Day 0.5: hours before takeoff

So, I fly to Peru tomorrow. Or rather, in about 8 hours. How weird is that? I went from counting down 100 days ago to 8 hours. This is one of the most surreal things to ever happen to me, except it's REAL. and it's HAPPENING.

Also, I elected myself to be group leader. This delights me to no end, and there really is no reason for me doing so beyond me wanting to say silly things like, "follow the leader!" and "you shall obey the leader!" and etc. Yea, but it's an easy job, I just need to figure out exactly what/who the "bell staff" is and be confused as to why a bell is the title... if you know, please tell me!

So, we need to check out by 8am and be on the bus, to the airport by 8:30am. Our plane isn't until like 1pm or something though and we land in Miami about 2 or 3 hours later. As soon as we land, we're gonna have to book it to our plane to Peru and then we're OFF to Peru galore!

The first 2 days we are in a "retreat" which basically means, I need to make sure I pack enough business casual stuff for 2 days. By the way, I do not own many business casual things. These next 3 months are gonna be difficult, since I own mostly t-shirts and very few nice shirts... I'm going to have to figure out how to buy more. This, I believe, will be difficult as most Peruvians tend to be of a smaller stature and as such, have clothes that do not fit gigantic me.

(fun side anecdote: during the Spanish interview, which is when the PC called me to conduct a little interview to determine my level of spanish capabilities, I basically panicked because the lady on the phone, who was extremely nice and patient with me, asked me about my time in Guatemala. The only thing I could come up about the people, in my moment of total blankness of mind, was that the people of Guatemala were "pequeño"... I honestly meant to say "bajo" for short, but i said "pequeño," which means tiny. TINY. I described an entire group of people as tiny. I don't know what's wrong with me, except that my spanish is the worst.)

The morning will definitely be interesting. I have a last minute letter that I need to post to Cornell so that I can get my Perkins loan partially cancelled (how cool is that? serving in the Peace Corps means I can get as much as 15% of my Perkins loan cancelled per year I serve. Amazing.) and deferred while I'm away. I also need to remember that this needs to be filled out and sent once again next year. I very much doubt I will remember this. Hrm. Let's just hope for the best, eh? I also need to call my dad and remind him to run over to Verizon and put my phone on military hold (another awesome thing). I really hope everything goes smoothly and that all 51 of us make it safely and happily in Peru!

I CAN'T WAIT. MY LIFE IS FINALLY GOING SOMEWHERE. AAAAAAAAAWESOOOME!!

p.s. it is crazy LIGHTNING outside right now and I looooooovvveee it <3 Finally, Washington D.C. is gonna take a chill pill and cool it, cause the muggy weather was too much Louisiana air. You walk through it and it feels like you can eat the air, it's so humid and hot. I'm actually full from all the humidity I devoured.

Oh! And I had my final restaurant meal in America! Fino Italiano on Mth and Washington (or something ridiculous like that. The streets are named by letters. That's the funniest thing ever. If I had a lot of time on my hands, and a hoodrat streak, I would steal the signs and play the most BAMF game of scrabble, ever. Scrabble bit there isn't very hoodrat. I would be a very scholarly hoodrat, who steals vandalizes, steal street signs, and reads Proust. Actually, not Proust. Yet.). I ate a delicious pasta dish, a glass or two of red wine, seafood appetizer, and finished it with ice cream. Yikes. But the Italian man serving us was a sweetheart with the most endearing accent, I couldn't help myself!

Ok, seriously, bed time. I only slept 4 hours last night because I'm insane and insomnia continues to plague me. Still, I manage to function beyond what I believe a person who sleeps as little as I do should be expected to do. Maybe I really am a robot.

One can dream.

P.P.S. I won't have access to my phone after around 3pm tomorrow!! If you text me and I do not respond, please do not be offended. I'm just no longer able to access my cell BUT you should leave me an email or comment here or fb me or something. I'll probably have access to Internet at some point :) LOVE YOU ALL <3

Day 0: Staging

Today is the first day of the next 27 months of my life. I'm not 100% sure how I should feel right now. Honestly? It just feels like I'm going back to college, or I'm at a rugby tournament. I mean, I have my rugby bag, I'm at a hotel with all my electronic things (laptop and now a brand new KINDLE that my friends bought me as a going away gift. I should probably mention that all my friends are gorgeous, in mind, heart and body, and I love em all to death.), and I'm meeting amazing people left and right.

Speaking of the people: the PC is doing a fantastic job with that. As of yet, everyone I've officially met has been just mind blowingly friendly, funny, and an absolute pleasure to talk with. I know for a fact that I will be developing a mild crush on every single one of them. Probably not romantically, mind, as anyone who knows me can tell you that I'm basically incapable of traditional "romantic" love. Like a robot. Actually, robots are awesome. I wish I had a bionic arm or something, that would be so cool.

But I really do hope everyone likes me. I know I can be kind of weird and "quirky," to put it nicely, but I hope it doesn't put anyone off :/ I know, I know, I probably shouldn't be worried about what other people think, but you know what? I do. I want the other PCTs to like me, I want my 2 host families to like me, I want the community I will be serving in to like me. Why can't we all just be friends? Is that a naive sentiment that dwells solely in my mind? I don't think so. I think it's an attainable goal, I just have to keep myself in line, I guess.

But in any case, I'm getting nervous. Also, because I left my external at home with all my movies and things. Because I am an idiot who shouldn't pack last minute. My bad. I'll live without it, but it's going to be annoying. On my laptop, I have the Firefly series, The IT Crowd series, Tangled, and Princess Bride. I'm really hoping these will last me the next years but I doubt it very much. It's a good thing I like to read so much, cause I'm def going to be doing that a lot. Unfortunately, I'm a fast reader and I've already finished Tina Fey's Bossypants on the plane ride over (p.s. I read the entire thing with her voice in my head. It was both weird and wonderful.)

