My Day of Staging in Atlanta

So, one of the questions that went through my mind for the last 8 months was: "what the heck is staging?" I read all the information packets I was sent, and I could tell you what each one of those things said. But, I still never REALLY knew what "staging" was going to entail! Today, I found out.

To start at the beginning, I arrived in Atlanta yesterday. Coming from the West Coast, I had to leave Seattle a day early in order to be in Atlanta by noon the 23rd, which was when staging started. I quickly met more volunteers that came from the West Coast, too. I went to dinner with another trainee, Pete, who is from the San Francisco area because we were here a little before everyone else, but then after dinner, a handful more people showed up. A group of eight of us went to a cajun restaurant for dinner (Pete, me and Aden just went for the company because we had already eaten). It was great to just sit and visit with people that were all in the same position as me: nervous, anxious, excited...

Oh, and just to throw this out there, the "shuttle" the hotel has is a stretch SUV limo!! Ya, no joke. So, when I was picked up from the airport and to go to and from the cajun restaurant, we were rockin' the limo.

Even though I went to bed really late (East Coast time), I woke up super early, which is actually quite normal for me. It was nice, though. I was able to eat breakfast, walk to Walgreens and print some pictures, go for a walk while the pictures were printing, and then I went back to the hotel, worked out and their fitness center and got ready for our "staging" event. The dress was American business casual, which I learned is different than Honduras business casual. In Honduras, jeans will be acceptable, but here, they were not. Thankfully I didn't learn that the hard way, but a couple of the guys did.

So, a little before noon, my roomie and I went downstairs and met up with a bunch of other people our age that had already began to congregate in the lobby, and after just a few minutes we were told to get in line for registration. A lot of us just stayed sitting and chatted because there was NO reason to stand in line for an hour and a half! Registration just meant turning in all our paperwork: life insurance policy, emergency contact info, loan deferment paperwork, and a general registration form.

After two hours of sitting, talking, and waiting in lines, all my paperwork was complete, I had my original passport back, and I was given my spending money for lunch and dinner for the day in Atlanta. So, then it was on to the actual STAGING!

So, STAGING, was five hours of discussing the Peace Corps three goals, the 10 core expectations, our expectations for the Peace Corps, and our fears and aspirations. It started to get a little repetative by the end of the day, but all the information was good. It was great to hear other people expressing all the same concerns that I have been having. It was also great not to have to validate my reasons for wanting to join the Peace Corps in the first place. Since I made the decision to go into the Peace Corps, I was constantly asked why? Don't get me wrong, this is a valid question, obviously one that I had to consider a lot when filling out my Peace Corps application and writing my personal essays. But, it was refreshing and comforting to be in a room with 52 other people that all want to be in the Peace Corps. So, you don't have to explain anything to them - we are doing the same thing. Obviously most of us came to this place in our lives in our own ways, but the fact is that we are here and doing it is all that matters.

So, during staging today, some of the things we decided all of us are nervous for:

Learning a new language and having to communicate with everyone around us
Violence and thefts
Bugs (spiders)
clean drinking water
access to toilets
having everyone always look at you as a gringo
not being able to communicate with home

What we all decided we were excited for:

Learning a new language
being in a new country
helping our communities with what ever our projects are
building relationships


We spent a lot of time talking about why we were nervous and excited for these different things, and then we asked why we think the Peace Corps has us go over it all so much. The general consensus was that they have us discuss all the things so much because the more we air our concerns and talk about what we are excited about, the more relaxed we will become. Realizing that we are all worried about the same things made us all more relaxed.

Of course, when we were done discussing all that we were nervous and excited for, we talked about what we could do to prepare ourselves for certain obstacles, which just made us all even more relaxed. Yes, again, this did get a little repetitive, but it still made us all feel a lot better.

I have to say that I feel a little more comfortable about going to Honduras tomorrow. Ok, I'm still very nervous, but knowing that I am with 52 other people that all have the same thoughts going through their heads makes me a lot less nervous!

