Staging

I made it to Philadelphia last night around 5:30 and got to the hotel around 7:00. My packing was not nearly as light as I thought. Each bag was 50 lbs. and I had to reshuffle stuff from bag to bag to get it figured out. The flight was fairly eventless aside from the two characters who sat next to me. They seemed to be a couple of men going on business travel. For the first 40 minutes one gentleman lectured the other on management architecture and hierarchy, and when the other gentleman got excited about something he started thrashing back and forth, which I repeatedly mistook for moderate turbulence. When I got into the Philly airport, I got my checked baggage and lugged it over to the ground transportation desk where the ladies behind the desk were perpetually entertained by the “stupid travelers” who didn’t know what to do, because the ladies didn’t explain what the method was for catching a shuttle. Finally I got to the hotel, last in the shuttle, which ended up being cool because the shuttle driver was Ethiopian and has been in the country for 10 years. He was more surprised than anybody I’ve talked to yet that it snows in Lesotho.

This afternoon we had registration and got to meet everybody. There are 19 of us going to Lesotho: About 5 in Maths/Science Education, 7 in ESL and 7 in Teacher Training. The group is quite outgoing and seems to have an easy laugh. Training was quite quick and went over a brief intro to the Peace Corps, some skits illustrating Peace Corps Policy, did an exercise with the group leaving for Kenya that went into some cultural integration dynamics then went over logistics for the trip to Lesotho.

The itinerary is:
Wednesday - 9:00 am get on bus and go to JFK
- 5:20 pm Depart for Johannesburg via Dakar, Senegal.
Thursday - 5:30 pm Arrive Johannesburg and go to Hotel
Friday - 6:15 am catch flight to Maseru, Lesotho

That’s all for now, I’m going to go meet up with everybody in the lobby to go get some dinner.