Departure and Staging in Philadelphia

So my cousins helped me pack my stuff yesterday evening after I had unsuccessfully tried packing it myself all day. And by helped I mean completely packed all my stuff. Don't know what I'll do when I have to pack to go home, I'm just gonna toss all my crap and give it to the next person. Then a couple of them stayed over, I gave my mom a good night hug and said the usual, "Try not to miss me". We woke at 5am went to SFO and said our asian goodbyes. Major Hugfest & Tears in front of the security checkpoint. That was pretty tough, I'll miss them a lot. Especially my favorite little midgets. Good thing I'll see them in Spain in 2012. 

I flew into Philadelphia and arrived early around 5pm. It was weird walking around the airport. I felt like I was on vacation, then I realized no one in my family was with me and I had never been here before. Then i thought, "Awesome!" and texted my cousin and told him how that was awesome. Turns out another peace corps girl was on my same flight. She saw my peace corps luggage tag and introduced herself. And it also turns out that she lived in the Haight for a year a block away from me. Small world. So I suggested we shuttle to the hotel. From there we broke off into our own rooms. I've never speed-socialized with so many people in my life. It really puts me out of my own element. But it's really been rewarding to force myself to interact with everyone. Each person is really interesting in their own way. However, it was the best ever in the universe to finally meet people in my Guinea group. Nothing weirder to know that a stranger across the country knows what you're going through. I instantly felt like family and that was pretty cool. 

Now I'm in the hotel room again with my roommate. We're both about to pass out for a bit before officially heading off to the staging meetings that kick off at 1pm. Everyone had to wake up at 7am today to get yellow fever shots. I hear we'll get a boatload more in-country. I'm trying to force myself to blog since staging was one of those things I was really wondering about when I was applying. It caused a lot of apprehension knowing I'd be meeting all these strangers. But the reality has been pretty awesome. Strange is only so strange in your own head. Once you talk a bit to each person you can kind of connect and see what motivated made them do this.

Thanks again to family and friends. Still hasn't really hit me that I'm leaving you guys for a while so all your emotional reactions to me leaving are kind of tripping me out. Maybe I'll snap out of it once I'm in Africa...but perhaps by then it will already be time to go home. 

Next steps: Meetings at 1pm that go to the evening. From then we stay up till 2:30am take a bus to JFK and wait for our flight to the motherland of the human race. On the real though, this definitely ranks as one of the most exciting Monday mornings I've ever had. And I haven't had any coffee.

First Post Office Ever in the Universe

Outtie.