Plane ride. 9/26/12

9/26/12

Today I met the other 55 future peace corps volunteers. Spent 7 hours in a room with people in the same boat as me. Everyone is incredibly friendly, supportive, and knows exactly how it feels to make a commitment to the Peace Corps. There are several ukulele players- a fact that makes me miss Kelly (my tenor). Maurine, the Staging Coordinator met me in the hallway as I was heading down to the bus and explained that it was one of the best things in her job to meet the new Peace Corps Volunteers. I feel so much more comfortable knowing these amazing people will accompany me to Mozambique. We'll all be faced with the same challenges and support each other through all of them.

I made some last minute phone calls to try saying "see yah" to the most important people to me- a sad but necessary thing to do. It's currently (while I write this) roughly half way through the 14 hour flight; we're just getting ready to pass over Namibia and so far I've watched three movies (Prometheus, Brave and The Descendants) and read a good portion of my book. Anyway, the waiting and thinking back upon the phone calls made me realize that I'm on my own; from here on out I'll make my own successes and failures. I have told myself, and will continue to tell myself, that this whole program will be made simple (if you have a difficult math problem, you make it less difficult -more doable- by examining the components and making it simple); despite all the steps in between, I was selected to be an American math teacher in Mozambique, and to that end I'll strive to succeed as much as possible. It's overwhelming thinking about what to do next or how to do "this" or whether "that" task will be too hard, so I write this to remind myself to take everything in stride and focus on the big picture. My job isn't just to teach math; it's to be an example of an American for peoples of other countries as well as to tell other Americans what other peoples of other countries are like. To me, this is an exciting, edifying and worth-while opportunity. Although my family and friends are always in the back of my mind, I've turned my face forward and am ready to leave the US behind for now.