I must admit, everyone here seems to be fairly fluent in Spanish - especially compared to me. This makes me especially nervous, but, I found a handful of people that seem to be more at my level, so at least i will have a few people in the entry level class with me once we get to Honduras!

So, hasta luego y espero voy a hablar pronto, pero no probablamente por tres meses!!!!

Have You Ever Had A Chocolate Chip Cookie?

So, I have told you all about the Peace Corps and where/when it came from. I have told you about my experiences getting into the PC and what it has been like for me waiting on correspondence from them, and just simply waiting to leave. Well, here I am - in exactly one week, I will be in Honduras. This seems completely baffling to me!!! I just can't believe that this time next week I will be in another country beginning a whole new life. I am going to be away from my friends and family. I am going to be away from the life that I have become so used to and comfortable with. No longer will I have the internet at my finger tips when ever I want it to e-mail my mom because I had a bad day, or to watch my girlie shows online because I'm a total girlie-show girl and a romantic. No longer will I have access to the daily amenities that we all take for granted - what ever those may be: running water, a toilet, a shower, electricity, being able to go to the grocery store and find anything from milk to peanut butter to toilet paper when ever I want - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That is the life that people in the United States get used to. We are the epitome of the ideal consumer: we want products and we have the ability and authority to purchase those products. But, also being a consumer, we have to have access to those products when ever and where ever we want, and here in the United States, that is given to us.

Where I'm going, though, that is not going to be the case. If a kid falls down and breaks his leg, we won't be able to call 911 and have an ambulance there in under 10 minutes. If a goat that a family depends on for milk and eventually meat is found unconscious, we won't be able to rush it to the nearest vet to be fixed up in a jiffy. If someone is making there daily tortillas but doesn't have enough corn or lard needed to feed the whole family, they won't be able to just walk down to the 7/11 on the corner. We, as US citizens, are so used to having what ever we want at our finger tips, i think we often take it for granted.

Now, even us PA-ans don't really have do much roughing it. Yes, we may not have the ability to walk down to the corner quicky-mart to grab some eggs or sugar, but we still have the means of doing and getting what ever we want. These things just take a little longer. In Port Alexander, we just have to plan ahead. We can order what ever we want from Sitka and have it to us in a week or less. Yes, there is never that instant gratification, but you can still be a happy consumer. If someone hurts themselves, the helicopter can be there in 45 minutes. Yes, Port Alexander is remote and it is a-whole-nother life that takes getting used to, but it is nothing compared to what I'm going to see. Some communities I may end up working with may never have seen a computer in their life, they may never have had the opportunity to eat a chocolate chip cookie, they may never of had the satisfaction of knowing how it feels to run out of something and just be able to go and grab more. They won't have money, their neighbors won't have money - if that is all the corn; that will be all the corn - there just won't be tortillas that day for some people.

Like i said, this is going to be an adjustment for me. I think that growing up in Port Alexander with out a lot of the same comforts as growing up in a city, will make it a little bit of an easier transition for me. However, it is still going to take some getting used to. I haven't had to rough it like I did when I was little in Port Alexander for quite some time. I like having a clean porcelain bowl underneath me when I have to go pee; I like using a microwave to cook and re-heat things; I like have electricity without having to worry about the generator running out of gas, or checking the oil, or making sure that the 110 vlt plug is not plugged into the 12 vlt outlet.

