Staging

Surprisingly enough I have a bit of free time today. We spent the afternoon getting a few vaccinations, yellow fever is a must to enter Benin, and we also had to have a pollio vaccine after the age of 18 and an mmr booster after 13. So i got yellow fever in my right arm and mmr in my left. The logic escapes me, since now both of my arms will hurt when I have to haul my luggage tomorrow instead of just one. We had to wait from noon until about 2:45 because of course the shots were given in alphabetical order, but that I'm used to.
As to staging itself, its been good. I got here a day early and it seems like alot of the people who were here early are grouping together. I think its just a familiarity thing, we know each other's names, we had an extra night and morning to bond etc. But as time goes we are meeting a lot of people (there are 59 going to Benin, which is the smallest group in Philly, South Africa has 93 and Mali has over 80). Having the facebook group was really nice because I feel like there are few people here that I already know a little bit. Of course once we get to Benin we will spending most of our time with our groups (TEFL for me). I've read that staging is like the first few days of college, I guess thats about right. We spend alot of time talking about safety, security, anxieties, etc. And of course remembering to always always always take our malaria prophylaxis.
The Historic District of Philly is really nice and we got to do a bit of site-seeing (since we arrived early) and it was definitely nice to just kick back with a few other PCTs and see the liberty bell Independence hall etc.
Aside from that I now know that as an Education volunteer I'll be placed in Lokossa, Benin for my training which lasts until sept. 21. Lokossa is one of only two training sites with an internet cafe so I'll try to have a few updates while I'm there.
We fly out tomorrow and will be in transit until 6:30 pm local time in Cotonou on friday. It still hardly seems real that tomorrow I'll be starting the journey to Benin, but I'm very excited and can't wait to be there and get started on all things we are only talking about here.
The next post will be from Benin!