Last Day

So here I sit in my lovely hotel room in Washington D.C. (well actually it is the hotel room of one of my new-found friends and she is being kind enough to let me bum the use of her computer) on my last day in the United States. It occurred to me yesterday that I had been so stressed out by the last two weeks of saying goodbye that I had forgotten how excited I actually am about this whole experience. My entire Peace Corps training group is AMAZING! They are sooo much fun and we have all bonded far more than I could have ever expected in the last two days. So after two days of being given the nuts and bolts of what to expect and how to prepare, they have told us that we are now ready to get on a plane and fly to Togo - after spending over five hours hanging out in the D.C. airport that is. My bags are packed and I just took the longest and hottest shower I think I have ever taken, enjoying what could be my last bathing experience that doesn't involve the word "bucket." Tomorrow we will get up at 6am and I will go to Starbucks for one last Grande non-fat latte before heading off to the clinic for my shots and malaria meds. Hoping I will be able to fight for the malaria pills with the least amount of side-affects, but of course those are the most expensive and I will probably end up taking the ones that make me hallucinate, overly-prone to sunburn and I'll vomit the whole plane ride - but hey, its all about the experience. We leave the hotel at 3pm even though our plane doesn't take off until 1030pm so there will be a good long time for me to make final phone calls and continue to bond with the group. We fly to Paris and will be there for about an hour and a half as long as we don't miss our plane. However, we were told that the flight from Paris is guaranteed and if we do happen to miss it the airline will pay to put us up in a hotel for a night - tempting, I know. It is about another 5 hours from Paris to Lome, the capital city, where we will begin our Togo adventure. I will be giving the Peace Corps mom's email address to send the "safe arrival" email and she can either post on the blog or send out a mass email to forward the news to you. I feel like this has been a long post especially since I haven't even gotten to Togo yet, but I wanted you all to know that I am truly happy and loving this so far. Thanks for all the emails and posts you have sent so far. Keep it up! I will post again asap, but I'm not sure when that will be, so remember: no news is good news.
Gros Bisous!!