T-Minus 5 Days!

In five days my adventure begins with a flight to Philadelphia!

Philadelphia is where I will have "staging" aka orientation (the Peace Corps decided to rename everything in their own lingo...presumably to confuse anyone who isn't involved directly??).

After a day in Phildelphia I get on a bus at 2:30 am, drive to JFK airport in NYC ,fly to South Africa,get off the plane in Johannesburg and immediately get into another bus for 3 hours. The final destination is where I will be for the first week of my training: Mokopane College of Education in the Limpopo Province.

After those one or two weeks in the dorms I'm moving in with my training host family in rural South Africa. Most likely I will not have running water, and I have been told that internet access during training is limited. Part of this is our location and the other part is they don't want us to use the internet while we are supposed to be focusing on assimilating to South African culture. SO - if you e-mail me or message me on Facebook and I don't reply it's just because I can't get on the internet.

During training we focus on many things including language, safety, health, South African culture, and have hands on experiences in the community. I'm hoping that I can be like a sponge and soak up everything they have to teach during my training period! Slightly nervous about the whole learning the "basics" of FIVE languages...I'm sure I'll have some stories about that part. Until March 24th I am in training and am not considered a "volunteer" but a "trainee". A couple weeks into training I will find out my assignment and location for the 24 months of service! I can't wait to find out this information!!!

For those of you interested in sending me letters/packages...
***MY ADDRESS DURING TRAINING***

Alana McGinty
Peace Corps
PO Box 9536
Pretoria 0001
South Africa

**Note about the mail: Any mail I get during training will be forwarded to me by the Peace Corps. Mail is supposed to be reliable in South Africa. Letters should take about 2 weeks to get to me, packages take longer. I read that if you want to send me a package if you can fit it in one of those bubble wrap envelopes it will get to me faster because it will be treated like a letter. I've heard that you may want to put religious messages on the outside of packages to avoid theft. I guess people don't want a whole bunch of Bibles, but the Cosmos and US Weeklys I hope to receive must be a hot commodity! ; )

I'm at the point where it's still surreal to a degree and I just want to get there! The anticipation of something like this is overwhelming! I'm feeling really good about leaving, but have a few worries. I'm imagining that all the other volunteers (there are 43 of us leaving on the 26th) are going to be South African language experts, know everything there is to know about HIV/AIDS, and be well versed in anything to do with South Africa. If that is the case they better be willing to share some of that info with me! : ) In seriousness though, I'm assuming I won't be the only one who has a hard time learning the basics of 5 languages and hasn't worked with HIV before.

When I get internet I will update my facebook/blog to let you all know that I'm still alive and have made it to South Africa.

Until then...my only expectations are to be surprised everyday by myself and others.
Life is calling...and I'm about to answer!