T minus 1 day

Well, our journey begins tomorrow morning, and I feel fairly confident that we are as ready as can be. For those that don't know, we started with this whole Peace Corps thing nearly two years ago when we heard a radio commercial that advertised living in a small village on the African Savanna with no plumbing or electricity. We did some research, completed our applications in Spring of 2007, and after a year and a half of waiting and wondering, here we are now about to move to a small Malawian village with no plumbing or electricity. It's been a long last month, finishing up with our jobs here in Michigan, doing last minute preparations and paperwork, and, hardest of all, saying lots good-byes. As difficult as it will be to leave, we are excited to finally get started on this adventure.
Here is summary of our plans for the next couple of months:
Tomorrow (Friday) morning we fly to Philadelphia for a couple days of orientation. This will be a crash course of what we've gotten ourselves into, as well as plenty of paperwork and shots, I'm sure. We then take a bus Sunday morning to JFK airport in NYC, where we will catch a long (17 hours, I believe) flight to Johannesburg, South Africa. We'll spend Monday night in a hotel, then Tuesday morning will take one more flight, finally arriving in Lilongwe, Malawi (Yay!!)
Upon arrival we will be taken to the College of Forestry in Dedza (about an hour from Lilongwe). We'll stay in dorms for the first week as our bodies adjust to the time (6 hours ahead of EST), food, elevation (Dedza is at about 5500 ft), weather (although I believe that being in the mountains, weather shouldn't be much change from Michigan in September), and many other unforeseen changes. The next week we really jump into things as we move in with of host family in a small village similar to the one where we'll be posted (although we still don' t know where that is yet). That means no running water or electricity, travel by foot, washing clothes by hand--the whole nine yards. As crazy as it sounds, I'm looking forward to living that way, leaving American comforts behind--or at least all of them except for camera and iPod, which we're taking with us. We'll live with the host family throughout our 10 weeks of training. During this time we won't have access to computers, so my next posting probably won't be until early December.
Our training will cover everything from language and culture to job skills for the classroom to how to cook and (most importantly) use a squat toilet. However, we recently learned that the language portion may have an unexpected twist. Since we received our invitation a couple of months ago we have been studying Chichewa, the language spoken by the majority of Malawians. The rest speak one of 12 local tribal languages. Just last week we received an email detailing our upcoming training and learned that our training class will be split into two language groups-- one to learn Chichewa and the other to learn Chitumbuka, a local language. So basically, there is a 50/50 chance that we will be learning a language that we had never even heard of until this week, after having spent the last couple of months learning a different one. Oh, well. We've been told many times during the application process that patience and an open mind are the key to success with Peace Corps, and I'm sure that will be confirmed many times for us in the next few weeks.
As hard as it's been, we have enjoyed getting to see everybody this last month, and we really appreciate all of the prayers and well-wishes. We would never be able to do this without having such a support system in all of our family and friends. Please feel free to leave comments, especially any questions that you may have about what is going on in our lives. Also, check out Zeb's blog at zebandtinainmalawi.blogspot.com.

Tsalani Bwino (Stay Well)

Tina