Staging in Philadelphia

The last two days have been very intense. On Saturday morning, I said good bye to my parents and flew from Madison to Milwaukee, and then to Philadelphia to my Staging Event, a three day pre-training training before I leave for Ghana. It was sad to say good bye to all my friends and family, although I was getting tired of doing it over and over. Thanks to all who wished me well and encouraged me. I am so excited and scared to be doing this amazing thing!

On the Plane to Philly, I chatted with the woman sitting next to me about what I was doing, and the guy in the seat behind me heard and introduced himself. He was also going to the same staging event to become a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) in Ghana. His name is Anthony and he also went to school at UW and was roommates with some guys that I went to high school with. Interesting coincidence! We got to Philly, (the plane was only delayed a little), and found other people carrying big bags and and wandering around like us. There were lots of other to-be PCVs and we took a shuttle bus together to the very fancy Holiday Inn hotel in the Historic District of Philadelphia. There, I checked in and gathered my paperwork for registration and training. More and more people gathered in the lobby and lounge areas of the hotel, and we all introduced ourselves to one another excitedly. I realized that there were a lot of people in our training group, and that we were all going to Ghana to become teachers.

Our group consists of 35 people, a few more guys than girls, two couples, mostly mid-twenties but a handful of older people, including 5 people over 50. They are from all over the country and four of us are from WI. There are only a few people of color in our group. These people will become my new best friends (I hope) and we will be a support network for one another for the next 10 weeks of intensive training in Ghana. The Staff who ran the staging did an awesome job. We had trainings and activities all day yesterday, about PC policies, expectations, cultural adjustment, and logistics. They answered all of our questions and made us feel unified as a group and excited about Ghana! I have really only begun to get to know these new friends, but already I am very excited. A lot of them are teaching science, like me, but others are teaching math, visual art, or information communication technology (computer stuff). We have the chance to go out to lunch and dinner together and we also went out to some cool local bars and had a pool party at the hotel. PC gave us each $180 to spend on food, accidentals, and reimbursement for transport and airport fees. I spent a good portion of it on alcohol and sushi. It feels really good to not have to worry about money, and know that I will have enough to live and get what I need while I am serving in Ghana. I filled out my loan deferment forms and the only thing I have yet to do is get a new watch battery(or a new watch).

Tomorrow, we go to the Clinic to get malaria medicine and a yellow fever shot, then we check out and ride a bus to New Jersey in order to fly out of Newark Airport. We fly to Amsterdam first, and have a 3 hour layover there. Unfortunately, our trainers insisted that we did not have enough time to leave the airport. From Amsterdam, we fly to Accra, (accent on the second sylable) the capital of Ghana. It will be almost a full day of only travel. I'm not really looking forward to the flights, except that I'll get to spend a lot of time with some of my groupmates. When I get to Ghana, the real work begins. I'll be busy with language, cultural, and technical training. Don't worry if you don't hear from me in a while because this this stuff, no news is good news. I'd love to get comments or emails from you all, and I'll answer all your questions about how amazing this all is.

love,
Toby