How its gonna be...

I must admit that right now,  24hrs before I will leave for Philly, I am in copy and paste mode. Get every last minute thing done as fast as possible. However, for your sake I will try to make this post personal and interesting, instead of posting exactly what the PC has sent me.

Tomorrow, June 6th, around 12pm I will start loading the car with 2 years worth of luggage.
(Please, please, please feel free to call me to say 'bye' one last time. I will do my best to call as many people as possible, but that is a lot of people.)

Hopefully, all of my luggage will pass inspection. We are only allowed a total of 80lbs and 107 linear inches for our checked baggage. I have been trying to weigh as I go, but I'm not sure how accurate my measurements have been.

My flight leaves for Philadelphia at 3:15pm. I know that some of you are thinking, 'Philadelphia.... I thought you were going to Africa?!' What will take place in Philadelphia is something that the PC calls 'Staging'. This event lasts aprox. 33hrs, and is an opportunity for all of the new Swaziland volunteers to meet each other, talk about motivations, goals, etc., and of course to get a ba-jillion vaccines. Tomorrow we will all just check in, register, and turn in some forms. Tuesday is the big day for the 'clinic appt.' and ice breakers. We will have that evening free and go out for our last stateside meal for 2 years.

Wednesday the traveling begins.... at 2:30AM. No, that is not a typo. At 2:30am we check out of our Philly hotel and hop on a bus to JFK airport. Our flight for Johannesburg leaves at 11:30am. That is a 15hr 25min flight my friends! We will arrive in Johannesburg at about 9am on Thursday, June 9th!!!!!!
From there we will catch a bus to Swaziland, tack on another 5 hours. Expected arrival in Swaziland is 4pm!!!!!

HOLY COW!!!

We will start training right away, even though we will not be moving in with our host families until the 14th of June. That means that I will have a family for my birthday!!!!

During training my time will not be my own, and every second will be scheduled for me. This means that I will most likely not be able to contact any one for the first 10 wks or so of training. No news is good news.
As soon as I get a phone, or have a chance to check email, blog, or facebook you will all know.

Please POST QUESTIONS. I will check the blog late on Tuesday (providing there is internet at the hotel) and respond to as many as I can. Any questions after that will not be answered for quite a while.

I will miss you all SO much. <3