Waiting for the airport to open...
After a long day of staging we have arrived at Ronald Reagan Airport to begin our trek down to El Salvador. We checked out of the hotel around 2:30 am and it is currently 5:49 am and our flight departs at 7:15 am. I decided to take advantage of this free wi-fi to fill everyone in on the staging event. After turning in our paperwork and receiving government issued ATM cards everyone gathered around and began the ice breaker worksheet they provided. Pretty typical ice breaker, for example: find someone who only checked one bag...find someone brought a musical instrument...someone who is an only child...etc. From there on it was a walk through of the Peace Corps expectations and procedures we will be experiencing in the next few days. We reflected on our aspirations, anxieties, and our commitment to this life changing experience. We had special guests stop in to listen and give some words of encouragement, President Barack Obama.........just kidding! That would have been pretty awesome. The Regional Director for our region which covers all of Latin America, the Pacific Islands and some other remote islands spoke to us about some of the recent changes the Peace Corps has gone through for safety and security reasons. He was joined by a couple other RPCVS (returned peace corps volunteers) from El Salvador. It was very refreshing and reassuring to listen to these men express their love for the country and the Salvadoran people. I also took the opportunity to speak with two people after the event that were listening in the back. One of them is also an RPCV from El Salvador and the other lived in El Salvador has a diplomats wife. They gave me some great intel on the country and were really encouraging and excited for me. Other things covered in the staging event were safety concerns and how we can avoid getting into sketchy situations. I found out that I will probably be able to grow a mustache, so today is day 1 of operation mustachio bashio. After the staging event the whole group, 9 girls 6 guys (1 married couple), headed out to Dupont circle to grab some grub. The married couple, the Smiths, my roommate Tyler and another volunteer decided to grab some Thai food. I got pineapple fried rice, large hot saki and a cold beer. I was very satisfied after that meal and just wanted to roll over in my air conditioned room. Unfortunately we had to walk back in the 94 degree heat, which warranted another cold beer upon our arrival to the hotel. After sufficiently lubricating myself I had to pack up and get a couple hours of sleep.
I may not be able to blog in the next week or so, our training schedule is very controlled and packed with meetings and more orientations. Hopefully I will be getting a cell phone next week, so I will be trying to get a couple calls out. If you get a funky number calling you, answer it.
I am one step closer to getting the biggest culture shock of my life and I can't wait. There are so many things that I am going to miss back home, but in the bigger scheme of things 2 years is not that long and I am kinda looking forward to finding out the things that I miss the most.
I'm getting a little burnt out on this post, I guess you have to wait until my next post. It will be a much more exciting post, I promise you.
Paz y amor
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