Staging

Hey guys,
This is gonna be quick 'cause it's late and I have an early morning tomorrow. Right now I'm at a Holiday Inn in Philly for the beginning of our orientation. Which means that last night and this morning I said goodbye to everyone, and needless to say, I was an emotional wreck. I cried a lot, and I still get really sad, especially when I think about missing my favorite 2 people (Justine and Zach.) But I figured that as soon as I started Staging I'd be okay, and so far so good. We basically sat in the hotel for 6 hours getting lectured about rules and policies, but after that we finally got to hang out with each other and go to dinner and stuff. There are 36 people in my group, mixed between Health Education and Environment volunteers. Definitely a majority female, and a majority of us recently out of college. Only 2 married couples and only 4 people over 40 I believe. I've been so nervous and edgy all day, but as soon as we actually went out and talked to each other, I've felt so much better. I went out to a burger/beer joint w/ about 8 others and it's so clear that these are the kind of people that I'm going to get along w/ so well. After dinner we walked around a little bit, past the Liberty Bell and Ben Franklin's grave and stuff. Woot. As if we came to see American History, not. After that we sat at the hotel bar for a while and the bartender serving us asked if we were Peace Corps. When we said yes he immediately told us he was going to buy us all a shot because he respected PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) so much. So he brought over these HUGE shots of tequilla, they were seriously almost 1/2 a wine glass full. As soon as that happened and we were all just getting along so well I was like "Ok, I am definitely doing the right thing." So yeah, now I need to go to bed because we have to get up at 5:30 am tomorrow to start our long day of travel. Love you all though, and know that so far the 1st stage of my journey has been awesome!

Thank God for vaccuum bags...

So this is what my packing list boiled down to...I'm still amazed I was able to fit everything in just 2 bags and 2 carry-ons. Below are pictures of my attempts and eventual success:

Clothing:
2 pairs jeans
Pajamas
2 sweaters/sweatshirts
Stocking cap?
Railroad hat
2 pairs sunglasses-aviators and regular
Windbreaker
3-5 skirts/dresses
2-3 dressy shirts (shoulders covered)
1 nice dress
Socks
Underwear
Slip
Workout capris
5-6 t-shirts
1 pair nice/comfortable
1 pair dress
Hiking boots
Water sandals
Sneakers
2 swimsuits
Sports bras
Tank tops/undershirts
Bandanas
Jewelry
Belts
Watch
Sleep mask
Purse

Toiletries:
Hand sanitizer
Shampoo
Soap
Deodorant
Lotion
Razor and blades
Nail clippers
Hairbrush
Tootbrush
Pads
Baby Wipes
Earplugs
Sunscreen
Floss
Birth control
Hydrocortisone cream
Hairties/barettes
2 pairs glasses
Contacts and solution
Makeup
Burts Bees
Hand mirror
Face soap
Toner
Eye makeup remover
Max Deet
Towel?

Entertainment:
iPod w/ USB and charger
small speakers
2 cameras
Cards
Laptop w/ charger and dongle
External HD and flash drive
Books
Tons of batteries
Battery charger
Journal and pens
Colored pencils/crayons/coloring books
DVDs

Gear:
Plug adaptor
Sheets and pillowcase
Leatherman
Headlamp
Duct Tape
Sewing kit?
Nalgene
Money belt
Alarm clock
Ziplock bags
1 empty duffel
Forms and passport pictures
Umbrella
Lonely Planet guide
Bike helmet

Food:
Seeds
Protein bars

Gifts:
Poppers for kids
Lion puzzle for kids
ONE bracelets for kids
Sidewalk chalk for kids
Photos of friends/home/family

Personal Goals for the Next 3 Years

1. Successfully complete Peace Corps. Duh!

2. Travel back to Nkubu, Kenya and visit the Huruma Center orphanage where I volunteered in 2007 and fell in love with Africa and the kids there

3. Travel to Victoria Falls on the border of Zimbabwe and Zambia and go bungee jumping there!4. Make a documentary about my experience in Tanzania

5. Travel on my way home to the US, either through Europe or Asia

6. Master Swahili

Random hodge-podge of ideas that were in my head...these are of course missing all the deeper, more meaningful goals of Peace Corps, such as having a positive influence on my village, making a difference, etc. Rest assured, those are definitely foremost in my mind, but thinking about all the awesome side things I'll hopefully be able to do also gets me really excited!

