The D.C. Walk of Staging

Well I've been in Washington D.C. for the past 48 hours, unfortunately we haven't had any time to sightsee (boo!). My team is called team Nica 48, we are the 48th team to enter Nicaragua with the Peace Corps since the program was reopened in 1992. There are 40 of us, about 15 guys to 25 women. There are two married couples. We will be departing for Nicaragua tomorrow 9/3 at 4:30 a.m. from the hotel...way too early. This extremely disappointing because our flight doesn't leave until 8:55 a.m., so we will definitely be getting some sleep on the airport floor (just kidding...maybe not?). Once we get to Nicaragua we will be staying at an awesome hotel called Las Mercedes in Managua until Saturday. I guess we get some sort of pre-training overview, and then it's off to our training towns on Saturday morning. We will be spending 11 weeks in our training towns, that means after October 20 I will get my permanent site assignment. I hope all is well with everyone and I look forward to hearing from you all whenever you have time to write to me.

I can't believe that today is already Friday and I have been here in Nicaragua three days already! Tomorrow morning we will be completing PC (Peace Corps) orientation here in Managua and moving on to our training sites. I know a lot of you are interested in where I will be stationed for the next two years of my life, but unfortunately I will not know that until the end of October. However, I can tell you where I will be located for training. Our team will be separated tomorrow morning into Environmental Education (19 volunteers) and Agriculture Development (22 volunteers) groups. I, along with the 21 Agriculture volunteers, will be spending the next three months in a community by the name of Estelí. Estelí is located in the northwestern pacific side of Nicaragua.

We will be spending the next 10 weeks in intensive language, technical and cultural classes! All volunteers will be living with host families in communities around Estelí. My community is called El Naranjo, it's about 15 minutes from Estelí (which is our departments "hub city") I am super excited because I get to meet my host family tomorrow afternoon. We have already received information about them. There are five people in my family, the mother, father, granddaughter (8 yrs) and two sons (16 & 18 yrs). I will not have access to the Internet for a while, as there isn't any in my immediate town, but I will try to get in contact with you all soon!