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Day 4 - 07 July 2005 PHilly - PHreedom, inPHormation and PHun 3 days in Philly full of info sessions & workshops on safety & security, cultural awareness and health. LOOONNNG days, with both morning and afternoon sessions, and the shots have begun! WOO HOO! on the 2nd day here, we took it back to the old school with Polio & MMR shots, and topped if off with a PHAT serving of Yellow Fever, with a side of blood withdrawal. aren’t immunizations yummy? my left arm is killin me and I can’t wait to get sick...at least we got malaria pills and we’ll be enjoyin crazy freaky deaky dreams tonight… so most of us are well over the 80 pound total weight limit (I’m at 100lbs.) and we’re all scramblin to shave off a few pounds here ‘n there. I dropped a bunch of my cd’s and the case and half the soap I bought, and a few other random things, but yes, I kept the fryin pan...shutup. Last night a few of us got together bcuz the SUPER I.T. guy actually bought a new laptop AND projector with 150 DVD’s, so we "watched" Volunteer starring Tom Hanks and John Candy since what we’re gonna be doin is an integral part of the movie. i say "watched" since most of us were actually finishin a handle we just got that mornin...ahhhh good times, one final swim in the U.S. (and worldwide?) for a long time...goin dry abroad to keep head clear and financials under wrap. wish me luck... so basically there were a few rumors this mornin as we all got up and prepared to depart for the islands. the first one goes like this: we have a bus ride to NYC from Philly, then 2 flights following: one from NYC to Dakar, Senegal, and a 2nd from Dakar to Praia, Cape Verde. our bus is loaded and waiting, the flight to Dakar is quickly approaching, but somehow our final flight to CV "disappeared" off the charts. it simply ceased to exist this mornin...brilliant, don’tcha think? spirits fall as we start to wait, hearing every half hour that we’re gonna wait for at least another half hour. :-( the 2nd follows: since our flight from Dakar ceases to be even a breath of air floating gently across anybody’s lips, our coordinators scramble for 3 hours to reroute us through Madrid...oh HELL YEAH! of course a roar goes over the crowd of 25 and spirits are higher than ever before. this flight could get us to another island in CV and we’d have to wait there, or accidently get stuck in Madrid...darn. this rumor disappeared almost as forcefully as it had raised our spirits just hours before... so after all that, we basically just took our bus, boarded our flight to Dakar and crossed our fingers...bein that Senegal is a French speakin country and none of us speak French, all we can do is hope, and sign...and sigh... <--- blog home               Dakar & "The Resort" --->