Staging

Yesterday, I officially became a PCT – Peace Corps Trainee, that is. I walked through the long, long line (and by walked through, I don’t mean that I budged…see previous posts about my feelings on budgers) and ultimately made it into the room where an icebreaker was happening.

For those of you who don’t know, icebreakers are those undoubtedly silly games that are played in groups of people who don’t know each other very much. It is supposed to be a social lubricant (but much more fun than drinking) that helps people get to know each other. Well, my opinion on icebreakers is that I L.O.V.E. them – I could really do them for all three months of training and be totally fine. It would be so great. This is because you can never stop learning about other people, and although in a few weeks it’ll seem like each other is all we have (the volunteers), we really won’t know each other all that well. In a short time, we’ll know more about each others’ bowel movements than we have had a desire for, but we won’t necessarily know each others’ favorite foods, what our families are like, or where we grew up. That’s just how it works—it all comes later. And that, my friends, is why I love icebreakers so much. It gives you a chance to learn a little bit about someone that you didn’t know before.

Anyways, so our first day of training is over, and it was both great and exhausting. I didn’t have the chance to eat lunch yesterday (or much of a breakfast, for that matter, due to the nerves in my stomach being so lively), so my body was living off of apple juice and an apple granola bar that I had on the plane. My body was not happy with this, because it is never happy with apples in general. So, my stomach was pretty angry last night until I finally got some food in it at about 9:30. Yikes. But the beds were comfortable and I got a great night’s sleep. Well, I had a great sleep until about 4 AM, when I was awoken by a strange quiet alarm that seemed to be coming out of my bags. What was the source of the noise? I didn’t know. I tried to ignore it, hoping that my roommate wouldn’t hear it, but I finally realized I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep. So, here I am in my hotel room, trying to find my headlamp in the dark and trying not to be too loud. Well, that failed when I needed to unzzzziiiiiiippp and unveeeeellllllcrroooooo the suitcase to get to the alarm. The source? My speakers for my iPod. Apparently the alarm button got hit somewhere along the way. Interesting. Oh well – I turned it off and got two more really great hours of sleep – Thank you, Crowne Plaza LAX for the sweet dreams.