Life has been made quite simple for all of us, and for the most part, we take it for granted. Yes, we have all had our trials and tribulations, but when you look at the broader picture, it is nothing. We travel, watch the news, read books, newspapers, and magazines - we hear all the devastating stories of things that happen around the world. Oh, and I'm sure a lot of you probably no someone personally that has been effected by some grave travesty - Hurricane Katrina, a tornado, a fire - things happen. But, these are not everyday occurrences for us in developed countries. These are once-every-few-years travesties that stick with us! But, when you see the kids in the TV commercials with bloated stomachs because they are malnourished, when we see the pictures of the tribal women in Africa that are weaving crafts to sell to us in America just to make money to put a roof (more cardboard) over their head, we have to remember that these are the countries that go through travesties ever day of their lives. Families are penniless, babies are dieing, governments are corrupt, kids learn to shoot an AR before they can tie their shoes. There are problems out there in this big world that we only ever get sneak peaks into. We should all be grateful for growing up in the United States. Yes, we have political problems, poverty problems, health problems - but when these are compared to other nations in this world - it seems so minuscule to me.

I have to admit, I am a little overwhelmed with the idea that this time next week I will no longer be going off the images I see on TV or the stories I read in news papers. I will be up close and personal with the people of Honduras. I really have no idea what to expect, which quite honestly, scares the crap out of me. But, I am relieved that I have not let fear stand in my way, yet. It could have easily come to the point where I chickened out and changed my mind. The idea of going into the unknown is enough to send me back home to my mom, but I have stood firm, and I will continue to.

Today, I have been a mess of nerves - unable to pack or practice Spanish; unable to do anything except for be a bum and watch my girlie shows. This is just nerves on my part, but nothing that is going to stop me from going out into the world and helping the people that have been through so much more in their lives than we can even imagine.

So, what's the deal with the Peace Corps anyway?

I read the book “All You Need is Love: The Peace Corps and the Spirit of the 1960s” by Cobbs Hoffman. I found the book very interesting, a little dry, but still interesting, and I learned a lot about how the Peace Corps started and how it got to be where it is today. So, I’ve decided to share that information with all of you. I took most of this information straight out of the book, and intermixed it with a little of my own style and some facts i found online - if you want more of where this came from - you’ll just have to read the book, but believe me, this is all the good stuff! I pretty much just condensed 250 pages into 5500 words.

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After WWII with the physical devastation of large regions, genocide, concentration camps, civilian deaths, and atomic bombs - combined with the Cold War that followed, people were reexamining the basic question - what is the place of individuals in a mass society capable of mass destruction? From this, came people wanting efforts made to reverse the world’s destructive trends, paving the road for a generation of youth who wanted to join in the effort to demonstrate the other side of America - our morality.

By the 1960s, the United States had participated in two world wars and had incomparable economic productivity. Following close behind was the Cold War, in which the U.S. used its new found power to become one of the top superpowers. “The New Frontier” that Kennedy spoke of was a nation that could use that newly gained power for good for all nations, not just for ourselves; this would move human history onto a new plateau in which strength and benevolence were joined. This was the U.S. that Kennedy wanted and spoke of often during his campaigning.

While under the leadership of Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, a desire to demonstrate actively the geopolitical power of the U.S. to do good became evident. Even in 1957, Congressman Henry Reuss and Senator Hubert Humphrey were trying to initiate a national service program to send people abroad. In 1960, both even introduced legislation, but it was John F. Kennedy that was widely perceived as the most attractive hero of the era. It was Kennedy who got the ball rolling. What was loved about JFK and why he was such a hit with the youth of that decade, was his notion that our nation needed a higher purpose to be genuinely heroic - he wanted to find something that would show the United State’s ultimate intentions. This was especially critical to Kennedy because at that time, we were located in Cold War “hot spots” like Vietnam.

Kennedy gave a speech at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on October 14th, 1960 to a crowd of 10,000 students. At this gathering, Kennedy made his first announcement for a program like the Peace Corps, challenged the students attending! He asked of everyone attending, who would be willing to spend ten years in Africa, Latin America, or Asia; how many who were becoming doctors would be willing to spend their days in Ghana, ect. This was the start of it all. Eight hundred students signed a petition during the three weeks that followed Kennedy’s speech and presented it to him, challenging him to go through with his challenge. Three days after the speech in Ann Arbor, Kennedy won the presidential election! The students that he inspired at colleges around the globe were not even able to help him win the election because back then, the voting age was 21. But, those college students were the ones that wanted to join the Peace Corps, and they were the ones that flooded Kennedy’s office with thousands of letters expressing their interest and trying to figure out how they could become a volunteer.

