Thursday, March 23, 2006

Some notes from Pre-Service Training

Yesterday and today have been very long, tiring and full of useful information. I learned yesterday that I am one of maybe 6 or 7 Water/Sanitation workers. This is out of 76 total volunteers in my training group.

There are groups of primary and secondary school teachers, lots of computer technician people, health volunteers and business volunteers. Currently there are between 7000 and 8000 volunteers serving worldwide.

PC has an annual budget of $317 million dollars, compare that to the estimated $800 mil - $2.2 bil for a B-2 bomber and do the math of value of your dollar.

Peace Corps was started almost exactly 45 years ago on March 1st, 1961. Ghana was the first country to recieve volunteers with the Philippines being the second. Since its beginnings, PC has seen nearly 180,000 volunteers.

Madness.

Monday, March 20, 2006

Packing for a multi-day jaunt to the other side of the world

Today I went crazy-nutso on the packing. Clothing, electronics, duct-tape, socks, multiple pairs of sandals, all into 4 bags and weighing in at under 80 lbs. I used the Peace Corps packing list with little variation.

A big challenge was finding what is known in the local language as pasalubong; gifts for my host family(s). I brought a bunch of Moe's Bagels stickers and a giant bag of Sharpie markers. I hear that small gifts are good and that lots of little things are better than one big thing; this way everyone can participate.

My state of mind is one of chaos right now. It wasn't until 30 hours before my plane flight leaves for Detroit for staging that I really got on the ball and started thinking about all the other business that I have to take care of before I leave. Fortunately, I planned well and have only small things to cover so that I can go the Philippines completely free of financial responsibility.

Looking around my room where I am sitting, I can see all sorts of mementos from my grade school days. There are so many familiar items with long, intricate stories behind them. I am mere hours from leaving all this that I take for granted as familiar and am going to generate two years of thoughts and stories. Every item in my four pieces of luggage will have something new and unexpected associated with it by the end of my adventure.

It is really scary when I put my mind to work on the magnitude of what I have gotten myself into:

A trip.
To the other side of the world.
To a country the culture and language of which I have only a cursory understanding.
To live.
For 2 years.
To have limited contact with anything I could potentially call familiar, be it persons, places, things or customs.

Will my body only notice climatic changes or is moving halfway around this small blue sphere in the vast empitness of our universe enough to alter the energies that keep me alive and interested? I have always known myself to be exceptionally sensitive to chemical and physical changes in the world around me. Living in the tropics is going to be a trip.

Who knows? Oh well, the countdown begins...

Friday, March 10, 2006

The cosmic game

A few rather magical and cosmic things have happened to me regarding this upcoming experience (for those of you counting at home, I leave on March 21st, 12 days) .

The Onion newspaper has always served, along with Zippy the Pinhead, as a sort of cosmic predictor of things to come. This article came out in the Boulder onion right before I left. While the content of the article is not what I am expecting out of my journey, the simple mention of the Peace Corps is enough to give me some indication that something/someone is aware of me.

The second, more significant happening came in a random email not addressed to me. As I have been corresponding with PC and all the future volunteers currently stateside, a lot of emails have been thrown around that are not properly addressed (they go out to everyone). One of these was headed by my childhood friend Allen Rathbone. I emailed this mystery individual to confirm that yes, he and I were both going to Peace Corps simultaneously and that yes, he was going to the Philippines as well. Of all the random happenings associated with this journey, this one is a bit much.

For now, back to cleaning up the giant pile of stuff that I brought back from Colorado so that my parents wont throw it away.