in which I apologize for trying too hard and get some relief.

At this point I'll ask you to excuse me, and the first post, a bit, because I've come to realize that it's difficult for me not to wax poetic about this upcoming change in my life. It is something I have thought of, aspired to, planned for and dreamed about. All I know at this point about the experience I can expect is what I have read in Peace Corps published literature, seen on current PCV blogs or heard in person from encouraging RPCVS (that's returned Peace Corps volunteers - we might have to start an acronym index before this is all over). Hopefully (for your sakes) once I step off the plane these posts will become less philosophical and emotionally centered and more event-based and travelogue-ish. But since this is all about keeping you up to date on what it is really like to be a Peace Corps Volunteer, I think that I would be amiss not to include this key part of the process, the preparation for departure.

Tonight was fun, as I had the chance to see a high school production of "The Pajama Game", via connections of my roommate's. It did me good just to have a few hours solid where I wasn't thinking about Peace Corps at all, where my mental capacity was taken up only with the analysis of why one chorus member was wearing white dance shoes and all the others, black, laughing about the stereotypical high school drummer in the pit orchestra, just doing his own thing, and discussing whether one of the more diminutive male leads was, indeed, going to be swallowed up by his own costume. I've been ticking things off my list, slowly, methodically, to get ready for leaving, but even when I'm not actually in the midst of those things, they and other thoughts related to spending the next 2 years in Africa are occupying my mind. So it was a relief to drift away, relax for a while, and just revel in the absurdity of 40-odd modern teenagers dressed in relatively incohesive 50's garb marching onstage to strike for a wage increase (at a pajama-making factory) of 7 and 1/2 cents.