Staging in Philly!!!

Ok first of all, I have no idea why my blog posts are posting in reverse order than what clearly makes sense. I've looked around at all the settings and I even googled the problem, but so far I have found nothing. Obviously, I would like the newest blog posts to appear at the top!

Note: after I published this post, I noticed that this entry was on the top, but the other two are still flip flopped. I guess I will see how it goes from here!

So this morning, I woke up super early and hurried around to make sure that I had everything ready to go and that I wasn't leaving my bedroom in too much turmoil for my parents to deal with! Big shout out to my amazing cousins and my amazing friend Keaton for helping me stay calm this morning!

My parents and Keaton took me to the airport. Luckily, I was able to upgrade because I have such a great father! I didn't think I would cry, but just as I was walking toward the security line, I totally broke down. But all I could do was hug my parents and Keaton and keep walking. It got better once I was on the airplane and headed towards Philly (my staging destination), especially with the comforts of first class!


I made it safely to Philly, collected my million pounds of luggage and grabbed a cab to the hotel we were staying at. We had training/orientation for most of the afternoon, which turned out to be a lot of fun! I can tell I am going to make some great friends! At the end of orientation, our leader handed out paper with all of the volunteers separated into four groups. Each group has a leader who is responsible for many things throughout the entire travel process (passports, tickets tips, head counts, etc)  and OF COURSE, I volunteered to be the leader of my group! Team Awesome!


The worst part of the day was realizing that I had left my brand new amazing rain jacket at my parent's house. I guess it doesn't seem like a big deal to some, but I was not looking forward to getting to Guinea during rainy season without a rain jacket! Luckily, I have the BEST PARENTS EVER! My father discovered Delta Dash, which allowed him to package my jacket and get it on a Delta flight that afternoon and it arrived in Philly this evening. It was a bit of a process to make it back to the airport and find the cargo building, but I am so happy to have this jacket!


Tomorrow, we (me and the other 25 or so volunteers) are taking a bus to New York, where we will fly out of JFK to Brussels and then from Brussels to Conakry. Once in Conakry, we are staying in the volunteer houses for a day or two and then we will get settled in with our hosts families and get the three month training started! Can't wait!


Thanks again for yall's amazing support and I hope to keep everyone as updated as possible!