The youth of the 60s, whose parents had fought in WWII apparently craved a historical task of equivalent stature - and the Peace Corps became that task. With Kennedy warning the public that he was going to ask a lot of them beginning with his first speech as a nominee and continuing to challenging the younger generation to not “see what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” and repeating FDRs sentiments that they “have a rendezvous with destiny,” throughout his campaign, young people of the US were eager to join what JFK randomly called the Peace Corps during a campaign speech in San Francisco on November 2, 1960. Placing the voter, rather than the candidate, in a position of proving himself was one of Kennedy’s more ingenious campaigning techniques, and in the two months before he was inaugurated, Kennedy’s office received 25,000 letters from the American people inquiring how to join the “Peace Corps.” The book stated that more people wrote offering to work for the still nonexistent Peace Corps than for all the existing agencies of the government put together. Letters kept flowing in, including thousands more after Kennedy was formally inaugurated as the President of the United States on January 20, 1961.

The Peace Corps was created by Executive Order in May 1961 - although the Kennedy staff did borrow from the Humphrey and Reuss plans, it was Kennedy’s brother-in-law Sargent Shriver, who shaped the Peace Corps. The day after his inauguration, Kennedy called Shriver and asked him to head the task force to fashion the Peace Corps. There were many suggestions thrown around for how the Peace Corps should be approached and how it should be initiated into action, but Shriver, with the help of his right-hand-man Harris Wofford, who was Kennedy’s campaign adviser on civil rights, got the ball rolling. It was both Shriver and Wofford’s idea that the Peace Corps should not start slowly and on a limit pilot basis, they had bolder plans in mind. It was quickly realized that to merit recognition, the Peace Corps would have to operate on an entirely different scale from that of its predecessors - small volunteer programs lending a hand overseas such as the American Friends Service Committee (CARE) and the Heifer Project. One member of the task force stated “If you want to succeed with an idea that may fail, you have to do something big enough and bold enough to overcome the critics.” So, it was decided that a small Peace Corps would never attract the political talent, legislative attention, and public sympathy necessary to become successful. The task force was aiming for 5-10,000 volunteers to be in the field in the first year. Kennedy gave Shriver and the task force a month (February 1961) to develop a plan he could announce in response to the mail, polls and editorials that continued to pour in.

The task force decided that the only way to have the Peace Corps implemented immediately was to have the president pass an Executive Order. Passing new legislation would take a minimum of six months, which would mean the Peace Corps would miss out on the college students expected to graduate in June who would be looking for an after college experience - but with the Peace Corps not in place, all those graduates would turn elsewhere.

When Shriver gave Kennedy the final report for the Peace Corps logistics on February 24, 1961, his main concern was the Peace Corps autonomy. According to Shriver and the rest of the task force, the Peace Corps needed as much autonomy as possible from other foreign offices so the American people could start fresh. Starting the Peace Corps under the International Cooperation Agency (ICA) would identify the Peace Corps with the public, political and bureaucratic disabilities that presented themselves during the previous few years. Shriver wanted the Peace Corps to have its own identity and power! It was also in this final report that Shriver recommended the name the Peace Corps become the official name of the organization because he couldn’t come up with anything better, and because it was a name the public at large had already grasped emotionally and intellectually.

It took Kennedy only one day to read through and decide on the matter of the Peace Corps and on March 1st, 1961 he signed Executive Order 10924 creating the Peace Corps on a “temporary pilot basis” until Congress could consider legislation. This executive order put the president’s prestige on the line, because infringing upon Congress was not done very often, especially so early in a presidency, but it was a risk Kennedy was willing to take.

