I’ve met my Peace Corps cohort at the hotel where we had our staging. This is essentially one evening plus one full day of orientation before we get on the plane for North Macedonia. Among other things, we went over a whole bunch of scenarios that Peace Corps volunteers have been through and discussed how they were handling things and what can be done better. And there’s a whole lot about practicalities like how we’re getting to the airport.
I’m one of four leaders for leaving the hotel and going to the airport; my group to lead is me and three others who were the last four in alphabetical order. In addition to each group leader being responsible for three or four other people, each of us has one other area of responsibility: hotel group leader, documents group leader, bus group leader and airport group leader. I’m the airport group leader, which means I’ll confirm the check-in location with airline staff before we unload the bus and make sure everyone goes to the right place after leaving the bus.
Our cohort consists of 17 people. We’re 10 men and seven women. At least in the times immediately before COVID-19, about two thirds of volunteers were women, but I’m not sure how things stand now that we’re returning to service after all volunteers were returned to the USA in 2020. (At the beginning, Peace Corps was primarily a male service, but women outnumbered men starting in the 1980s.) The youngest is a 22-year-old woman; the oldest is a man who didn’t say his exact age, but mentioned that he had voted for John F. Kennedy. Since Kennedy’s last election was in 1960, and the voting age was 21 back then, that would make him born no later than 1939, putting him in his 80s. He is one of several members of my cohort who have previously served in other Peace Corps assignments.
As far as I know, I’m the only Rotarian in the group, and I imagine I’m probably the only one without a bachelor’s degree.
Most people in the group are going to teach English. I am one of the community development people; I think there are about four community development folks.
We’re all looking forward to getting to North Macedonia. Our flight leaves Dulles at 5:35 p.m. Sunday. We change planes in Vienna, Austria, then arrive in Skopje at 11:50 a.m. Central European Summer Time (or 5:50 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time) on Monday.
A note on time changes: North Macedonia sets clocks one hour back to standard time on Oct. 30; most of the USA does it on Nov. 6. It’s usually a six-hour time difference between North Macedonia and Eastern Time, but it varies around the time when the clocks change.