what a long strange trip it has been... and yet it is just beginning

November 11, 2010

I feel like, what with this being the week I become a volunteer and all, you deserve a blog. I also feel like you probably really don’t want to read about my going to conferences all day starting Sunday at 1:00 to Thursday night at 5:00. Here is the gist of things, and then we will move on to more blog worthy things. Sunday and Monday were some business type PC things. Monday night I met my counterpart, and the rest of the sessions were basically training for when we get to site next week.

Now, for something you’ll really like. The stuff to blog about:

• This week has left me with some very mixed feelings. Not that I hated training these past 12 weeks (but it was in fact training) but boy am I glad to be over with that part of my life. It was sad to leave Palo, and really too bad that it was too early for me to be showing the proper emotion, let alone any emotion. I really liked being there and loved the way our Barangay just took us in and showed us the ropes.
• I also loved the people I got to go through this experience with, not just my cluster but the other clusters as well. I loved that we had the type of relationships that spending nearly every waking hour with each other was just not enough. And after this week we are being scattered about. Some of us here, some of us there, and others just staying right put. Because of that, we’ve been spending nearly every iota of free time that we have here together. At dinner we do whatever we can to get all 14 of us around the table. I’m so terribly sad to part ways with them, even though in 2 weeks we’ll see each other again, and then probably not too long after that.
• Then there is worry of next week. I. Am. Going. To. Be. A. Volunteer. (let us just process that for a moment) I’ll be at site doing my Peace Corps thing. The first few months will be observing, and talking, and eating meryenda, and figuring out what I can do outside of teaching. I’ll be doing what I came to do, and that is wonderful, and scary, and wonderful because it is scary. I’m shaking in my heavy, heavy boots!

So that is where I am in life. I  soon to be sworn in official volunteer fixing to hop on a plane and fly alone to my site!