at my site

Hey hey. So, first of all, I am an official Peace Corps volunteer. We swore in at the Ambassador's house (which, by the way, is quite impressive) on Friday. Basically, we all got fancied up, listened to a few speeches, and swore to defend the US Constitution, so help us God. We got to invite our host families, and my host parents came. Oh yeah, the weekend before we had a family party for all our host families, which turned out really well. We were responsible for planning the whole shabang, from finding a room to taking care of the food, and everything in between. It was just for the CYF families, but still, that added up to about 100 people. My job was to be in charge of the money, which by the way, was about $400. So basically, this party ran at $4 a head to cover decorations, a room, food, entertainment, and even a homemade pinata. We ordered a bunch of pizza and then made some other stuff to go with it, like salad. Wow, I never want to make a 100-person salad again—it took about 4 people to chop up all the veggies, and my hands were still sore afterward! Oh also, the day before, I helped make the cakes. We made four sheet cakes, and each one was a different shape (one being a heart). All in all, I would say it was a success.

Anyway, back to swearing in... so, after that I had to go back to the office and reconcile all our receipts from the family party, then I went to a grocery store to get the stuff I needed to make dinner that night. I wanted to say thank you to my host family, so I made them spaghetti and meatballs with homemade sauce. It turned out pretty good, I think. Mainor and Maryuri and their three kids came, along with Esterlyn and Karen. They all said they liked it, although tico spaghetti usually involves a much sweeter sauce, sometimes tuna, and always rice and beans mixed in.

So, Saturday I said goodbye to my host family and took the rest of my belongings to San Jose. The VAC dinner (basically a dinner for all the volunteers in CR) was that night, so everyone comes into the capital and stays at the same hotel, goes to the dinner, then goes back to the hotel, then goes out in SJ. It was cool to meet some of the other PCVs and to hang out with everyone from training one more time before going to our sites. I got to my site around 1:30 in the afternoon on Sunday and found that my host dad had already called my boss and my training host family to find out where I was... (of course, neither party would have had the answer to that question).

Anyway, I started unpacking my stuff (fun fun), and then in the evening, I went with my host family to a birthday party up the road. Then we just hung out and watched a movie. I really don't know what I am going to do this week. Some people say that the first week in your site is the longest week of your life.