Dakar by way of my favorite city ever, Bruxelles!

Patience and flexibility, combined with a sense of humor, are probably some of the most important qualities necessary for the Peace Corps, or really anything involved with the government or any level of bureaucracy. This experience from the application process to now have definitely tested and developed mine. Yesterday, we (my Staging group, probably around 40 of us...) found out that our Staging (orientation) was moved from Atlanta (Suz and many others know how "fun" that dreaded airport is, right?) to Philly. No biggie, PC is paying for my ticket wherever, so ATL vs Philly makes no difference to me--the flights are roughly the same length and the Philly flight takes off not even 30 min later than my ATL one was supposed to be. Of course, now the ATL-Dakar direct flight won't be happening so I was very excited to discover that we would be making a stopover in Brussels before heading off to Senegal! On Wednesday, March 12, we will ride from Philly to NYC, fly out of JFK on American Airlines overnight to Brussels. We will have a roughly 7 hour layover in Brussels (my longest ever though probably not quite long enough to get to the Grande Place or anywhere outside of the airport, but it will be rockin' to be in a familiar place on my way to a not-so-familiar one). We will then have an afternoon-evening flight to Dakar, getting in around 10pm on Thursday (a week from now), probably insanely exhausted and excited for the unknown. This also doubles the time flying for us from an 8h 15min flight to over 16 hours from NYC to BRU and BRU to Dakar. I think I'm going to be doing a lot of reading the next few years :)

Today was also haircut day (7-8 inches, not quite enough to donate) so I will try and post a pic of the new cut soon (when it's curly rather than the blown-dry Clip Joint style) for inquiring minds (Suz). Also, I must admit, I actually bought boring earrings today in an attempt to be practical pre-PC. By boring, I mean they aren't 2 inches long and crazy colored, but I didn't even let myself look at the fun stuff! Discipline and a phone call with Jen helped, hehe.

1 business day (ie bank and "important" stuff) and the weekend before I head out! Katie is in town, so she'll help set up my iPod as I continue to use her room to pack while working on cleaning and organizing my own room for 2+ years. Crazy!