Staging Info At Last!

I finally got the information about my Pre-Departure Staging today! So my travel plans are solid and I leave Columbus in exactly 1 month!

Sunday, June 14
9:45am Fly from Columbus to Philadephia -- 2 hours
1:30pm Register and check into a Holiday Inn in Philly, meet the rest of my training class!
3-7pm Training and info sessions

Monday, June 15
6:30am Check out and go to a clinic to get shots
9:30am Bus ride to JFK airport in New York City (so I will be back on Long Island again) -- 4 hours
5:40pm Fly from JFK to Amsterdam -- 7.5 hours

Tuesday, June 16
10:20am Fly from Amsterdam to Kilimanjaro then Kilimanjaro to Dar Es Salaam -- 10.5 hours
9:40pm Final arrival in Tanzania!!!!!!

So with all the time changes and layovers and long flights, I will be traveling for 2 full days. I'm going to watch so many movies on the planes because I can never sleep on planes and it will probably be my last chance to see any good ones for awhile! I'm excited about the stop in Amsterdam; even though the layover isn't long enough to even leave the airport at least I'll be able to say I've been to a new country (sort of)!

So yeah...ONE MONTH!

"Don't you see your dreams lie right in the palm of your hands?"

Today I feel so ready.

It's a gorgeous spring day in Ohio; the sun is out, the wind is blowing just enough to be fun, the ice cream truck is tinkering around the neighborhood, and the flowers are out in full force in my front yard.

It's one of those days where I'm so happy to be alive, inspired to get outside and do something positive for the world. And I'm so grateful for the opportunity I have to go and live my dream in Africa.

I'm ready for bucket baths and squat toilets and dusty red paths. I'm ready to speak Swahili and plant a garden and read a book a day during monsoon season. I'm ready to learn as many ways possible to make rice and beans (but I'm eating tons of all the delicious American food I love right now to prepare for this). I'm ready to meet amazing people with the same goals as me and amazing people who live so differently from me that my world will be rocked. I'm ready to do my best to change the world for the better and fully prepared that the world is going to radically change me.

53 days. I'm pumped. Bring it on.

Pre-Service Training Address

This will be my mailing address during my Pre-Service Training in Tanzania. I will be here from June 16-August 26, then my address will change when I move to my permanent site.
Carrie Hoffman, PCT
Peace Corps Training Site
PO Box 9123
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Supposedly packages take 3-6 months surface mail, 3-8 weeks airmail. So if you want to send me something at training, you probably should do it as soon as I get there! Also, letters will be much faster, so send lots of those!!!!!

Less than 2 months to go and I still have so much work to do to get ready! Where did the time go????

3 months to go...

Two big shocks I found out about today:

1. Peace Corps is evacuating from Madagascar due to political upheaval. Madagascar is one of the countries I could have been invited to and actually REALLY was hoping for. Of course now I'm really glad I wasn't invited there because it looks like I wouldn't be going. It's just crazy that this happened in December of 2007 with Kenya, a place I've been, and now it's happening again with Madagascar. Both places where the Peace Corps has been forever and were considered very stable. Makes me even more glad that Tanzania is considered one of the most peaceful countries in all of Africa.

2. A volunteer in Benin, West Africa, Kate Puzey, was murdered. I'd be lying if I said that didn't scare me a little bit, but I'm going with the logic in my brain that knows that it's a horrible but RARE event, and that I am actually statistically safer as a PCV in Africa than as, say, a normal person living in Manhattan or something. It's just so incredibly sad. She will be missed.

As for me, I am continuing to work on my Swahili using Rosetta Stone, and also starting to think about the daunting process of packing. Two years of my life need to fit in 2 bags weighing less than 80 pounds and measuring less than 107 inches all around. Eeesh. So far I've made a trip to Dick's for a few things I know I'll need, and have decided to steal my brother's hiking backpack as my main luggage piece, since I already used it in Kenya and can lift it most of the time.

