Lizzy Doing Slide Show in Seattle

I'm heading up to Seattle on March 30 and will be doing a slide show for Feathered Friends on April 3rd. This door money from this show will be donated directly to our project in Liberia. For more information, please contact the cool folks there at: (206) 292-2210. There address is: 119 Yale Avenue N., Seattle, Washington 98109.

Thanks Casey Middle School!

The 6th, 7th, and 8th graders at Casey Middle School in Boulder are raising money for Girls Education International, the nonprofit that I run with Heidi Wirtz. I just did a 20-minute slide show there this past Wednesday, March 19th. The kids were really wonderful, well behaved, and enthusiastic. Plus, the presentations they did before my slide show and after were awesome. I'm so impressed by these 350 youngsters. Right now they are doing a penny war (i.e. racing to see which class fills up a five-gallon jug with money first). The day I left the 6th graders were ahead with the 8th graders in second place. The money they raise will go directly to our Pakistan projects.

Girls Ed Gets Press in Boulder Daily Camera

Here's a sample of what I've been up to. You can read more about Girls Education International on our blog or website.

So much stuff going on!

I've just posted new news on the Girls Education International Blog. When people ask me what I'm doing these days it takes me about five minutes to tell them. I feel like my life has changed completely over the past six months, and it's changed for the better. I am trying to make my living as a writer and as the executive director of Girls Education International. Of course, neither Heidi nor I get paid for any of the work we do yet. However, when the organization starts to grow bigger, both of us hope to be able to spend most of our time working for GEI (and focusing on our other professions: writing for me and climbing for Heidi).

My writing career is slowly getting going. I am a senior contributing editor for Rock & Ice magazine and a columnist for Rocky Mountain Sports. My first column comes out this April and is on Pete Takeda and Majka Burhardt, two writer/climbers who recently published engaging and exciting books about adventure climbing. (Majka wrote Vertical Ethiopia: Climbing Toward Possibility in the Horn of Africa. and Pete wrote: An Eye At The Top Of The World). I also just published an article in Rock & Ice about Alex Honnold and I'm working on another feature, which will be published later this year. I've got a few other projects in the works.

Unfortunately, I can't quite pay my mortgage with the writing work, and so I'm working at the local Lyons Montessori school. However, I enjoy the children. I have had to let got of my desire to have children for now. I simply can't do it until I am more established and/or have a solid partnership with someone else who wants children. I still want children, of course, and eventually it will happen, but I can't focus on that right now. It was sad for me to let go of that desire. On the other hand, I am now working with kids age 2.5 to 6 every week, and so I get my fill of child energy (and I love love it!!!). I also will be working part time at a local restaurant, Oskar Blues, that has great beer and fantastic live music three or four times per week. The best thing about these two jobs is that they are just a couple blocks from my house, and so I can minimize my car driving and walk to work. I also just got work with a health and fitness website, but I don't know the details yet.

I'll be heading off to Seattle and Hood River, OR, on March 29th, where I will climb with my friends Mark, Peggy, and Ellen Hudon and also with Colin Haley, the most radical young alpinist in the world right now (and I get to write about him!). This spring I plan on being in Yosemite for a month or so, hopefully writing another article for R&I. And this summer I have to go to Pakistan for a short period of time to work with the CARE Foundation on a Girls Education International project.