I was given the name Daniel Wayne Schutte on March 17, 1981. I grew up in the American Midwest, in the town of Clear Lake, Iowa. During my earlier years, I spent much of my free-time from school stomping around local wetlands with my big brother Brad. Bird-watching, hunting, fishing, constructing rafts that sank in the marsh, exploring, building tree-houses, and generally enjoying the outdoors ate up most of my time.

I grew up in a very environmental and outdoor-oriented family. My mom, Carol, is an extremely passionate professor. She has spent over 15 years teaching biology, anatomy and physiology, and environmental science at North Iowa Area Community College ("I chose NIACC first!"). Constantly touching the lives of students in so many ways, she is one of the most hardworking and admirable influences in my life.

My dad, Steve, is a recently retired Iowa Department of Natural Resources game warden. After 25 years spent upholding the hunting and fishing laws of our state and our country, he was just as enthusiastic on his last day as on his first. A hunting, fishing, and traveling addict, Stevie and his countless "Little Buddies" leave very few sections of wetlands and forest in the central United States and southern Canada unexplored.

As for me, after graduating from high school I began my freshman year of college at NIACC. The summer before my classes began I participated in a tropical rainforest and marine ecology class in Belize that was organized by my mom. Entering the trip, I was a decided student of biology, although I had not chosen the medical or environmental branch. Eighteen hours after entering the tropical rainforest of central Belize, I made the decision to devote the rest of my life to ecology and environmental science. While studying at NIACC, I participated in several other ecological field courses, one of which was to the temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest. I also went to the boreal region of Northern Minnesota to collect data for a post-forest fire regeneration study that is being conducted and maintained by my mom and her teaching associates.

After finishing two years at NIACC, I entered Iowa State University in Ames as a double-major in Biology and Environmental Science. In June of 2001, the summer before arriving at the ISU campus, I enrolled in an ecology field course in the prairie-pothole region of Northwest Iowa. The class was held at the Iowa Lakeside Laboratory campus and I fell in love with the scholastic environment, the campus, and the professors - all of it. This month-long course was my first exposure to intense research techniques and activities, and further fueled my academic fire. The next summer, I traveled to Australia as part of a general Australian ecology trip, and upon my return, enrolled once again at the Iowa Lakeside Laboratory campus to take an aquatic ecology and a soil science course. For anyone considering taking an intense immersion course during the scholastic off-season, I cannot say enough about its' worth.

For two years at Iowa State I taught an anatomy and physiology lab in the Zoology department in addition to juggling my own scholastic endeavors. I survived, and during my last semester of school decided to apply to the Peace Corps. I was invited to serve in Paraguay as a beekeeping volunteer in July of 2003, and left for Paraguay in September.

And now here I am in the Paraguayan countryside. I keep bees and teach beekeeping. I work at a rural high school teaching English and environmental science. I raise worms and teach worm rearing as a source of organic fertilizer. I have an organic garden and teach organic gardening. It is very hard to describe my Peace Corps service in a small written piece, but this humbling experience has been powerful. It has focused my intentions and opened my eyes to some of the often unperceived social, economic, and environmental interactions of the world's peoples.