I'll close with a lovely picture of me being a huge dork after excitedly buying a new rain jacket, headlamp, and Leatherman multi-tool. Never dreamed that this would be me after all those family camping trips I spent endlessly complaining.

Oscar Predictions 09!

Sooooo I have to work during the Oscars....boooooo. And it's gonna be hard to top winning the Oscar pool last year, but I guess I'll try. Here we go.
CAPS=Will win
*=Should win (in my opinion)
ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Richard Jenkins
Frank Langella
SEAN PENN*
Brad Pitt
Mickey Rourke

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Josh Brolin
Robert Downey Jr.
Philip Seymour Hoffman
HEATH LEDGER*
Micheal Shannon

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Anne Hathaway
Angelina Jolie
Melissa Leo
Meryl Streep
KATE WINSLET

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Amy Adams
Penelope Cruz
Viola Davis*
Taraji P. Henson
MARISA TOMEI

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
Bolt
Kung Fu Panda
WALL-E

ART DIRECTION
Changeling
Benjamin Button*
The Dark Knight
The Duchess
REVOLUTIONARY ROAD

CINEMATOGRAPHY
Changeling
Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
The Reader
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE*

COSTUME DESIGN
Australia*
Benjamin Button
THE DUCHESS
Milk
Revolutionary Road

DIRECTING
BENJAMIN BUTTON*
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
The Betrayal
Encounters at the End of the World
The Garden
MAN ON WIRE*
Trouble the Water

DOCUMENTARY SHORT
The Conscience of Nhem En
The Final Inch
SMILE PINKI
The Witness

FILM EDITING
Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Frost/NixonMilk
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE*

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
WALTZ WITH BASHIR
The Baader Meinhof Complex
The Class
Departures
Revanche

MAKEUP
BENJAMIN BUTTON*
The Dark Knight
Hellboy II

ORIGINAL SCORE
Benjamin Button*
Defiance
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire
WALL-E

ORIGINAL SONG
DOWN TO EARTH from Wall-E
Jai Ho from Slumdog*
O Saya from Slumdog
BEST PICTURE
Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE*

ANIMATED SHORT
don't care

LIVE ACTION SHORT
no idea

SOUND EDITING
THE DARK KNIGHT*
Iron Man
Slumdog Millionaire
Wall-E
Wanted

SOUND MIXING
Benjamin Button
THE DARK KNIGHT*
Slumdog Millionaire
Wall-E
Wanted

VISUAL EFFECTS
Benjamin Button
THE DARK KNIGHT*
Iron Man

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
BENJAMIN BUTTON*
Doubt
Frost/Nixon
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Frozen River
Happy-Go-Lucky
In Bruges
MILK*
Wall-E

There ya have it!

Rosetta Stone

PC (Peace Corps) was nice enough to give me a free online subscription to Rosetta Stone, so I've recently been using it to jump-start my Swahili skills. I'm supposed to complete 40 hours before leaving, and I'm already at 11. I'm hoping to surpass the 40 and just do as much as possible because I know the more I can cram in before leaving the better off I will be when thrust into a homestay with a non-English-speaking family for PST (Pre-Service Training) in Tanzania. Rosetta Stone is so repetitive and immersing that I can definitely see that it's helping me. So far it hasn't been too hard thanks to the 2 semesters I did take of Swahili in college, but I just finished Unit 2 and I can tell it's definitely increasing in difficulty. Some of the sentences are just so dumb it makes me laugh. When am I going to need to say "The dog is not a man"???? Or my favorite so far: "There are 2 balls in the right hand of the woman and 2 balls in the left hand of the woman." Wow, so many balls! She's got her hands full! (Oh, the places my mind takes me...) Obvsiously the hardest part is the actual speaking. I'm sure I can understand a lot more than I could say right now, which is normal with language learning. Some of the words just get me so tongue-tied though...especially when a 3 syllable word somehow has 4 'Z's in it. Crazy.
Here are my plans for the rest of the day in the best Swahili I can muster:

Nimesoma Kiswahili. Sasa Mama yangu ni mimi tutatembea mwenye mbwa yangu. Nitaenda kucheza ngumu na kunywa bia mwenye rafiki yangu Justine.
Salama! (Peace!)

