Visual cacophony

Aside: Thanks to Chandra Lewis for the following short story: "Ransom of Red Chief" http://fiction.eserver.org/short/ransom_of_red_chief.html . It's a pretty good read. In the spirit of adventure and seeking whatever it is that I'm called to do, I've got a trip lined up already... on 29 DEC 08, I'll be flying down to Lima, Peru. and staying there for 2 weeks with a program called "CREATIO" which can be summed up as a Christian civic environmentalist group. Here's a link to their site... it's pretty freakin sweet: http://www.creatioweb.org/about.htm. so after that I'll be comin back to the good ol' USA on 12 JAN, which is less exciting. To be completely transparent, I still don't know exactly what I'll be doing, but I do know that Kris Lopez said that if I worked at Starbucks or somewhere lame like that, he'd put a hit on me, so I guess I won't be working somewhere like that. On the other hand, I've been checkin out NOLS- National Outdoor Leadership School. It's an amazing bunch of programs- stuff like mountaineering, rock climbing, wilderness backpacking and survival, Wilderness first aid/EMT stuff... I'd really like to get involved in just about any of their programs. I guess I'm most interested in the month or semester in Patagonia- that is, the southern tip of South America- and the wilderness EMT cert. Suffice to say, these programs are fairly expensive, so I'd probably have to get a job in order to make enough $$ to pay for them. Since I would be loathe to spend much time in some random dead-end job, I'd probably get 2 or 3 jobs and work like 100 hour weeks (I'd have nothing else to do... just work out) and make the dough really fast, so that I could then go off into the wild blue yonder (wherever that is...) ASAP. I'm also pretty interested in the semester in the Himalayas program, and the month or semester in New Zealand. I guess Scandanavia or Baffin Island would be pretty legit too. Oh, and a semester to prepare you to be a professional outdoor/adventure educator guru... oh yes. Any votes? Patagonia, New Zealand, Himalayas, Wilderness EMT, Scandanavia, Baffin Island (Canada)? Thanks to all those who've been stoppin by to say "hi" or congratulate me on my decision ("Hey, congrats- you're about to jump off a cliff" "oh gee... thanks"), it really does mean a lot to me, so thanks. Word of the Day: Absquatulate. First one to figure out what it means gets... a high five.