jobs. Still enchanted by work overseas from my trip to Australia the previous January, I simply googled: Engineering Abroad. And aren't you surprised, that is NOT a Google Whack!!! Haha.

That search brought me to the website of Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Michigan...aka, the Upper Peninsula or the U.P. as the locals call it. What I found up in this quirky lil engineering school in the snowy north is a joint master's degree program with the Peace Corps. This Master's program which is the only one in the country as of right now for environmental/civil engineering caught my eye. The usual engineering grad program consists of spending 2-3 years taking courses paralleled by local research in a lab and the usual TAing and grading....lame right? what can I say I'm part dorky engineer, part ...well I don't know all that yet. But I knew the traditional approach wasn't for me....being inside sucks.

Instead of all that, MTU had something I really liked....one year of graduate coursework on campus in Houghton followed by two years of environmental engineering work in some exotic country as a full fledged Peace Crops Volunteer. However being a graduate student I have the added responsibility of not only completing the projects assigned to me by the PC, but conducting my own environmental research while in country to write my thesis about after I complete the two years abroad.

Call me crazy, but that's what I did. And in a nutshell that is how I plan to live in a foreign country while doing volunteer work, research, becoming fluent in Spanish, get some real life experience under my belt, an engineering masters, and a new world of fun an excitement, all before the age of 27....or so I hope.

It's just so weird, I’m not much of a planner and as of April 2007 when I was admitted into the MTU/PC program, which is called Master's International btw, I pretty much had my life set till 2011...like I said, so weird.

My year in Houghton was nothing short of fantastic. This small, Midwestern old mining town really opened my eyes to life outside New England and the East Coast. I spent my two semesters downhill and cross country skiing, snowshoeing, shoveling, sledding, and even jumping into a hole cut into the frozen lake when it was zero degrees out. The other students in my program were pretty amazing. I lived with 2 guys and another girl in the party house for our crew. Our old Houghton house we rented even without checkin it out first, became a porch hangout, SundayFunday football viewing arena, and the host of many more fun than you'd expect grad parties. I miss it, I miss that house and my roommates and friends a lot. But the MTU chapter is over and the Peace Corps one is next. As one of my buddies in Houghton said right before we all left, "it's really crazy how groups of friends come into your life for a certain period of time, but eventually leave." It's a bittersweet idea that friendships come and go and gets me all nostalgic for my Acton crowd, my UDel biddies, Camp friends, Dewey Beach housemates, Australia travelers, and the most recent MI crew at MTech. And soon...a whole new Panama group whom I have faith will become my best friends for the next two years. Even though I'll never be in these locals again with those same people, the memories aren't going anywhere.

The year flew looking back, but when hasn't it in this part of my life. I miss that place a lot and am lucky to have had the opportunity to live there for a year. Most of all, I miss playing dominos with the happy hour crowd at the KBC - the local brewery in town after a long, hard day in the office. Butttt let's be serious, that only happened once in a blue moon - the long hard workday that is, the dominos and beers happened everyday regardless. People have GREAT attitudes up there in that wild wilderness of a town.

So here's a lil history for you. Back in the day people moved up to Houghton and the Keweenaw which is the Native American name for the peninsula in which Houghton and MTU are located, to mine Copper. The area is known as the Copper Country. Copper Country crusin' would be the name given to ridding up to the tip of the Keweenaw with friends, stopping at the local dive bars and chattin with the locals, or yoopers as they are called on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. So anyways, miners moved up to Houghton to work in the Quincy Mine and make a living for themselves. After some years of profitable mining they decided they needed a school for the engineers to ummmmm learn at I guess? Along comes the Michigan School of Mines. Well like most mines do, the Quincy mine eventually was not economically viable, and it closed. The college however was eventually was turned into Michigan Technological University with presently one of the top 20 grad programs in the country for environmental engineering....so go me for goin to school up there.

So finally in May just as I got home from my four day trek home with my friend Meredith and a new kitty "Vader" acquired one snowy night from under our porch, I made it home to open my Peace Corps Invitation to Panama.....so here I go.