Why I'm Anti -"Fireproof"

"Facing the Giants" and "Fireproof" are two movies which have recently been released into theaters and on DVD after being made by Sherwood Baptist Church in Georgia using low budgets and volunteer actors. I am a Christian, and I appreciate their attempts to get the Christian message out there, but there are many reasons the idea of these films makes me roll my eyes and sigh.
First of all, both movies offer Christ as an easy answer. As if accepting Christ and following Him will automatically save your football team from defeat and your marriage from divorce. Does anyone really buy that? Christians have the same divorce statistics as non-Christians. My relationship with God hasn't prevented me from facing problems and failures in life. I doubt there's really anyone out there whose sudden conversion really resulted in a spontaneous solution to all their relationship problems.
Secondly, the campy and cliche quality of these movies makes them laughable where they try to be serious. I am a strong proponent of spirituality in the movies, but I believe that the most effective examples of this are movies that embrace artistic excellence, genuine writing, and originality. Aesthetically brilliant films like "Fight Club" and "The Thin Red Line" have deep spiritual resonance despite their secular settings and true-to-life violence. In his book The Hollywood Project, Christian film buff Alex Field states "For too long, Christians have been judging film through a narrow moral lens that forsakes the value of aesthetic excellence while dismissing the reality of the world we live in and the true spiritual searching in which our culture is engaged." The nature of life is a search for truth, and art should be a reflection of this search, not an easy-answer movie with all the gritty realities filtered out for a G rating.
Also, I disagree with the separatist ideology of "Christian" media- we have our own world of music, movies, books, magazines, everything - overtly labeled as "Christian" and thus separated from the mainstream, even though oftentimes these products are merely sub-par imitations of what is mainstream. Jesus said to be "in the world but not of it", so why can't Christians produce art which reflects their values and still release it in the mainstream? Doesn't that give us a higher chance of actually reaching someone who would steer clear of products overtly labeled as Christian? Separation into camps of "Christian" and "secular" only divides people and allows Christians to avoid confronting the realities of the world. Some things in secular culture are awful and wrong, but this doesn't make them any less real. This brings me to my next point. The two Sherwood movies are mostly just preaching to the choir. I highly doubt anyone went to see "Fireproof" without knowing that it was a Christan movie. If what they wanted to do was make a preachy movie for an already-reached audience, then that's great. But as an outreach tool, it's ineffective.
Even if a non-Christian saw "Fireproof" and was moved, is that enough to really begin life as a Christian? Developing faith is a complicated journey, one that involves intense personal reflection, reading the Bible, and prayer, over an extended period of time. Seeing a movie may help, but saying it's going to convert people is an overestimation of it's power. "Is there anyone who ever remembers changing their mind from the paint on a sign? Is there anyone who really recalls ever breaking rank at all for something someone yelled real loud one time ?" one of my favorite songs questions. It takes more than a sporadic jolt of Christian message to make a lasting change in someone's life. Instead, I agree wholeheartedly with the philosophy of Christian filmmaker Buzz McLaughlin, who has chosen not to make overtly Christian movies. "Our films are aimed at a different target. We want to reach the person who would have trouble relating to an overt faith-based approach. We want to create films that deal in an artful and truthful way with struggles and moral dilemmas, and hopefully we will leave the audience considering answers that point gently toward forgiveness, healing, and life-affirmation. We’re trying to reach an audience that is willing to ponder difficult questions, but doesn’t want to be led by the hand—an audience that will, if we’re successful, accept the invitation and begin the search themselves." This philosphy of filmmaking allows for much more truthful, artistic, and relatable films, which will ultimately be more effective in prompting searchers toward the truth.
Lastly, a question which I don't have the answer to: What could Sherwood Baptist have spent the $550,000 it cost to make "Fireproof" on which would have had a greater and more lasting impact on our world? And what did they do with the $33 million that the film grossed? If anyone knows the answers to this question, I'd really love to know.
In conclusion, I'm not hostile to the motivation to make these movies; in fact I think it is quite noble. However, the films are mistaken in their portrayal of Christianity as an easy answer, their poor filmic quality, and their overt, proselytzing approach.

More on "Fireproof": http://stillsearching.wordpress.com/2008/09/29/fireproof/