First Impressions

We have officially arrived in Mozambique!  For two nights we will be here in Maputo, then we head off to Namaacha on Saturday to meet our host families there.

I sit now on the balcony of my hotel room overlooking the Maputo Bay.  The sun is beginning to set, its rays filtering through the clouds, it is slightly muggy but not horribly so, breezy, and maybe around 70-75 degreesish.  Life could certainly be worse.  

view from my balcony

Today, after our 15 hour then 1.5 hour flights, we took 3 buses to the hotel, our luggage all in the back of a pickup and filling a trailer.

People strolled the streets, some waving at us, other passing drivers peering into our bus I’m sure wondering what we were all doing there.  Maybe I was expecting a bigger city since it’s the capital or maybe we just didn’t venture in that area on our short drive from the airport to the hotel, but it kinda reminds me of downtown LA.  One side of the street has older looking cement walls and low buildings while the other side has a bright, newly painted yellow apartment building.  The bus driver pointed out Nelson Mandela's house as we drove past.  Billboards for Coca Cola and even KFC are displayed along the road, the occasional fruit stand or guy selling maps appears, satellite dishes sit in apartment windows, clothes hang from banisters, kids in uniform leave school, 6 people ride in the bed of passing pick up trucks...It's not crazy crowded or hectic feeling at all and those on the bus sit there trying to take it all in, that we are actually here!

Unfortunately, we don’t get the chance to explore the city as they confine us to the hotel premises for these next two days, giving us more vaccines (I only got a rabies shot and then get another tomorrow) and supplying our malaria medication (cross your fingers for no crazy side effects), and then tomorrow we go over some safety things and prep for living with our host families who we meet on Saturday! 

It’s all happening very quickly, yet still feels very surreal in a way probably because we are still just at a hotel and there still remain a lot of unknowns.  I’m nervous about meeting my host family and then actually jumping right in to training and this is all really happening! 

P.S. I am unsure how reliable the communication, particularly the internet, will be during these first 10 weeks of training, so, just in case, there may be fewer posts, if any, but I’ll try my best to continue to share my experiences as soon as I can!

From the airplane

Distance traveled:4355 miles

Distance to destination: 3682 miles

Time to go:6:55

Right now my watch says 7:07pm, though I have no idea what time it is wherever we are flying over right now.  If this post is rambly, I apologize seeing as how I am greatly sleep deprived and fighting a cold that decided to start yesterday unfortunately.  Despite that though, the flight is fairly comfortable.  Whoever invented those horseshoe-shaped U pillows is a genius! And they have the individual tv screens on the seats with lots of movies, games and tv shows to choose from.  Though, I have opted to spend the past 8 or so hours sleeping on and off because of our early morning/not sleeping last night.  But I am getting ahead of myself, let’s recap the past day or two.

So Monday was my flight to Philadelphia for what they call Staging, essentially an orientation-like welcome to Peace Corps type of event.  I arrived in Philadelphia in the evening on Monday and met with a girl at the airport to share a shuttle to the hotel, of course we were on complete opposite sides of the airport and hauling our luggage all over was a blast!  Relaxed evening spent meeting other early arrivers and discussing our very similar concerns over attempting to pack according to the 80 lb weight limit and things we had to leave at home, and how none of us really know Portuguese and how in the world are we going to learn it in only 10 weeks! 

Tuesday morning, a few of us took the short walk to go see the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall.  The weather was muggy, hot and sticky, my dad rubbing this in more with a text message declaring it was sunny blue skies back in Orange.  Finally, at noon, my first actual Peace Corps activities began.  After turning in some paperwork and registration forms, the staging included seeing and meeting everyone in our training class for the first time, discussing Peace Corps expectations, their core values and mission statement, our anxieties and aspirations, brief touch upon safety and potential threats we may encounter, and logistical information for our flight the next day. 

Brief description of our training class: there are 51 of us, everyone teaching or a teacher trainer.  Most people are around my age, 21-25ish with a few in their early 30s, two married couples, slightly more females than males, everyone from all over the country from the Bay Area, to Washington, to South Dakota and Nebraska, to  NYC and Pennsylvania.  Made me realize I need to work on my US geography!

Anyway, last meal a few of us went to Hard Rock Café, good food but terrible terribly slow service.  Then, since we were expected to check out of our hotel at 2:30 am, about 20 of us all met up and decided it was pointless to try to get any sleep, perhaps this is why I am now sick, but it was great getting to know people J.

Our bus left the hotel around 3:00am for the drive to JFK airport through the pouring rain.  We arrived at the airport at 5:40 to realize that the check-in desk does not open until 7:30am, so all 51 of us plopped down in the middle of the airport with our huge suitcases, quite the sight!

Anyway, we eventually got on the airplane, no one left behind, no one (surprisingly) having any difficulty with the weight/size requirement making me think of all those things I chose to leave behind and probably could have gotten away with bringing. 

And now I sit on the airplane scrolling through which movie to watch as we fly along the coast of Africa, still something surreal about the whole situation.  In about 6 and a half hours now, we arrive in South Africa with a short layover before our flight to Maputo where we will be greeted by the Mozambique Peace Corps country director and staff.

Sorry for the boring post, but some of you like to hear about the logistical information.  More exciting posts to come, I promise, including first impressions of Africa!

Bounce House, Swimming, Pinata, Oh My!

So since I was put on the spot yesterday and didn't really say much, I will begin my first post with a huge THANK YOU!  

Thank you to everyone who made it out yesterday to my going away party.  If I do say so myself, it was quite the party! At one point, one of my friends asked me, "Who are all of these people?!" and it was amazing to look around and see people from all different parts of my life: family, friends I have known since elementary school, college friends making the long drive down for the day, friends of the family who have watched me grow up, friends who I consider my second family or have become part of the family...all there to support me (I guess people like me haha) and I couldn't help but feel more loved and lucky to have such support and encouragement behind me.

The past few months I have been living in a state of no absolutes.  I was always just taking one step at a time whether it was hitting the submit button on my application back in February, preparing for my interview in March, or sending that email that said "I, Sara Nowakowski, accept my position to serve in the Peace Corps."

Now, I continue that trend of taking it one step at a time.  To be honest, I still don't really feel like I am going anywhere yet as I begin packing (well soon will begin packing, in honesty I will probably procrastinate on that for a while despite my mom's constant reminding of it), then I will just be taking a plane to visit Philadelphia, then that final plane to Africa.

The most common questions I receive are: "Aren't you scared?" and "Are you ready?"

To the first question my typical response is "I am every emotion."  Scared for the unknown, yet excited for it. Nervous about what I am going to encounter, yet anxious to begin a new adventure.  Terrified of a complete and abrupt change of every part of my daily routine and a huge distance between my usual support system, yet thrilled for the challenge to go beyond my usual comfort zone to test myself and just see what happens, to just LIVE and experience an adventure that is for sure going to include its hard, harder, and hardest times,   but also its best, better, and bestest times, all memories I will never forget!

Which leads in to the question "Are you ready?"  Typically, my response here is, "I don't think I will ever be totally ready."  How can one be totally ready for something for which she has no idea what to expect?  From past volunteers, that is the most common advice I have received is: try to go in to your service with no expectations because it is not going to be anything like you expect.  So this is something I have been trying to hold to, to have no expectations and, frankly, I don't know where I would even begin such expecting.  And that is a big part of why I want to do this, to enter the unknown, something I know very little about, to LEARN about a new culture, lifestyle, community, country, language, and myself.

Everyone says "Now is the perfect time in your life to travel and do something like this."  And I agree: Now is A Time for Adventure...