It has been the most intense 24 hours of my life. After a tearful goodbye to my parents outside the hotel lobby where I registered on Thursday, I had the opportunity to meet the rest of the volunteers (there are 78 of us!) It was fun and great too meet so many new people and many of whom will become close friends in the 27 months to come.
Friday morning we had to check out of our rooms by 6:30 am and with a little waiting around we headed to National to fly out to Miami, which ended up being delayed...and then went from Miami on a 5 hour flight to Lima Peru. It was a VERY long day, and I did not have the best seats on the plane so it was hard to get comfortable and catch up on any of the sleep I missed prior to leaving due to all the anticipation of this trip. Turns out, Lima and much of Peru is an hour behind home, so we got there 9:30 Lima time and after waiting forever in a parking lot we finally got buses out to our brief training site which was about a 2 hour ride, and put us here around 2 am. The little bit I saw of Lima at night was very disappointing, very poor and dirty.
I am at my current training site until tomorrow morning when I will travel to Chaclacayo for the next 3 months. I will be staying with my first host family tomorrow. I am very nervous, because today we had our spanish interviews and I realized how rusty I am and communicating with them may be very difficult at first. I am also a little apprehensive about leaving the other volunteers so soon. Although I will see them again monday when we start our official training.
My emotions are on overload at the moment, there is a definite homesickness that has set in because the idea of being so far away from my family for so long is very scary, and I am unsure how often I will be able to communicate with them. I am also extremely nervous, I am reminded everytime I look outside at how different of a world I am in! I am located in a valley where there are rock desert mountains towering over us and a shanty village located on the mountainside right above us, they currently have music blaring that is echoing all over the place! I know there is so much more in the days to come and I just hope to keep a postive attitude to get by.
I don't know what kind of internet access I will have but I will try and stay on top of the emails and blog as often as I can. I miss everyone!
1 comment:
Hi Jillian! I was so excited to see your current blog and to know how your first few days are going. You are so brave to have taken on this adventure, but you are perfect for the task! I'm going to print out your blog for Grandma so she can be kept up to date. Keep blogging and know that we will be reading!
Love, Aunt Laura
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