Staging Event

My flight to D.C. was excellent and switching flights in Chicago was no problem. When I arrived at the hotel, my roommate for the night had already arrived, but was not in the room, so I went down to the staging event area to get signed. I immediately met two female fellow Peace Corps (PC) trainees, both from the Northwest. They were super cool. We waited in line and chitchatted a bit. I was glad that I read the fine print on my student loan deferment papers because most of the other volunteers had the wrong paper. (I had to call and email twice to get the right one before leaving home.)

So after registration we began the introduction at 2:00, which felt like 6:00. All of us were exhausted because basically no one slept the night/days before and, of course, everyone seemed nervous yet excited. We played games to get to know each other and reviewed really vague information that was sent to us already via email. Most of the questions that everybody asked were answered with the stock response, “You will go over that in training.” While it was nice to meet the staff and all the other the other trainees that I will spend the next 10 weeks with, I did not find the information helpful, and I just kept thinking, “I flew to D.C. only to fly back to Texas (layover in Houston) to get to Peru.” 

Meeting all the other volunteers was a fulfilling experience. It was so nice to be in a room with 34 other people that understand why I am serving in the PC and what I have been through to get to where I am. There were no questions why and no confusing looks. Everyone had a common thread. However, there are a lot of differences also. Most people are from the north…to be expected. There is actually another volunteer who grew up in Texas, but she has been living in Maryland for about 3 years now. There is also a guy from TN, a chick from GA, and one from SC. We are composed of youth development workers and business workers. There are several psychologists among the youth development workers and several people with Master’s Degrees. Most people seem to be fluent in Spanish, but I know there must be someone else at my beginner level. I am not the only person in my 30s! There is at least two others. 

After the staging event, I was really tired, but wanted to get to know my fellow volunteers better (plus the Peace Corps gave us money to eat a good final meal in the U.S.), so I joined a group of about 20 and we headed out to Georgetown to go eat. We quickly realized that nowhere was going to seat 20 people, so we divided up in half between Mexican food or burgers. Of course, I chose Mexican. A little ironic that my last American dinner was Mexican, but it was yummy. I wanted to go see the monuments since I had not been in D.C. since I was eleven, but it was almost 11:00 by the time we got done eating and we had to get up by 6:00 the next morning.

 

Sorry that I completely forgot my camera while in D.C., but more to come of more distant places!