Two Flights Down, Two to Go

Well, tomorrow Matt and I are off to Kazakhstan. Or, er, Frankfurt. And then Kazakhstan. After a very long wait.

Both of us are feeling much better today than we have up until now about this departure. We had been feeling very ambiguous, and we still do in a lot of ways, but I think a large part of that was just the fact that we have been waiting for sooooo long to get started on this. One of the ways I get through waiting is to not get myself wrapped up in the thing I'm waiting for. If I spend a lot of emotional energy on it, I won't focus on my present and I won't appreciate all the good things that each day can bring. So I think about things, but keep myself distant from them at the same time. It helps. In this situation though, I've been doing it so long, I can't get worked up one way or another.

Today, however, we were feeling good. The days of hard good-byes are past and we're on to the doing. One thing we are not looking forward to, though, is that we won't be able to live together during training. I knew this was a possibility with PC, but it seemed like all the other couples in KZ didn't have to separate so I thought the same would be true of us. Wrong. We'll get through it, but it's hard to suddenly adjust to that new reality (which we weren't given more than a week and a half to deal with).

Our staging (PC slang for pre-departure orientation) was today and it was fine. It consisted of really general, really typical basics about Peace Corps and it's goals and then we had to write about our aspirations and anxieties and blah blah blah. Considering the subject matter, they did a really good job with it. I even still liked our presenter by the end of the whole 5 hour she-bang, so..., there's that.

Don't get me wrong, I actually do think it is important to take a moment before we go and focus on our reasons for doing what we are doing and on what our new employers expect from us. It's just very typical orientation stuff and there aren't any real big fascinating moments. I did appreciate that my new colleagues were very game about it, though, and helped the whole thing along with a good attitude. And I appreciated that I myself, when told we had to perform a skit based on a scenario that highlighted specific core expectations from the list of 10 we were given, didn't make any audible retching noises.

I'll try to connect tomorrow and/or soon after we reach Kazakhstan, but my internet connection is up in the air from here on out.