Thursday, July 07, 2005 Goodbye America! I'm officially leaving today. In fact, I need to finish packing and check out before 11 or I'm screwed. Actually probably not, but even so it's better to be on the bus. Things have been awesome so far, the people here really are great. Philly is totally sweet as I pointed out yesterday, and things were in fact better in training. I got all of my shots today, and my first dose of anti-malarial medication. Evidently there are two, one has a side-affect of blindness(!), the other "vivid dreams". We're taking vivid dreams. It's sort of crazy around here right now with everyone going to clinic, getting checked out and packing. Of course I think we're all freaking out a little bit about the trip, but spirits are high. We're leaving Philly tonight at 6p to got Paris, then stay in Paris for 6 hours then off to Benin. The one crappy thing is that we don't get time to rest between getting into Benin and starting training. We get to Benin at 7p local, then it's training at 8:30a the next day. Of course our schedules will all be screwed up... so yeah.

Once we're in Benin we're staying in some sort of converted convent. No idea what the facilities will be like at all. We're there for around a week then it's off to our host families. I'm realloy curious about the way food will be and all of that, but I did find out one thing. There IS internet at my training site! So it looks like I'll get some blogging in at least once a week (provided I can afford it, I'm not sure what our training stipend is). Well, gotta get packing. I haven't uploaded photos yet, but if I get a free moment before 11 I will do my best.