Pilgrimage to PC Mecca

I went to Peace Corps headquarters in downtown DC yesterday with a group of three others from W&M for a nominee/invitee event. It was quite a production...Gaddi Vasquez, director of the Peace Corps, spoke, as well as an RPCV from the Kyrgyz Republic and the mother of a volunteer who she had just visited in Ecuador.

The speeches were great and heartfelt and all, but that wasn't really the important part of the trip. What really hit home for me was when all the invitees came to the front of the room and a microphone was passed around, with each invitee introducing themselves and saying which country they were going to. Of course I'd been discussing my placement in Georgia with friends and family, but something about the experience really drove it home for me. I was professing to a room full of strangers and near-strangers whom I had only met three hours before that I would be spending the next 27 months of my life in Georgia, teaching English. Something about it just made me think "wow, I'm really doing this." Maybe it was the formality of it all, with the microphone and the completely ambiguous "business-casual" attire everyone was sporting. Or maybe it was the fact that I didn't know any of them, and it was the first time I was telling my plans to strangers. But whatever the reason, it really made the whole process seem real and near to me.

So, I leave in 53 days. And I couldn't be more excited. I met all of the PC staff that I had been communicating with via email and telephone at the shindig last night, which was really nice. I also met another person (Emily) who will be in my Georgia group, so I will recognize at least one familiar face when we arrive for training in Philadelphia in under two months.

I have also made progress towards getting this dental business cleared up, hopefully it will be simple and not like the experiences Brooke, Virginia, and Audrie (the other people from W&M who drove up yesterday) are having with their medical stuff. But it's (mostly) outside my control, so que sera sera, I guess.


Tim