Maybe I'll finally understand this whole "Texas pride" thing...

I (along with the rest of Tico 23--my group of fellow volunteers in Costa Rica) have finally received long-awaited information about staging! Staging is a two-day orientation in the US that prepares volunteers to go overseas to their host country. Our staging will be in Dallas, Texas, which came as a surprise, since we all for some reason thought we were going to DC! That's exciting news for me, though, since I've never been further west than Ohio. :)

My flight departs from Philadelphia at 8:15AM on Tuesday, February, 21, and I will arrive in Dallas at 11:20AM. I'm hoping to catch up with some Tico-23ers at the airport so we can all get lost together on the way to our hotel. ;)

In the meantime, I've been shopping and getting together everything I'll need to take to Costa Rica with me! My mom and I spent hours, yes hours, in Target today, looking for everything from a raincoat to some very unfashionable skirts (skirts must be at least knee-length, or so Peace Corps tells me!) to shampoo to bathing suits. It was a very fruitful trip, and I now have most of what I need!

For now, I'll leave you with this, yet another beautiful Peace Corps ad that is clearly aimed at the naive and overly-idealist, in other words, ME.