While I'm in D.C. I also plan on going to CVS or something and getting some last minute things, like crayons and stuff to bribe future peruvian children with. No, bribing children with goods is not something that is beneath me. Read above: I WANT THEM TO LIKE ME. no matter the means. As long as it isn't my kidneys or something, I'm totally fine just giving away everything I have for them to like me :( it's a little sad, a little desperate, but that is actually how much I want to be liked T.T

Anyway, something else I will have to do tonight is readjust some of my packing. So, once we get to Peru, there are like 3 or so days of like a retreat-format thing, or something. I don't know, apparently it was in one of the attached docs we got as an email, which I haven't read... Still, I don't think I have enough clothes on my carryon for something like that. Like pants. I have 1 pair, the one I'm wearing right now. I'm totally okay with wearing that for every day until they fall apart, but I'm pretty sure that's gross and people around me will not appreciate it. I'm thinking wearing the same thing every day and being grody for that long will hurt my plans to be liked. This also means that I will have to open the bag that my father was able to somehow shut with all the stuff inside of it. Part of me worries that opening it will be like opening Pandora's Box, in that everything will suddenly explode out of it and I will feel like an idiot, but the butterfly of hope (aka, a pair of jeans) might not be worth it in my situation...

Ah well, I'm going to grab breakfast at Starbucks* (read: a caramel macchiato, because I'm too nervous to eat solid food but a macchiato has the same number of calories as 1/4th a supreme breakfast platter at McDonalds. By the way, I don't know when they started including the calories of dishes at restaurants, but I LOVE IT. I'm terrible at figuring out that stuff, so I was shocked- positively shocked- when I found out that said breakfast platter has 1010 calories. what? I used to eat that so much as a kid! No wonder I'm such a fatty... Bah. I'm hoping time in the PC will also allow me some "get healthy" moments, even though so far everyone I've talked to says I will most probably gain 10-15 lbs from the rice and potatoes I will be consuming by the truckload. Erm. That's not good, but it sounds really delicious... See? Like I said, it feels like I'm going back to school. Maybe the freshman 15 will actually hit me in Peru? I lost weight in college, mostly from sports and not eating anything that would make me tired/consuming atrocious amounts of sugar free redbull and monster as the bottom of my food pyramid. I'm going to assume my diet of energy drinks will not be continued in Peru. I assume.)

Off to breakfast! I shall report what my day is like later. Thanks for reading :)

Peace.

*edit: so we went to bruegger's bagels instead, except that turned into going to whole foods which meant i got me a naked juice (that weird green one? it's the best kind) and some fruit/nut mixture for later. also, i'm editing this during my break from orientation and they gave us soda but it's these cute tiny things and the bottles are made of glass! i love it!! i want to take them all home with me, just so i can look at them... glass bottles are so much better than plastic. i dunno how they rank next to juice boxes though. a side by side comparison will be necessary for that.

I'M IN D.C.

so staging is tomorrow. for those of you who don't know, staging is when all the Peace Corps Trainees meet up for meetings and getting paperwork done, and all that jazz.

THANKFULLY i've already met some ppl here and they are AWESOME! which makes me really glad right now :D sadly, it's super hot and humid right now. but then again, the A/C is blasting full force so i get to enjoy that for a while! huzzah!

but now i should socialize and see how many other PCTs are around. OMG! THIS IS HAPPENING! except it still hasn't quite kicked in. intellectually, i am aware. emotionally, i am not.

for any PCTs reading this: i'm in room 624. come say hello! either that or i'm in the lobby. probably eating ice cream.

Day -1

so it's the day before i get on that plane to DC for staging. i haven't exactly completed my packing. more like, i put all the stuff i want to take with me on the floor next to the bags i have to take them. the proportion of space in bags to stuff i own... does not bode well...

so i ate some marshmallows instead and recharged my camera.

there's still paperwork i haven't completed and random things that i know, for sure, i've forgotten. but hey, (to quote one rugger, buffalo) whaddyagonna do?

i'm pretty sure i've packed the essentials, and probably a whole bunch of things that i shouldn't have packed but i've done so anyway.

it still hasn't really hit that i'll be leaving for peru.

these next few days will certainly be interesting...

dear god, two more days

2 more days until i depart for staging in DC, and then head to peru for the next 2 years of my life.

packing: 5% complete

paperwork: 78% complete

saying goodbyes: never. i hate goodbyes. let's just not and say "see you in a few years" instead.

vlog: yea. too much fear of having my face on the internet. but i'll try to get over it...

2 days to prepare less than 100 lbs. of things that i get to take with me. this will, hopefully, consist predominately of clothes so i'll actually have less? but who knows. cause i sure as hell don't.

i hope my stuff isn't stolen in transit from the US to Peru, which seems to be a possibility.

note to self: mark all things with "God bless" in the hopes that fear of God will help deter some thieves from taking my things.

how did it get to 2 days already? dear me, i don't know. could have sworn i had much time.

they say time flies, but they didn't tell me it flies like a mach 10 plane.

2 weeks left

until i leave for peru.

the GRE is completed. packing hasn't even started. paperwork still needs completing. whatever.

oh goodness, i'm really going to be spending 2 years of my life in peru.

this is so exciting. i just might squeal.

yup.

you can't hear me, because i'm squealing and all you see are typed words. but just imagine me squealing with my happy face on. yea. that's me.

fantastic.

peace corps invite accepted

alright, so i accepted my invite to the PC a few days ago and now i've been inundated with paperwork and more paperwork.

awesome.

at least i finished 2 of the five packets... dunno what the other 3 comprise of but i'm sure they can't be that bad...

anyway, i gotta study for the GRE so let's focus! go go go!