Somehow, Justin and I managed to pack our lives in 2 suitcases and 2 carry-on items per person. Basically, if my suitcases were human, they would not have room to eat one more bite on Thanksgiving dinner or their zippers would break open. Of course, Justin’s laptop bag decided to do just that. At the security line before our first flight, as Justin was putting back his laptop in the bag, the seam of one of the pockets wouldn’t close properly!

But it didn’t matter, because after months of waiting, we were finally on our way to Staging in Philadelphia! During this 2-3 day event, the Peace Corps staff hosts a bunch of group discussions and sessions to introduce us to the Peace Corps’ expectations, other volunteers, and some projects. (see picture above for my hotel room window view!)

I’ll be honest, there were a lot of group activities and sharing- much more than I’m used to. Group activities were not very often when I worked professionally (in the corporate world) and when they did happen- we tended to split up and do each segment individually. At staging, it was more like “pick a partner/group and each of you have ‘x’ amount of minutes to share and then switch.” Thankfully, our group of volunteers seem awesome. Scratch that- our “new government issued family members” as one person said, seem awesome 🙂