Staging in Philadelphia

Today was Day 1 of Staging.

At noon, we registered with the lady and gentleman that provided our orientation for the day. A second gentleman was also there as a member of the National Peace Corps Association (NPCA), a non-governmental organization that provides services for current and returned volunteers. He introduced himself and the organization. He then revealed that he was going to "pull an Oprah" and give us all a Google Nexus 7 tablet. Ooo I was so excited! I thought maybe this was just a generous gift from the National Peace Corps Association. Nope. Based on a passionate Peace Corps volunteer's efforts, Google donated 1,000 tablets to the NPCA and the association chose us as one of the groups that they felt would best be able to use the services offered by the tablet during service. NPCA, I won't let you down!! I brought my laptop for skyping/blogging/emailing and my smartphone for music, but I'm excited to have a third device that will have a longer battery life than my laptop.

NPCA also releases a quarterly magazine as seen here

Staging mostly consists of welcome activities and an overview of most questions that future volunteers have. We did ice breakers, we did personal reflection, we performed scenarios (my team did a rap...ya we're so cool), etc. It wasn't super intense at all, which was great!

There are 31 volunteers in my staging group and we are all education volunteers. Most of us will be teaching junior high English, math or science. There are a few who will be teaching preschool. Everyone is SUPER nice and personable, which is fantastic considering we'll be the only Americans around each other for the next two years. We're all nervous, but totally excited! I'll be sure to post pictures of us as we start to get to know each other better during training.

Tomorrow is Day 2 of Staging.

Tomorrow we take a bus from Philadelphia to New York JFK. Then we wait in the airport for a large sum of hours until our flight around 6pm EST. I volunteered to be one of the group leaders, which means I will simply do a headcount and be aware of the people in my small group from the hotel through landing in Burkina Faso. That's a small task compared to chaperoning 25 high schoolers and their parents through London last New Year's.

Day 3 of Staging 

Friday, we land in Belgium for a four hour layover. Then, we land in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (Wah-gah-doo-goo, the capital) that evening and immediately will receive medical interviews to start our malarial prophylaxis.