So to begin, staging in Philly went really well and we all were more than appreciative of the luxurious accommodations and spending $$$ from our PC directors. We spent the first night trying to learn all 72 of eachothers's names and swapping stories on packing woes, getting military style shots and what clothes are considered culturally appropriate. After an early morning visit to the med clinic to get our yellow fever shots, and then had meetings and pre-orientation the rest of the afternoon. We got most of our burning questions answered and i think we all had a sigh of relief to finally be around a group of people that understood your feelings about embarking upon this incredible journey. The second night, we celebrated one of our PCVs birthdays accordingly at a Karaoke bar, singing well into the wee hours of the morning as many american themed songs and "leaving" songs as we could. And we also threw in some African themed songs like Hakuna Matata and of course Africa by Toto.
AKWAABA! We finally arrived in Accra on Friday morning after having an adventurous day of buses breaking down, wondering aimlessly around JFK airport and waiting on at the gate for an hour to make sure all our luggage was indeed coming with us. The flight actually went by really quickly but after any overnight flight, we were all feeling a tad bit groggy and zombie-ish. We were welcomed with overcast skies and the start of the rainy season, but no rain could deter our happy spirits of finally arriving at the destination that we had waited so long and ever patiently for. I have to say, as big of a group we are, we were pretty good about speeding through baggage claim and getting to the appropriate places and meeting the right people. We piled into probably the nicest buses we will be in in the course of our 27 month stint, at least that's what our Country Director said, and made our way to the PC office. We were welcomed there by all the staff and even some prayer elders who blessed us and then gave us all a shot of schnapps. Pretty cool, eh? We then got our pictures taken, everyone being thrilled by the way... because who doesn't want a picture taken after an 11 hour flight and no sleep, and made our way down the bumpy road to the compound where we would be staying the next couple of days.
We were staying at a place called Valley View University, which was a pretty big compound and had lots of amenities like a basketball court, soccer field and some trails for running. We were staying in a large outdoor area with a large gazebo and courtyard in the middle with dormitory-style housing surrounding the oustide. So far the accommodations have been great and our rooms are huge and we have running water and electricity, always a big plus. This will probably be our nicest accommodations and i think we are all taking advantage of that fact. Its kind of like being at camp, we have meetings during the day but in our down time we're always doing some sports activity or card game or group game. So its been really fun, relaxing and socializing and getting to know eachother. I have to say there are still a few people that i have no clue what there names are but its only been 5 days, i think i have some time. On saturday we learned "Survival Twi"(the local language) and were brought to a local market to test or language skills. We only knew basic things like "what is this called?" and "how much is this", fortunately it wasn't a big market day and the market sellers were very patient with us. Tomorrow starts vision quest for some of the volunteers, unfortunately not the education group which i am in, but we do something similar in a couple of weeks called job shadowing where we go to a current volunteers site and stay there for a couple of days. There, we get to say what the life of a PCV is really like. I think we actually go to the site where we will be assigned for the next two years but im not sure. more to come about that later.
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