July 3, 1994

After a 15 page application and a three hour interview with scare tactics...after all six of my references have completed their many pages about me and sent them in...after the medical exam, the dental exam, the many more papers and pages sent and received to try and weed out the weak...after nine long months during my senior year at the university, waiting and waiting for an answer for the process to be done, I finally receive my invitation to join the United States Peace Corps and serve for two years in Morocco. I call my mother exhilirated and dumbfounded, hardly able to breathe.

"I'm going to Morocco!"

"Monaco?"

"No, Morocco. Where is Morocco?"

New York

We are checking out of our room in an hour and meeting in the lobby to head out for the airport. One woman in her thirties, I hear, is going back home. She met a man a couple months ago and won‘t leave him.

I could have done this. I could have attached on to someone and done the same thing, but by damn I will be on that plane out of here. I want to tell this woman that she’s going to regret it. All the “what if I would have gones” will linger for the rest of her life.

There is nothing to be afraid of here; seventy-two people all in the same clueless boat. I was talking to a girl Erica last night as we walked down restaurant row on Hampton Beach. It is amazing that there are so many of us and that we’re all hanging out like this not knowing anything about the next person except that we will all look back on this shared experience two years from now. Though we don’t know each other, we will inevitably know each other, and there’s no way around it.

American Airlines Flight 98 departs at 7:00 pm for Brussels onto Casablanca, Morocco.

The adventure is beginning. Through all of this waiting I am finally here.

8:30 pm

Perhaps I have a little buzz now as I sit on this plane. I know that I’m here and I know where I’m going but the reality of the absence of all the people I have ever known and make up who I am? The absence of them is slowly sinking in as I cross this ocean. The reality of the time period that I will be overseas is overwhelming me now, though most of my nervousness, I thought, was a couple of weeks ago. Maya said it well: I feel like a deer right in headlights.

Here starts the roller coaster. We’re creeping up the first hill.

Training starts Wednesday. We have four and a half hours of language classes six days a week.