beginnings of pre-service training

Peace Corps is truly a time warp. We've been in country for not even 3 days now and I feel that I've been here a month. I suspect this is due to the near 48 hours of travel it took to get here, but its weird. For example, I keep thinking Im all adjusted to the 13 time change, but then today I woke up at 4:30 am feeling completely rested, and if you know me at all, you know I am NOT a morning person. The days here have been completely packed. We are constantly learning. In the past couple days we have covered everything from basic language skills (Mero naam Alex ho...my name is Alex), how to eat with our right hand, how to use a charpi (pit latrine), how to bathe in public, and how to construct/clean our water filters that will protect us against water borne pathogens. We are really children, considering people are showing us how to eat and use the toilet. But, its all very helpful and necessary considering we head to our homestays on Thursday! We've also been receiving lots of medical training, including too much information on bodily functions. We've also been receiving daily immunizations, so now I am protected from Japanese encephalitis and Rabies, yay!! On a different note, the food here is quite delicious, if not repetitive. Today for breakfast we had curry potatoes and rice, and for lunch and dinner we had daal bhaat, which consists of rice, lentils, and vegetables. We will eat daal bhaat 2x a day every day for the next 12 weeks. SO, if any of you are at all inclined to send care packages, please send granola bars or other delicious food items so i dont die from rice overdose. Dhanyabaad (thanks). for the rest of our PST (pre-service training) Peace Corps uses a method called community-based training in order to teach us all the cross-cultural, technical, and language skills we need to know. Four of us live in a cluster with an LCF (language and cultural facilitator..PC loves their acronyms) and attend class from 7-5 everyday. About once a week all 20 of us get together at our "hub" site for group training. This repeats every day except for Saturdays for 12 weeks until november 30th when we are officially sworn in as PC Volunteers!!! So much to learn! Tomorrow we find out who will be in our cluster, as well as what village we will be in!! Our hub site is Chautara, which is in the central region of nepal, about 3 hours northeast of Kathmandu. our five villages are spread out in the district, with some of us only 15 minutes from Chautara, while others might be up to an hour. I'm really ansty to find out who im with and where i will be living for the next 12 weeks. A pleasant surprise is that we all will have electricity and some form of running water in our homestays! I had very low expecations and was expecting neither of these things, so its nice that we will be able to charge some electronics and bathe on a fairly regular basis.

Well, its 8:15pm here and i am about to fall asleep. Ive been asleep before 9pm every night here. This is probably my last blog post for a while :( because we wont really have internet at our homestays, except for when we are in Chautara for group activities. until then, send me snail mail please or an email or a facebook message so I know what is happening in peoples lives!