The Group

Although I am writing this while in Bolivia, pretend it was yesterday before I left Miami and I am blogging. I´d like to take some time to talk about the group of people I am with and the staging we went through together for two days in Miami.

Everyone is very friendly and about what I expected...a few really chill people, a few kind of spazzy people, those who talk a lot and those who are rather quiet. I wonder what they think of me so far and where I fit in. We haven´t had too much of a chance to get to know each other aside from having meals together and the like, but we are starting with small things. I´ve got everyone´s name down so far (too bad they don´t have dot numbers) and am now working on where everyone is from and where they went to school. There are 31 in our group, 16 Integrated Education Volunteers and 15 Basic Sanitation Volunteers, of which I am one. There are about 5 each from Oregon and California, 3 from Alabama, 2 from Seattle, 2 from DC, one from Maine and a few other Midwesterners...even one guy who went to Michigan! He´s surprisingly cool though. There is one guy Josh who reminds me so much of my friend Frank Sasso that I have actually called him Frank a couple of times. He doesn´t seem to mind. There is also a girl from DC who played Lacrosse at Georgetown who knows Molly Murphy McLauglin, which I found pretty random.

Everyone has at least one cool story to tell, and most have traveled extensively. People have lived in Argentina, chile, tanzania, japan, italy and many others. There are two married couples, one which is older and one my age.

They say that over the next three months of training, our group will become extremely tight. Then we all get sent out to our posts and spend our social time meeting up in cities with folks from our training class.

It is nice being around people who are here for the same reasons I am and who are all going through the same stuff. You will be hearing much more about them as the weeks and months go by.

All for now.