Greetings Furure Trainee:

Today I received the e-mail I was waiting for. Since my last post, I guess it has really only been two weeks, which seems crazy to me. Time is going by at a snails pace. The last two days feel like a week to me. Alas, I have to find a way to cope - to take a breath and just realize that I still have a month until departure, and that it is basically going to feel like three months jammed into one.

Back to the news I received today. I got my staging e-mail. Just so you all know, the staging step in the Peace Corps process is the pre-departure orientation before leaving the United States. It is said to be a brief but intense orientation to the Peace Corps and to the general demands of being an effective and safe volunteer. It is also a chance for me to meet the rest of my training class. We will spend a jam-packed-full day together getting to know each other, learning about the Peace Corps, reviewing important policies and procedures, receiving any required vaccinations, and completing registration. Staging is also where I will pick up my official Peace Corps passport and my airline ticket to Honduras. Six goals are posted on the Web site that are supposed to be accomplished while at staging:

1) Complete registration and vaccination processes
2) Get to know the Peace Corps
3) Become aware of the Peace Corps policies and procedures to which you will abide
4) Become aware of risks that exist in your country of service and understand how those risks might be managed
5) Understand that volunteers, Peace Corps staff, and their communities have responsibilities for volunteers’ well-being
6) Learn about how to arrive at Post

Number six is definitely the one I am eager to learn about. When we get off that plane in Honduras - WHERE DO WE GO - HOW DO WE GET THERE - WHAT DO WE DO ONCE WE FIND WHERE WE ARE SUPPOSED TO GO - QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS!!!!!

Since I found out I would be going to Honduras, I was under the impression I would be going to Washington DC for my staging event. However, today I found out I will actually be going to Atlanta, Georgia. It doesn’t make a huge difference to me. I would have loved to go to DC because I might have been able to see my cousin Ashley, but I guess I am only at staging for a day so it probably wouldn’t have worked out anyway. Atlanta it is!

On February 23rd, 2011, I have to be dressed in business casual and in my hotel for registration, which begins at noon and goes until 2 p.m. From 2 - 2:45 p.m. we learn “who we are” and “what’s expected of you.” We get a whopping 20 minute break from 4:25 -4:45p.m. Then from 4:45 - 7 p.m. it’s “what you expect,” “what’s next,” followed be “closing.” The next morning, we check out at 4:30a.m. and head to the airport at 5a.m. for a 10:10 a.m. departure. Why the heck we are departing for the airport five hours before our plane leaves is totally beyond me. We sure as heck are not going to miss our flight. My itinerary says it is a three hour and thirty five minute fight, non-stop to Tegucigalpa, and then I will actually be there. Can you believe it because I sure can’t. I am actually going to be in Honduras one month from TODAY!

OK, so where do I go from here? Tomorrow, I have to call SATO travel, which is the company the Peace Corps goes through to organize all flights. The Peace Corps has already arranged my international travel, but I have to call SATO tomorrow to arrange my flight to Atlanta. I am eager to do this. I feel like as soon as that ticket is in my hands it will mean everything has fallen into place. Well, receiving this e-mail today really made me realize everything has fallen into place. My health is good, my latest labs must have been good, which I was 99.9 percent sure about anyway. There is not a lot left for me to have to worry about. I am working on my Spanish! Today was the first day of the Spanish classes I signed up for. I think they are going to be perfect. They are going to supplement the work I have been doing with Rosetta Stone and books, perfectly. I feel like I’m doing pretty good reading and writing my Spanish, but it is the conversational skills that I am completely lacking. So, that is where these classes come in. One of them is a conversational class, which obviously is all about practicing speaking Spanish. The other one is a little higher level class to work on my grammar and to get more into past and future tenses. I feel like I am a little ahead of the people in my class, but I am so timid when it comes to actually speaking that it is going to be perfect. This will really give me the opportunity to get comfortable speaking Spanish. I only have the classes once a week - from 9:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. on Mondays. I’m bummed it is only one day a week, but hey, that is better than nothing!

On top of my Spanish, I also have to make sure I have all my paper work in order for staging. I have to gather all the forms I’ve been working on: registration, loan deferment, life insurance policy, power of attorney, payment method, privacy act waiver - there are a whole mess of them. But, I’m pretty sure I’ve got them all pretty much in order. Well, except Power of Attorney. That is my next step. I just talked to my mom today and decided that it was something I should do. You never know what might happen and I’m sure the second I step foot out of the country something would happen that my mom couldn’t help me with because I hadn’t signed one.

So for now friends, I am in the United States for another month. I have one month to hang out with my friends and work on my Spanish. I have one month to collect addresses, and try to figure out what I am going to take with me and what I am going to have to leave behind. I have one month to go through my pictures and decide which ones to print because there would be no way I could go two years with out being able to see that person or place when ever I needed to. I have one month to take my life and pack it in two suitcases before I get on a plane and embark on the adventure of a lifetime.