...and so it begins.

On Monday, 2 March, I received an e-mail from the Belgian American Educational Foundation, or BAEF. I was being awarded, the e-mail read, a fellowship to research in Belgium for the 2009-2010 academic year. I read it about five or six times before calling my girlfriend. "I'm going to Belgium," I said. For the next few days she -- and everyone else I told about this -- was visually more excited than I was. Even though I happily applied for this fellowship last October and have always wanted to live outside the United States, I didn't really think I'd get it. Now that I have it, I have about five and 1/2 months to do A LOT of work to 1) get research in order so I'm prepared to look at Belgian material and 2) prepare to live overseas for about nine months. This blog, I hope, will be a place to share my thoughts as I prepare to and then actually live in the low country of Belgium, researching the Belgian side of my dissertation on US humanitarianism to the occupied kingdom during World War I.

I'm going to start out at home in Connecticut, with a few trips to New York. Then a research trip to California, then back to New York and then overseas in September to begin what is probably the greatest research and personal life opportunity I've ever had. I have a supportive dissertation committee, great friends and family, and a wonderful girlfriend who "gets" all this somehow and is willing to let me out of her sight for nearly a year. I'm working with the mantra: I can do this. I will do this.

The goal in all of this is to be able to beging writing my dissertation while over there and, once I get back, finish it by the summer of 2011 and get a "real" job teaching college level history and starting the rest of my life. It's ambitious -- yes, it really is, but I'm looking forward to the challange.

Here goes....