Week 1 [June 27, 2010 – July 2, 2010]
Ah, I finally got to sleep in! I thought I was going to sleep in until 12 pm because I stayed up late watching “Dear John” but I woke up at 9 am -______-. That gave me time to clean my room, take a bucket shower, and eat breakfast. I had scrambled eggs, turkey ham, and cheese. I fashioned a tortilla sandwich out of them and it was deeelicious. Hot chocolate was served as well. Hung out with the fam for a while then headed out again to do some internet stuff. I was able to practice my Spanish a lot. I spoke with one guy at the bus stop and another at the internet cafe. The first guy's name was Josue and the second guy was Alejandro. I am running into so many Alejandro's!! It's a bit humorous to me because a friend and I were joking that I'm going to meet an Alejandro because of Lady Gaga's song.. and here I am, meeting Alejandros.. =P. He seemed really nice, he sells roses of all different colors, and travels from Teguz to these hilly towns to sell his flowers. At the internet cafe I was trying to order chilaquiles but they came and served me french fries with ketchup and cheese instead :(. Ok, my Spanish isn't THAT bad! Haha.. well there obviously was some miscommunication and I'm pretty sure it happened when I tried to ask exactly if the chilaquiles were made of tortilla chips and I accidentally said papa because I was thinking potato chips... whoops!
Came back home and met the relatives of the fam, and sat in the living room reading through all the booklets the PC gave us. I later joined host dad and babysitter to go buy some groceries. Dinner was baleadas!! Soooo freaking good. Well, I had the ones they make at the training center cafeteria but those are nothing compared to my host mom's. Tortillas de arina (flour, they're larger than the tortillas de maíz) with frijoles (beans) and mantequilla (almost like sour cream) inside. Yum yum yum, reminded me of a soft taco sort of. “I Am Legend” was playing on the TV so I was watching some of that in Spanish but then realized it was getting late and retired to mi dormitorio.
Ok, I'm not going to keep track of days anymore because I can't possibly do that for 27 months, but I thought it was appropriate for the first week.
We received our training schedules. It really does seem intense and I really hope that I'll be able to accomplish everything set out for us to do.
And I just realized that I was taking the malaria pills everyday.... it's supposed to be once a week >_<. Well I only did it for 3 days so hopefully that's okay...
I found out that I'm ranked Intermediate-Low in Spanish! That's great news, because the level we all have to be at to become PCVs is Intermediate-Mid, which is only one level higher than Int-Low. And technically at the end of PST, we should all advance 2 or 3 levels.. so hopefully I'll be Advanced-Low at least, by the time I finish.
We learned how to thoroughly wash our fruits and vegetables, and it was a very hands-on training session because in the end we made a veggie salad and a fruit salad! The veggies and fruits here are soo flavorful.
I got about a million picadas, or bug bites. I'm not sure where they're from because my host family doesn't have any, but we were thinking it's from the fleas in the grass since I have to walk to and from training everyday. Le sigh. We washed my bedsheets and I'm going to wash all my clothes pretty soon. The nurse said I may also have had an allergic reaction to a couple bites, which spurred even more to come up sort of like hives I guess? Now I have to take anti-histamine medication and use anti-bacterial ointment to prevent infection. Yaaaaaay -_________-.
Anyway. First week of training went okay. I think everyone is a bit tired and overwhelmed because we're learning a lot of material in our Spanish classes, but I can already tell I'm getting better. I'm not really sure what else to write here anymore... Just taking one day at a time. I've learned that I can eat questionable things if I don't know what they are (sometimes), and that I can sleep in a bed with a small cockroach and silverfish in it and not freak out that they were in my bed the whole night. Oh, and that I can bear cold bucket showers. Maybe not big deals to most people, but if I was back in the states, I'd probably be complaining about each and every one of these things because they're totally avoidable... but I realized I ain't in Kansas anymore and I just gotta get used to this since I'll be here for 2 years!
I washed my clothes for the first time without a washing machine. It's actually really easy but it's time-consuming and I can tell that by the time I'm done here, my arms are going to be ripped ;).
Oh, and I'm getting a minor tan =]. I will probably be uber dark by the time I'm done. w00t!
