Staging-Orientation
Staging and Orientation have been a whirlwind of activity, hence the lack of communication up until now. Still, in the past couple of days I have met a lot of interesting Americans from a range of backgrounds, from a variety of places in the U.S. (among the more popular being Wisconsin and Oregon) and each with their own reason for wanting to join the Peace Corps.
The journey began last Tuesday when, having woken up at 4:30 am, I hopped on a flight from Hartford to DC. Nena, my older and wiser sister, picked me up from the Reagan/National airport and drove me into to town to the Holiday Inn on Wisconsin Ave. in Georgetown/Glover Park. Dropping my bags off at the hotel, She and I grabbed some coffee, perused a few Central American-history and Thai-cook books, and ate breakfast at a small French bistro back on Wisconsin Ave. and near the hotel. Shortly thereafter, a quick goodbye left me checking in to my room and getting dressed (no jeans!) for my Peace Corps staging event.
Staging turned out to be quicker and less painful than I could have imagined. After sorting out our paperwork—turning various forms of consent, life-insurance policies, and a few others—, we received in exchange an envelope with our new Peace Corps passports, a debit card, and a few other sheets of paper outlining general information about our travel arrangements and terms of service. A handful of ice-breaker exercises later (one of which entailed groups of us drawing pictures to represent our greatest sources of anxiety and for which nearly every group drew a large, hairy spider), it was nearly time for all of our last dinners in the United States (chicken club on M Street), then bed, and our flight to Managua.
Arriving in the airport in Managua around 11:30am on Wednesday (GMT -7), all 43 of us quickly passed through customs, picked up our bags (none of which, as far as I am aware, had been tampered with) and walked outside into 90 degrees of balmy humidity. A delegation composed of Peace Corps Staff and current Peace Corps Volunteers met us with brightly colored signs and cheers and chatted with us while we waited for our vans to arrive to take us to Granada for our pre-service training orientation.
Situated quaintly on Lake Managua, Granada is one of the oldest cities in the country and one of two contenders for best colonial architecture of Nicaragua. The drive was quick and uneventful—I am beginning to realize that very little is far from very much else in this country—and the accommodations in Granada were very comfortable. In our afternoon session we were officially welcomed as PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees) by the acting country director and given an overview of how the following days’ orientation would proceed. A delicious meal soon gave way to excited chatter that gave way to sleepy small talk and, in-turn, bed.
The following day started with a bang, more precisely the five o’clock chiming of bells from the cathedral next door. Breakfast at seven and a quick session on health beginning at eight were soon followed by individual language examinations. In the spirit of examinations, we had been forewarned that the examiner for the oral evaluations would merely ask us question and would under no circumstances respond to any pleas for help. My examiner, who I was later to find out would become my full-time Language Facilitator was patient, quiet, kind, and completely unwilling to help me out of any of the conjugative traps that I so easily and repeatedly to set for myself. Still, I must have done something right and the next day was informed that I would be placed in one of the groups of advanced speakers and would undergo the 3-month remainder of my training in city Masatepe, where I now find myself.
Still, I had several more sessions to sit through—one on safety and security, another given by the TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) program director, another couple on exactly what I’m still unsure—before the ‘orientation’ portion of my training was over. As a surprise, on Friday evening after the last session the trainers had organized a boat trip around some of the ‘isletas’ on lake Managua near Granada. As the pilot of the boat that I was in told me as we cruised in and out of countless islands each of which approximately the size of suburban house in the United States (and some of which actually had houses built into them), the isletas had been formed by the eruption of the nearby Masaya volcano.
A fiesta was organized for that night, seeing that it was our group’s last evening together, and the next morning we boarded buses that took us to our training villages (where we will be living for the next three months while we complete our Peace Corps training). As luck would have it, I was placed here, in Masatepe, one of the larger villages of the state (departamento) of Masaya and with seven other Trainees.
When the bus pulled up at the stop and the driver announced that we had reached the residence where I would be living for the next several months, I was met by my new host mother, sister, and my 15-year-old brother. Both are very kind and welcomed me very warmly and before I knew it I had a hot plate of gallo pinto (rice and beans) in front of me at the dining room table and a joltamal (sweet/cheesy/jol-tamale) in one hand. Then my new host-brother began peppering me with questions about the United States and Brazil and just about anything else that he could think of and he hasn’t yet stopped.
Yay bro thanks for the update!
Is that your bed in your new casa? Is that your mosquito net? Is that your host brother?