Getting to Know Our New Friends

On Wednesday, May 23rd we started our staging event in Washington, DC. Staging is a series of talks and team building events, not really much new information, but it was great to meet the rest of the group; 28 other people that, like us, are headed to Honduras to learn and serve.

The group is an eclectic bunch. Not necessarily what you would expect for Peace Corps volunteers (I guess that could be said about us). There are two project groups together: Business/IT and Protected Area Management (PAM). It’s an interesting mix, PAM volunteers focus mostly on environmental protection and agriculture, whereas business people focus on financing, IT, tourism, and education. As you could imagine the two groups have very different backgrounds and yet there’s such a powerful link among all.

To give you all an idea of who they are there’s a farmer from Pennsylvania, an archeologist from Idaho, people that left corporate America, someone who graduated college last weekend, four married couples, a gymnast, computer programmers, people who owned their own businesses, girly girls, tomboys. Some are very liberal, some are very conservative. All are so different in many ways, yet also similar in many others.

It’s definitely been a great time with these people and a great comfort to know we now have a network of people to count as friends from such different walks of life.