PST Placement

(From August 20, 2008)

Today we received our placements for PST (Pre-Service Training). I found out I’ll be heading to somewhere in the southern part of Negros Oriental in the Visayas. It sounds like it’s a beautiful city—very clean, college town, ocean, etc. Can’t wait! We’ll be heading out at 3:30 AM tomorrow for our respective cluster sites, traveling by plane. Our first activity after we arrive is meeting our host families at a potluck, and subsequently, I have realized I need to get used to eating fish with scales and bones right now—no hesitations. Maybe it’s delicious. I’ll let you know. The location of my PST also means that I’ll be learning Cebuano as my language instead of Tagalog. This is because the Philippines is home to over 140 languages that are typically dependant upon region. But no worries—the Rosetta Stone study will actually help with a lot of the pronunciation of Cebuano.

Also, tonight it was evident how much the Peace Corps really loves their volunteers. At the last dinner together as a group of 69 volunteers, we had tacos, hamburgers, and ice cream. Amazing. That will probably be the last of that for at least six months—whoa. To top it all off, we got to be rebels and eat the ice cream before dinner! Wow. Peace Corps LOVES us.