The Final Countdown

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Exactly one month from today, our plane will be landing in South Africa! We're steadily accomplishing all the tasks on our "home front" to-do list -- we've even got wills now. On the Peace Corps end we've submitted our fee free passport applications and our South African visa applications, written our aspiration statements, revised our resumes, completed the "Peace Corps Pre-departure Online Security Orientation," and gotten our Yellow Fever vaccinations. The Yellow Fever vax kicked my butt, I felt sick for days. Perry was fine. 

We've also booked our flights to staging. We'll be meeting the rest of our group (and getting more shots, I think, not looking forward to that part!) on July 10th in Atlanta, Georgia. We'll be leaving our apartment on the 8th, though. We're staying at the Hilton Seattle Airport for a night and flying to Atlanta early on the 9th. Peace Corps is flying us in a day early so we don't have to take the red eye flight. I am very grateful for this, because we'll be well-rested for staging! Then, on July 11th at 7:35PM, we'll take off for our 15 hour & 50 minute, 8,434 mile flight to Johannesburg. Wow, this is all happening. :)

I wanted to draw attention to the resources the Peace Corps put together for friends and family. There's good information there that answers many questions about Peace Corps service. We have an address you can write to, too:
Perry and Elizabeth Atterberry
Peace Corps
PO Box 9536
Pretoria 0001
South Africa

We'll get a permanent address after Phase 1 of training, sometime in early September. The Peace Corps will still deliver mail sent to the above address, though, about once a month.

PS Please write "AIRMAIL" on anything sent, otherwise, it could take upwards of 6 months for us to receive it.

- by Elizabeth

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