Turkey day

Thanksgiving was a highly anticipated day for all of us future volunteers ( I say future because we're not technically "volunteers" until we're sworn in on December 14). Not only would we be enjoying a break from our variety-lacked diets of meat and rice to enjoy a nice meal, we would also be finding out our sites that we will be working in for the next two years. Needless to say, everyone was pretty excited on that day.

We started the day by visiting the Museo del Caribe. This museum featured exhibits about various aspects of Colombia's Caribbean culture. There was a Gabriel Garcia Marquez room, which featured a 30 minute projector show of animation that corresponded with a few of his popular works. It was interesting and more than a little but trippy. The rest of the museum featured aspects of Caribbean language, dance, and the local ecosystem. It was enlightening. It also had this when you walk in the front door

 

 

 

 

 

 

Takes me back to simpler times. Simpler, more racist times.

We then took a bus back to the Peace Corps office where we would eagerly await the news of our future sites. Naturally, the conference room wasn't ready when we arrived, so we waited in the Peace Corps office, which was surprisingly devoid of staff, save for the secretary. So we all took to raiding the upper staff members' American candy stashes. Before you say anything, that candy was there for everyone, but maybe not everyone at once, but oh well. After a bit of waiting, we finally made our way to the conference room. The staff member that was mainly in charge of placing us, Olga, started calling individual people to stand up. She then gave a very brief intro about their site, almost always including over-the-top compliments (I love this place, the people are soooooo nice, this site is so beautiful, etc) and then said the name of the school and which of the three big cities it is in. My name was called about 2/3 of the way through. I was ready for the standard hype of my site, but I was surprised to hear her say that this site is going to be "very challenging," and they have "many needs" with "a lot that can be improved." I was in a state of partial shock. I didn't quite know how to react. Later, everyone told me that my face was priceless when she was telling me all these negative things about my future school. I was a bit upset and depressed that my school was the only one that she had only negative things to say about. It also didn't help that when I asked other staff members for more info, all they told me was that place was really dangerous. Great. According to Olga, with this presentation of our sites, we normally would get a packet of further information about our sites. However, there were a couple of the packets that weren't finished, so they were going to wait until the next Monday to hand them out. So, for a while, I was pretty bummed out about what I heard about my future site.

All I have to say is thank goodness there was Thanksgiving dinner to look forward to. I was more than ready at that point to eat my sadness away. And I must say, I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of food available. Being in the Peace Corps, I've grown used to living with limited resources. But brother, resources were a-plenty that day. Everything thing was delicious, except for the broccoli salad. It would have been fine had someone no loaded it up with nuts. It completely ruined it, as nuts do to many foods (brownies, cakes, various salads). Man, nuts really grind my gears. Anyway, I was still happy to eat until I couldn't feel my feet. The dinner was held at staff member Fernando's house and he has one great setup. He has a floor all to himself with a great view and a ping pong table. You better believe I was all up in that table's bizness, yo.