New job, new house, new adventures!

(I hope I don't get in trouble for using these images...)

As many of you already know, I got a job with Habitat for Humanity through the AmeriCorps program that will start on September 1! After volunteering with them since February a ridiculous number of hours (what else is there to do when you get laid off?), I applied for one of the AmeriCorps positions, interviewed, and was hired back in June. This made me deliriously happy, not just to have a job offer, but to be able to work with such a great organization doing work that I truly love.

As AmeriCorps, I'll be organizing volunteers that come on site, leading construction groups, doing some community service projects, and a variety of other duties that I'm sure will be revealed in good time. I also get to live super cheap in a house owned by Habitat with the other AmeriCorps volunteers. There will be four of us living and working together, trying not to kill each other before the end of the year. It'll be an interesting social experiment to say the least.

Another perk of the job is the opportunity to go to El Salvador with Habitat in October! HFH Portland Metro/East (the affiliate I'll be working with) has international affiliates in El Salvador and Thailand to which they tithe ten percent of their building costs to build homes in those countries. A group of about 20 of us will have the chance to go and build for a week in Central America! Of course, I couldn't pass up a chance like that and finagled my way into the trip just before the cutoff. I'm still working out the details, but I'm planning on staying for an extra nine days or so to travel in El Salvador and Nicaragua (Honduras seems to be a place to avoid at the moment; who knows what it will be like by October), blowing all of my vacation days in the second month of the year. That seems prudent, right?