Going to Peace Corps "Camp"

Staging in Washington D.C. was quite an event. We checked into the hotel with our four 50 lb. Bags, 2 backpacks and one carry on. We handed in our numerous forms and were awarded our official Peace Corps passport. Our staging directors (our counselors)
were three former volunteers.
Peter had worked in Costa Rica in the 80's. Pam had been in India in the 60's and Igor was in Slovakia in the 90's. They had wonderful stories to share to illustrate the points they were trying to make with regard to safety, cross-cultural adjustment, unwanted attention and Peace Corps policies.
Our fellow “campers”, with whom we will serve for 27 months, are a large group of 46. There are four couples, and a total of six people (including us) are over 50. One of the other couples may even be older than we are! There are four or five thirtysomethings, and the rest of the group are either just out of college or have been out for a couple of years.
We met for twelve hours of training over two days. Peace Corps uses a very experiential learning approach which involves lots of interaction so we quickly began to bond with the rest of our “pledge class” as we did skits, made murals to illustrate points and dialogued on lots of different topics.
In the evenings we went out with one another and shared info, rumors, fears and alcohol.
On Friday, our travel to Georgia began with a night flight to Munich. We arrived at 10 in the mornng after an 8 Ѕ hour flight. PC had reserved day hotel rooms for us at the airport, since our connecting flight did not leave for another 11 hours. It was like herding cats to get our group of 46 pointed in the right direction, but eventually we all arrived at the hotel (there were no PC leaders on the trip itself, just us PCV’s, and there was some confusion after we arrived in Munich as to which hotel we were supposed to be going to). Everyone slept, showered and refreshed in our modern German hotel. Then it was back to the airport. As I write this we are again at the airport waiting for our delayed flight to Tbilisi . We were due to arrive there at 3:30 am on Sat., but now it looks like we won’t be getting in until 4:30 am or so. I will update this blog after we arrive. We will not have internet access for at least a week and maybe longer, but we will get this entry and those which follow posted as soon as we can.