We are in route to Istanbul, Delta Flight 75 from JFK.  The in flight film was The Kings Speech.  Brilliant!  I am so glad to have seen it  It was on the top of my list of movies to see before I left the country and I never had the time for it.  Just goes to show that things tend to work out if you just trust the system.

People have been asking me for weeks if I am excited about my service and thus far I have mostly said that I am not.  Reason being is that I was excited weeks ago and that recently I have just been READY.  Well, here I am, on the place, the USA at my back.  NOW I AM EXCITED!

The people in K-19 are all amazing grade-A / 5 Star people.  Few seem to have the diverse array of experiences that I have but they are all very accomplished in their own rights.

There are 43 in the groups.  The vast majority of the are assigned to teaching english.  There are around 8 or 9 that will be health educators.  Of the Business and Community Developers in the SOCD program, there are only 6.

One interesting thing that has been topic of many conversations today is the duration that people have been waiting for this moment.  Almost everyone applied over a year ago.  One person had their initial nomination in April 2009 and for various reasons has not actually gotten selected until now!  I of course applied just 6 months ago.  I seem to be the very rare and “unheard of” exception.  I’m not complaining!

I have not slept in days  Wednesday I did not sleep at all.  Thursday night I got only 3-4 hours of sleep.  Last night about 2 hours.  I slept through take off on the plane but after an hour they fed us and I have been up ever since.  I am not at all tired now.. not even 6 hours into the flight (its 11pm at our point of origin).

If I don’t start sleeping sometime soon I will regret it greatly.  I guess I should get on that now!

Goodnight!