My first blogging experience

I have to start by being completely honest with you. This is my first time doing this, maybe my second time hearing the word "blog", and as I write this I still am not exactly sure what I am doing. However, I was asked to attempt this and so am giving it a go. Let's see....where to start. I guess I'll begin with how I ended up here and why you might be partially interested in what I have to say. Last year I was blessed with the opportunity to be a member of the founding team of the Nicaragua Project at Babcock. What started with five students, Christopher Burch, Megan Glaser, Ben King, Vera Cuevas, and myself, quickly grew into a project that reached MAs, First Years, Second Years, Evening Students, and Faculty. The project is now in its second year, with the amazing students who participated in last year's Spring Break trip leading the way and guiding the project forward. What started as a project with a foundation in social responsibility and international business, aimed at establishing a business arm to a vocational school, quickly grew into an entrepreneurial, consulting, and business seminar project that spanned the business school concentrations. What started as a project specific to Babcock has quickly grown into a project that will reach across the Wake Forest campus and into the various graduate and undergraduate schools. What started as an interesting idea and the passion of a few has quickly become a force of change. This summer, while on a scholarship from the Price Foundation, I had the opportunity to host Ajay and Aparna Patel and Tom and Karyn Dingledine. During this trip, I was able to show them the beautiful country of Nicaragua, introduce them to the organizations we work with, and allow them to meet the small business owners that attended our student's seminars. In these four days, after these visionaries were given first-hand experience with this project, the scope of what we were aiming to do exploded. It was here that the goal to reach the greater Wake Forest community was born. With Babcock leading the way, we hope to help Wake Forest differentiate itself on the unique learning opportunties, founded in social responsibility and an international application of classroom knowledge, it provides its students. After this summer we realized that in order to accomplish these goals we would need someone in Nicaragua, working on-site in order support Babcock students in this move forward. After much thought and prayer I decided to withdraw from medical school, take a year off from Babcock, and return here to help in these efforts. I am writing now from Nicaragua after having been here for one week. In this short amount of time I have already experienced things that are truly "Nica", and will share and explain those shortly. With this blog I was just looking for a little warm-up.....and to set the stage for the year and blogs to come. What is that I hear? Yep, it is a rooster crowing at 9:30 p.m. (by the way, the rumor that roosters crowe only at sun-up is completely false). Hasta pronto, Chris