Wait, did I just apply to be a volunteer in Haiti?

Oh. Yes, I did.

I took a step. I don't know yet if it's actually a leap, because they might not even select me as a relief volunteer. I applied to an organization called Sustainable Haiti, telling them that I could start in June. Their website seemed pretty legitimate, so I just decided to go for it. I have no idea how I'm going to afford the plane tickets, or live for a month without technology, but hopefully I'll be fine.

The application asked what cross-cultural experience I had, and I realized the answer was none, and that made me want to apply even more. I need to get out of the burbs, and the perfect little city of college where everything is planned. Sounds like typical teenage rebellion, but it's for a good cause. I really do want to help the relief efforts. I need to do more research on Haiti, but it sounds to me like they need as much help as they can get.

So, if anyone who reads this little slice of my mind has any advice for me, it would be awesome if you'd share it. I really have no idea what I'm doing, and I'll have less of an idea if I actually get into this program. Feel free to tell me how great of a person I am for trying this, or you could try to talk me out of it, I'm interested in both sides of the spectrum.

That's all for now. Here's the website I got the application from: http://www.sustainablehaiti.org/Default.aspx

So I changed the name of my blog.

I realized it was a little lengthy.

Now it's just as lengthy, but seems more urgent. Maybe I just got bored and wanted a change. It used to be called "Art, Sustainability, and Other Important Things," but I think that gave away too much of what I talk about. Now maybe it'll be super endearing and everyone in the world will want to read it because they'll want to find out what the heck is so important!

Anyway, I wanted to share some exciting news with whoever reads this thing: I won something! It probably doesn't mean a lot but I was pretty excited about it. On Friday, instead of doing a Geology lab, we took this problem-solving assessment test. It wasn't like the SATs where you're doing math and science and all that, it was more like actual real-world problems, like you're at an internship and your boss tells you to make a chart from this specific data, how do you do it? Application-type stuff like that. I thought some of the questions were pretty difficult, but I finished in the allotted amount of time. My professor had "bribed" us with pizza to take the test (even though everyone was thrilled about being able to get out of the three-hour class two hours early) and told us that whoever got the highest scores would win a prize. Well, I got a perfect score of 500. So I won! It made me feel great, and also I got a Geology T-shirt and a pretty rock as a prize! Not the most important thing in the world, but definitely made me feel like a champ.

Okay so now that I've gotten that great victory off my chest, I can talk about the actual cool things that are going on. Right now there are three people here from China. They are working with my professor/boss to learn about sustainability and hopefully bring some of what they learn back to Hainan, where they live. They're all very nice, and they seem so eager to learn, which is awesome. I wish we had more Americans like that. Anyway, I'll keep you (whoever you are) updated on more awesome things!