Philly to Philly - Staging and Itinerary from Philadelphia to Philippines

My staging information flew into my inbox today tellin me when I’ll be flyin out of the country. I’d been assumin that’d I’d be headed to Cali to fly out to Manilla. Instead I’m headed to the Always Sunny City of Brotherly Love for orientation and staging. I’m flyin out of Gainesville Regional Airport (and by regional we mean two gates, two airlines, two possible destinations, and...fortunately...no cows) at 6:15 am on the 19th of August. That’ll be rough, I do mornings about as well as France did in the World Cup: grumpy grumblings, lack of coordination, one angry tirade, flaky croissants instead of a real breakfast, and an early plane flight out. Complicated analogy, but appropriate. I’ll change-over in Atlanta (cause as the joke goes, if you die in the South you have to connect in Atlanta to get to heaven) at 8:40 am and then fly into Philly arriving at 10:54 am. Orientation begins at noon so it’s gonna be a tight fit.

Orientation is roughly a seven hour fun fest, following seven fun hours of flying, of things you need to know before goin. “Who we are, What’s expected of you, What you expect, What’s next” etc etc. Check out the next mornin is at 5 am where shortly after we will bus to NYC and fly out of JFK…to Tokyo…to Manilla. Talk about long days. The flight time says 20 hours, 20 minutes. I think you can watch all of the Star Wars movies and still have time to try and fail miserably to fall asleep on a miserably uncomfortable plane…I can still recite lines from Pocahontas II from the time I watched it 3 times home on flight back from Europe cause I couldn’t sleep (their movies system was screwed up or something).

Anyways, I can’t wait to get to Philly and meet the other education volunteers (the youth development and coastal resource people will be stagin outta Detroit)!