October 11, 2007

Training is starting to wind down really quickly. This week has flown by. At first, I felt as if training would never end. Now, I feel as if there's not enough time to do all the things I need to do to prepare for my LPI and the "Homestay Thank You". We have one more day of official training and that's it. Monday's our language test and we head off for K'la for a couple of days before being shunted out into the real world of a PCV. It's quite scary. It's also hard to think that our group will be split up after next Thursday. We really are a dysfunctional family, and I'll be very sad to say goodbye to everyone. It's especially hard knowing that a lot of my good friends will be on the opposite side of the country.

More Tragedy
We found out today that our APCD is leaving us at the end of the month, pretty much right after we swear in. It's hard to describe what a big impact this has on me, individually, and us, as a group. Jeffrey has been our advocate from the beginning, and he's American, so he understands "where we're coming from", more than an HCN can. That's not to say that the HCNs haven't been awesome, because they have. But, as far as admins go, Jeffrey's the bomb. And now he's leaving us, right at the beginning of our service. It's a hard blow.


October 16, 2007

Training. Is. Over. I moved all of my crap out of the Homestay house, took my LPI, and am now chilling in a pretty decent hotel in K'la. It has running water and a porcelain choo. Plus, I just gorged myself on a ton of awesome food. What more could a girl ask for?

You know you're on US soil when you're freezing your ass off in an obscenely air conditioned room.
We visited the US Embassy today. We met the ambassador's deputy chief, a political officer of the embassy, the program coordinator for USAID, and the cultural attaché. Unfortunately, the deputy director of the CDC-Ug wasn't able to come talk to us. Got to shoot off some e-mails very quickly in their resource room. Pretty sure all those e-mails were somehow secretly read by the government. Good thing they were completely innocuous.

Got to do some shopping in K'la today, too. We're all busy picking up things we think we'll need for our site. It was completely overwhelming and stressful. It's so strange to walk into a big supermarket/super-center after being in a small town like L'wero for so long. I don't really know how to explain the shock of it. It was difficult deciding whether or not to buy the little tablets that clean your toilet bowl! I hate just thinking about it right now. And it pissed me off that a travel-size bottle of Listerine cost the equivalent of US $10. That's messed up. Oral hygiene should not cost that much.

I just can't seem to escape…
Celine Dion's song from Titanic
teaching