Disclaimer: the contents of this blog are entirely my own and do not represent the United States Government or the US Peace Corps in anyway.

In less than 24 hours, I will be in Philadelphia, and a few days later, Malawi.

The biggest question from everyone has been this: When did you decide to do this?

I honestly don’t remember.

I can’t remember not deciding or not wanting to do this. In high school I had some vague idea of what the Peace Corps was (as I think most people do. I can’t count the number of times that people here have assumed it was some sort of missions organization and it sounded cool. Some friends and I were curious about what it actually was, so in 12th grade we were in a class that had computer screens and we weren’t doing anything (who does anything in 12th grade?). We looked up what it was and how to apply online. I liked the idea for some inexplicable reason that I can’t verbalize, but I did notice that at the bottom it said that almost every Peace Corps Volunteer has a college degree and this will make you much more likely to be accepted. “Alright,” I thought. “Go to college. Get a degree. Do Peace Corps. Sounds simple.”