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Published: March 3rd 2010
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February 17th. I arrive at the Logan airport (of course a million hours too early) my parents clinging to my arms. I'm grumpy. I just want to be in DC. The flight was nothing special. I arrive in DC around 11 am and after walking around asking a few people when to go I get my bus pass. Immediately after me another girl approaches the travel stand and she looks like a PC volunteer. Her name is Carrie. We're instantly friends and we share the bus together. It's always nice approaching strange new adventures with a buddy by your side. She relaxes me and I still turn to her for the occasional comforting.
We arrive at the hotel and I drop off my bags and take care of my paperwork. The whole day I'm fumbling and dropping things. The excitement in overwhelming and manifesting itself through my clumsy body. Luckily, everyone is nice. The day in Washington is practically a blur, it went by so fast. We learned some of the basic PC stuff and received out shots and then were sent to bed.
One day in DC, that's all they gave us and then we were off to
Quito, Ecuador. February 18th.
We arrive in Quito late that night. The airport scene is hairy and getting 55 volunteer's luggage is a mess. Farren (my room mate in DC) loses a shoe that was tied to her pack. Eventually we get outside and then it happens. Some guy yelling at me in Spanish and I have no idea what he's saying! It's awesome. I turn to Reid, who is a fellow Bostonian for assistance. Eventually I get to where I need to be going. The Natural Resource Conservation (NRC) kids get red name tags, the Sustainable Agriculture (AG) yellow. We basically get to the hotel in Quito and go to bed.
February 19th. I don't even remember. Or perhaps I should say, I try to forget. That was the day we received way too much information, a few more shots, and of course, the dreaded language exam. The only vocab I could remember was furniture vocab. When my facilitator asked me about my house, I was like, “Si,en mi cuarto hay una alfombra, una lampara, una cama, una mesa... etc.” But that was all I could remember. Never have I been so embarrassed. On the bright side,
I found out there are other engineers that don't know a word of Spanish. At least I'm not alone.
The 20th we went to the equator. I'm angry because they did the sink trick where they showed the water turning counter clockwise and then clockwise depending on which side you were on, but we found out later that it was only a slight of hand trick. And I fell for it. But other than that, it's cools to cross visiting the equator off my list. I've now stood on two hemispheres at the same time. How many people can say that?
We arrive in Cayambe that afternoon. I receive my third room mate. The facilities are nice, but we are basically locked in a compound in the middle of the city. We have training sessions all week. They range from safety and security, health, Agriculture, and language. I'm put into a group of people who speak the same level as me. It's awesome. Our instructor's name is Lenin. He's probably the funniest and most patient instructor in the entire world. My language skills are depressing. The security sessions are scary and basically tells us of all of the
worst case scenarios. The health sessions are about malaria and diarrhea. Oh, and we eventually get even more shots. Thank goodness for the AG sessions. Learning about all of the awesome things that I'll eventually be able to do is what I cling to in order to stay afloat. I cannot wait to live on a farm and own chickens, milk cows, and teach families about the importance of composting.
Oh, and the food, amazing. I mean, I never know one could cook rice and potatoes so many different delicious ways.
February 26th. After about a week of training in Cayambe it's time for us to go our separate ways into smaller communities based on our language skills. My group is going to Pasillo. It's so small that we can't find it on a map. We have half a day of training again in the morning where we learn more about all of the different ways people will try to steal things from you and then in the afternoon we gather our things and out host family comes and picks us up.
Off to Pesillo and (almost) all on my own.
The contents of this Web site are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. Government or the Peace Corps.
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