The tank is clean

I woke up on Friday morning after a restful two and a half hours of sleep knowing that today was the day. It was the first day that I would know what I would be doing for the next two years and where I would be going. They have kept us in the dark for the last 3 weeks as to what our sites were going to be. They’ve known. We know they’ve known. But there we were in week 7 of being a Peace Corps Trainee, and still we had no clue who is going where. 

And so, we walked into the hall where we have class every day that normally looks like this:

And were treated to a new setup that looked a little like this:

In walks Kristine, our PCVL, and she has a wand and holding a hat covered in kitenge, a local fabric. A hat that was very reminiscent to that of the sorting hat in Harry Potter. This is not a drill. I am being sorted by the sorting hat. Oh my goodness.

One by one, we were called up to the front of the room, the hat was placed on our heads and a voice (that we think was probably Jerry, the country director) played over the speakers telling us what region we would be in. We then would put up a picture of ourselves on a big map, get information on our site, and move to our tables with other people in our super region. By the end, I learned that I am off to the Shinyanga region!

I am the only one from my cohort heading to this region which is a little bit… scary. I am really going to know no one going into this next new experience. Though I guess that is nothing new for me. I will have a number of PCVs near to me, but I won’t have any of the people I have started to get close to over the past few months. Now I am seemingly back to square one on that front. 

This is really going to be a whole new adventure. I admit, I am anxious. I feel like everything in my life is so uncertain right now. If I had chosen to go to grad school there would have been a path that could inform me years down the line. All I have right now is I know I will be in this country for two years and I will be teaching. What will I be teaching? I don’t know. What projects will I do? Couldn’t tell ya. What will my town be like? Heck if I know. What will the people around me think of me? Will they have preconceptions about who I am? Can I overcome that? Could be anything. 

There is so much that you just don’t know when you join the Peace Corps, and it is nice to have clarity on this one thing, but really it adds 300 questions in its place. I like uncertainty to an extent. I love an adventure, and I thrive on some spontaneity, exploring, and living in the moment. Give me a rough outline and some time and I will have fun doing something new in a new environment. But it is so different when the timeline is 2 years and not 2 days. I want to know at least what I will be teaching. Or what my house looks like. Or who I will be living with. I suppose these are all questions that will be answered with time.  Here goes site week