Perpetual Change

So much to say...

I have finished staging, and what is staging you might ask? Well I will get to that but first you should know that I was one of the lucky 11 trainees that will leave on Tuesday. So while 35 trainees left Monday, we got the day off. I took in an architectural tour downtown with Lauren, and then got to have dinner with Ellen Kanner at a fabulous Thai restaurant. It has been a very nice relaxing day.

The Peace Corps Staging facilitator made an interesting point. He said that as volunteers we come from different backgrounds, we work different jobs, in different cultures, in different parts of the world and we have no uniforms that identify us. But we do share a few common experiences and staging is the first one of these.

Staging is a two day seminar on how to maximize your safety and how to be open for all the things that you will experience and learn in the next several months. It is a little bit redundant, but it helps to answer questions and get people in the right frame of mind. It was very well put together, and our facilitator was great at engaging the group. They have answered just enough questions where we aren't nervous, but we aren't exactly ready either.

Here are some interesting facts about Peace Corps.
There are 7500 volunteers worldwide right now in 72 countries and there have been 175,000 total in Peace Corps history.
15% of volunteers are minorities.
10% of volunteers are over 50
The budget this year was $317 million and last year it was $310 million.
Ukraine is the largest post. It has 309 current volunteers (not including the 46 in my training class). That means 1 out of every 25 volunteers is in Ukraine.
In Ukraine 50 volunteers are over 50; so we have many older volunteers serving.
There are 3 married couples in my training class, all are different ages.
Our country director Karl Beck is considered one of the best.

Peace Corps is an Independent Agency (not under the State Department). The Director is nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate who has oversight over the organization.

The leading cause of Peace Corps Medical evacuations is not heart attacks, or terrorist bombings or even physical assaults, it is soccer injuries!

And an interesting fact about our group, and probably all staging groups...There are lots of Type A, outgoing, assertive people for this type of training. I never had to talk if I didn't want, someone ALWAYS spoke up. There were very rarely those awkward pauses when a speaker asks a question to the group.

"People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care" The biggest thing to take from staging was first that we are here to facilitate others progress, whatever they think that might be, basically to give them more choices. And the second biggest part was to keep an open, but safety-conscious mind, and a good attitude.

And finally a little anecdote. So the PC has a TON of paperwork. I have filled out so many forms, done multiple resumes and aspiration statements, but I discovered at Staging that they do read all this information. In fact they had pulled an interesting fact from each person's file and put it on a sheet so that, as we arrived, the other day we had to go around the room and try to fit names next to all the accomplishments. And they dug for some.
Well mine was "worked on a private yacht berthed in Italy." I am not sure I could have picked a more fun fact, and it turned out to be my calling card. You see, Alli, Uncle Tom and I got stuck in a bit of traffic (like 30 minutes) from the suburbs on arrival day, so I just squeaked in at the end of registration. Everyone else had been working on this sheet for an hour. I on the other hand was a bit frazzled and nervous about my poor first impression, and so a little off guard. As I walk into the bustling room with the name tag that I had just affixed, I hear a guy and girl next to me say, "I bet it's John." The guy then turns to me and says matter-of-factly, "You worked on a yacht in Italy, right, John?" I am dumbfounded and it showed. I say, "(sputter) well, yes,...do I know you?" He says no, but assures me I will understand in a minute. As I get through turning in my forms, many people approach me. Turns out everyone has been looking for the guy that worked on the yacht for about a half hour. In fact, there was a rumor circulating that it was made up to throw people off. We have thought many times in the last couple of days that Peace Corps was testing us. So for the rest of staging, when I would introduce myself to people, they would generally get this look of "were you here the first day?" to which I would reply, "I was the yacht boy", and inevitably they would say, "Oh, I was wondering who that was...."

Oh, and the cookies from Jonathan and Aunt Sue have been a HUGE hit!!

posted by jjs @ 11:38 PM