Friday, March 16, 2012

Leaving for Philadelphia today

My staging event is in Philadelphia. Staging is a 2-day event where all of the soon to be Peace Corps Trainees arrive and get a basic orientation before taking off. It is spread out to allow for everyone all over the country to show up in this one location. Pretty neat stuff.

Tuesday we will be taking a bus together and heading to JFK to fly to Casablanca. Crazy stuff!

I requested to go to Philadelphia a few days early. I am going to spend the weekend with my grandma, maybe see my aunt and cousin, and do a yoga class with a bunch of soon-to-be PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteer) on Sunday. Apparently a current PCV's mom owns a yoga studio and will let us all take a class there on Sunday. I am looking forward to it.

How are you feeling? Are you excited? You're going to be so great! I'm/We're so proud of you. Be careful. Don't get pregnant.
--These are the comments I keep getting over and over again as the days slowly tick down to the leave date.

I'm glad it's slow, because I have spent the past week squeezing in 2 months of a social life. I had my goodbye party (amazing), random gathering on the front porch (I tanned) and cried in the teacher's lounge (that was a blast). I am quickly falling too much in love with Colorado and my group of friends. They make it too easy. If I waited any longer, I probably wouldn't be leaving at all.

I was talking to someone about the idea that I'm not overly excited about heading out, but that I feel some sort of weight or responsibility and necessity to go through with the Peace Corps. He brought up my favorite method of decision making--> cost/benefit analysis!!

Cost:
2 years
2 years of my friends
2 years of my friends, weddings, children, puppies, break-ups, heart-breaks
my amazing puppy
the school where I work

Benefit:
travel
travel
travel
educating Americans about Moroccans
educating Moroccans about Americans
doing a little bit of good in the world
teaching
sleeping in a hammock
adopting all of the puppies and kittens and monkeys in Morocco
travel
being able to say "I DID THAT" ******

...So you see, there are costs and benefits to both sides. But in the end, time moves onward and forward and don't stop for nobody. So I'll do it, and the worst thing that happens? I say "I DID THAT"... but don't get to sleep in a hammock.

Not a bad deal.

2 comments:

  1. No no.. that cost benefit analysis is alll wrong. You have to put some sort of monetary value to each thing and then discount it back to being a present value. Then you can compare the monetary gain for both columns, and that will tell you what to do ;p

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