71 Days until London!

It is about time we gave you a more formal brief of where we are. The last few months have been filled with excitement, planning, incredible fundraising through friends and family and even a little bit of turnover.

First, we would like to announce the newest member of our group, Sam Stogdon. Sam is Percy's younger brother, and is currently on a gap year after high school. Sam was captain of Concord Academy’s Varsity Soccer Team the year after Percy and I were co-captains. He will be attending Haverford College in the fall. So our new group of four is Zeke, the Stogdon brothers, and Me, David. We are very excited to add Sam onto our crazy adventure this summer not only because of how his personality will add to our trip, but also because his skills will hopefully help quell the fears of some of our more timid and anxious supporters. Sam spent much of last summer working for his Uncle in an auto repair shop and adds some much needed knowledge of cars to our otherwise naive team. Not only that, but he spent 60 days of his fall, hiking and trekking through the wilderness of the Pacific NorthWest picking up a plethora of the useful outdoors skills we will need once we get into Central Asia. Please help us in welcoming Sam to our team!

Next, we are so very thankful and proud to announce that we have surpassed our initial fundraising goal for streetfootballworld! We have already raised just under $10,000 for the charity and are hoping to continue our great success through your efforts and raise even more. While we reached our initial goal in our first 60 days, our fundraising page is still open and full of great perks for you to purchase along with a new one - streetfootballworld t-shirts - which we can send to you! We have also raised $200 for Cool Earth the rain forest preservation charity chosen by the organizers of the Mongol Rally.

We are also thrilled to announce that we have linked up with The Cross Cultures Project Association (a European affiliate with streetfootballworld) and will be stopping off to visit their soccer programs in Sarajevo, Bosnia, and Tbilisi, Georgia, to meet the kids and coaches and learn all about their projects. Both of these programs use soccer to help kids learn peacemaking and leadership skills in this strife-torn area of the world. The high school club team, GPS-Massachusetts, that Zeke and I played for together, has generously agreed to sponsor our team by donating soccer balls and gear for us to bring along and give to the Bosnian and Georgian soccer programs. You can read more about their gift at http://gps-massachusetts.com/2015/04/13/gps-ma-donates-soccer-equipment-to-eastern-europe/. We want to extend a huge thank you to GPS for helping us with such an incredible donation for this trip!

Finally, we wanted to update you on our planning and preparation for our trip. We have all officially paid and sent off applications for our visas for many Central Asian countries. A great company called VisaMachine will actually get the visas thankfully (saving us a lot of leg work and hassle). If you have not yet seen our route, it is newly posted and explained on our website- we expect to visit 19 countries!

As we continue our planning we would love your input and suggestions. If you have places you have been near our route, or know someone who could help us in a remote area (out in the deserts of Kazakhstan for example), or even have a tidbit of advice, please send them our way!! Everything and anything is welcome.

Please like our Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/fcmongoal and Instagram account to stay current with all of our news. We are about to start a weekly media campaign, posting a weekly image with basic information about places we will be driving to along our route. Stay tuned and thank you for your enthusiastic support for our crazy adventure this summer!