Flight 540 to Greatness

Leap year was a predictably terrible movie. I am on a plane right now flying to Washington DC to start the journey that has taken so long to commence. Somewhere in mid July of 2008 I pulled the trigger and sent my application to the Peace Corps. Somewhere along the way I had heard of the patience it takes to deal with the application process, let alone the 27 tough months that would follow in service, but I had no idea that 2 years later I would be sitting here on flight 540 from SFO to Dulles international airport to begin my staging event with approximately 45 other potential Volunteers. The Peace Corps has combined 2 groups, the small business development, and either the environmental or the agricultural group (I forget).
Everyone has been asking me how I feel and if I’m excited; to tell you the truth, I have no idea what I feel. I am so terribly sad to say goodbye to my beautiful girlfriend Brittany, and at the same time, I know this is a once in a lifetime journey that has the potential to propel me in life in many ways. I expect to gain a wealth of knowledge, fluently speak Spanish, and most importantly to my mother, gain much needed patience. So I guess I feel a mixture of emotions that at the moment I can’t decipher from one another, but be assured that I am excited to see what will become of me and my life in the next few years. I only know what the government has told me, which understandable is not much.
So, you may be wondering, what the hell am I going to be doing for 27 months in some far away land that some of you may believe is in Africa. Well Ladies and gentleman, I will be deployed to Nicaragua (Central America, in between Costa Rica and Honduras) as a Small Business Development Volunteer. There are many different positions and duties of volunteers around the globe. Depending on the individual’s skill sets of the volunteers and the needs of the countries, the volunteer can work in something like 8 different sectors. In Nicaragua there is agricultural, environmental, TESL (Teaching English as a Second language), and Small business Development. There might be more, anyway, I will be in the Small business development group. I will complete a small orientation in DC, and then I will fly to Managua, the capital of Nicaragua on May 12th for another in country 2-3 day orientation. From there I will hop on a bus to a city named Masaya, or a smaller outlying village, to begin my 11 week training. At this point I am not yet an official Volunteer; I have to complete the training and be sworn in by the ambassador to receive that title.
What does this 3 month training consist of?
1. Mucho training de Spanish. Now I know some of you think that I should know Spanish, seeing as how I obviously conned the University of Alabama to give me a double major in International business and you guessed it, SPANISH! Oh, and I lived abroad for a year in a Spanish speaking country, (Buenos Aires, Argentina). Seriously though, I need help, and this is the aspect of training that I am most excited about.
2. Technical training. This will probably help me learn how to teach the high school kids about starting or improving a small business. Additionally, I will learn how to be an effective business consultant to the small businesses in the community.
3. Health and safety in Nicaragua
4. More fun stuff that I don’t know about, or forget.
On another note, I just had to spend $139.00 to get this customer service for my software on my new computer because I cannot get wireless internet. I had to board my flight in the middle of talking to a technical support specialist so I have to wait till I get in to DC to finish the evaluation on my computer and hopefully get my computer fixed so I can get internet when I go to Cybers in Nicaragua. I suppose you will know that I got it all figured out if this gets posted by May 11th, 2010.
See you later!