At dinner today with my training host family, I realized when tomorrow comes I can say "Tomorrow I'm moving to my permanent site. For two years. THIS IS IT." I can't believe the time has come and after a year of applications, interviews, travel and training, Omnibus 105 Ecuador will be sworn in as United States Peace Corps Volunteers.
In honor and memory of our training time together, I put together a little video:
It's tough to describe how I really feel. I'm excited, but daunted. The job is indeed tougher than I thought it would be, and whatever is before me is a lot more difficult than I imagined. And I face something else I didn't expect - leaving what has become my family. My training host family is home. I love where I live, I love the comfort and privacy, I love that I can be a vegetarian with no problems, I love how patient my host mom is and how entertaining and...well... brotherly my host brothers are. I never had siblings so for three months it was really fun to have teenage brothers even though we didn't get to hang out much.
So it's hard to leave. After we've established the only home we know in Ecuador, we have to move on. And it's not even a smooth transition - because it's Semana Santa (Easter week), travel is an unbelievable mess so Peace Corps is making us leave the same day as swear-in. For some of us (me), that means right after the ceremony, at 10:30 a.m., we board a bus for Quito to catch rides to our permanent sites. No after party, no celebration.
And as usual, I'm not packed yet.
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