IST

*In-Service Training

As I sit in the lobby of the Park Hotel, I’m left to reflect on this past whirlwind of a week. I’m the only volunteer still here and have no idea when I’ll actually be heading back to site. Such is the life of a PCV.

This was my first time seeing many of the other volunteers in the past four months. Jenni said it was like coming back from summer vacation and seeing all your old school friends again. To be honest, the entire week I was swelling with mixed feelings about being surrounded by Americans again. One of the M25 trainers, Tyler, mentioned what he calls “soum anxiety”, which is the feeling of being overwhelmed by the presence of so many Americans again. I’m not sure if it was that or something else but this week was difficult for me. Don’t get me wrong, I loved seeing everyone but sorting through all those emotions will take time.

Your relationship with other PCV’s is strange. You spend three months growing extremely close with this group of random people only to be shipped off all over the country. You might only see some of those people 2-3 more times over the next 2 years and yet they’re still your best friends. Hell, you might never even talk to them while at site but there’s still this unspoken understanding of one another. It’s hard to put into words.

What was nice was how productive this week was for my counterpart and me. Although she’s a bit shy, she really got into the sessions and seemed to learn a lot. This week definitely broadened both her and I’s professional horizons. I’m excited to see how it all translates back at site. It seems that CP’s and HCA’s see Peace Corps as this distant entity they don’t really interact with or know much about. I think this training helped in making Peace Corps the agency seem more real to them.

As Mikey and I were packing up our stuff this morning we had our classic jam session which has become tradition since staging. Mikey put on “What A Fool Believes” by The Doobie Brothers and I turned to him and said, “If we ever had a movie together this would be the song they’d play over the end credits.” He laughed. When I was rooming with Mikey for the first time during staging he asked me, “Do you like The Doobie Brothers?” to which I, of course, answered yes. For some reason that moment felt like the true beginning of my Peace Corps experience. Not just because it was the actual first day we all arrived in San Francisco but more because it marked the first connection with a friend in my cohort. The rest is history and that song has grown to become my favorite of all time.

Although this post was unorganized and disjointed, and wasn’t all that much about IST, it hopefully gave some insights into what it feels like to be me right now.