I just wanted to get the details of my grad program up here cause I've told it to a million people so far, lost my breath, and they still don't get it.

So the Panama part....this is what they told me so far. I fly to Miami for staging where I get all my shots, meet my group of 35 volunteers, and sign a million papers for 3 days before we fly as a group to Panama on August 11, 2008. Once in Panama I hang out in Panama City for a week and do some touristy things before moving to our training site to train for 3 months. I will live with a host family and go through a series of language, safety and specialized engineering training with my fellow batch of Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs). I believe that we will all be living in separate host family homes, but we will all be within walking distance of each other and with a local school where training classes will take place. Where this will be with respect to Panama City?!?! no idea except they say it's about an hour away which will be cool for some weekend time off. I'm assuming that out of the 35 who will be in my group, at least 6 of us will be engineers; the rest will be business PCVs or English/education PCVs. I will have separate engineering training, what I hear from Return volunteers (RPCVs), with rest of my engineering group. This will include learning how to mix concrete, build a latrine, a clay stove, and possibly a rainwater catchment tank or biosand filters. If you don't know what these are I will explain in more detail when I'm actually building and implementing them in Panama. For now just know they are simple environmental technologies that can drastically improve the sanitation, drinking water availability, and therefore quality of life in areas of water borne disease, drought, and inadequate water supply. Luckily for me due to my year in Michigan I have experience building most of these structures as part of our lab classes.

If I make it through the three months of training, which I am very confident at this point that I will, I will be sworn into the Peace Corps in late October and move out to my site where I will live and work among an indigenous Panamanian community for the next two years....till October of 2010. Classically I would be sent to site alone however there is a good chance that in a Catholic country like Panama I might be sent with a male PCV as my counterpart. This is to help the adjustment period of an American walking into an indigenous village easier since a single, tall, blonde, unmarried 23 year old woman with no kids blasting into town and building stuff is just about the weirdest thing my future community members might see....ever. So lately aka the past 5 years or so, we have heard that some PC countries have been assigning a male and female together, to play the brother sister part so they don't think I'm some crazy un-catholic single bad girl....cause they’re gonna think I’m nuts no matter what. Once again, I won’t know where I'm going, if I have a counterpart and all that jazz until probably this September, half way through training. I’ll keep you posted.

I'm definitely somewhat scared about being so alone. Worst case scenario I can think of is being 6+ hours away from another American or PCV. Ideally, it's not too important for me to have a counterpart, but I'm hoping I'm at least within an hour's walk or bike ride to the next PCV. We'll see what I end up with. So at this point in October I'm gonna take my pack and move out to site to live with my second host family for the next three months. Hopefully by then I'll be fluent in Spanish and the transition will be easy. However like every RPCV I've talked to has warned, what you think should be easy is borderline impossible, and what seems like the hardest thing in the world is like cake. ...I'm ready for it!

The assignment guide I have recieved from the Peace Corps has listed my primary duties as follows...but who really knows if this is what it's really going to be like? Most likly not the case, but here it is:

"The two main goals of the Environmental Health Project are:
1. The rehabilitation, construction, or expansion of rural water and sanitation systems.
2. The training of rural community health committees and individuals on environmental health topics.

It's major objectives are:
1. To train aqueduct committees in the operation, maintenance, and management of water supply infrastructure.
2. To promote and increase the use of latrines and other sanitary waste disposal systems.
3. To teach and promote watershed protection to ensure sufficient quality and quantity of water. 4. To train individuals and groups on the importance of health and hygiene practices, sexual educaiton and HIV/AIDS prevention."

I hope if you have stuck with reading this so far you get an idea of what my life will be like starting in August. Until then I'm enjoying my time with friends and family in and around Boston. I'm heading- down to Dewey Beach in July for some much anticipated beaching and drinking with my college biddies, and then returning to the South Shore for family beach week.Get ready for pictures, stories and probably way too many drinking water details to follow in Panama. I'm lovin this blogg already.....don't hate.

LUV KK