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!