Seven days. Exactly one week. And then I'll be on my way.
Here's the plan:
I was supposed to leave early June 9 from Minnesota to get to Philadelphia by noon, but because I have family on the east cost who I'd like to see, I was able to use my excellent persuasion skills and convince the Peace Corps to issue my plane ticket for one day earlier and to New Jersey, rather than Philadelphia. Thus, I'll be departing on Wednesday, June 8 at 9:55am from Minneapolis and flying to Newark, New Jersey where my uncle will pick me up -- ironically, he also was in the Peace Corps and served in Africa, though it was a long time ago and he was in southern Africa (the country of Swaziland). I'll be spending the rest of the day with my aunt, uncle, and 2 younger cousins, and staying overnight at their house. Hopefully this allows me to get a good night's sleep! But I won't be surprised if it doesn't. I might be too nervous/excited to sleep. And my uncle might talk a lot...
The next morning, my uncle will drive me to Philadelphia (just a few hours away) and I will commence staging, or orientation, at noon with all the other new Peace Corps Volunteers at the Crowne Plaza Philadelphia West Hotel. We spend the night at the hotel, but rise bright and early to load a bus that will take us to a clinic in New York where we get tons of vaccinations and other shots. We depart from JFK airport in New York that evening, flying to Brussels, Belgium -- an 8 hour plane ride. After a brief layover, we then fly south to Burkina Faso's capital city, Ouagadougou -- another 6 hour plane trip. From there we begin our approximately 3 months of training (focused on developing cultural understanding and language skills), while living in Ouagadougou with a host family and 2-4 other volunteers.
I've been paying attention to the weather in Burkina lately and have mixed emotions. First of all, WHOOO!!! Sunshine and temperatures above freezing, yes please! I'm getting sick of Minnesota's weather, which still seems to be in winter mode, besides the ONE day it got above 75 degrees. And when the temperatures are remotely decent here in MN (i.e. I don't need a sweatshirt and our house doesn't have the heat turned on), it's either raining or blowing 40mph winds. Or both. Enough of that. I will welcome Burkina's weather with open arms! And by wearing a tank top. However, on the other hand, Burkina's temperatures are warm. And by warm, I mean REALLY warm. Like above 95 degrees every day. Eww. That'll require a lot of deodorant -- you now know what to send me in my care packages! Night time isn't any better: if I'm lucky, temperatures will drop to, oh, maybe 85 degrees. Not exactly the most pleasant sleeping conditions...
In other news, I recently found out that there will be at least 15 other new volunteers going to Burkina with me! I figured all along it wasn't just me headed to Burkina, but then again, the Peace Corps never really said there'd be others...I just assumed. And it's not uncommon for me to assume wrong. But this time, I was right. I still have no idea who the others are, or even how many of us there will be, as the Peace Corps has not released that information to us, but we get to meet everyone at staging in Philadelphia, and that's only a week away! By the way, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to know that there's at least 15 of us...perhaps it's highly classified top secret information like Area 51...but it's not my fault I know: the person in charge of our arrival in Burkina has been trying to coordinate mountain bikes for each of us in our proper sizes, and sent an email bluntly stating, "The 15 of you have not yet turned in bike sizes need to do so ASAP." Thus, there's at least 15. Maybe (probably) more. I hope they're all cool people. And not weird. But if they are weird, I hope they're at least entertaining. Long plane rides (and electricity-free villages in the middle of nowhere) are so much more enjoyable when you're surrounded with entertaining people, right? Let's hope so.
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