Wow. This is awesome.

So...DANG.  Where do I begin with this one?

Today is Saturday, March 5^th.  On February 28^th, this past Monday, I reported to my Peace Corps Staging event in Washington D.C. At 12:30 pm.  I'm marking out specific days and times because the concept of time has been nearly erased for me this past week and I'm trying to establish in my mind how all of this has come to be.  At 2:00 am the next morning the group of Trainees was down in the lobby, loading up bags onto a bus for the airport to catch a flight for Costa Rica.  It was go time then and it hasn't stopped since.  This week has been a whirlwind of new people, new and old emotions and information.  Not to mention the sleeping schedule – waking up at 5:30 am due to ruckus the parrots were making (I know, my life's awful, right?) and going to bed sometime around 9 or 10 pm...well, all of that can make a person's head spin and just forget about time or days.

But man, I can say without reservation that regardless of how mentally whiplashed I feel, I am part of the luckiest group of Peace Corps Trainees on the planet.  It would take a lot more than an intense week of Pre-Service Training to distort that one, clear refrain in my mind.  Costa Rica is truly a paradise and I've only seen a fraction of it.  Claro que not all parts of the country resemble the idyllic resorts that you may typically think of when you hear “Costa Rica”.  But today I was sitting on a bus with the other Trainees and looking out the window in wonder as we drove around a bend in the highway and the trees opened up.  Out in front of my eyes were green mountains around a green valley and I don't think I'll ever want to see anything else.  Maybe it's partly from living through the rough winter back home and I'm overcompensating, but there was definitely something about the sunshine and everything living around us that felt...right.  So for me, that's paradise.

And then on the bus we started getting dropped off at our host sites where we'll be for the next ten weeks during training.  As each Trainee (“Aspirante” en Español) was dropped off in a group in their host communities, the desire to meet my family grew and grew.  There's six of us in the farthest training community, a semi-rural town about an hour and twenty minutes by bus from San José.  We're rural enough that they ended up dropping us off one by one.  I was not the last (thank goodness or I would have been out my mind with anticipation) and my family lives down a dirt road maybe two minutes walk from the road.  I was nervous about getting into conversation with the family, but man.  They did that for me.  I got all kinds of questions from my eleven year-old and fifteen year-old sisters about my family at home, which telenovelas I like, how old I am and whether or not I have a boyfriend or if I like to drink.  My host mom and my host grandmom were sitting in for 20 Questions and I got to ask a lot of stuff about them, too.  My host dad was around and you know what a man in a house full of women is like, so I won't go into that, haha.  Then my younger sister “helped” me to unpack and we talked for about two hours while I did that.

My very first cafecito with real Ticos followed and I know this is a common thread, but...I am such a lucky Trainee.

So just to wrap this all up, before we left for our families today, the Peace Corps had us thinking about what commitment means to us.  I thought a lot about people at home (y'all know who you are) and I think that as much as relationships are a reason to go home, relationships are also what's keeping me here already.  There's a definite bond a;ready with the other Trainees which doesn't happen by accident.  And knowing that one day I will, I can't wait to start thinking of this host family as my real family.  So yeah, that's where I am right now physically, mentally and emotionally.

Oh!  And freaking tired.  So that's that for now.