Travelbonanza

(the following was written on January 17th, finally found the interwebs)

Travel.

It's a blessing and a nightmare. I'm so grateful to be able to hop on a plane and go anywhere in the world, but paired with the crowds of people and the often unorganized airlines, I end up feeling like a rat in a maze. 

We arrived at JFK at about 5:00am after less than 3 hours of sleep. Some of the group slept on the airport floor, some on the chairs. Some played games, some split in pairs. (Okay Dr. Seuss) I played bananagrams (not as bad as actual bananas) and chatted with the other volunteers and ate a nutritious, delicious airport breakfast. Our flight left around 9:00am, headed to Miami, where we had a 3 hour layover. By this time, we were really good at killing time. One of the guys in the group had his 25th birthday and said this is exactly how he thought it would be- heading to a foreign country. So a couple girls bought him a cupcake and we sang to him. Hopefully our last time being loud, boisterous Americans in public.

I slept like a baby through most of both flights, earning me the title of "champion of sleep". I woke up for food, which may or may not have been worth waking up for, and I woke up when the Captain said we would soon be making our descent. Flying in over Quito was exactly how I pictured it. It was about 9:00pm so it was very dark but there were thousands of lights, lots of hills, and all those pesky emotions, only this time, they were mostly positive. My cell phone worked! So I was able to text my family that I had arrived safely. Though, I won't have internet for awhile, so I'm saving this to my computer to post later.

Then, we arrived at baggage claim... DUN DUN DUNNN! No bags. They lost all 50 (2 for each of the 25 volunteers). Some of them would be arriving on the next flight at 10:45pm and some would be coming the next evening. Each of us had to check with the attendant to find out our fate. Both of my bags were coming that night and the Peace Corps staff offered to take us to the Training Center so that we could start eating and get to bed and they would stick around to pick up the bags.

The bus ride to the Training Center was about 1 hour. I spent most of it looking out the window, trying hard to absorb everything we passed. When we arrived, there was a meal of humitas (cornbread) or tamales with tea. The tamales had chicken, peppers, and hardboiled egg! They were very good! The Training Center is a converted high school and we are staying in classrooms that have bunkbeds and 2 bathrooms with warm water showers! (I was happy about the "hot" water, which turned out to be lukewarm, but manageable). I had excitement-induced insomnia and fell asleep about an hour after going to bed to the sounds of stray dogs barking (there are a lot!). Now we're up before 7:00am and we woke up to our alarms, but also the faint sound of roosters. Awesome. The countryside is gorgeous and we have a huge window in the room. I'm going down to get breakfast now and start training. I'll try to write again tonight but of course, my computer is dying so maybe I'll write by hand the old-fashioned way.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for caring.

<3 Chels