San Fran!

Just back from the Spring Orientation in San Francisco. It was pretty wonderful. Very reminiscent of summer camp - making close friendships very quickly, bug bites, bunk beds, etc. We stayed in a hostel in Marin Headlands and it was completely beautiful.

I flew in to San Jose because it was a lot cheaper than flying into SFO. Thank goodness I booked US Airways. They just happened to be the cheapest and they aren't experiencing the crazy cancellations that most other airlines seem to be having right now. The flight was ok - a little bumpy. I was up at 4am that morning to catch the train to the airport, so I was able to sleep a bit.

When I got in, I had to catch a bus and then a train to get to a place where someone could pick me up to drive me to the hostel.

The weather was perfect so I didn't mind the fact that I had to wait almost an hour for the train to show up.

The train took about an hour to get me to the station where I was meeting my ride. There was beautiful California scenery along the way, so it was an enjoyable ride. Pretty easy to figure out the schedule/ticketing too. A lot easier than SEPTA, if you ask me.

I had no trouble meeting Ben (my ride) and it turned out that he was also an Indonesia volunteer. He also had Meredith with him who had taken the train from Berkley. It was a little more difficult trying to find everybody else in the group. They were all flying into SFO. After circling the arrivals terminal about fifteen times we finally got everybody in the van - Ti-Bay, Tien, Anthony and Rachel. Anthony was also volunteering in Indonesia.

After driving through San Fran we stopped at a scenic view point on the far side of the Golden Gate Bridge, which was nice because I've never seen it before. I took a few photos.

The hostel is in those green hills you can see to your right. I'll add some scenic view from the hostel at the end. Things were very very busy once we reached the hostel and activities began. We had meetings pretty much non-stop.

We had some meetings about VIA in general and also a country specific meeting. There were also ice breakers and getting-to-know-you stuff. The country meetings were interesting. Everybody seemed very nice. Nathan, the program director of Indonesia was very low key and it was nice to meet him since I've been e-mailing with him quite a bit.

There were 6 volunteers going to Indonesia. There was one other girl, Gillian, who happens to be from Philadelphia and graduated from Del-Val (my mom's Alma Mater!). That was quite a coincidence. Hopefully the two of us will be able to meet up before we leave. Gillian said there is an Indonesian restaurant that she knows of in center city Philly so we may go to that together and practice our Bahasa Indonesian (Translation: Language Indonesia). Maybe we could even find an Indonesian to tutor us. I think (and everybody seemed to be saying this at orientation) that the better you know the language before you leave, the more you can get out of the experience and the quicker you can become comfortable and integrated into your new home.

Friday night the man who started VIA, Dwight, came to speak to everybody. I really enjoyed this. He highlighted the fact that VIA takes no money from he government and has no political or religious affiliations. That way, no we have no leverage with any foreign government, in the sense that we can't force them to take volunteers. If Indonesia asks VIA for a volunteer, we can be confident that it is because they genuinely want an American Volunteer there, not because they are afraid of the US government or because they find it simply easier to say "yes". Dwight's talk really made me confident that VIA was the right organization for me.
Saturday was also a very full day. We had meetings on finances, country meetings, Q&As with past volunteers, and a lot more that I'm sure I'm forgetting right now. In the little free time we had, I hiked up the hills with a few people and took these photos.

Also on Saturday we got the information for the various available posts in Indonesia. I spent a lot of the day reading about the posts and trying to decide which I liked best. Finally I just decided that there were a few that I didn't really like, but I would trust the program directors judgement on placing me.

I should find out later this week which post I'm at and I'll but the details up here. Basically I decided that I wanted to be in a small city and I didn't want to be at a Muslim boarding school. I'm not sure yet if I'll be teaching English or working with a non-profit company (as an English Resource). There was only one English Resource position that really appealed to me, so I'm not sure if I'll get it. Gillian was also very interested in this post.

Well...this entry is getting really long and I'm only 1/2 way through orientation. I think I've mentioned most of the main things though. Also, it's lunch time and I'm hungry. So that's it for now!