Staging

Yesterday I made the long trek from Portland to Atlanta to meet with the rest of my departure team before heading off to South Africa. After an amazing weekend of friends and family coming together to celebrate my departure, getting on the plane was a little hard. There was a very tearful goodbye between my parents and I  in the middle of the Portland airport, but eventually we said our goodbyes and I headed off to Chicago and then to Atlanta. The landing coming into Atlanta was not a fun one. I'm not one to normally complain about a bumpy ride. I actually find turbulence to be like riding a roller coaster and I rather enjoy it. However, coming in through a lightning storm where you can see the lightning flashing through the clouds that your small metal plane is flying in is pretty freaky. But eventually our wheels touched the ground and I was still alive.

After spending all day sitting in airports and on planes I was looking forward to the next day and the possibility of moving around a little while meeting the rest of the team. That unfortunately was not the case. After spending some quality time trying to put names to all of the new faces we spent eight hours sitting in a conference room talking about the logistics of this adventure, and discussing our fears and aspirations about heading off into the unknown.


So far I actually really like everyone that I have talked to, which if you know me at all, then you know that is not normally the case. With such a variety of people here there would normally be one or two people that I basically couldn't stand right off the bat, but so far everyone is really nice, and really excited. It is weird being with such a large group (46) that all have the same motivations and end goal. I think this is the first time that I have been with people that I don't have to explain myself to, they all kind of just get me and why I am here. Although we are all different, some old and some young, some black and some white, some shy and some outgoing, we are all here for the same thing and it seems that we all have very similar fears, excitement, and expectations about what is going to happen to us over the next 27 months. I'm sure that as the time goes on we will all find our groups that bond more than others, but for now we are all trying to just get through the goodbyes and transitions together.


The one big point that I learned during our eight hour conference was that from here on out I can't post my exact location on this blog. Since it is an open blog and anyone can read it, it is a security risk to post where volunteers are located in country. So for the first week that I am in Africa I will be at the training center discussed in previous posts, but after that I will be moved to a remote location with a smaller group to do more individual cultural and technical training. If you would like to know my location feel free to send me a message of facebook and I will attempt to reply when I can. Otherwise just know that I am in some small town in South Africa probably trying to figure out how to take a bath with a bucket and a ladle.