leaving on a jet plane
Hi Friends, I wrote this while in Miami, and am just now posting this.
I made it to Miami, on time and without incident. I arrived shortly after 330. By 430, I had collected my bags on a cart (yeah, it was worth the $4), rolled all over the ground transportation terminal looking for a hotel van that didn’t exist, and settled on a taxi. It was about $26 for the drive to the hotel, but well worth it as well.
My roommate Nikki was already here when I arrived. We walked together to a commercial district about 10 minutes from the hotel and got a frozen yogurt snack. And at 6 we went to our registration meeting. We handed over our final forms to the two PC administrator types here conducting our pre-service training. That took until about 630 and then our group went to dinner at a Thai/Sushi restaurant. I had a salad with ginger dressing, tom yum soup w/ chicken and a summer roll (shrimp and crab with avocado and cucumber rolled up in a rice paper wrap). Delicious, and certainly something I won’t get in Paraguay. The waiter liked us and brought us complimentary creme brulee. After dinner, we went to piano bar and had a beer.
As a part of our check-in, we were given a prepaid debit card and a PIN number. We were instructed to withdraw $120 cash for our 2 days in Miami. It might be tough to spend so much. But there is a Fresh Market across the street. I might have to swing by there tomorrow a.m. and get something special for breakfast.
Our group consists of 21 people, fewer that I expected. Pretty even male:female ratio. No Southern folk besides me…lots of Midwest and Northern folk. Mostly all in the 22-29 age range. Several of the women are working on Master’s degrees in their service. And everyone is in Community Economic Development. There is a wide range of language proficiency. One girl studied Chinese in college, and found out 5 weeks ago she had been offered a position in this Paraguay group. There are several other people in the “I took Spanish in high school and some in college” boat with me. And then there are some Spanish smarties. I feel a lot better about my language situation now. I’m not too out of the loop. But overall, I’d say I fit in pretty well with the demographics. There is some hypothesizing among the group that your language studies in Paraguay will be determined by your language interview. In other words, if you do well, emphasis will be in Guarani. If you don’t do as well, you may be in remedial Spanish for a few weeks. I would prefer that!
