Dear family and friends,

I’ll be serving with the Peace Corps as an Environment Volunteer starting February of 2006. After ten weeks in language, skills and general assimilation training I’ll spend two years at my assigned field site working an environmental education project. I’ll have more details on my specific project and location six weeks or so into training. This web site is designed to keep you updated on how I’m doing, and to serve as a forum for exchanging stories and letter excerpts.

For those of you I haven’t been in touch with for some time, I graduated from Brandeis in 2005 with majors in conservation ecology and cultural anthropology and a minor in environmental studies. I spent the summer of 2005 in the Berkshire hills, writing the new Nature Conservancy/Division of Fisheries & Wildlife’s Guide to Invasive Plants in Massachusetts. I also joined the Student Conservation Association’s Berkshire-Taconic Landscape Program crew, doing invasive plant management and various local conservation projects.

I spent the fall to winter of 2005 in Arlington, MA working as an assistant to National Geographic wildlife photographer Tim Laman. While in the Boston area, I also worked with Dan Perlman on EcoLibrary.org, a wonderful teaching resource on concepts in ecology.

My parents met and got married in Madagascar and my sister and brother, Iambo and Stephan, are half-Malagasy. I’ve heard about life in Madagascar for 22 years now and am eager to finally discover the great red island for myself!

Thank you Mom, Dad, Grandpa, Mike, Iambo, Stephan, and Sarah for your love and support. I miss you already.

And thanks to Kevin, for your friendship and for thinking up rachelinafrica in the first place…

Rachel