Sunday, December 2nd, 2007...5:50 pm
FINALLY Under Way!
Here I am in Philly; I’ve got my Peace Corps orientation under my belt and a cheesesteak in my stomach; we head for the clinic tomorrow morning and then we’re off! We arrive in Guinea Tuesday night sometime!
Part of the orientation we just went through (get-to-know-you exercises, review of PC goals and policies, intro to some cultural training, etc) made it very clear that part of my job is to help manage expectations on YOUR end — it sounds like my monthly internet access projection may have been overly optimistic (one RPCV had access about every 3 months), BUT every site is different and I’ll just have to wait and see! Phone is not very practical often; letters take a long time; internet is infrequent. As they say, no news is good news… That said, I will do my very best to stay connected — if only because I want to have friends who still remember who I am in 2010!!
I am also told that, as part of Peace Corps policy for security reasons, I will be unable to go into a lot of specifics about where I am situated, just FYI.
OK, business out of the way, everything so far has been as expected, a little dry, a little silly, but all good. There’s 37 of us; the average age is 26; there’s one guy over 50; about 60/40 female/male; there’s one volunteer who just finished his 27 months in Costa Rica, went home for a month and hopped back on a plane to go to Guinea with us! Lots of really nice, interesting people who I look forward to getting to know VERY well. They say about 30% of every class will drop out before their two years of service are up — it is certainly my plan to do this for the next 27 months of my life, but I also don’t want to let myself be miserable for two years just to save my pride!
I’m surprised at how calm and ready I feel. The only times I start to get nervous are when I try to conceive of this undertaking as a whole, the language acquisition, the work, the cultural adjustment, all of it together is fairly daunting. But, in actuality, I’ll be living through it one day at a time so I might as well approach it as such. I can deal with tomorrow, and tomorrow I can deal with the day after that.
It is sad to think that I have all of my goodbyes behind me. I feel like there’s no way I said goodbye sufficiently to let people know how important they are to me, what valuable parts of my life they’ve been and how much I hope two years of growing and heading down our own paths won’t make our old friendships unrecognizable. It almost didn’t occur to me until some other folks mentioned (in the anxieties/aspirations exercise) how they were concerned about what they would come home to after two years; everybody’s lives will have continued and ours too, but I feel confident that my good friends now will be my good friends then too. What’s two years after all? It’s nothing, that’s what!
I am thrilled that my feeling of confidence and preparedness hasn’t dissipated at all! Granted, I’m in Philadelphia connected to the internet on my laptop which is plugged into the wall — can’t say I’ve encountered too many challenges so far! My next post will be form Guinea!!
2 Comments
December 2nd, 2007 at 6:20 pm
I assume they are talking about where your site will be when they say you can’t talk? I would check the employee manual under government security overseas. The law may from the State Department or another agency. Peace Corps has Special Agents(DoJ) that would be able to answer those types of security questions, which you probably want to know as an employee.
December 2nd, 2007 at 8:00 pm
hey i don’t know where I’LL be in 2010, but i know WE’LL still be friends…..love and hugs to you katy. have a freekin blast!
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