Pre-Service is finished

Well, I have completed the pre-service training. Five hours in a conference room later, and I am ready to take China by storm.

There are 82 volunteers leaving with me for China. It's wonderful to be in a company of people as excited about serving as I am.

Nothing terribly thoughtful; it was a long day. Kesha was on the radio when I ate lunch. A fine gent named Sean is my roommate; he says "hi".

I'm going out tonight with some of the other volunteers to enjoy "our last night in America", as our leaders jokingly called it.


Thanks again to everyone for all of their well-wishes. Tomorrow should be fun.


EDIT:  So a group of us went out to Navy Pier, ate burgers and rode the ferris wheel. We thought that was quintessential Americana. (Also, I spent all of my time looking for the Cash Cab; no luck.) Now I'm going to sleep.

I leave tomorrow?

Packing is stressful.

I should have done more of it sooner.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog.

I want to keep a blog as a place for people to keep up to date (within whatever connectivity constraints I have) and share my experiences.

I leave for Chicago Wednesday morning (29 June), and will take part in my Pre-Service Orientation. The following day, I fly from Chicago O'Hare on United Airlines flight 851 at 12:15 in the afternoon. I have a direct (FOURTEEN HOUR) flight to Beijing. After a four hour layover in Beijing, I fly to Chengdu on Air China, where I will be for my first months of training.

They tell me training is a very intense experience. Hopefully I will find a tad bit of time to update and let everyone know I'm alive--although I imagine posts during training could end up just stories about learning Mandarin.

That's all for now; I have to finish packing. Please follow my blog; please comment; most of all, please enjoy.