How this all started

Way back in February, I received an email from Dominican University of California, where I was enrolled in my last class in my MBA program. The email was a flyer about a summer live-abroad trip to South Africa. At the time, both Jim and I laughed about it, how silly it might be for me to leave Novato and our family for two months, hahaha!!

Besides, I was job-hunting and there was my summer garden, and, well .... the flyer got put into the paper recycling, and that was about it.

Fast forward to April. The flyer came out again, and I talked with my professor, who encouraged me to apply.She knew my background in non-profit management, and said the project could use my skills.

The next evening, Jim and I talked it through and he encouraged me to apply, that he and the kids would be fine for two months (thoughts of sixty days of Video Game Wars were already forming in all of their heads). The only problem was - it was Friday afternoon, and the complete application was due Monday MORNING!!

I spent the weekend pulling together letters of references from professors and former work supervisors, finding transcripts, and writing a compelling letter as to why I wanted to participate in a program that I didn't yet know an awfully lot about.

To make a very long story shorter, in a highly competitive application process, I was accepted, and received notification late on Tuesday afternoon that I was in fact, for the Summer of 2010, going to Cape Town, South Africa.

:)