"I thought I was gonna be sleeping on hay..."

Soooo....let me talk about yesterday. Yesterday was official registration as a Peace Corps Trainee. There was a lot of "Hello, Neha. Welcome to Peace Corps." And then we had fun icebreakers and skits and games like at camp, and instructions about the transport to Nica, and people showing their cute personalities and stuff. There are quite a few people from Wisconsin. All I'm going to say about cute boys is that there are a few. This blog is very public, that's quite risky.
I had a situation with my laptop, the charger stopped working so I cabbed to best buy after 7 and had to buy a universal charger for lots of money, but my I think my computer is about to become useless pretty soon anyways, we'll see.
Then my last American meal was eaten at Whole Foods and it was kind of perfect.
We had to wake up at 2am, check out at 2:30, leave at 3, and our flight was at 7:20. I could not fall asleep without a window seat, so the (almost) entire day has been spent being (almost) miserably tired, but whatevs. There was a nice Nicaraguan man sitting near us on the second flight from Miami to Managua.
The plane hits the ground and I have a huge smile on my face.
We are welcomed by posters and 2 current volunteers.
Again I go outside and it reminds me of India and therefore Costa Rica.
And then I'm sitting at lunch and the girls I'm sitting with are marveling at the beauty of the place and in a wave of doubt and pessimism I'm thinking I should have picked the place that was newer and exciting (Eastern Europe) and then there are clouds and crazy lightning and deafening thunder and pouring rain and i look around and realize again that I do appreciate it even though it's not completely new and no matter what or where THIS is MINE. This is mine. Do you know what I'm trying to say? I'm so ready.

Then there is this orientation that is torture because I'm exhausted and I cannot keep my eyes open and luckily its short and I collapse into a two hour nap and wake up in time for dinner and walk out of the hotel room to the sunset and try to take a picture of it but you can't capture that stuff (I learned that on my last trip to India).

Dinner is good. I'm so glad so many of us are fresh graduates from college. I'm sad that half of us are in environmental education and I won't be seeing those people much after 3 days.

Peace.