Is it really 3,000 miles to Belize? Well, if you're willing to dish out a good amount of toll road money to see the beautiful Missouri and Arkansas back country, then you might make it in 2,831 miles. But it you prefer a scenic route to break up your drive earlier in the trip, you'll be putting a good 3,000 miles on your car.
Lucky for me (and with generous, if not wary, support from my parents), I won't be driving. Good thing too, after reading one of my host's blogs, Designing on Sunshine, which proves every reason not to drive through Mexico.
Why I am going:
1) Like anyone who has ventured outside of his/her own country, I inherited the malignant and insatiable disease for which the only temporary cure is repeating the action that infected you in the first place. Side affects include all forms of culture shock: depression after withdrawal, ill-feelings toward native food, culture, and people, planning imaginary trips in great detail, the skill of clearing a room as soon as you start to mention that time you had four servings on gelato in twenty minutes, or listing off every Pope since the 16th century...
This disease is called the travel-bug.
For me, it's been dormant for two whole years, quietly building pressure like a volcano. But as my senior year of college came and went and friends started graduating, moving away, and getting married, I must have snapped. I booked a round-trip flight to Belize City after volunteering to work on an organic bamboo farm an hour inland.
2) For my senior thesis. My plan is to study the sustainable and organic agriculture methods used in Belize, compare them to Midwest methods, and attempt to apply sustainable methods I see to small-farming in the Midwest. Bamboo is being used as a sustainable resource because of it's incredibly fast growth and strength.
3) To practice journalistic writing, is there a better way than to go somewhere completely new and try to write about it?
Where I'm volunteering:
Barton Creek Outpost
http://www.bartoncreekoutpost.com/
Spanish Creek Rainforest Reserve
http://www.belizeability.com/
