Staging in Philly!

Post by Kevin

Alarm goes off at 3:30am, official kick off to the longest traveling experience of my life.  Dayton to Detroit; Detroit to Philadelphia.  We met a fellow Peace Corps Trainee, Chelsea, in Detroit.  Somewhere around this time my newest nephew was born in Cincinnati.

I’m not sure who I should blame for this, but the Philly baggage claim ate my brand new Osprey Airporter LZ.  I repeat.  The Philly baggage claim ate the Airporter.  We were walking toward the baggage belt when they redirected us to a different belt because the other one was stuck.  I didn’t think much of it until Lara’s bag came out and then mine didn’t appear.  I went over to the other belt to see my backpack lying on the ground out of the Airporter and a guy standing on the belt with a pair of scissors.  Dialogue went as follows:

“Is my bag the cause for problems here?”

Blank Stare

“Where’s the outer bag?”

Points to the belt.  (note: nothing is visible but the belt)

“Is there any chance of getting it back?”

“Hahaha!  No.”

So I just huffed, picked up my bag and walked on.  Walking away, I noticed that the only other damage was one of the buckles on my pack broke.  Moral of this story: Airporter was a complete waste of money.

I plan to explain the situation to Osprey as soon as I can and see if I can get either another bag or reimbursed for the previous one because it did exactly the opposite of what it was supposed to.  Also, when I’m back in the states I’ll send my pack off to get it fixed because the buckle that broke was sewn into the pack.  

Here was my solution for getting the pack from Philly to Freetown by the way:  (Side note: Lara put her pack in one my old duffle bags that had wheels on it so she didn’t actually use the Airporter that she bought.  I envied her decision greatly, but was thankful we had two Airporters)

Arrival at the Hotel

We get our bags out of the taxi and we meander into the hotel.  In the corner, we see about ten people sitting quietly with mountains of luggage next to them. 

“You Peace Corps?” someone asks.

“How could you tell?”

“Welcome!”

This kick started the next 12 hours of meeting everyone and getting to know where we all came from and what they had been doing prior to being in the Peace Corps.   It only took about an hour to realize that we all have extremely similar personalities.  Within hours it felt like we’ve known these people for years.  The only problem was this meet-and-greet was interrupted with 7 hours of training (little did we know that would characterize the next 10 weeks of our lives).  Staging consisted mainly of us playing through different scenarios that other Peace Corps volunteers over the last 50 years have encountered and what we should do if we are ever faced with the situation.  It was quite exhausting being that we had been awake since 3 AM.

Whatever the case, it was over at 7 and we were starving, so six of us got together and discussed that since we were in Philly the only logical food to get was a Philly cheese steak.  So off we walked through some pretty shady parts of Philly to get the best, last dinner prior to leaving the states.  Little did we know that this would be a great leeway into what Sierra Leone would be like.  We were told that was only about a mile walk, turns out it was closer to two.  It started raining on the way there, and we had left our rain jackets in the hotel.  We eventually were greeted with the Neon lights of Geno’s Philly Cheese Steaks, and it.. was.. awesome.  Here’s us enjoying our Geno’s for one last (and first) time. 

So as we sat there letting the Geno’s digest, Stefan and I (pictured on the right above) decided we weren’t entirely full (We bele no ful).  We decided that since this was Philly and one of our last chances at American food, why not go across the street to taste the other famous cheese steak restaurant.  So here’s a picture of the Pat’s Philly Cheese Steak I had.  I figured this would be a great taste test (there is one flaw in the whole situation: I got provolone on my first steak, and cheese whiz on the second.  Believe it or not, cheese whiz is where it’s at).  

The winner?  Pat’s meat was chipped and Geno’s was sliced.  I feel like Pat’s had more meat and it was juicier than that of Geno’s.  It was the definitive winner.

So afterward, some of us were tired and wanted to get back to the hotel quickly to consume some alcohol and the rest of us wanted to check out Independence hall before we left the country.  I feel it was fitting to check it out prior to leaving the country for two years.  So Josh, Gareth, Lara, and I took the long way back to check out the liberty bell and here it is in all its glory!

On our way back we hit up city hall and then made our way to the bar with the rest of our awesome group.  By the time we had made it to the bar, it was about 11:00PM.  I shared a pitcher with Josh and was too tired to drink anything else.  I also consumed about 3 glasses of water because I had walked 4 miles and eaten two cheese steaks and all that salt in my body was making me quite thirsty.

We eventually left the bar at 12:30 and promptly passed out in our bed.   It had been a total of 21 hours of being awake and we had to be up at 8:00AM the next morning to board a bus that would drive us to New York City so we could get on a plane for Brussels and then from Brussels to Freetown (See first night in Freetown for continuation).