I am Packed! or I Swear It All Fit Before!

I have finished packing! Which is good, since I leave tomorrow morning and, whereas other departing volunteers have no doubt been working on packing for the last month, I started this afternoon.

The useful information: I have one carry on backpack, one large duffel bag, and one large hiking backpack. Everything is labelled with my Tanzanian address, and they are just shy of the cumulative 80 pound maximum. Now to hoping US Airways doesn't charge me a fortune to check my bags. This is why I love Southwest (shoutout!)

The not so useful information: I am pretty sure the bulkiest thing in my pack are the 40 pairs of underwear I am bringing. Overkill- mayhaps- but I refuse to budge on underwear. I can't manage to get laundry done more than once a month when I have a washing machine, I most certainly won't do it more often when I have to do it by hand. I left socks at home to make room for the undies, instead. I also bought a bug hut before making sure it would fit, but its pretty boss, so I made some room for that by leaving out some clothes and shoes. East Africa is a giant thrift shop, right? I will be fiiiine.

Now that everything fits into my bags, the next hurtle is seeing if I can can actually carry all of it to Tanzania. Bon voyage!

A Grand Adventure or You Don't Have to be Rugged to be Accepted to the PC

Two days before departing for Staging, I return from a 3 day camping trip in the Grand Canyon. This was my attempt at being outdoorsy and "roughing it," while accomplishing something on my Photo Scavenger Hunt of My Life List. 

In case of flash floods...



At Mooney Falls, named after a prospector that fell the 200 feet when his rope broke and died...

Yeah, I climbed that.

This trip also provided an opportunity for growth as a budding backpacker...



Lesson learned: you do not have to be rugged or outdoorsy to be accepted to the Peace Corps. Wink wink, Phanny.

In closing, here is a PSA from Brandy (aka Goose):

One Month To Go! or What the Hell Am I Doing?

Travel arrangements have been made, overwhelming email about travel logistics and the first few days in country received, and bike helmet purchased! I have less than a month now before I finally get this show on the road!

I have spent the past month perusing the Tanzania Facebook group, http://www.facebook.com/groups/121447591273117/?id=159690090782200&notif_t=group_activity, and talking to people currently in TZ, where I have procured lots of information and advice that I have then used as an excuse to buy really cool things like solar chargers and a Kindle, which I have no idea if I am actually going to use while in TZ. I'll let you know if such purchases were a good idea or not.

After making my travel arrangements to get from Arizona to Philadelphia for staging, PC was kind enough to send out an email with documents describing just how inappropriate all of my clothing is going to be in the predominantly Muslim Dar es Salaam, how the first two weeks in country are going to a whirlwind of not knowing what I am doing, and that I have to bring a bike helmet with me. I really think that bringing a bike helmet is a very American concern that people living in Tanzania do not think about- which is probably why I have to bring one with me instead of buy one there- but seeing as I found it necessary to bring my non stick frying pan- even though I don't really cook- I guess I have no room to judge. So, I have one hideous white, very safe helmet to pack. Unfortunately, the cute pink one with the pandas didn't fit. It did say it was a child's helmet.

My excitement and anxiousness is increasing as time draws near. My plans for passing the rest of my time in the States include watching as much television as possible on a daily basis, eating ice cream and chocolate everyday, going back to the wonderful Bay area for a final farewell to my friends and family there, and camping in the Grand Canyon (yeah, I can be outdoorsy, too, environment volunteers, just watch me!). I really think the Grand Canyon might kill me, though. I built a set of shelves the other day, and was sore for the next two days. Me thinks this does not bode well. Also, I am hiking out of the canyon, and driving back home, two days before leaving for staging. Poor choice? Mayhaps...

My greatest concern going into this is how am I going to make friends with people?! Truth be told, I have not made a friend for a year. I got lazy my last year in college and just stopped talking to people I didn't already know. I joined this Facebook group and would timidly add my questions to the page- how am I supposed to interact with people when the anonymity and distance of the internet even makes me nervous! So, we'll see how that goes....

In closing, I want to apologize to the man who I stole this picture from, but this is basically what I want to spend my time in Tanzania doing. I am bringing lots of candies to make the babies love me. Is that really so wrong?

P.S. Dear Peace Corps Journals, could you put my blog under Tanzania for me? I can't figure out how to change which country its under. Kthxbai.

Turkmenistan Closed or I Don't Have to Live in a Desert Anymore!

I hope my ominous title sends chills down your back, especially considering that I am now melting in the Arizona heat and would love to feel some chills.

August 9 I receive a call from the Peace Corps- that familiar 202 number that I so looked forward to seeing on my phone 3 months ago while waiting for my invitation. This call, however, is the opposite. Turkmenistan has closed, and I will no longer be going there.

Uhhh??????????

