Pre-Staging

Yup, I definitely wound up taking some stuff out of my luggage today before heading to the airport. Oh well, it's still too much stuff, too heavy, and a huge pain. My own fault, I guess.

DC is chilly and slushy, but it is supposed to warm up as the week goes on. Luckily we have free wireless internet in our hotel for Staging, although it is abnormally slow. I have met over about half of our group so far, and they seem like a well accomplished group. This should be an interesting adventure.

And I definitely look forward to meeting you current PC México volunteers soon!

Pre-Staging Information

Just a quick correction. In a previous post, I had mentioned that our group will be the 9th to visit México (México 09). I found out some more information, and it turns out that we are the 7th CONACYT and 4th SEMARNAT group, so they are calling us the 7th Omnibus group. There used to be two groups of volunteers who left for México every year (around March and September), with the groups somehow divided between CONACYT and SEMARNAT. Now it is just one group leaving in March, hence the mixed numbering.

We have been receiving more information about Staging next week, as well as an information dump regarding the first couple days of Pre-Service Training (PST) in México. It looks like all of next week will be some form of orientation, both in DC and in Querétaro, México, where our three months of language, cultural, and technical training will take place. We meet with the PC México staff and our host families towards the end of next week. It looks like we will be pretty well taken care of for awhile. PC staff will be with us in DC, and they will also meet us at the airport in México City post-Customs.

I should have Internet access either at the training center or at an Internet cafe in town once I get to Querétaro, though I am not sure that I will have much free time to get online. I will definitely try to make some time.

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!