Getting the Peace Corps up and running was a non-stop task for Shriver and the task force. All at the same time, they had to devise a program, recruit volunteers, convince third world countries to embrace it, get it passed in Congress, and make sure Peace Corps met its own goals while helping to win the cold war.

Now it was time for Shriver to pave the way for congressional approval. He immediately organized a Peace Corps Advisory Board, drawing on a variety of Democratic luminaries, including Eleanor Roosevelt and David Lilienthal, and he also had Vice President Lyndon Johnson, who Kennedy had asked Shriver to include, as the Chairman of the Board. From the start, as it stated in his final report to Kennedy, Shriver did not want the Peace Corps associated with the ICA. Kennedy, however, did not seem to care as much as Shriver whether or not the Peace Corps ended up under the advisory of foreign service group - at this point, Kennedy had many things on his mind, such as coping with the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs invasion on April 17th, 1961. VP Lyndon Johnson, however was on Shriver’s side, putting it like this:

“This town is full of folks who believe the only way to do something is their way. That’s especially true in diplomacy and things like that, because they work with foreign governments and protocol is oh-so-mighty-important to them, with guidebooks and rulebooks and dos and don’ts to keep you from offending someone. You put the Peace Corps into the Foreign Service and they’ll put striped pants on your people….if you want the Peace Corps to work, friends, you will keep it away from the folks downtown who want it to be just another box in an organizational chart.”

It took Johnson pleading with Kennedy in a private meeting to finally have him agree to keep the Peace Corps out of ICA and the Foreign Service. However, Autonomy had its price. Now, came time to get the Peace Corps legislation through Congress with out the help of presidential assistants who were busy fighting for their own bill that was part of ICA. Shriver, with the help of Bill Moyers, one of his top staff, approached each member of Congress one by one. They spoke with 535 members of congress over two months. Shriver’s personal enthusiasm and careful preparation for legislative assault won converts for the Peace Corps in great numbers. Congress, however, threatened to postpone a decision on the Peace Corps out of annoyance over the Executive Order Kennedy issued. VP Johnson stepped in, speaking with members of the senate and personally lobbying for the Peace Corps. However, in August, the fight was still not over. Some members of Congress still wanted a smaller Peace Corps. At this time, Shriver went to Kennedy personally asking for help. It was then, shortly before the debates in Congress, that Kennedy announced his continuing strong support for the Peace Corps, asking for Congresses full support of The Peace Corps. On August 25th, 1961 - nearly six months after Kennedy’s executive order, the Senate cleared the Peace Corps with a voice vote. This was followed by a 288 to 97 vote in the House for the Peace Corps on September 14th.

The Peace Corps Act established three goals for the organization: First, to help interested countries meet their needs for trained men and women; second, to promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served; and third, to promote a better understanding of other people on the part of Americans. These became known as the Three Goals of the Peace Corps and are still the same to this day.

Shriver set in motion plans to put more than 650 volunteers in the field by January 1961 - only four months. He wanted to volunteers ready to begin training for Tanganyika within two weeks, the Philippines within three weeks, and Nigeria within four weeks. This meant there was still a lot of finding, interviewing, testing, selecting and setting up training programs to be done. Back then, all possible volunteers had to pass a placement test, testing general aptitude of knowledge of various skills needed for Peace Corps assignments, and language aptitude. (This test was removed in 1967)

As a result of Shriver’s desire to get things going as fast as possible and as big as possible in an act to earn admiration for the “spunk” of the Peace Corps, some countries received far more volunteers than could be absorbed into the communities. In the first year of the Peace Corps for example, the Brazil program quadrupled, India grew by almost 1,000, the Philippians reached 620 volunteers. Also, 600 volunteers were scattered through Micronesia in just a period of months. With these excessive numbers, neither the Peace Corps or the host countries could figure out ways to channel the volunteers’ contributions. Ghana and Malaysia had the best programs initially. However, in many countries the Peace Corps was more of a cruel joke because most of the volunteers did not have serious jobs to help their communities/countries. Angry volunteers and staff called it the “numbers game,” bigness for its own sake and to impress Congress, with little thought given to the consequences of overexpansion. In response to these numbers, Shriver began firing volunteers in countries that had far too many, beginning with Pakistan.

