Washington DC (Make Up)

For those of you just joining our blog, I made the mistake of deleting the Washington DC entry. Here is an attempt to catch everyone up on what happened at the onset of our 27 months in Botswana.

April 17 Lucas and I get up early to head to the GSO airport. We have not had much sleep as we were up late saying last minute goodbyes to family and friends. We land in DC before 8 am and haul 80 lbs (each) of luggage to the hotel. As people start piling into the lobby, we begin to introduce ourselves to other PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers). About four hours later, we started the paperwork, meet and greet part of the show. I am well outside of my comfort zone (Lucas is indulging in it) as we go through ice breakers and Peace Corps policy for about 7 hours. Our group is very diverse with 9 couples and 1/3 is over the age of 50. There are 5 of us from NC and 3 from MN, 3 nurses, 3 teachers and a lawyer (who, it turned out tried her first murder case on court TV).

We hit up DC for dinner for our last night in the US for over two years! Unfortunately, service is bad the food is worse. We repack our things and Lucas notices his camera is broken. And we haven’t even started…So the next morning we rush to a FedEx and mail his camera (to be fixed) and my cell phone (won’t need it where I’m going) to parents.

Five hours before our flight takes off, we load up to head for the airport (minus Peace Corps staff mind you, we are on our own). Hope nothing goes wrong…

Well besides security taking my toothpaste (yet they leave the hair cutting scissors…Why?), all 60 of us make it through. We fill up on pizza and ice cream before heading off to Johannesburg, South Africa.

The 15 hour flight is not so bad (longest Lucas has ever spent in an airplane). I was on Quantas flight for 16 hrs from L.A. to Sydney, Australia. Believe it or not, South African Airlines is better. In a row of 4 seats, only 3 passengers were assigned so everyone has a little extra room. Every passenger has their own TV where they can operate music, movies, games (including poker), and travel (in flight time, ETA, live feed cameras from under, in front and above the plane and satellite shots of where the sun/dark is on the earth…cool, etc). Once we land, we are herded through customs and meet up with Peace Corps staff once more. After a quick meal (there is Subway and KFC but we opted for something we’ve never had before), and money exchange, we move to hotel to recuperate. Next morning we eat breakfast (lots of questions about food and drinks but everything was sooo good) and load the bus to drive to Gaborone, Botswana. We had to de-board, and physically walk across the S. Africa/Botswana boarder and get our past ports stamped. We are finally in host country! Peace Corps puts us up in a beautiful, yet touristy Safari Lodge just outside of Gaborone. There are paintings and sculpture of safari animals everywhere (complete with testicles). Here we begin our Setswana and Peace Corps training.