My first thought upon arriving in San Francisco was "I packed too much." This was while trying to haul my two suitcases up some escalators and through the BART, walking two blocks to the wrong Marriot hotel and, ultimately, because I was late, taking a taxi to the right hotel where staging was to take place.
Staging was a painless affair: we signed in, split into two groups in two adjoining rooms and discussed our hopes, fears and dreams concerning the Peace Corps. As in summer camp, we did some role-playing activities, drew pictures of mosquitoes, volcanoes and lots of smiling stick figures in front of a rectangle which was supposed to symbolize our new home/community and held hands in a big circle at the end. I particularly appreciated discussing our reasons for joining the Peace Corps and what we hoped to accomplish by the end. Spot on.
Dinner then sleep for me, although some people stayed up all night cutting each others' hair and walking to the wharf in preparation for our 12 hour flight across the Pacific.
SO, here's the breakdown of how our travels went/are going (it's 3 am local time at the Singapore airport, where I am sitting, looking out over a koi fish pond. It's like a city in here. They claim to have the only indoor airport pool in the world):
1 pm Saturday - left San Fran for Narita, Japan
1 hour layover in Narita airport before boarding plane to Singapore (9 hours)
Almost 1 am Monday - arrived in Singapore
TO COME: 4:30 pm today we will board the plane for Surabaya, Indonesia.
If you're wondering where Sunday went, so are we.
Most people passed out in the sweet hotel rooms INSIDE THE AIRPORT that PC booked for us. I spent several hours getting lost in the ghost airport and eating whatever not-so-good food was available at this hour of the morning.
Halfway through our cross-over to Japan I opened my shade to see what looked like snow and ice covering the ground as far as my bird's eye could see. I'm not sure that it was snow and not cloud, but it's still terrifying and amazing to think that this HUGE piece of machinery is taking us across half the earth.
One more thought: during the flight, I watched a TED talk titled "Where is Home?" The presenter, Pico Iyer, said a few very relevant things that I scribbled down in my journal. He said, "it is only by stepping out of your life into the world that you can see what you most deeply care about."
He got into movement vs. stillness and described a time when he drove to this remote area away from his home to get away from work and whatnot but then ended up writing and writing upon his arrival until four hours had gone by and he noticed that it was night time. He went out and looked at the stars and heard total quite (not in a literal sense.) Of this experience he said "movement is only as good as the stillness you bring to it."
Although an advocate of traveling to make home more meaningful, he also said, "home is not where you are born but the place where you become yourself."
Staging was a painless affair: we signed in, split into two groups in two adjoining rooms and discussed our hopes, fears and dreams concerning the Peace Corps. As in summer camp, we did some role-playing activities, drew pictures of mosquitoes, volcanoes and lots of smiling stick figures in front of a rectangle which was supposed to symbolize our new home/community and held hands in a big circle at the end. I particularly appreciated discussing our reasons for joining the Peace Corps and what we hoped to accomplish by the end. Spot on.
Dinner then sleep for me, although some people stayed up all night cutting each others' hair and walking to the wharf in preparation for our 12 hour flight across the Pacific.
SO, here's the breakdown of how our travels went/are going (it's 3 am local time at the Singapore airport, where I am sitting, looking out over a koi fish pond. It's like a city in here. They claim to have the only indoor airport pool in the world):
1 pm Saturday - left San Fran for Narita, Japan
1 hour layover in Narita airport before boarding plane to Singapore (9 hours)
Almost 1 am Monday - arrived in Singapore
TO COME: 4:30 pm today we will board the plane for Surabaya, Indonesia.
If you're wondering where Sunday went, so are we.
Most people passed out in the sweet hotel rooms INSIDE THE AIRPORT that PC booked for us. I spent several hours getting lost in the ghost airport and eating whatever not-so-good food was available at this hour of the morning.
Halfway through our cross-over to Japan I opened my shade to see what looked like snow and ice covering the ground as far as my bird's eye could see. I'm not sure that it was snow and not cloud, but it's still terrifying and amazing to think that this HUGE piece of machinery is taking us across half the earth.
One more thought: during the flight, I watched a TED talk titled "Where is Home?" The presenter, Pico Iyer, said a few very relevant things that I scribbled down in my journal. He said, "it is only by stepping out of your life into the world that you can see what you most deeply care about."
He got into movement vs. stillness and described a time when he drove to this remote area away from his home to get away from work and whatnot but then ended up writing and writing upon his arrival until four hours had gone by and he noticed that it was night time. He went out and looked at the stars and heard total quite (not in a literal sense.) Of this experience he said "movement is only as good as the stillness you bring to it."
Although an advocate of traveling to make home more meaningful, he also said, "home is not where you are born but the place where you become yourself."
No comments:
Post a Comment