Staging

Today I woke up at 4:45am….fun! haha.  No, it actually wasn’t too bad. I was so excited to get going that I didn’t even think about complain about waking up so early. It was still dark outside when Ian and I brought out all of our luggage to the car. Since all of our luggage took up the entire truck area and backseats (minus one for me to sit in while being covered in our carry-ons), I was forced to say good-bye to my mom before heading to the airport. This is the moment when everything started to feel real. I’m extremely close with my parents and saying goodbye to my mom for two years was like saying goodbye to my safety net. As much as I was telling myself “Don’t worry, I’ll skype with her and she’ll visit,” I couldn’t hold back a few a tears. But they were good tears! I was saying goodbye so I could go do good things in the world and to a new, exciting adventure in my life. 

When we arrived at the airport, my dad helped us unpack all our luggage and then gave him a big hug and kiss goodbye. Then it was time to tackle the luggage. We had never really thought about how were we going to carry everything. I had two huge suitcases, a small CamelBack backpack, and my big backpacker’s backpack. Ian had two huge suitcases, his big backpacker’s backpack, and his guitar case (with no arm strap). We knew right away that we were going to make complete fools out of ourselves. 

After experimenting a few ways on how to assemble our baggage, we finally made it to the check-in counter. Luckily, there was no one in line to check in when we got there. We went straight to the available counter and handed the airline assistant our passports. He checked us in and directed us to a lady behind the desk to help weigh our bags. This was it ladies and gentlemen, the moment Ian and I had been stressing about while packing and repacking our bags hundreds of times in the past three days. Would we make the weight limit requirement? We were about to find out. First bag…..47pounds! Woohoo. One down, three to go. Second bag…..49 pounds! Barely, but we made it! Third bag…..53 pounds. Oh no, three pounds over. But the bag assistants weren’t too worried about it. It almost looked like they were going to let it pass. Then we put the forth bag on the scale...66.5 pounds. Not even close!!! So we knew that we were going to have to pay for one overweight bag. We knew that there was absolutely no way that we could rearrange any of our other bags to compensate for the extra weight since all of them were filled to the brim. And, the bag lady told us we would have to pay for the 53pound bag as well if we didn’t take some weight out. So Ian and I laid down the overweight bags and rearranged them so that one bag was under 50pounds and the other was over 50 pounds but under the maximum limit of 70 pounds. If you didn’t think we looked like fools carrying all our baggage into the airport, you definitely would think we were sitting in the middle of the airport, with two of the many bags we had surrounding us opened on the floor as we tossed items back and forth to each other trying to get this weight balance just right. 

This was very strange for both Ian and I since we both are avid travelers and have gone through this process many times. We were always the ones that had planned in advance before going to the airport and rolled our eyes at people who just couldn’t seem to get the whole airport-process correct. Now we were the one’s looking inexperienced and out-of-place. haha. 

But we got it too work. And that’s all that mattered. We made it through security in time and made it too our gate early. The whole process was actually quite simple after that. 

The funny thing is, once we made it to our flight, the airline staff announced over the intercom that since the the flight was fully booked, we had the option to check one of our carry-ons for free. FOR FREE! We definitely took advantage of that. Ian actually got to check both his bags since they were so large. 

I slept almost the entire flight, which I never thought would happen since I was so anxious and excited to get to Philadelphia. But I did. I shouldn’t really be surprised since I can fall asleep anywhere!

We arrived in Philadelphia a half hour early which was awesome because we were suppose to arrive at 12:30pm and we were told a few days before that Staging started at 12:30pm as well. So having this extra half-hour was going to help us not be so late to our initial meeting. But, little did I know, we were still going to be late. 

When we were waiting for our bags to come out of the baggage shoot, we over heard two ladies about the same age of us chatting about Albania. “PEACE CORPS” instantly popped into my mind. “Are you guys part of the Peace Corps?” I asked. They both replied’ “Yep!” with much excitement! Yay! We had just met Jill and Makena, the first of the 36 volunteers going with us to Albania. And little did we know, Jill was on the same flight as us, coming from her home town of Denver as well. :)

After introducing ourselves and gathering all of our bags, we all headed to the transportation desk to schedule the hotel transit to come pick us up. Now, the website of the hotel told us that the shuttle came every 10-15 minutes. Well ours didn’t come for like 40 minutes. So that’s we we all ended up getting to Staging late. But we did make it and that’s all that really mattered.

We were feeling very rushed when we arrived. We had some paperwork to fill out before we could go inside the banquet room and as we were finishing the last page, we could hear the Staging Coordinator introducing everyone to the event. We rushed inside and grabbed the only two open seats available. It was time to begin.

Now, I’m not going to go through all the details about staging. But what I am going to say is that it was very helpful at getting an idea about what we could expect for training and also, it got me really pumped up to start this amazing journey with all these people that just want to do good in the world. After staging, we were all quite hungry. So, as a group, we decided to meet up after moving all of our luggage (that was temporarily in storage) to our hotel rooms to go get some dinner nearby. We all split into groups based on what type of cuisine we were craving. We had a Philly cheesesteak group, a Mexican group, an Italian group, and then the group that I was in, Indian! Some of the girls had passed by an Indian restaurant while they were discovering the city earlier that day so a group of 13 of us (Peace Corps people must be very similar if they all like Indian food, haha) headed in the pouring rain (which we didn’t realize was happening until we went outside) to the Indian restaurant.

When we arrived, the restaurant was packed! There was absolutely no open sits anywhere. And here we are, 13 Peace Corps volunteers that haven’t eaten all-day, wet from the pouring rain, bombarding this tiny Indian restaurant in downtown Philly. Some of the group debated about leaving but most of us pretty much had our minds set on Indian. So we waited. About 25 minutes later, there was finally enough room for 8 of us. 5 people decided to go get pizza instead so it was perfect! And let me tell you, the food was amazing! For being an Indian buffet, I was really impressed on the quality and the spiciness of the food. Yum! 

Ian and I sat with two volunteers we hadn’t met yet: Kat and Megan. Kat is a fellow Health Education Volunteer with me and Megan is a Community Outreach Development Volunteer. We had a very pleasant dinner chatting about our past experiences and sharing our thoughts and curiosities of training and our placements. It amazed me how well all of us in Group 16 Albania seemed to click right away. I can tell that we are all going to work and support each other well. 

Tomorrow is a full travel day. We leave on a bus to JFK airport in New York at 10:00am and our flight to Munich, Germany is at 6:30pm. Then on Tuesday, we fly to Tirana, Albania at 9:30ish (I can’t really remember the time, haha). And then finally we get on a bus to Elbasan where our training will begin. 

Lots of traveling but totally worth it! Group 16 Albania, here we go!