Staging and Bridge to PST: 1/11/12-1/14/12

Staging and Bridge to Pre-Service Training (PST): 1/11/12-1/14/12

Staging in Miami was pretty uneventful-pretty much what I anticipate, I guess I should say.  It is worth mentioning that I met up with some other Peace Corps people at the airport; we pretty much stuck out like a sore thumb with so much luggage.  Apparently, there was a facebook group created for our training class and they had already planned to meet at a Café across the street from the hotel for dinner, so that was fun.  We had IHOP for our last American breakfast and then staging actually started.  It was basically a big paperwork-fest along with some ‘what are your expectations?’ ‘here are our expectations’ and ‘here is some important safety and security information that you should know before arriving.’  Then we got up super early Wednesday morning (had to be downstairs by 6am) and went to hang out at the airport until our 12:05pm flight.

Bridge to PST began Thursday morning, so we had Wednesday afternoon to kind of settle in at our 4-day residence near the PC office just outside of Panamá City.  It used to be a military base but the buildings have now been converted to several offices, some villas (where we stayed) and a school of some sort; I’m still not sure what grades.  Anyway, this is where we spent 4 days talking about what to expect as well as more extensive logistics, health, safety, and security information.  The best part about the whole thing, I think, was getting to know everyone (there are 54 in our training class) and the villas-they are way nicer than I think anyone was expecting.  We had hot water, air conditioning, and Wi-Fi (although my villa couldn’t get ours to work).  Apparently, there are times we can/will come stay there for a weekend, either for a training or just to get away for the weekend.  In either case, it’s good to know it’s available!