I Made It!

After a full day of traveling and lugging around luggage that’s bigger than me through the airport I finally made it to Guatemala! Me and 53 other trainees flew from D.C. to Miami and then landed in Guatemala City. It was nice to have so many other people who were in the same boat as me and who are about to embark on the same adventure.  When we got to Guatemala City we took our first “chicken bus” (an old U.S. school bus painted in bright colors and the most common form of transportation) to get to the Peace Corps training center located in Santa Lucía which is in the historic city of Antigua.  There are 4 active volcanoes around Antigua, 3 of which I can see from my host family’s house!

                The first few days have just been welcoming us to the Peace Corps, orientations on security and safety, and vaccinations. Two of us are staying with each host family, and the houses are within walking distance from the training center.  There are 6 people in my host family, and they own a beauty salon with massage tables and saunas... too bad I didn’t have enough time to take advantage of that! My bedroom is like a little apartment connected to their house and then the bathroom is a separate building outside the house. I had my first electric shower experience which sounds really scary but I promise it’s safe! The water is heated by electricity but I have yet to take a warm shower. All my showers have been freezing cold at 6:30am when it’s like 45 degrees….  so I guess I’ll get pretty good at taking quick showers.

The food has been amazing! My host mom and her daughter are really good cooks. They serve beans for every meal… solid beans, liquid beans, cold beans, warm beans….. every form a bean you could imagine. Then they usually have some sort of vegetable and meat and then of course muchas tortillas and bread.  They eat a lot of eggs…even for dinner and rice. They made this drink called “encamperina” and it looks like thick milk and it’s made with fish, eggs, sugar, and who knows what else….  it sounds really disgusting but believe it or not it’s actually really good!!! I have a feeling I’m going to be encountering a lot of weird foods over the next couple years. A lot of my fellow trainees have made the bathroom their friend but thanks to my host mom’s awesome cooking I have been bathroom free J

At the training center we had to go through language interviews so that they could group us according to language level. Today we will be moving to our host family sites that we’ll be living at for the next 3 months.  There will be a group of us at each site but we’ll each have our own family.  I am going to be in Parramos, which is only about 30 minutes away from the training center, with 7 others trainees from my group.  We’ll be in our communities from now on and will only visit the training center on Tuesdays for language classes.

It’s been pretty crazy the past few days… we had to pack a bag for 3 days while staying in Antigua so I’m anxious to get to my site and unpack all my junk. One phrase that I’ve been hearing a lot as we’re all trying to embrace the unknown is “no tenga pena” whichs means don’t worry!  Other than that there’s nothing too exciting happening yet so I’ll be sure to keep you up to date when I meet my host family at my site. Hasta luego!