In the beginning....

Hello Internet,

How are you? OK, so I've never been very good at saying hello, but I really have no idea who is going to read this. I have quite honestly been shocked so far by the number of people who have expressed an interest in following this trip, so if you are reading this, you know who you are, and I think you're awesome. However, there are many other people reading this who may not have told me that you were planning on reading this, or you might be a complete stranger who doesn't even know who I am. I would like to declare right off of the top that this blog is for all of you. Friends, family, complete strangers, anyone is welcome to read this, and I would hope you enjoy reading this as much as I am going to enjoy writing it. This is supposed to be a fun blog, but hopefully we'll all learn something somewhere. For those of you who know me well, my humour is sort of hit-and-miss. SO if you can put with the hopefully not too bad jokes, we'll have a good time.

This is the first entry, so I'm going to try and get as many disclaimers out of the way as possible, and then later, I might include a basic introduction of myself for those complete strangers reading this, or for the people that just don't know me very well.

First off, I'm going to say it right now, I have no idea what I am doing. This blog thing is completely new to me, and I don't really know at this stage what an average entry is going to look like. I have a general structure for the first couple of entries that will be coming out over the next couple of days, but after that I really have no idea what kind of shape or form this will take. I certainly will try and add more pictures, but I have not yet figured out how to do that quite yet. Having said that, I have not yet tried to figure out how to do that yet, so that's where I'm at with the whole blogging process. If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm kind of disorganized.

OK, one general disclaimer; obviously I am not trying to offend anyone or anything while writing this blog, and if it does happen, it is completely accidental. I am trying to be fairly honest with this blog, but I don't like hurting people, so I will err on the side of caution when I feel it is necessary.

I am going to try and make this blog helpful to as many types of people as I can, so my content will contain both recommendations for traveller's, other exchange students, and, if I feel like it, some of my general reflections on life (not too many though, because that's not a place I want to go). However, I am also informing my friends and family back home on what I am doing this week, and how the year is going for me. This puts me in a bit of a bind, because I am creating a blog about MY trip, but really don't feel like just going on about all of the things I did and people I met and things I have seen. So, when I talk about what I did, I think I am going to try and get something out of it that will benefit everyone. It took me a solid five paragraphs to get to what I really wanted to say. This will get better, I promise.

So, as promised, here is a (fairly) brief description of myself. I am an 18 year old Canadian from Revelstoke, BC, in the middle of the selkirk mountains. I would say that my greatest passion in life is athletics. This does not mean any particular sport, I enjoy playing almost all sports in general, and so I am pretty sure a lot of the stuff I write on this blog will have to do with my athletic pursuits. Obviously, I will write about lots of other activities as well, since my general plan is to do as many different activities over the course of eleven months as humanly possible, but as my passion is sports, I will probably constantly be involved with one event or another on a week to week basis.

Ok, so that is more than enough for this ridiculously long disjointed and probably very boring introduction. Again, I would ask that you stay with me, I am trying to get a lot of stuff out of the way today so that it doesn't come up for some reason during the year and then I have to devote a paragraph from my other blog entires and lose your interest and yeah, that would be a disaster. Therefore, I am going to try and get 1 or 2 sort of standard entries out before I jump on a plane and leave, so that you and I both get a better idea of what this thing looks like before the big leave. I'll include pictures as well, so that you guys aren't just reading blocks of writing. Thought you might appreciate that.

Before I leave I have to give a MASSIVE shoutout to Rotary International, the Rotary Student Exchange program and all of the people who make this program possible. As individual rotarians appear, I will thank them individually and I will try to work all of you in there at some point and give thanks through this blog as well as in person. For now, a huge thank you to all of you everywhere who run this program. If you know someone eligible for this program, or are even thinking about joining the program yourself, I cannot recommend it more highly. I have not even stepped onto a plane yet and I have met many many incredible individuals who give insane amounts of time to make the lives of people around them so much better. Many if not all of you will find your names somewhere in this blog. Not only do you meet incredible volunteers, but you also meet incredible peers. I will take this time to shout out Lucas Parreiras, the fantastic Brazilian who I had the pleasure of meeting during his yearlong exchange to my hometown of Revelstoke, Blake Ledger, my exchange role model (and soccer rival) and Jimmy Lin, simply because he is Jimmy Lin.

Stay tuned, more posts to follow very soon, and I can almost guarantee they will be better than this one. Please feel free to comment on what you like, what you don't like, and that will go a long way into shaping this blog. As I said, I have no idea what I am doing, and this blog is not just for myself, it is for all of you out there who feel like reading this. It should be a really good time, talk to you soon.