Day O

It feels like it’s been forever since my last post (in America!), but really it’s only been three days! Tuesday was kind of fun, well not most of it, compared to Wednesday though, which we will get to, it was a dream. The flight from Cola was early, got up at 4a.m., but problem less and the airport had free wireless. All airports should really have free wireless, cheap D.C. and Miami bastards. Anyway, got to D.C. actually a little early, and was definitely the first Peace Corps person to try and check in that morning. Left the bags with some niceish hotel workers and met Katy for a little breakfast (thanks for the skittles and starbursts!) and made it back to the hotel. Still couldn’t check in (apparently this is one of those swanky hotels that are booked solid in the middle of the week for no apparent reason), by this time though there were a couple other volunteers there to meet and share paranoid fears with.
We had this really long orientation session where we did things like draw our feelings on giant sheets of paper with a group, seriously that was mostly what we did. I’m one of like 3 Southern people here, one Mississippi, one North Carolina. Some Florida’s, but that doesn’t count. Afterwards, the people in charge gave us way more money than we really needed to go out and eat wherever. So some of us decided to hit up Georgetown for our last supper. Really fun, lots of wine and beer, Katy came by. Dinner was definitely the highlight of this long day. We got back around 11 so we could get a nap in before our 1 a.m. checkout time.

Day 1

This day was hella long. We had to checkout of the hotel at 1 so we could take a bus to the airport at 1:30. The airport was closed, so we all just laid around on the floor and played cards and what not. No free wireless…assholes. Why did we get to the airport before it was open? That is a stellar question to which apparently no one knows the answer. We herded thorough eventually for our flight to Miami. I slept in fits for pretty much the entire flight and felt slightly less bitchy upon arrival. The Miami airport is really nice, but not quite nice enough to enjoy staying in for over 4 hours which is what ended up happening.
First, right before boarding was supposed to happen, the man came on and was all like “there are some mechanical problems we are working on, so slight delay” to which I thought slight, take your damn time! Then he came back on and goes “so we’re going to think about it for another hour.” While the airport staff was pondering whether or not our lives were super important or just fairly important, we played more cards, no free wireless…really Miami, I expected more from you. I guess the hard thinking airport staff didn’t want our blood on their hands, so they decided to change our plane and we all herded across the airport to another gate. We waited there for awhile, before boarding. Just as I laid my head back against my seat for some rest, someone came on the intercom to tell us to all get off for “security reasons” so we all exited the aircraft with much pissiness, though at this point it was kind of funny. Finally we got on the plane where I discovered a damn crying baby two rows behind me. If that had kept up the entire flight, I might have lost my shit, but luckily it only lasted like 15 min or so.
We all excitedly looked out our windows upon arrival, and Nicaragua looked fantastic from the air. A bunch of PC staff greeted us at the airport and we took an hour bus ride to Grenada, which is lovely. The hotel we are staying at is pretty much paradise. We had a couple hours of information sessions and dinner, before they let us go. Most of us hit the sheets early, I went to bed at 9 when I realized I was staring at a wall for over 5 uninterrupted minutes.

Day 2

Such a refreshing sleep. We had to be at breakfast at 7 and some people went jogging at 6. I was really planning on it, don’t roll your eyes, but then I didn’t, which sounds like most of my stories about exercise. There were some current volunteers around, which is fantastic, since they just went through what we are going thorough very recently. This one girl told me about how poor her Spanish was when she got here and how she was placed in the beginner low class, which is the lowest, but now she’s pretty much fluent. She’s my inspiration. We had lots of information sessions today and got a whole pharmacia worth of medicine. We also had our individual Spanish evaluations. This went pretty much as expected. The evaluators spoke no English and my lady soon realized I spoke no Spanish. I mangled her language for several minutes before resorting to my blank stare method. So then she would point at basic things like my shoe and a chair and I was all over that. Except for body parts, that section of vocabulary completely left me. That sounds like not a big deal, but she pointed to like 10 different ones, as my hopes of beginner high or intermediate low class went fluttering out the window. I’m not extremely concerned about it though. I’ll just have to show improvement to an intermediate medium or high level by July to pass training.
Later, some of us walked around the city. We took a few pictures and I’ll try to attach some of mine. The city is beautiful, but really hot in the afternoon. Due to my extreme sweating situation, some other volunteers asked how my run went when I got back. To which I replied, quite well, before chugging two bottles of water. I just took my malaria pills, so I’ll keep you posted of any weird dreams I might have. One of the current volunteers said hers’ were all sexual, so…I probably won’t keep you posted on those. I didn't proofread this so...sorry. Adios!