Day 3 of Training: Still Alive

The first couple of days with PC were kind of rough because I didn’t really have friends yet… I’m not all that outgoing in big groups, and even though I was trying to be friendly, I kept finding myself hovering on the outside of someone else’s conversation. It was awkward and frustrating, and I was terrified that if I didn’t start talking to people soon, I’d lose heart and want to head home.
Today was better. Not like I have 18,495 new best friends or anything, but we’re getting to know each other, so conversations flow much more easily now. We can make fun of each other and the program, and we’re digging out the cards and teaching each other games. There are a lot of people I really like here – everyone seems pretty laid back, fun to talk to, and excited by the projects we’re going to get to do. There are 60ish of us, and I have yet to meet someone who doesn’t have a great sense of humor.
Plus, there are some hilarious personalities and wildly interesting backgrounds – in our “class” of trainees (we call it a stage, which sounds vaguely like “stodge” in French), we have two former circus performers, a girl related to Kevin Bacon, and another girl who played Belle at Disney World. Alex, feel free to be jealous. And great storytellers (not me), and people who actually speak French. I’m excited to get to know these people, even though I miss yall at home.
More to update later, promise! Tomorrow, we talk to the PC people about where we want to be posted (fingers crossed for some place cool!), and then we learn to ride zemis, the motorcycle taxi things here. I have a really attractive helmet that I have to wear… just wait for the pictures to come. And I move to my host family’s house on Wednesday, I think, so that’ll be fun to talk about, too. Yay PC Benin! Love yall, and thanks for the emails!