Off to Peru

Departure day. Day started out at 8am when we loaded the buses in the driving rain and headed to the airport. At the airport I was reminded that the Peace Corps is a government agency. Everything was organized but there was an element of “hurry up and wait” (kind of like the Army except people weren’t yelling at us). We got all checked in with our new passports with Peru visas and waited around until about 1pm for our flight to Miami.
From Miami, we flew into Lima and landed about 10 at night, loaded up a couple of buses and drove to Cajamarca which is about an hour outside of Lima. This is where we will spent the next three months training and living with a host family.

Day 1 of training we met the PC staff down here and were evaluated for our language skills. I think mine went pretty well until the questions started getting kind of philosophical like “Some people feel that capitalism and the development of a country leads to rich getting richer and poor getting poorer. What’s your position on this?” I know they weren’t trying to trick me into a whole political debate but I kind of felt uncomfortable and I couldn't just say “Well that sucks” or "Eat the rich" so I kind of bumbled through.

There was also a question that went something like you had a good job, good life, nice place to live, etc. why did you want to come here and volunteer. Quite frankly I was starting to get a little bored, wanted a big adventure and wanted to do something productive that could lead to greater opportunities in the future. I liked the mission of the Peace Corps so here I am.

(I wasn't trying to get fancy with the picture I just couldn't figure how to take it off sepia)

Tomorrow off to meet my host family with whom I’ll live for the next 3 months.