Blog

So I finally got everything worked out and I'll be graduating (unless something very unfortunate happens) at the end of April. After that I'm planning on traveling around Europe for a few weeks and then it's back to the states to ride a bike from Manteo NC to San Diego CA to raise money for affordable housing groups like Habitat for Humanity and Rebuilding Together, through an organization called Bike & Build.

The trip covers 3,464 miles and last 9 weeks. There are 10 Build days on the trip where the group stops to work on affordable housing projects. Before the trip I will be raising upwards of $4000.00 for the cause and have made a website to help with that and keep people up to date on the trip:
http://bikeandbuildvanderpool.blogspot.com/ Check it out!

I also recently got another car after demolishing the civic last fall (not my fault and everyone was OK). Anyway I got a 2004 Ford Focus SVT. It's a suped up ZX3 and boy is it fun to drive. Pictures to come soon!

After my account at U of M was canceled I decided to make my own site, and even bought a domain name for it. As you can see my creative names were already taken and so I have mattvanderpool.com... oh well, maybe I'll think of something better along the way.

Untill then I hope to be updating this site fairly regularly although it will probably take awhile to get up and running.

Some interensting links I've come across:
http://cassies-story.blogspot.com/ A high school friend of mine is over in palestine, check out her blog. It's extremely interesting.

http://english.aljazeera.com - Definately a different point of view, sometimes scary, sometimes insightful