Staging in Philadelphia

I arrived in Philly a day early yesterday since that's the best flight they can get me. My two suitcases were 50.5 and 51.5 lbs but they let it slide yay! It was really heavy dragging them around along with my backpacking backpack that weigh around 10ish lbs. The taxi ride from the airport to the hotel was really long because of the traffic so I was starving by the time I got to the hotel. I had the whole hotel room to myself for the first time ever yesterday since my roommate didn't arrive until this morning. It was peaceful but felt a bit lonely. I met my first Peace Corps friend, Katelyn, yesterday since she arrived early too and had dinner at TGIF.

My hotel room

I found a bus route last night that goes from my hotel to Liberty Bell so I woke up early this morning to go see it with Katelyn since it's on my bucket list (yay crossed off 2 more today!) . We walked around Market Street and also visited Benjamin Franklin's grave at the Christ Church Burial Ground. We barely made it back in time for registration at 12:30 since the bus took forever to come and the bus ride was about 30 minutes. 

Liberty Bell

Benjamin Franklin's grave

Staging is a pre-service orientation to the Peace Corps. This was our agenda for the staging event:

12:30 pm: Registration
2:00 - 4:25: Who We Are, What You Expect
4:25 - 4:45: Break
4:45 - 7pm: What We Expect, What's Next, Closing

It seems long but it wasn't so bad. I got to meet everyone in my group. So there's 26 people in our Moz 20 group and we're all health volunteers. There was a lot of interaction and participation required. We went through the Core Expectations, what Peace Corps is about, what we should do in certain situations, etc. During break I went to Starbucks to get my last cup of coffee frappuccino :( I also got reimbursed for dinner last night as well as $120 to spend while I'm en route to Mozambique. Yay!

Peace Corps Invitee to Peace Corps Trainee now :)

After orientation, we all got food to go and ate at the lobby to bond some more. I ate Chipotle for the last time.. gonna miss it! I just finished re-organizing my two suitcases We're checking out of the hotel in 3hrs (at 2:30 am) and taking a bus to JFK airport. I have a 15 hours non stop flight from JFK to South Africa then 1 hr flight to Maputo, Mozambique. My next post will be in Mozambique! ahh! So exciting!!

Bye for now! Miss you all already :(