Farewell cold weather woes

I have been back in Chicago for a little over a month and have been resisting the impending infiltration of drafty air and deary landscapes through the crevasses in my apartment and fibers of my wool sweaters.
Although all is not lost.
On December 23rd I will leave Chicago to travel throughout Central America (by way of Florida for a long overdue visit with my mom) and begin what will hopefully be a very prominent beginning for a long term project in Nicaragua.

What am I doing exactly? There are three main objectives during this traipse throughout Latin America:
1. To put my organizing skills to the test on an international scale while also improving my language skills.

2. To develop the technical skills needed to reduce water contamination through accessible sustainable technologies like rainwater filtration/harvesting and composting of human waste. These skills will be used in a long term project that I have been working on with the community of Waspam in the North Atlantic Coast in Nicaragua whom I met on a MADRE delegation to Nicaragua in 2007.
Recently, this project was accepted by Engineers Without Borders whom with be instrumental in the technical design and implementation of rainwater catchment and composting waste systems that have been proposed for Waspam. This project is set to begin August of 2009.

3. Finally, I will remove these skills long-simmered skills out of the pot and put them to use over the long term in Colola and Waspam. I hope to use this experience to develop a dissertation that will although me to maintain an active and supportive role in these communities while helping to further develop their programs.

(photos: examples of composting latrines in Mexico)

Here's the grand scheme of things over the next 6 months:
~January - April: I will be completing an internship at Rancho Mastatal in Costa Rica. The focus of this internship will be on organizing sustainable community development and natural building projects. What I really want to know about are way to recycle human waste in a safe and resourceful way to reduce water contanimation and there hopefully reducing public health threats.
~April - May: I will be in Waspam conducting preliminary outreach and volunteer in anyway I am useful while also preparating for the rainwater project.
~May: Travel from Nicaragua to Guatemala City by bus. In Guatemala City I will work with ProTortugas and visit Alma- one of the volunteers with whom totally fell in love- she is awesome and works on all sorts of cool projects involving natural resource and wildlife preservation.
~May-June: Return to Colola, meet with the Tortugueros and work with my favorite tortuguitas. Make a long overdue visit to my friends Jenny and Deva in Guadalajara- who I missed the last time I was in Mexico. And finally, return to Morelia to have a proper farewell with all the folks I met previously.
I will be back in Chicago by the middle of June- Ojalá verdad-- barring no staph infection, scorpion sting, amoeba infestation, leschmaniasis or other damned thing gets me first.