Staging, part 2

Professor in the Peace Corps

Well, it's over. We've finished the staging and it is on to China tomorrow. The session started at 8:30. The main part of it was taken up by going over the biggest threats we will face over there. In no particular order they were: HIV/AIDS; Natural disasters/political unrest; depression and loneliness; smog related illnesses and bird flu (why these were treated together remains a mystery to me); theft; physical asssault/rape.; food related illneses. We are certainly getting the fear of God put into us. The main solution to most of these seems to be to avoid drinking. Drinking increases your likelihood to be a victim of theft and physical assault; it only adds to derpression; and it probably doesn't help with bird flu. It was also stressed to us that we should avoid political activity in any way shape or form. In the afternoon we broke up into groups and had to put together a performance. We had to assign ourselves to one of the following categories--Musicians; storytellers; actors; writers; artists; dancers--and perform an assigned task. I signed up for the writers group, which turned out to be the most boring. We were required to put together a letter introducing the upcoming volunteers to the country. Others got to perform plays, dance, tell stories, draw pictures. One group did a rap song, one performed a play; we wrote a letter. In order to make it interesting, the group decided to use alliteration.
We were also provided with more details of our journey. Once we arrive in Chengdu we will be split into three groups of roughly twenty each, which means that about forty of these people I will never see again. So in case I never see them again, here are a few of the folks I will remember from this session:Phil is a young man who I had dinner with last night who has a fondness for Marx; Thomas is a guy I met at dinner at the pizza place I stopped to have my last meal; Richard is one of my two roommates, probably about my age, and has also done some teaching in academia; Chris is a young guy from Texas, and this is his not only his first trip out of the country but his first plane trip; Steven is a volunteer who had to pulled out of Bangladesh when things went bad there in March (I don't even remember reading this in the newspaper).
We were supposed to get some ribbons to tie on our luggage and I forgot. I gather that Peace Corps trainees still remember fondly the color of the ribbon they had. Ours was red for China. Hopefully I'll remember to pick one up tomorrow.