But I will go somewhere. Apparently in situations like this, when a country closes, the future PCVs are given a new placement, but they may have to wait up to 6 months, or even longer- you know how it is- especially considering the recent budget cuts Peace Corps has experienced. Luckily for me, though, this will not be the case...

I will be leaving for Tanzania, in Sub Saharan Africa, still as a health volunteer, only a couple weeks later than planned. Forgive the religious reference, but Hallelujah, because I don't want to wait any more! This does, however, mean that I will need to change some things, and the past three months of preparation have turned into only two months left to prepare for Africa, a place I never expected to go. My blog name will have to change, I won't need thermals anymore, the Turkmen that I haven't really studied will no longer be useful, my dreams of marrying an oil sheikh have been banished and I will have to depend on Sean and Meghan to pay for my vacations and lavish lifestyle in the future. Africa seems so much more outdoorsy than Central Asia.

I really was kind of disappointed at first. I was glad that I still got to go somewhere, and I didn't even have to wait too much longer than I had expected, but I had never wanted to go to Africa. I don't know anything about Africa. But I researched Tanzania and considered it more. Tanzania has a tropical coastal region, is surrounded my giant lakes on its inland borders, is home to giant national parks for all of its wildlife- including giraffes (my favorite), monkeys, and wildebeests- is not a desert, has an Arab influence, and I actually know a lot more about the health issues in Tanzania than I thought I did. Or maybe Tanzania just has more health issues than Turkmenistan does, so there is more for me to know. I think I can do this.

Now to start preparing....

Things I Love About the Bay, A Photographic Montage

Ride of Steel! or A Really Sentimental Weekend

I spent this past weekend visiting friends in So Cal and spending a day at Six Flags. There were five of us, including two of my beloved housemates, all of us preparing for two year stints abroad in the near future. One girl is leaving for Kenya in two weeks, another for Senegal at the end of August, I am leaving for Turkmenistan in September, and two girls are in the latter half of the PC application process.

The weekend provided an opportunity to reflect on our individual preparations with each other, and at the end, we said good bye. One observation made last night was that none of us are old enough to be saying these kinds of good byes. None of us have any comprehension of what it means to leave everything that is familiar for two years. We said what could amount to permanent good byes to people who have shaped our development over the past four years. I do not regret my decision to join the PC and I am excited for the challenges and opportunities for growth it will provide, but I was reminded of how young I am this weekend, and how little experience I have in the world. I have never left my friends and family for such a long time before. I do not know what it will be like to not see them for possibly two years. 

We also talked about how this is an experience that will force us to confront who we are. All five of us consider ourselves to be adventurous, exploratory people, but travelling by ourselves to a new country will test that, and we have to be ready to accept it if we can't make it, if we really aren't what we have always thought ourselves to be. Which would be a huge blow to one's pride.

But this is the point of going. To test myself, to see who I am, to grow, to be challenged, to have an adventure. I am little, I am inexperienced, and I will probably be scared, but I want this, and I am grateful that I have friends that are going through this experience with me, however far away they might be.

Also, thank you to Tiffany for being a pansy with me on all of the roller coasters, and to Rachel for making me open my eyes on Superman even though you were terrified, too. You should become a crisis counselor.

Family, Waiting, and Band Aids

I am leaving California for Oregon next Friday, so I am trying to see as much of my family and friends as I can in my last week and a half here. I went back to my hometown to visit my sister, niece and father today, which entailed Americanized Chinese food, playing skee ball at Chuck E Cheese's, and swimming in a blow up pool in my sister's back yard. As I said good bye to my father tonight- whom I will see in a week, granted- I realized how much I am going to miss him when I go to Turkmenistan.

We have had a turbulent relationship during most of my life, but over the past two years it has turned into what I would imagine constitutes a healthy father-daughter relationship. I ask him for advice, he gives me restrictions, I break said restrictions, and he adjusts his expectations in order to deal with me. Last summer, he explicitly told me "You can leave the state [for work, school, etc.] you just are not allowed to go to the east coast or leave the country." I was applying for the Peace Corps at the time. With time, he has grown to be surprisingly compliant concerning the plans I have for my life, which are so terribly different than the plans he had for me.

This lead me to consider how this experience would have been different had I accepted my other invitation option to leave in June. I would have been so busy, consumed in rapid preparations after finals and graduation, that I wouldn't have had time to reflect on anything, or think about my family at all. I would have had to be focused on my departure, and probably would not have even thought about my family or friends until I arrived in country and finally had some down time. Not leaving until September has allowed me to take time to visit everyone I love, but it has also given me time to fester over the changes that will ensue, like slowly peeling off a sticky Band Aid. I know that I already made my decision, and there is no going back now- and I don't want to, really- but which would have been better? Ripping the Band Aid off quickly by leaving in June, or this anticipation allowed by the slow peeling that is leaving in September?

This is my dad. If he ever learns how to use the internet and finds this blog, he probably won't love that I put this picture  of him on here, but he is such an adorable man, I couldn't resist.