And so it begins

Right now I'm in Philadelphia, paying approximately a million dollars a minute for internet access.  A small price to pay to keep you all informed, I figure. It's just too hard to try to call or email everyone individually.  They've kept us pretty busy here at orientation, doing several hours of talks, brainstorms, getting-to-know-you games and so on the last two days.  But then tomorrow morning, as the title of this entry says, the real thing begins. The time here, aside from being busy, has been pretty fluffy. They gave us money for meals and we all tried the local cheesesteaks, as well as some quite excellent and pricey cocktails at this swanky martini bar and a really great meal at this place called the Continental tonight.  (Amusing side note: one volunteer made the mistake of ordering a "Philly cheesesteak" - the person waiting on him pointed out "Sir, we're in Philly, you can leave that part out.")

 

As I'd predicted and hoped, my fellow volunteers are great, like-minded people, with a lot of backgrounds in volunteering, mentoring, and so on. It's great to be around people that can be totally goofy and dorky yet also passionate about things they believe in and ready to leave everything behind for this experience.  I'm sure we're all going to become really close in the next 10 weeks of training. There are 38 of us, mostly around my age (25) but with an older married couple and two older single women, as well as a few people in their early 30s. People are from all over the US, from the Midwest and east coast, Texas and the South - and I've found a fellow Oregonian (represent!).

 

This city is pretty awesome, and a lot warmer than Portland was when I left it. I just wish I'd had more time to explore.  Every building is so old and cool-looking, yet because they're everywhere a lot of them house the most mundane stuff ( i.e. quickie marts).  Today to buy stamps I actually went to the first US post office. It was really tiny and had these beautiful curved wood counters. I guess that's almost as good as the Liberty Bell, right?

 

Oh yeah, so about reality setting in and whatnot.  Tomorrow we catch a bus to the airport, then make our loooooooooooong flight to Istanbul. I've never been on an international flight but whatever the case, 10 hours sounds yucky. Then in our layover time there we're all supposed to try to nap, because I believe we have our first language lesson that night, and start pre-service training at 7am the next day. Who knows what time that will be back home....ah yes, 9pm. Probably safe to say we'll all be a little discombobulated the first few days/weeks.  Oh! And the real craziness: Saturday evening we go move in with our (training) host families. I have no idea what to expect. We'll live individually with them till about Thanksgiving, at which time we'll be sworn in assuming we do all the right stuff. A lot of people are worried about picking up the language, so I'm feeling pretty lucky to have my Russian background, however small. One thing I am nervous about is whether I'll be one of the 5 people picked to study solely Russian - even though I had hoped for this, I feel like it will mean being isolated from the majority of the group studying Romanian. I guess no sense worrying about it, seeing as how I can't change it. I'm sure it will be great either way, it's just that I've started getting to know these guys and I guess out of a sort of traumatic bonding am reluctant to move away from them.

 

What else...it sounds like we will be INSANELY busy during training, so please 1. send me letters and 2. don't take it personally if I can't send you many before December when PST is over, because I'll be in school all day and then doing homework all night. Apparently this is the hardest part of service for many volunteers.

 

I'd love to just keep writing and writing, but I probably owe this machine my first born by now.

 

xoxo

 

p.s. I just want to say thank you to all of you who were flexible about meeting up with me this past week, especially on Saturday when I seriously stretched the limits of what can be done in a day. Miraculously I was able to get in a smidgen of time with almost everyone, which was really great and meant a lot to me. And to Justin and Erin, who stuck it out with me all night until 7am when I left, let me just reiterate how awesome you two are!!!