hello from philly!

We're in Philadelphia right now, attending what the Peace Corps calls "staging." Staging is where we meet all the other Americans who are going to Tanzania with us, learn about Peace Corps policy and procedure, and prepare for our first days in Tanzania. One thing that is required of me in my blog, for previous posts and future posts: the contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the US government or the Peace Corps. There--fulfilled that requirement. So I think we're going with a really good group of people: there are 25 of us all together (10 of us are members of married couples, 5 people are older than Tony and I, and the rest are 20-somethings.) Interesting group--we're all either Health Education Volunteers or Environmental Volunteers, and it seems like, for the most part, we'll all basically get along. Tony and I had another major re-packing session tonight (6 times now? 7 times?), and we'll re-pack again in Dar es Salaam, the city in Tanzania that we're flying into (reason for the future re-pack: we don't need ALL of our stuff for our 10 weeks of training). We arrive in Dar on Tuesday evening, spend two nights in a hotel there, then on Thursday we go to a city called Kilosa where we'll spend two nights in a different hotel before moving in with our host family for 10 weeks of training. I'm excited, I'm nervous, I'm pre-menstrual, I'm exhausted. We got dinner delivered to our hotel room the last two nights (Indian last night, Thai tonight), and ate in our room, watching bad tv. It feels like the hardest goodbyes are behind me, because everyone I care about is someplace other than here--I'm ready to go. Stay tuned!!