Today has been a long day. An amazingly productive and exciting day with much packed in between, but long nonetheless.

I woke to the frantic buzz of my new digital vibrating alarm clock. To be quite honest, the buzz reminded me of an angry swarm of bees and had scared me with it’s first pulse which is good I suppose. None of those luxuries of sleeping in from my college days. I finalized some of my papers and before I knew it, 12:00 rolled around. We were to meet in the meeting room at 12:30. Butterflies of all sizes gave me a visit and I was forced to put one foot in front of the other towards meeting everyone.

There were already about 20 people waiting and I couldn’t for the life of me say a word. Well, I did say some hellos and how are you’s but they all came out hoarse. Pretty soon, I was Hancocking my papers and handed them off to the Staging Coordinators: Amy and Abdul. I also got my walk-around money :D :D! We all went inside and Amy started presenting on the goals of the Peace Corps. There were activities that included the whole table where we were to discuss a scenario and give a skit, ( I turned out to be someone’s evil consciousness which fits perfectly right ;) ) draw out our fears and aspirations and a group activity at the end. It lasted until 6:30 but everything felt so fast! I was really impressed with the Peace Corps when I saw that they had provided interpreters. Shows that they practice what they preach. Turns out that I didn’t use the interpreters very much.

I met all 37 of the other trainees (we’re not volunteers yet until after we pass our 9 week training period) and most of them are recent undergrad graduates and my age! Only 3 are 50+ – I’ve only gotten the chance chat with one of them but he seems to be really cool. None of the others are deaf and there are 8 deaf Educators counting myself. This is actually the first time that I’ve been in a fully hearing setting without any other deaf people around and I think I handled myself very well, aside from the fact that I’m very much hoarse right now. My roommate, Reily, and I talked for a good while and he showed me this cool diagram that basically shows that we spend more time being unhappy but no matter the length, we always come back up and we’re always happier overall that we were when we first started. I can see myself becoming good friends with some people here already.

Tomorrow, we check out at 7:30 and skedaddle for JFK airport in NYC. From there, we have an 8 hour flight to Amsterdam with a 5 hour layover. Thereafter, it’s another 8 hours on KLm to Nairobi, Kenya. I’m so excited but am definitely not looking forward to the travel time. It’s like they say though – you have to suffer to gain happiness. Bags locked and loaded, I stand (well sitting as of this second but tomorrow..) ready to fly.