3 Weeks!

Three weeks from tomorrow (Monday, October 8th), I will be on a plane heading to D.C.!

I will spend October 29th-31st in D.C. for what the Peace Corps calls "staging". Staging is a brief orientation all Peace Corps members go through. I will be there with the whole group of people going to Namibia with me (I have heard there could be up to 70 of us!). I will celebrate Halloween with my first round of shots at the PC health clinic, then we head to the airport for a 15+ hour flight to Johannesburg, South Africa. We will spend the night there and then arrive in Namibia on the 2nd!

We will spend the first two weeks in "technical training." I think it is a lot of language classes and maybe some "how to teach" classes as well. Then we find out where we will be living for two years (yay!). We spend the third week in our future home sites. Our fourth week is spent shadowing another Peace Corps volunteer. Then the rest of the training, I will be living with a host family and working in a model school (I think it will be like student teaching.) Then, on December 28th, I will be sworn in as an official Peace Corps volunteer!

Right now, I am just kind of trying to get everything ready ("kind of" and "trying" being the key words here!). This week is my last week at work, then I have Homecoming this weekend (so excited to go back to Miami!) and then I will really need to kick the packing/preparing to leave for 2 years into gear! So much to do!

Oh, and I also have my address in case you want to write me letters! They say the best way to send is a letter is to address it to "Sister Aly Martin", write in red ink and write Bible verses and holy phrases ("Jesus is watching"; "God bless you", etc,). I guess they are very religious/supersticious and won't mess with your mail/packages if it is religious (who would want to take a nun's letter?!?!).

"Sister" Aly Martin, PCT
Peace Corps
PO Box 6862
Ausspannplatz,
Windhoek, Namibia

OK. I am going to bed! Only one more week of work....yay!!