The Big Commute

Staging is the orientation into training for the Peace Corps.  It is the first time that we meet the people that we will be spending the next two years with. Staging for my group of Education volunteers (math or English) was in Philadelphia. Then together as a group, we travel to Lesotho, are met by the in country staff, and are placed with our host families.

The first leg of my travels starts at home, with my family. . I woke up to my mom saying “Don’t you need to leave in 10 minutes?” Whoops. Luckily there was absolutely no traffic on the way to San Francisco Airport and no long lines once I got there. I went in and met my first Peace Corps friend, Sarah. I was so happy to meet another person who was down to earth and easy to talk to. The plane was getting ready to board…then I remembered that I left my sweatshirt at the security….

We finally got to Philadelphia where we had an evening to relax and bond with the other west coast people who also had to come a day early. The next day was the staging event – basically a training seminar. We also got to have our last American meals….so happy that there was a chipotle and star bucks next to our hotel! (The rest was gross American food, but I may eventually miss that too…)

We had only a couple hours of sleep because we left the hotel at 2am Thursday morning, about 9 hours before our flight, just to make sure we would make it. The flight from JFK Airport to Johannesburg was 15 hours. We got off the plane at 8am and rushed to our next flight from Johannesburg to Maseru and flew another hour and a half. We finally made it!

The rest of the day, meeting our host families, having our first language and culture class is just kind of a blur, but luckily we have to be in our rooms by the time the sun goes down and I was able to just fall fast asleep.