A little background...

"The older I get, the more infuriated I get with "that which I do not know," like places I haven't been to: every country I haven't been to - taunts me. ... So, I reckon if you don't go, you'll never know. You gotta go, you've got to bust a geographic move to ever really know anything. You can read all the books you want, but it's kind of like empty facts to me until you go out into the world and you bump your head against another culture, or another religion, or another government."
-Henry Rollins, Talk is Cheap Vol. 1

As a sailor, I saw parts of the world that I would never have had a chance to see had I not enlisted. The time spent out to sea was long, the readiness inspections were grueling, and the time off in foreign ports was never long enough (except for the stops in Guam, which had a tendency to go on longer than anybody should care for).

So, after five years as a Helmsman and Quartermaster onboard the USS Key West (SSN 722), I decided that it was time to get out and stop travelling the world. A fairly smooth separation and transition from the military ensued and I wound up at the University of Wisconsin - River Falls.

During my first semester, a unique program came to my attention called The International Travelling Classroom (ITC) where a small group of professors take a group of students to several different cities in Europe. Not just a semester abroad at a foreign university - an entire semester seeing as much of the varying cultures of the continent as is humanly possible. The temptation to see more of the world that I hadn't been to overtook my decision to stop travelling. So now I find myself gearing up for another new set of places that I get to go to. I'm fully aware of the opportunity and the privilege that has been provided to me by fate, circumstance, and hard work - and I plan to exploit them for all they're worth.

With this blog, I hope to:
1. Inform family and loved-ones as to my goings on and travellings.
2. Contribute to my own reference and entertainment.
3. Get credit for the assigned journal I am supposed to be writing for one of my classes.
4. Offer evidence that there is life outside the United States. I love my country, but I get the feeling that far to many Americans are either ignorant or ambivalent to much of what happens elsewhere in the world. I think that it's important to try and overturn this kind of thought.

That's all the background one could possibly need. The plane takes off on January 29th. Until then, I have a lot of moving and packing to do...stay tuned.