From California to Pennsylvania...

Hello and welcome to my first post!

First of all, thank you so much for all your support. I believe that this will be a great experience and I am so excited to share it with all of you.

I am currently in Philadelphia in the Historic District. Tomorrow (Wednesday), I start the training program which I believe involves lots of talking, mingling, lecturing and hurting (more immunization stuff). More on this tomorrow.

This morning was pretty terrible. I had last minute packing the night before and then I had maybe two hours of restless sleep to start off my day which started around 5:30 am. My family saw me off and Frank and Lindsay took me to the airport. I cried when I said goodbye to my family, cried more before security, cried after security and started bawling when the airplane took off at 8:40 am. I cried myself to sleep, woke up, read goodbye letters from Frank and Lindsay, and cried myself to sleep again. I had a stop in Chicago for about an hour and then hopped on another plane to Philadelphia. I arrived at almost 7pm eastern! My whole day was gone! I was still feeling pretty miserable when I got off the plane.

Luckily, the Peace Corps volunteers I've met so far have all been wonderful, and I had a yummy philly cheesesteak for dinner with two lovely ladies. I plan to eat philly cheesesteak for my entire stay here.

Before I forget, if you'd like to send me snailmail here's my address:

Ji Young Kim
Private Bag #00243
Gaborone
Botswana

(YES IT REALLY IS A BAG!)

I hope I can stay in touch with everyone throughout this 2.25 year journey. I am so sorry if I didn't get to see you before I leave-- my life was pretty hectic. Please continue to send me permanent (physical) addresses to jiniki@gmail.com if you would like a postcard or other forms of snailmail. I miss you all so much and I hope to hear from all of you soon!

--Nicole--

P.S.-- I will post pictures soon! Nothing too interesting yet... I will be posting on this site:
www.picasaweb.google.com/jiniki