Things I now know:
- I will be leaving out of the Detroit metro airport at 7:00 AM on Monday, March 19th, and arriving in Philadelphia at 9:00 AM.
- I will be staying in Philadelphia for one night while we complete staging (very close to the Liberty Bell, I might add)
- I will be boarding a bus to the New York JFK international airport at 10:00 AM on Tuesday, March 20th.
- At 6:45 PM, it's wheels up - I will be on a nonstop flight to Casablanca, Morocco, beginning the adventure of a lifetime.
You might be asking yourself, "What the heck is this 'staging' business she keeps referencing? Why do they stop in Philadelphia for a day?"
Staging is a very brief, intense orientation that we take part in before leaving the country for Morocco. We'll receive our ticket for traveling from JFK to Casablanca, get to know one-another, and get some basic information needed before our full, three-month long Pre-Service Training (PST) in Morocco.
It's comforting to know that we will be taking this first step of our journey in the form of a mini-trip to a US city, meeting our fellow volunteers and making sure we've got all of the bureaucratic necessities taken care of. (Also, a note to future volunteers: don't worry, Peace Corps books and pays for your flight to staging and your accommodations while there! You are taken care of!)
The entire pre-service orientation and training process is extensive, which is both awesome and surprising to some people -- So many people (including myself, two years ago) have this idea in their heads that Peace Corps entails being dropped out of a plane into the middle of nowhere with only so much as a handbook and a "good luck," and that couldn't be farther from the truth! I'll talk more about this in a later post, but we'll have 3 months of intensive training and 2 different host families to introduce us to the culture before they let us loose!
The emails also contained a bunch of other specifics, including some instructions about training modules/classes that we need to complete online before arriving for staging - and I'd be lying if I said the student in me didn't get a little excited about that!
This is actually happening. There is actually a ticket purchased by the Peace Corps for my departure. This is not a hypothetical. This is happening. . . ! Excitement would be an understatement.
Hold on to your hats!
