le 30 decembre (night)

Since earlier post:
- (while making earlier post) felt guilty about getting post up and not milking every last minute with my stage
- brought birthday shanigans to bear on current PCV's. Didn't take long for us to work our way in. A classic, quick job. Good work all around
- made first withdrawl to bank, with help from current PCV. Actually not terrribly difficult. But I feel mad guilty and not very secure waklking around with my entire move in allowance and monthly living allowance on my person until I can lock some up in the hostel for a day. Combine this with the money I have from America, and I have all my money that I own in my backpack tomorrow. They say we're not targets becaues we're intergrating and not rich, but I'll be carrying around like three times the GDP of the country.
- I feel safer saying that we've been training in Hamdallaye. I've been real careful not to say the name of the town, but we're leaving so, it's ok to say now I guess?
- changed my email signature and vaca message to note that I am a official PCV now.
- one of those small little notes: so because the smallest unit of money in Niger is a five cent piece, when things in the supermarket are priced by weight and then you should get like 13 cents back...they cannot give you your change, so they give you like 10 cents and then 2 candies or something like that. At least, this is how it works on one supermarket.
- bristled with unfinished business: our Zarma rap, never getting to sing "Shout", a big song to go out with, notes to everyone in our stage. This last one is really bothering me now. I think I'm the only person to not write notes to at least some people. I got really daunted by the task and didn't want to write only some or only quickly...maybe I should have done that over the last few days instead of writing blog posts. That would be more living in the moment I guess. I promise to make it up to my stagemates. I feel very selfish. It's 0030 and people are sitting around the circle, people who will leave in three hours, and they're writing notes to us. My box is pretty full with notes. I feel really bad about this.
- Heard that our speeches were on the radio. Also were/ or will be on TV or something? This makes me excited.
- Visited my fam for the last time. Took some pics. It's so cool to walk down the street, which I haven't done in a few days since we've been popping into Niamey, and have people call you name, or your little Nigerien brothers run up and jump/ hug you in greeting. It's so nice to know people, to be able to sit in someone's house and feel comfortable. It took nine weeks to build all this, and tomorrow we'll leave it and have to start all over again.
- been some unsure what to do with myself. Tried to pack up, collect pics from today, talk to people.
- finally, in the last 30 min, felt tired. With tiredness, instead of frustration about not being able to have one more day with the whole stage, feeling sad about leaving everyone. A new very difficult aspect of PST is that you settle in, you make friends, and then you have to leave it all...and start something a million times harder. Finally though, I can say that the next three months will be the hardest part of all of this...of the last year of preparation and the next two years of actual service. And finally, it is upon us and we will get through (en shala), but again, sitting on the edge of this....intimidating and scary.

In our interview with our country director, she asked if we could imagine ourselves moving to site and completing the two years of service. It seemed like she was getting at were we thinking of going home, but she also emphasized that she was asking could we imagine moving to site. What a stupid question. At least for me, having never even been to Africa before, and for me, having never lived in my own apartment before, I cannot imagine at all what it will be like to be in a Nigerien town BY MYSELF in an apartment/ hut thing. And I'm trying, I think, not to try to imagine it (besides the image of our lang immersion house with a view of the river, which is the image that comes to my mind) and set up all these rediculous expectations. Again, it seems this has happened so much over the last year and especially with all the Peace Corps stuff, I just have no idea what this next thing will bring.

A certainly exciting day with many high points, but right now, tired, guilty, sad, and anxious. Should have just sat with people and talked and written notes.