First things first, a quick breakdown of who we are and how training went down, with details to follow in upcoming posts. 53 strangers meet in a hotel (many of us escorted from the airport in a stretch limo supplied by the hotel, quite ironic...) in Atlanta on Wednesday, February 23rd. Besides Jessica F who is from Atlanta, I probably have the shortest distance to travel, coming in from Columbia, SC after a nice week-long visit with my folks in Aiken. Yet I am the 2nd to last person to arrive, several hours late due to a number of flight delays. Quite an ominous start to this new adventure. But like Peace Corps spouts throughout the entire year-long application process, be prepared to be flexible over the next couple years of your life. They weren't kidding.
We endure the first of what will be many, many meetings involving ice breakers, skits, PC policy, and general information/thought sharing. From what I can tell in those couple hours, we have quite an interesting, entertaining group from a variety of different backgrounds. In total, there are 53 of us, ranging in age from 21 to 71 years old. There are 4 married couples. Four rugby players. Several folks from the DC area, whether there recently for college, work, or born and raised in the area. 29 men, 24 women broken up into 3 projects: Business (12 guys, 6 girls), Water and Sanitation (13 guys, 5 girls), and Health (4 guys, 13 girls). We will all get to know each other quite well during training.
Training is 11 weeks long. The first 3.5 weeks are spent in the PC training center in Zarabanda, neighbor to touristy Valle de Angeles and 30 minutes outside of the capital city of Tegucigalpa. During this time, we attend meetings detailing PC policy, health sessions, security sessions, they figure out what level of Spanish we all come in with, and we get started on our technical program-specific training. We each live with our own host families in the neighborhoods in and around Zarabanda, as a way to start the full immersion into Honduran culture and the Spanish language.
After general training is complete, the 3 projects get split up for Field Based Training, and are sent to separate towns; Business to Yuscaran, Wat/San to El Paraiso, and Health to Villa de San Antonio. Clearly by the names of the towns alone, Wat/San wins. FBT entails 6 weeks of project-specific training. Four hours a day of Spanish class, four hours a day of business training. Again, we all live with individual host families. FBT is more hands-on, we get pushed a lot more to use our Spanish, we go on field trips to experience the Honduran business climate. Some of us grow wicked facial hair.
Six more weeks are up and we all reunite back in Zarabanda, move back in with our first families. Another week and a half of general policy as well as classes preparing us for the real world (no more gringos, no more English, life is about to change dramatically). Then the big day comes, Swearing In, Friday May 13th. We all officially become Peace Corps Volunteers! All 53 of us. It really is quite a feat that we all made it. There were certainly many plausible reasons for people to head home but I'm proud to say that we all pushed through and achieved our first of many goals. The next day, our wonderfully safe American bubble bursts and we are on our own, to figure out exactly what it is we are doing here and what it is we want to get out of it.
The next many posts will flesh out the above, put some meat on the skeleton and attempt to give you a real sense of who we are and what we experienced. The first 3 months were fun. Here's to the next 24!
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