Officially a Peace Corps Trainee

Today was hard.

Woke up early, had the last of Mom’s Home Cooking that I’ll eat for the next few years, drove through traffic to LAX, made it through security barely on time to board plane, sat down, watched plane take off–

And then I bawled. For about 40 straight minutes. They were inconsolable, heaving sobs that, try as I freakin’ might, just could not hold back.

The last 20 minutes of the flight I forced myself to stop because I wanted to look presentable at staging and I didn’t want my cohort to think that I’m just an overlarge infant hiding behind a tough girl shell (also because I barely noticed they were showing Big Bang Theory on in-flight entertainment and I wanted to watch).

I met up with a few other trainees at the airport and we made our way to the hotel where we had staging. Which, really, should just be renamed “waiting”. Waiting in line to turn in forms, waiting for passports, waiting for boring speeches and group exercises to be over. During which, I counted the number of males and females in our group. There are approximately 54 of us going, and about 26 of them are male–a pretty even gender split, which is definitely not what I was expecting. A few people got sent home before even making it out of staging. There was a girl who fractured her patella a few days ago and was deemed medically unfit, a girl who quit without telling anyone, and a girl who fainted and got ambulanced out of the hotel. And a guy who I guess missed his flight, because he’s joining us tomorrow.

That’s what I should have done. I should have missed my flight so that I could skip all the boring parts of today.

After staging we went and withdrew our Peace Corps allowance (about $120 to cover travel expenses and food from now until we land in Phnom Penh on Thursday) and most of us went to dinner at Johnny’s Joynt, a pastrami-corned beef-barbecue beef sandwich/dinner place on Geary and Post that was once featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. I got the day’s special, which was oxtail with pasta. It was okay. Kind of tasted like really soggy ribs on top of really soggy pasta.

Tomorrow we’re flying out of SFO to Hong Kong. Our flight leaves at 1:20pm. We’re leaving the hotel at 8:30. It takes this long because of all our baggage and getting through security. Everyone else brought so much stuff and is telling everyone else how they were barely under the luggage weight limit. The limit is 100 pounds, split between two bags. I only have 40. I hope this is something I’ll be relieved about rather than regret, but it’s probably the latter because I’m imagining what it’ll feel like when I realize I’ve forgotten something really important.

And lastly before I forget: contact information has been updated. I have a phone number now! Please don’t call until Friday, though–that’s when the physical phone will actually be delivered into our hands.

Next time I update this I will be in Asia. I can’t decide if I’m excited or nauseated.