Staging is over!

I just finished my 2nd and last day of our staging (orientation) event in Philly, and there's definitely a lot running through my head right now. We leave at 6:45am tomorrow to head to the clinic, where we will receive all of our shots and pills, and then take a bus to NYC and get on our 16-hour plane trip to Johannesburg, South Africa. After a night in Johannesburg, we have another few hours on a plane to Madagascar!!!

I've gotta say, so far this has all been absolutely surreal and wonderful. Our group is so amazing. I feel very lucky to be a part of all of this right now. About 35 of us were in staging together - 18 of which are going to Madagascar and the rest to Malawi. Another group of about 40 are being trained for Camaroon in the next room. When I got on the plane from Syracuse, there happened to be 2 guys going to the same staging event in the row next to me - one going to Madagascar and the other to Camaroon - so that was awesome. Then, we ended up somehow running into another guy in the Philly airport, and then 2 more girls. It was the weirdest coincidence, but definitely really cool. We also saw Ted Nguyen in the Philly airport. (I have no clue who that is, but I'm told he's famous). hahaha.

I really can't believe we've only been here for a little over 24 hours. Everyone bonded almost immediately - it's shocking how much this reminds me of freshman year of college... I'm relieved though. Everyone going to Madagascar is young (mostly 22-24), but the Malawi group has some older people. It's going to be sad to say goodbye to the Malawians already... Tomorrow's our big day - I'm majorly pumped and anxious.

Big shock of the day - they just told us we can only bring one bag to our home during training, and the other has to be locked up till we get our permanent location after training. Everyone's rushing around to repack their luggage so they have only the most important things. They just told us it was going to be really cold during training too, and none of us packed warm clothing - looks like we're going to be wearing the same 2-3 outfits over and over again for all of training. We also found out that our home during training is not actually in Antananarivo (Tana)- it's in a rural village 2 hours away, but we will have access to Tana and my address is still the same. They say we won't have internet access for at least 3 weeks, so this is going to be the only update for awhile. SEND LETTERS!!!

Anyway, I'm basically in my glory right now. I hope the feeling lasts.