"Here Are Your Government-Issued New Best Friends"

I'm sitting with the 16 other members of my Peace Corps training group in Dulles waiting for our 5:40 direct flight to Dakar. We're a small training group, which is nice because we all know each other by this point, and we won't get lost in a group of like 70. Also, we're all small enterprise development volunteers, so we aren't segregated that way.

The flight should take around 8 hours, and we'll get to Dakar around 6am.

Staging was pretty useful, but not country specific. They run a standardized training program for each group, and then you get country specific information once we land in country. We all went out for dinner last night, and then watched the Bruins handle the Canucks at the hotel bar. Today we got yellow fever shots, delivered by possibly the most competent immunization-izer I've ever experienced. We had some free time so we went to the Botanical Gardens and the Native American museum.

None of us are that nervous at this point, but that might change as soon as we have to speak almost exclusively french.

I'll post again once we get there and I have access to internet.