Last week of Training

This is the final week of PST. I will soon be moving out of my homestay house and into an apartment in Praia. I recently learned that I will be living with a retiree. The woman’s name is Dianne and she is about 60 years old. She is a professor at ISE, like me and she apparently goes to bed early, like me. I have only met her two times, very briefly. She seems like a very nice lady, and everyone seems to really think she’s great. I have a few reservations. One, she’s 60! I think you can imagine the kinds of things going through my mind at this point. I mean, I’m a pretty relaxed person with a pretty boring lifestyle, but even I might want to stay out late or have drinks with friends at the house and I can’t really imagine spending a lot of time with this person. I don’t want to have to feel like I am sneaking in or out of my house when I come and go. I am, of course, imagining the worst here, so bear with me. Second, we work at the same place. Some of you know that I have had some not so great experiences in the past living with people I work with. I, of course, have also has some pretty amazing roomies who were also co-workers (Kathleen and Jill W.). Third, this woman has been living alone in this apartment for a year. I will be moving into a home that she has already created and expected to feel like I live there! But the flipside is that in a year, she’ll be gone and I’ll either get a new roommate or I’ll get to live alone! SWEET! All in all, I have really little impression of this woman and I believe this will be a great experience. It will be nice to have someone with more life experience around when I need it. And, my friend Nick suggested that it might be nice to have a “mother” figure around when I am homesick or sick or need some advice.

At this point, I haven’t actually spoken with Dianne. She hasn’t called me to arrange my moving in and I have no way to call her, seeing as though I have no telephone. I also have the unfortunate job of moving all of my things down to Praia on my own! When we came here, the Peace Corps moved all of our things for us, now we are expected to find a car and get our things moved! They are just throwing us to the wolves the second we get sworn in as volunteers.

Speaking of being sworn in, we will officially become volunteers on Friday afternoon. The ambassador will come to San Domingos and formally make us volunteers! It’s a pretty big deal. Just today I was told that the PST director was going to recommend me without hesitation to become a volunteer with the Peace Corps! I am very excited. I also found out that my Portuguese proficiency exam went very well. I was rated an Intermediate “HIGH” Portuguese speaker, which means that I am at the highest expected level at this point. We have minimum proficiencies and I exceeded those! I haven’t found out about my Krioulu exam yet, but I will very soon. Things are better than ever! I hope to hear from everyone really soon! I’d like to know what is going on elsewhere. Okay, txau, ti logo.