Southwest bound

8/16/10

It's 8 p.m. and the rain is pouring outside of my window. A perfect time to write. Let's play catch-up. It's been a week since I last wrote and since then I've been thrown into the whirlwind of another country, culture, language, and lifestyle. Our staging for Guatemala was in Arlington, VA and was exactly the same as staging for Togo in Philly 11 months ago. The same activities, icebreakers, and skits. It was fairly exhausting. There are 32 of us, 24 of whom are girls (the Peace Corps tends to have a female majority). Our training group is divided into 3 areas of focus: municipal development, agricultural marketing, and food security (the program of yours truly). It's a pretty good group, of course it was awkward but we're all in the same boat so that loosened things up a bit. A few of us went out and had some drinks after dinner and my buddy Chris came across the Potomac to hang out. It was great to see him before I left.

We checked out of our hotel at 3:30 and boarded buses which took us to Reagan (I prefer to call it National). I've always thought National is a beautiful airport with it's old architecture. It didn't take long to get to Guatemala. We had a very brief layover in Miami but almost instantly we were back on a plane for the 2 1/2 hour flight west.