In which I attempt to plan travels...

One of the lesser qualities of a life on the road is the lack of certainty. When each job lasts a year or so, and itchy feet set in after six months on the ground, it's awfully hard to know where one's paycheck is coming from a few months into the future. The end result is that perhaps a third of any given year is spent sending out various job applications - though thankfully not outright unemployed.

At least I feel like I'm climbing the ladder a bit. I've just applied for a spot with the World Food Programme in Rome - a hypercompetitive position I'm unlikely to be interviewed for, but it's not so farfetched that it's not worth a shot. Jeepers, I'd love to live in Europe for a little while and stop struggling with craptacular internet access. If I got anywhere with it, I'll probably find out in the next few weeks, but it wouldn't start until September.

Other travel plans abound. I've applied to join an expenses-paid advocacy trip to New York to lobby UN members to assist my grad school. That one I'm very optimistic about, rating my odds at about 70%. Cross your fingers for me, and I'll find out on the 16th.

Meanwhile, I'm attempting to weasel my way into Burma for a little fieldwork. My bosses think it's a great plan and thoroughly safe, but my neurotic paymasters with the Canadian government are rather less sure. They've denied my initial request for travel authorization, but I whined and appealed and I'll learn more this week. Wish me luck again.

In other news, my Nonviolent Social Change class isn't going entirely as planned. I had my students act out a meticulously planned roleplay of an Alabama lunch-counter sit-in during the 1960s. Instead of learning key lessons about nonviolent assembly, they cheerfully thumped the tar out of each other with water bottles for twenty minutes. Oy. Can't I teach a class about violent social change? Seems more in line with my expertise...