And away we go

Greetings from Johannesburg! I probably won’t be able to blog again for a little while, so I am taking advantage of having internet access in the hotel to write a quick update.           

It’s amazing to realize that I have made it this far. When I got to the airport in Vermont and strapped on my giant hiking backpack, on my way to our two-day staging event in DC, that’s when it really hit me: I am finally a Peace Corps volunteer. I’ve been talking about it and planning for it for so long (3 years? 4 years?) that it always seemed like such an abstract idea—until now. And then when I arrived at the hotel in DC, it suddenly hit me that the feeling of foreignness I was experiencing, just by being in a different city and strange hotel, was going to be one that will pervade my life for the next 2+ years. I know that once I get my site placement and am well settled there, it will start to feel like home, but there will always be a sense of foreignness, and that is scary to think about.

The staging event itself was fairly low-key, and it was great to finally meet the people with whom I’d been talking on Facebook for the past few months. It’s funny to think that although none of us know each other very well yet, we are undoubtedly going to become incredibly close, mostly by virtue of  proximity and necessity.

On Tuesday we all boarded a bus to Dulles to catch our 17-hour flight to Johannesburg, and despite everyone’s stress about packing and bags being over the weight limit, we checked in without any difficulty. The flight itself was not as bad as I thought it would be—I’ve had worse long-haul flights-- though it was funny to be getting on a plane at sunset one day, and then go through another cycle of sunrise/sunset, all while still in the air.  I’m doing pretty well considering the time difference—I’m about to take a couple Tylenol PM in order to drug myself into the right time zone and get some sleep!

Because of flight schedules, we are all spending the night in an airport hotel in Johannesburg (the Southern Sun—it’s actually quite nice) and then we board a flight to Madagascar at 10 AM tomorrow.  The local Peace Corps staff will be picking us up from the airport in Antananarivo (the capital of Madagascar) and driving us to the Peace Corps training center in Mantasoa, about 20 miles away. Then we stay there for 1-2 nights, and then we go to our host families!

I sent an email to my Peace Corps recruiter yesterday, just thanking her for helping me get to this place and sending her my blog details, and she sent this a really amazing piece of advice that I thought was too great not to share. She said:

My go-to advice for departing volunteers is always this: imagine every small (and I mean, TINY) accomplishment as a tiny pearl, or jewel of your choice. Imagine that each time you achieve one of these pearls, that you string it on a necklace. And on those days when you feel like you have gotten nowhere and wonder what the heck you’re doing there, take a look in the mirror at the necklace and realize that Peace Corps service is not one, big project that is either successful or unsuccessful. It is an accumulation of minor, small, incremental adaptations, words learned, habits formed, etc. And the proverbial necklace you wear is your evidence of that.