Philly Steak and Cheese!

Hi! You will all be happy to hear that I made it safe and sound to Philadelphia last night! Though it took two plane cancelations, an unexpected layover in Chicago and arriving to the hotel about four hours later than planned, I am here. Although this sounds bad, it wasn't because of the new friends I made. While the Peace Corps travel agent found me a new flight out of Seattle (after the first cancelation) he told me about the two other PC girls he had just helped and put me on the same plane, giving me their names and phone numbers. I ended up finding both of them together while we were still with our families, we took tons of pictures and became fast friends. Two hours and another cancelation later we finally figured out that we were not even in the same program, they were going to Turkmenistan- I am going to Azerbaijan. No wonder our talks about the country we were all going to kept falling short! Unfortunately they just informed me that their program can no longer go to Turkmenistan and they all are being sent home; I feel very bad for them.

My day has been full of sitting in a little room with 62 other people having what the PC calls staging. From basically noon till now we have been talking about everything you can think of under the sun to keep us safe and sound while in the AZB (so don't worry you guys, OK). The other people in my group are so far fantastic; quite a few of them seem to be my age which is fab-u-lous! :) You know how I know this... We are going out tonight! Last night in the states, you have to right!?

Step one: making it to Philadelphia-COMPLETE

Step two: Here I come Azerbaijan!

Preperations

Hello to my dearest friends and family,

It is Saturday morning. I just popped out of bed, sat down at the dinning room table with my mom and realized, "wow! I leave in two days." Not that I haven't known, but it was a long and somewhat slow road to this point. Don't get me wrong, that was a great thing for me because it gave me time to spend with all of you. I just can't believe the time is here.

So this, ladies and gentlemen, is my blog. For those of you that don't know exactly (and that is OK, mom. I'm just kidding) a blog is like a journal, but it is online and accessible for all of you to read, and anyone else in the world. I will update this as often as I can with what I am doing and pictures that go along so that you can all see what it is exactly that I am doing. Then it is up to you to leave comments (there is an option to do this after every post, look towards the bottom of this one) so that I feel like you are thinking about me ;). So make this your homepage... I'm full of jokes this morning!

As of right now, I am trying to figure out how to make my 60 lbs bag drop down to 50 which is the limit. Wish me luck, I'm going to need it, as I don't even have everything I want in the bag now.

Next step: Staging in Philadelphia (check out the schedule I made on the side! Great idea Erin Marg Morg!), I'll let you all know how that goes and maybe even put up some pictures of the whole crazy thing!

Thank you all for making these last few days very special for me. Lets stop saying goodbye, how about "talk to you soon!"