Shots!

This entry was written on tuesday, but for technical reasons I couldn´t post it till today!
Today I got a rabies shot. I was pretty terrified to come to training today only to find out that it was the first immunization day and I was the first person on the list. It ended up not hurting at all but I think it’s pretty cool I got a rabies shot. Some how in my head this makes me PCV cool. Before all the Cameroon kids got on an airplane, they had to stop at the clinic and get a whole bunch of shots. Once again, thank god I am not in Cameroon.
As you may have gathered from my previous blog posts, I am doing well. Much better than I expected. I’m not sure what it was that made me so prepared for this, I’m sure it was a combination of living with hosts families in Spain, volunteering in Mexico and having a high level of Spanish coming in. There are a couple of people that are really struggling with it. Unfortunatnly two of them are my really good friends. They’re a whole mess of emotions and are crying a lot. It makes me sad cause it’s not the kind of bumbed out you can take your friends out to coffee and let them get everything off their chest kind of bumbed out. I can’t tell if talking about it is actually worse or not. My two friends that are really struggling with the adjustment having very low speaking skills. I also don’t think either one of them have ever lived outside the US. One of the girls lives 4 houses up the road from me and I can hang out with her at night and walk to and from school with her, but the other lives in a bario far far away. I don’t think I am immune the culture shock or sadness of being away from home, I just don’t think it has hit me yet. I struggled so much in Spain I have a hard time believing it’s not going to hit me like a brick wall and I’ll just want to go home. I think about my future site, where I’ll be spending my 2 years of service away from all the Americans. They say that’s when the loneliness kicks in. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
I also can’t help but wonder who from my group isn’t going to make it. Chances are, somebody will drop out before training ends. I have my money on some people, but for the sake of everyone, I hope we all attend our going home party 27 months from now
We got our language group assignments today. I got put in advanced. There are only 7 of us out of 35. Well technically I’m not advanced. I’m intermediate high, but since there are no other people in my category they put me with the advanced. I don’t really know how I feel about it, it’s definitely hard. There are native speakers in my group to give you an idea of what I have to work with. The advanced group is also the only group that does a mini project during training. I still don’t really know what that is, from what I gather we actually go out into the communities where we live now and do what we are going to do out in the field. Again, really hard. The teenage student in me doesn’t want to have to do something harder than everyone else is doing. But In the long run, nothing can prepare me better for being out there, speaking Spanish with only native speakers and getting experience for my job. But at the end of the day, the director of language and culture came up to me and said if I want to try the intermediate mid class I can. So on Friday I’m going to try it out. There is definitely some stuff I still need to learn and might be better for me if I just skip over it all. But maybe it’s better for me it I do. That’s why I’m going to try the other class on Friday and make my decision then.
I had my first case of GI yesterday. I was slightly relieved when I didn’t get sick immediately when I stepped of the plane like I was expecting. Yesterday we were given our big old first aid kits with just about everything you can think of in it. Then Javier gave us a 2 hour lecture on the illness most common in all of peace corps….diarrhea. And guess what I got 20 minuets after the end of the power point presentations. Talk about the power of suggestion. It was pretty bad I think. I’ve never gone to the bathroom so much in my life. But on the plus side, it seems to have only lasted a half a day; although I’m sure it will return in the not so far off future.
Things with my host family are great. My host mom is really understanding of my being sick but she still can’t figure out why I eat so little. For instance, she for my lunch today she packed me two sandwiches, two pieces of fruit and a bottle of juice that she squeezed her self in the morning. But then at lunch time she showed up at the training center with more food! There was a big bowl of Peruvian style chicken noodle soup, another container or rice, lentils and chicken and a Gatorade that she said she bought especially cause I was sick and probably needed electrolytes. By the way, the soup was piping hot when I opened it, and we live a 20 minute walk away. I feel pretty lucky that she is so great. I watched some TV with the family last night. I always thought americans watched a lot of tv but it seems that Spaniards and Peruvians watch way more tv than americans. Last night we switched back and forth between a zorro soup opera that takes place in the 1800’s and lost with Spanish subtitles. We live pretty far away from everyone else in our group and even then I don’t feel that comfortable going on my own at night. I’m definetly a little jealous of the bigger groups of people that live together. But at the same time, I think it’s good that I get used to spending time with my family and not a lot of time with americans. It’s going to make the transition to site so much easier. On that note, it’s Bron’s birhtday today and we are meeting a different city. My host mom is gonna take us cause we don’t know how to get there.