Mexico 09

It's about a month from staging, and the Mexico 09 group (9th group in the Mexico program) has started exchanging e-mails. There are 18 of us, divided between CONACYT (the engineering focused organization) and SEMARNAT (the environmental focused organization). I think it will be really interesting to learn what everyone's background is, as Mexico traditionally brings in volunteers with years of work experience. We meet in Washington D.C. on March 2nd for staging, then take off for Mexico on March 4th, moving in with our host families on March 5th. It should be a busy several days, as it is a quick orientation and information dump. I will post more information as I get it. My understanding is that getting free time and computer access to post online during staging and training may be hard, but I will do my best, since someone has already requested at least one update a week!

Some of the local staff have been talking with us about host families and eating preferences (i.e. pets / no pets, vegetarian, food allergies, etc.), so it is nice to see that they will try to take personal preferences into consideration. I should be pretty open to what I eat, but we'll see what happens when I actually see something on my plate!