One Last Post From Home

Yesterday was my first official day of training! It was a long day with lots of paperwork and information, but it was a lot of fun. Up until now, this experience has felt surreal. Finally meeting my fellow volunteers and beginning training made it feel like this is really happening now.

I started my day off walking around Philly, attempting to find a coffee shop, with two volunteers that I happened to meet in the hotel. We got to know each other and spent the morning wandering while we waited for training to begin in the afternoon.  It was easier to spot Peace Corps Volunteers when we returned to our hotel because they were all waiting around in business casual attire with Peace Corps paperwork and folders. There are 31 volunteers in my training group, ranging from people in their early to mid 20’s to older volunteers on their third tour with the Peace Corps.

I am really excited about my training group! Everybody is equally enthusiastic and anxious, which is nice because we can all relate to each other and what we have ahead of us. There’s a girl in my group whose name is Hayley with the same spelling as me, a guy whose father grew up in Orinda, a girl who went to Cal and a guy who grew up in Davis…it really is a small world! There are volunteers from the Mid-West, East Coast and even Alaska. Despite our differing backgrounds and reasons for joining, we’ve come together for a united cause. Our training director said from this point on we are a family. We will need to be a resource for each other to get through this experience. We discussed our peers' positive, negative and confused reactions to our decision to join the Peace Corps. It became a comfort knowing that we are all in the same boat right now. One of the returning volunteers, Jerry, recited the following poem to us in regards to this unique experience we will be sharing with each other:

It would be dishonest to pretend
that I went because I wanted to turn the desert into a garden
or to realize dreams that were thousands of years old.
I went because it was different,
because I wanted to go,
because it was a road that might have an end.
I knew I would not stay forever;
I never thought of tying my future to this newness;
I knew I would take the road back one day,
but perhaps carryng with me a particle of the night’s silence,
or the day’s honesty.
— adapted from “Dust” by Yaeldyan

As we are getting to know each other better, I am becoming even more excited for my service! Our training in Philly was a general overview of Peace Corps service. We will have more specific training in regards to Burkina and our jobs when we arrive in country. After we finished yesterday, a large group of us went out to dinner and drinks together. My earlier fears of not finding people to connect with in my training group seem silly to me now.

This morning, we had to check out of our hotel by 6:30am and load up our luggage onto a charter bus. Then, we walked to a clinic nearby and were administered our yellow fever vaccinations to get into the country. Then, we took the charter bus to JFK airport in New York where we are now. Our training group is travelling to Burkina together.

Well, I just wanted to give one last update before my flight. This may be my last internet connection until I get situated into my training program in Koudougou this weekend. But I wanted everyone to know that I am having a great time so far and I can’t wait to tell you about Burkina!