Staging and St. Lucia

Right now I am in St. Lucia. It's been an exciting journey getting this far. On Sunday night my parents drove me to Chicago O'hare. It was sad saying goodbye, but it was still exciting to leave. I arrived shortly after in Miami, where I met Kelly, another future volunteer (I say future volunteer because we are still trainees). Interestingly, Kelly not only was on the same flight to Miami as I was, but we even arrived at the airport, and checked in at the same time I did.

Once we were in Miami we found our way to the shuttles to take us to the Hotel. The shuttle missed us the first time, so we had to wait another twenty minutes for the next shuttle to arrive. Eventually we made it to the hotel, where we met other future volunteers. We couldn't check into our rooms yet, so we were just hanging around the lobby and chatting. After a good seafood lunch at a nearby restaurant, we got our rooms and then checked in to registration. It was fun meeting some of the people I've been communicating with on facebook finally.

After registration we began our staging event, which is pretty much an orientation covering our aspirations for Peace Corps, risk management, and how we were going to get to St. Lucia. It went well and we got to know the other people. After staging we found dinner at a Latin restaurant across the street, then hit the sack. The next morning was going to be early and the start of a long day.

August 25th I woke up at 4:30am because checkout was at 5:15. I woke up without much struggle and made checkout early. We all headed back to the airport to catch our flight to St. Lucia. It was an easy an uneventful flight. Once we arrived in St. Lucia we were met by the Peace Corps staff for the Eastern Caribbean, and brought to a retreat center that is somewhere very far away (up and down very twisty and scary roads.) The retreat center is a beautiful place with a great view of a nearby bay. We got our rooms (I got a single. nice!) did some basic orientation and then ate dinner. Dinner was a delicious vegetable soup and barbecue chicken. The dinner was served by nuns since the retreat center is in some sort of catholic mission center. I don't know much about that. For drinks we had this interesting (and eventually enjoyable) juice that we were sure came from something like celery. It took some getting used to, but I started to like it. I have a feeling we'll get a lot of it this week, so I'll love it eventually, i'm sure.

After dinner we were done for the night, and able to relax after several long days with little sleep. Because were much closer to the equator, the days here are much shorter. I believe sunrise is at 6 or 6:30am, and sunset is about 6:15-6:30. I'm not sure if my tiredness comes from the change in daylight, or nonstop excitement I've had for the past few days. Either way, I'll sleep well tonight.