My First Day

Today was my first day of staging, and things are going well.
My first goal of this entire experience was to actually make it to D.C. with all of my luggage, and I made it here!!! I'm also proud that I did not have a nervous breakdown as I continued to pack and re-pack all of my items over and over again.
My day started this morning at 4am when I woke up to finish getting ready to go. (I had a wonderful two hour nap) I made it to the airport, and of course my carry-on bag was inspected in security, so I had to stand there barefoot watching a man poke through my bag. The flight to Miami was short, and I even got to sit in the emergency exit row which was nice because I was able to spread out and enjoy the flight. My flight arrived in Miami around 8:50am, and by the time we waited for the people to come out to the plane and park it, ride the shuttle, and make it upstairs, the time was 9:07am and my connecting flight departed at 9:20am. I took off with my huge carry-on bag, and I made it just as they were closing the gate. I got some flack from the gate guy, and I just told him that we sat in the plane parking lot for over 10 minutes. I got to my row 11 seat, and all of the over-head bins were full, so I had to put my bag in the over-head bin in row 42!!! ( it was really fun to wait for EVERY SINGLE PERSON to walk past me so I could go gather my bag. The only advantage was that I did not have to wait at all at the luggage pick-up.) I had the window with the engine below, but I was all alone in all three seats!!! I moved over to the window, put up the armrest next to me, and just sort of spread out. I was alone for quite some time until someone else moved to the aisle seat. I was shocked when the flight attendent gave me the ENTIRE can of soda without me asking her to do so.
I made the mistake of reading the book sent from the Peace Corps entitled, " A Few Minor Adjustments." The book only introduced more things for me to be nervous about. As we were landing we flew past the momuments, and I waved to the President in the White House. Once I got there I had the pleasure of trying to navigate my HUGE backpack on my back, a rolling suitcase, my nike duffel bag carry-on thrown across my chest, AND my crocs regular-sized backpack half dangling from my shoulder. I now have random bruises all over my body, and my bra straps indinations may forever be on my shoulders.
I took a five-minute shuttle ride to the hotel, and me and all of my bags checked into the hotel. A few minutes later my rommate showed up, and we spoke briefly. I didn't want to be rude, but I had to excuse myself because I really needed to eat something before staging started.
Lectures/group activites are never good on a couple of hours of sleep. I almost fell asleep many times, and there were quite a few of us doing the head-bop. I spoke to one of the Peace Corps people, and he told me that a new person made the list. I was joking with him that if you tried to pack everything on the packing list, it was impossible to get it all in. He was laughing, and he explained that he tried to tell that to the new person, but he guesses that it didn't stick. I was glad to see that other people had the exact same problem as me. We are all going to be getting a lot of packages over our first few months of service. Everyone was really nice, and I think that we are all going to have a lot of fun.
There will be 17 of us heading to The Gambia on Wed. Now that I am here, I'm starting to get nervous. That's okay to me because it just makes the whole experience more worth while. Today I read a quote on the wall that stuck in my mind: "A turtle can't walk if it doesn't push its head outside its shell." Even though I am nervous and really scared, I just have to get out there and do this or I may miss out on a lot of things in life. I am about to start something that might possibly be the most exciting thing I do in my life, and I can't wait to share it with all of you along the way. I'll write when I can, and I look forward to hearing feedback from all of you. Email me, or just leave a post right here on the blog.

I'll write again tomorrow if I have time. (Note: This blog is set to the time in The Gambia.)

ps if things are not clear, or there are spelling mistakes, I wrote this when I was really tired, and I really do not feel like proof reading it.