My Nine-Month Plan

After a fantastic summer reporting and writing for Newsday and a much-needed fall of relaxation, I have decided to put off getting a full-time job in journalism in order to take a gap 3/4-of-a-year.

From Dec. 5 until Feb. 20, I will be traveling around Southeast and East Asia with various friends from high school and college, hitting up 10 countries at an incredibly fast clip. For the last few weeks, I am teaching English to 16-to-18 year olds at a two-week "winter camp" in Taiwan.

Then, from the beginning of March until the end of May, I have an unpaid internship at the Museum of the History of Science in Florence. I'm going to be doing some writing, some communications, and some student outreach for the museum, which, by the by, contains such treasures as Galileo's telescopes, astrolabes, and compass, as well as the rather shriveled remains of the middle finger of his right hand. Yes, I know. It's awesome. (For all you Hist and Sci junkies out there, check out www.imss.firenze.it for more in this vein.)

Then, for the summer, the plan is to work as a counselor or trip leader for some kind of camp/teen tour program that allows me to travel as part of the job. (If you know of any programs like this, let me know! I'm in the process of applying to them now.)

Send me a text mesasge!

http://www.telestial.com/view_product.php?PRODUCT_ID=MSIM-EX01

Scroll down to where it says "Send free SMS online to any Explorer subscriber: Click here." Then click there and enter my text message number (372-5337-3378) and write a message that includes your name, since I won't know who it's from otherwise. I will then get the text message and proceed to be ecstatic.

I'll be blogging my various adventures as best I can. Please comment!