Los Angeles is just like the stereotypes said it would be, full of palm trees, burger joints, and pavement. I'm writing this at 8:30pm Eastern Time which is well past my bedtime in Eastern Standard and I've had only a few hours sleep in the past day so while this entry may not be entirely lucid, know that for once, it was not intentional.
Flying from the East coast of the United States to the West in one day, during daylight gave me a chance to watch the whole country roll by before leaving it for two years. It was like living out a Bruce Springsteen song, seeing the green covered mountains of Virginia give way to hills then the ordered checkerboard of the mid-West followed by a steady browning of the terrain until the crop squares became circles and then dessert, plateau, mountains, and finally the urban sprawl of the Los Angeles valley.
I've packed up my life and am taking care of a few nagging details, surfing off of the LAX Radisson''s ubiquitous connectivity while I still can. To the extent that people are patterns, as Robert M. Pirsig might say, moving a person from one end of the world and one mode of living to another is like moving the center of a cobweb without breaking it. Many of the strands connecting the person to the world like bank accounts, credit cards, and cell phone plans can be stretched or cut and replaced. Physically moving a person is the easy part, while re-establishing new connections to allow you to go on living somewhere else is difficult and exhausting.
It turns out that my Dad and brother moved on the same day as me. Tommy has his own apartment in Minot now. Dad, as some you may now, hurt his leg about a week ago. He's home now in a cast and doing fine even if he's not terrifically mobile.
I've been in Los Angeles since 2:00pm Western Time. In that time, I've gotten to know several of my fellow Vanuatu volunteers. We range in age from the mid twenties to early sixties and come from all over America, each with a different background. There doesn't seem to be a "Peace Corps type person" except that they are all educated and American. Many of us have been having the same conversations over and again and the common themes are "I'm really excited", "I'm just now beginning to believe this is real", and "does anybody have any idea what we're doing?". For the many of you who kept asking what my last meal stateside would be, I still don't know, but some of these conversations took place at the local In And Out Burger over cheeseburgers and milkshakes. We're getting anything iced while we can. Also, the Chicago style hot dogs in during my stopover at O'Hare where spot on. Maybe tomorrow should feature a Denver omelet, New York cheesecake, Buffalo wings, and Memphis barbecue. Are you still humming the Springsteen song?
Registration took place today and tomorrow will be filled with orientation activities, ice breaker exercises, and the like. We fly from LAX at 9:30pm for Aukland, then to Port Vila, where we will hit the ground running with more training and a few days of activities before moving into the training villages.
Excuse me for not sharing more, but it's time for bed.
- - Daniel
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