Monday morning Sr. Julio woke me up a 7:00 to get ready to leave for the training center. It takes about a half hour to walk there, so I ate a quick breakfast and we left at 7:30. Before I went to sleep on Sunday Sr. Julio told me that there were two other volunteers that lived nearby, pointing off in some random direction as he said it. When we walked out the door I realized that he had actually been pointing to the house across the street and our direct neighbor to the right. So Jon and Kelsey walked with us to the center. I am SO happy that I have friends so close. It’s nice to see smiling, English speaking faces each morning. We had more orientation meetings all day. One assumes that we eventually get actual information, but at this point we’re still learning how things are going to work. I have training from 8 to 5 every week day, with an hour for lunch at 12. Our families make lunches for all of us, so we actually turn up with lunch boxes. In addition, most of the parents walked their volunteers to the training center that first day, so it was like kindergarten for 24-year-olds :-P I didn’t have a lunch box because Sr. Julio decided to bring my lunch to me at the center. There was a small mix up though and, the best we can tell, I ended up eating the guard’s lunch. In my defense the guard did hand the bag to me, so I don’t really know what happened. I was thrilled to see a whole avocado over some lettuce with tomato slices and cut carrots, all dressed with lime. Delicious right? That was until I went to the health lesson that afternoon where they told us we weren’t supposed to eat raw vegetables for the first few weeks because they might makes us sick. I thought I was done for, but luckily I didn’t get sick ☺ That afternoon also brought the first of many informational sessions on diarrhea. Yeah, you read that right. Diarrhea gets its own info session in the Peace Corps . Some of the PCTs discussed an option for a new PC slogan; “join the Peace Corps and get comfortable talking about your poo.” I also feel that in the interest of honesty I should confess that this blog entry was almost named after the info session, “oh the places you’ll go”. Look closely, you’ll enjoy the pun. And yes, part of the presentation was in Suess-ian rhyme. Welcome to the humor of the Peace Corps and our PCMO Jorge.
Kelsey, Jon and I got a little lost on our way home, but it didn’t take us long to sort it out. I expect the walk home to generally be a silly event. We all sort of dawdle together while wandering down the roads. It’s a break between Spanish classes and Spanish houses. I ate a quick dinner and then Sr. Julio took me to the market in Chosica so I could buy an alarm clock. We also walked around the town center for a while. It’s an interesting little town and I will enjoy exploring for myself sometime soon. We sat in the central park and talked for about an hour. Sr. Julio takes very seriously my need to learn Spanish. So he sits me down for at least an hour every night and just talks about whatever comes to mind. I imagine that at some point I’ll look back and find this very amusing, but right now it’s actually a challenge for me every day. Once I got home I braved the shower, read a little bit and went to bed. Two things I’ve learned: 1- If you want people to take shorter showers (talking sub-3 minutes here) turn off the hot water. 2- living life in two languages is exhausting. I expect I’ll be ready to go to sleep by about 9 every night for a while :-P
No comments:
Post a Comment