PC Training

Well, after a quick trip out of the country, I came back on Tuesday just in time to take care of some Peace Corps business. Right after I stepped off the plane, I made my way to my future house and signed the lease--I finally have a place to stay! No pictures yet, but I promise some after I get back to site. It's a very cool place with a terrace all around the second floor and painted in a very manly red and pink color scheme. After the lease was signed, a couple of people from work helped me move all of my luggage and a bed from my host family to my new house. Some basic construction and cleanup continues while I am out of site, but hopefully everything is ready when I return.

Wednesday we left site to take yet another 10-hour bus ride down to Querétaro for some Peace Corps workshops. I think that makes the 5th long bus-ride for me, although I know some people who have taken 16 or 18 hour bus rides to go on vacation. I´m not sure how they do it... This time we took ETN, which is the luxury bus line in México. It was the same sized tour bus, but there were only 24 seats! Each seat was very spacious, like a first-class airline seat, and everyone had their own headset to listen to music or the movies. While the movies weren´t blockbusters, it was very nice to not have the music blared over the speaker system for everyone to hear.

Thursday and Friday were filled with PC workshops with representatives from our sponsoring agencies (CONACYT offices), some universities, and professional associations. The subject was technology transfer, and different experiences and perspectives were offered. I thought it was a pretty good networking event, since the various centers rarely communicate about projects or ideas, and the various counterparts talked quite a bit amongst themselves.