36 Hours of Brotherly Love

Well our short stay in Philadelphia is almost over, and then in a mere 25 hours from leaving here we will be in Entebbe, Uganda!! We are officially now not PCN (Peace Corps Nominees), and are PCT (Peace Corps Trainees). Our day has been filled with group builders, shots, and understanding guidelines. We started the day at 8 am and finished around 5:30 pm. We covered everything from Core Guidelines, to Anxieties/Aspirations, to what to expect when we get to Uganda. The day was filled with meeting many new friends.

We found out that for the first two weeks we are in country we are going to be in what is called "Standfast." This means that we will basically not leave our training facility, Lweza, for the first two weeks at least. Every volunteer in the country is in standfast and for each one it means something different for. It is incredibly re-assuring that they are taking precautions to keep us safe while we are there. We are definitely ready to get there and get this crazy adventure started.

This evening we went out to eat with a large group of people to Maggiano's Little Italy. Which if you know Emily and I but at all you know that this was one of our favorite places until it closed in the Twin Cities. So that was a great celebration dinner for our leaving for Uganda! The waitress was super excited for us, and as such gave us celebration cookies and charged us for 7 extra meals. We had a great time and once we got the waitress to correct the bill we had many relieved laughs to go around!

We leave our hotel tomorrow morning around 2 am! Which we are just so excited about. But we will first fly to South Africa from JFK (15 hrs). Then to Entebbe from there (4 hrs). Once we get to Uganda we may be contactless for our time in standfast. We won't have a chance to get cell phones until that time is over. So this may be our last post for a little while. We will be excited to tell you all about our time once we have gone through at least two weeks of training. Thanks again for the great send off and we can't wait to tell you all about training!