Staging - Day One

What a crazy day! So much preparation and anticipation and now things are finally getting started. My flight left at 7:10 this morning and I got to the staging event in Philadelphia with my bags (exactly the maximum allowed weight allowance worth) around two. I started the day off right by taking the wrong bag off the carousel at the airport, pretty much par for the course for me. Turns out someone from Greece has an identical giant red bag to what I have and I chased them down just in time to swap luggage. I’m now at a Sheraton and over the next two days there will be an overview of what to expect and then it’s off to Nairobi. Today we’ve been through training regarding ways to cope with anxieties, as well as some basic safety guidelines. Basically it was just an ice breaker day and I met the 30 or so other volunteers that are going with me to Kenya. Things look to be more in depth tomorrow and Wednesday before heading off to Africa. The volunteers are a mix of education and IT/business development and the crowd is really diverse. I’m surprised by how many volunteers have previous work experience or graduate degrees. It turns out the guy I’m sharing a room with has a doctorate in Neuroscience, and there’s several other people in the group with PhD's as well! The group is an interesting mix of people my age and people in their forties through sixties. Looks like the phase of your life to go is before you have kids and after they are out of the house. I’m still unsure of what exactly it is I will be doing, but I hope to know more soon. It looks like it may be two months into the training before they have an exact answer for me. In the meantime I’m hoping to get a cell phone and have Internet access in Kenya. We’ll see if that works out!