Staging was a huge success. I arrived in rainy Philadelphia on Sunday morning with some time to kill before registration. Our hotel is about three blocks from the historic district of Philly. I was able to see the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and the Korean and Vietnam War Memorials. I felt like I was in a European city: brick buildings built close to the narrow streets. When William Penn planned the city, he made sure to include places for public recreation; several of these squares are now luxurious green parks whose trees offered shelter from the rain. For lunch, the obvious; Philly cheese steak.
Back at the hotel I began to meet my fellow trainees. (Aside: wow, the government pulled out all the stops for our hotel. Beautiful. I later realized that this was all an attempt to ease us into the Burkinabe villages gradually.) Despite the rain, everyone jumped into introductions and our orientation sessions with energy and enthusiasm. The trainees are a mostly young crowd with a few people out of school for only a couple of weeks and no one over age 31 or so. We are from all over the US, so listening to introductions was a lesson in great American accents, with an emphasis on the South. My favorite person so far is L, a 2007 UW Madison graduate originally from Lafayette, CA. Right away we have my two favorite cities in common: Madison and San Francisco.
Tuesday-Wednesday blurred into one long day of travel. We got to New York around noon but didn’t arrive at JFK airport until after 2:30. Our bus driver must have been a New York native because he took us on all sorts of crazy side roads through Brooklyn with great ease. In fact, I think we were only a fez blocks from A & J’s apartment. After a nice airport lunch with B & P, I boarded the plane: first stop, Paris; then on to Ouagadougou!
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