Off we go!

The time is drawing near! On Monday, we'll hop on a plane to Philadelphia for a 3-day Peace Corps Staging event, then it's on to South Africa for Pre-Service Training! We'll have no internet access, during training, so I'm afraid our blog won't be updated, again, until the end of September. Please do feel free to send snail-mail, though! (See mailing address on right).

As far as training details go, all volunteers will stay in Northern South Africa for the first week. For the following seven weeks, volunteers will live with host families in nearby homestay villages. Our hands-on, full-immersion training will include language acquisition, technical skills, cross-cultural awareness, health and safety, and security. Ben and I may be separated for these seven weeks, since we're in different programs, but we'll reunite on September 20th, when we're officially sworn-in as Peace Corps Volunteers! After September 20th, we'll be able to live together at our permanent site.

We're naturally both nervous and excited, anxiously awaiting our upcoming adventure...We still have much to do between now and Monday, and it will be here before we know it!" Since this is not "goodbye," we'll just say, "Ke tla go bona kgantele!" ("See you later!" in Setswana, one of the languages we'll be learning during training. It looks like we'll learn Africaans, too!)

South Africa, here we come!!!