It Has Begun

So I am here in Chicago and I have survived my first day of staging. It was mostly a lot of getting to know you type of things as well as talking about the mission of the Peace Corps and the three objectives.

For those of you not in the know they are essentially this:
1) to provide resources for developing countries
2) to give America a face abroad and teach them about the American way of life
3) to disseminate what we learned about the other cultures to Americans at home

These are severely paraphrasing though.

Things are great and I am having a great time and learning a lot. There are so many people that it's impossible to learn everyone's name and story, but there are a lot of AmeriCorps volunteers, which always makes me happy and those of us from Philly have been good about taking care of each other. There have been a few points where I have been sad and whatnot, but you just can't let that get to you.

I am sorry about the phone too--I can't seem to find my cell phone charger so it shall remain off other than to check messages.

My baggage situation blows goats though--I packed wayyy too much stuff, even after hurriedly emptying out my huge pack this morning. I thought about mailing back some other items, but as they are mostly clothes, what is the point? It's not a significant amount and again, people have been helpful, so I'll stick to that.

We have free internet access here at the hotel, so I will try to check in again tomorrow. We leave on Sunday afternoon.

I'm excited to get this journey started!