Washington D.C., USA

In DC, waitin' for the bus...

I arrived in DC on a Monday morning with everything I could carry and checked into the Crowne Plaza Hotel, where the rest of my Peace Corps group would be. After grabbing lunch with my friend Emi, I started what would be a seemingly endless string of seminars, meetings, and workshops that I later discover would plague me for the next ten or so weeks.

Does this all fit?
30 people times 80 lbs. of luggage each... you do the math

For starters, we all introduce ourselves to the group. There are thirty of us in all. For the rest of the day we get a rough schedule of what's happening to us duing training.

First stop, shots! Tuesday morning we head to a clinic where we get poked and prodded for Hep A, B, tetanus, malaria, yellow fever, etc.... What fun we had. After that we returned to the hotel to get all of our stuff. Packing the buss we took to the airport was a chore. Thirty people with at least three bags apiece takes up a lot of space.

Where's my bag?
Part I: Washington International Airport

At the airport, it was sit and wait time. Once we organized all our bags, it was checking-in time at Lufthansa. After hours of waiting at one of the airport bars for our plane to come in (are they ever on time?) we were off for Germany.