So clearly this won’t be a day by day thing…..but I am going to do my best to keep up to date with the madness that is life in the Peace Corps. And yes I realize I’ve only been here a few days, but believe me when I say its nuts J so let’s dive right in……
>Atlanta, DC, and our arrival in Lima OR “I’m so glad I didn’t have to eat the soap”
I actually left Athens on June 8 to stay in a hotel in Atlanta the night before my flight. I believe that my mother intended it to be relaxing afternoon by the pool before I left the country, but it turned into a frantic game of tetris to fit everything into my suitcases. We brought along the bathroom scale from home to make sure everything was the right weight. My packing got a little out of hand. I can admit at this point that I might have done a fairly bad job of it :-P my bags were stuffed FULL and yet I still don’t have things I should.
That night our whole family went to dinner at Uncle Julio’s with my friend Katy and her family. She is another volunteer in the Peace Corps Peru 17 group with me. We met on facebook and decided we should meet in person before we left the country. Dinner was great and our parents now have someone else to commiserate with. Or in my mom’s case….instead of commiserating, she bought a car. (Kidding mom, it’s about time you ditched the mini-van.) I had a 7:15 flight out of Atlanta on Thursday; which meant two things: (1) I had to get up earlier than I wanted too and (2) Katy almost missed the flight. Yikes! It all worked out though and we actually met another Peace Corps Trainee (PCT, as we’re called) on our flight. His name is Kyle and the three of us gabbed the ENTIRE way to DC. Our flight landed a little early, all of our luggage made it there with us and the shuttle got us to the hotel in time to eat lunch before our meetings started. Excellent!
We were in meetings all day. There were a few ice breaker games, some group skits and few info sessions that would’ve scared most sensible people…..but we’re not sensible, we’re Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVS). Heads up, lots of acronyms with the Peace Corps; it is the government after all. There are 51 of us total. We’re split between two programs, youth development and small business development. And oddly enough, thanks to an ice breaker, we now know that there isn’t a single “only-child” among us. Who knew? Thursday night I went to dinner with Ellie, Lee and Lee’s girlfriend Britton. We went to this great little tavern in Georgetown called Billy Martin’s. It was my last dinner in the states so we made it a good one. Thanks guys!
Friday morning we had to be out of our rooms by 8 am to catch our bus to the airport. I volunteered to be a group leader, so I chased around 9 other PCTs to make sure we all got out of the hotel and to the airport with our PC passports. Apparently no one told the American Airlines desk at Regan that 51 sleep deprived PCTs and ALL of their luggage would be showing up at the same time that morning, so they were a little shocked. Things went smoothly though and we all hung around the airport for a few hours before our flight. The flight to Miami was fine; I sat with a girl named Kim. She’s great. We landed 40 minutes before our flight to Lima was supposed to leave, but apparently 51 people are enough cause to hold a flight. We all ran through the airport with our phones stuck to our ears (had to get those last few calls in) and invaded the plane bound for Lima. I sat with Nicole and Zach and once we realized sleep wasn’t going to happen we just talked the whole way. Most of us got up to walk around the plane to visit with people in the group. People aren’t usually that social on airplanes, so it didn’t take long before the rest of the passengers on the plan started asking questions. Ha! The flight was only about 5 ½ hours but it made for a long day. We landed in Lima where Sanjay, our country director, was able to meet us at the immigration line. We all went through passport control, baggage claim, and customs before loading onto buses for a 1 ½ hour bus ride…..the day just kept getting longer :-P We arrived at Villa de Paz around midnight and paired off into our little rooms. I roomed with Kim. Anecdote: There was a small colorful packet laying on each of our beds, which many of us first thought to be food. Sadly it turned out to be soap; which did nothing for that fact that we were all hungry. 1:00 in the morning found us all standing out on the porch discussing the rumor of sandwiches that was floating around. Kim and I were about to give up when one of the trainers turned up with a stack of cheese sandwiches. What a relief! Because as Kim said “that soap was starting to look tasty.” Lesson: always pack snacks :-P
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