Site Presentation Day

Today I had my site presentation. What is a site presentation you ask? Well it basically means that one of my lovely bosses came down to my site and had an official meeting with whoever decided to show up to talk about what Peace Corps role is in the community, a little background history and what they can expect from their new voluntaria, aka me.

So I woke up, bright and early, at 7 am (ew) and attempted to stay a little warm while I showered. I mention this because you wouldn’t think this would be a notable moment but it was strange. The water was indeed hot (scalding I might add, because I was trying to counteract freezing air) but I could NOT escape the cold. It’s not even thatttt cold. I feel like such a wimp for complaining about the temperature, I’m from Wisconsin for goodness sake. We see average temps below zero degrees Fahrenheit all the time in the winter. It was literally 45 degrees and I couldn’t handle it. I was practically shivering while the near-boiling water was hitting my skin. Whatever, I’ll get over it with time…right?

So then my boss, my wonderful host mom, the nutritionist and dentist that I hope to work with a lot, and I went over to the local high school. While we were waiting one of the PCVs who had lived in my community in the past showed up too! It was really nice to feel supported, and to have people there who understand what PC is about. So we go into the classroom with about 60 high school students, the directora and the health teachers, and my boss gives her spiel and then asks if I want to say anything. Of course I didn’t want to, but I did. I threw in a little “Mbae’chepa” action and they loved it, and they all gave me a rawring applause for saying 4 sentences relatively fluently. Go me! Then my boss asked if the students had any questions and of course there was a boy in the back who asked “um, how old are you?!” yeah sorry, I might look like I’m in high school buddy, but I’m not. It seems like I’ll be able to work pretty closely with the colegio so I’m excited about that.

Then we went and looked at housing options for when I can move into independent housing. So far my best option is to live with my Baba (Ukrainian word grandma… wow that will now be the 4^th language infiltrating my blog. Impressive) because she has a ginormous house with all these extra bedrooms and such. Qué Suerte! So we’ll see what happens with that.

Also, my amazing boss brought me peanut butter and potato chips (clearly to be eaten separately, unless you’re into weird stuff like that) because she knows that these are main things that PCVs miss! That is so thoughtful I couldn’t believe it!

Well, that’s all I’ve got for now.

Chau