“Phony jobs,” which the lack of important rolls for Volunteers to play began being called, obviously happened because of the rapidity with which the Peace Corps expanded. But, possibly more importantly, these “phony jobs” became prevalent became the Peace Corps’ ideological commitment to a rugged individualism which called on volunteers to figure out, along with the peasants of a country, what they should be doing. People thought that volunteers needed more guidance after placement in a country and community, but unfortunately, it took years for the Peace Corps to substantially change the way they operated in that sense. And, to this day, the volunteer, working with their host country, is still primarily responsible for figuring out their exact duties.

The Peace Corps appealed deeply to the imagination of America and the world because it was rich in meaning and because the charismatic Kennedy had elevated it for all to see. Shriver decided that the Peace Corps volunteers, in comparison to government foreign service officers would be recruited from “every race and walk of life,” and they would be trained to speak the languages of the people they are working with as a way to integrate into their communities and build goodwill. However, as was pointed out by some, the Peace Corps had to rely on individuals who had the freedom to give themselves over to idealism and adventure, and this meant drawing mostly upon unattached, middle-class youth, which made recruiting from “every race and all walks of life” difficult. As well as actively seeking volunteers of color, the Peace Corps also sought all volunteers who would present the “desired image of America,” meaning the volunteer would have no prejudice against men and women of races, religions, nationalities or economic or social classes different from his or her own. Striver wrote in his book The Point of the Lance: “We were told that we couldn’t send Protestants to certain parts of Catholic countries in Latin America, but we sent them. We were told that we couldn’t send Jews to Arab countries, but we sent them.” This commitment to desegregation was one way Striver hoped the Peace Corps could reform America and the World.

A very powerful argument that arose for the Peace Corps was that people said the United States could not act as a model for other nations because it didn’t share their experiences. This ended up being used to recruit those volunteers that were ready to lead a “pioneer life” and experience different nations. Motivation for the Peace Corps also came from the book “The Ugly American.” In this book - American foreign policy was widely criticized saying that Americans in third-world countries were “time-serving, self-promoting, luxury-loving bureaucrats.” Foreign governments viewed these Americans as “stupid men.” It was the goal of Kennedy and Shriver to make certain that the Peace Corps did not represent in anyway that image that came across in “The Ugly American.” What they wanted to represent was the main character of the book who was able to “portray an America that can save itself and in the process the world by rediscovering its frontier character under frontier conditions.” This is where the idea for the ideal volunteer came from - someone who can learn local languages, eat local foods, initiate small, hands-on projects based on their own expertise, reject racism, and ultimately refuse to play the “superior white man” roll - the ideal volunteer integrates into their community, becoming equals. Shriver actually sent a copy of The Ugly American” to every member of the Senate when he was lobbying for the Peace Corps Act to be passed.

The United States was not the only country with the idea to send volunteers to third-world countries. Between 1958 and 1965, nearly every industrialized nation started volunteer programs to spread the message of economic development and international goodwill. The first county to do so was actually Australia. The National Union of Australian University Students sent a couple students to Indonesia to work at the level of the average citizen in the early 1950s and by 1954, an agreement had been ironed out by the two countries. By 1960, when The Peace Corps was coming around, Australians had already sent nearly 40 volunteers into Indonesia.

The British Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) was founded seven years after the Australian started their program, but came from the same desire to help third-world countries. Like the Australians, and later us Americans, the VSO founders showed a strong concern that their volunteers exhibit the right “attitude of mind.” They lectured that only people who could put aside cultural and race prejudice were wanted.

The Canadian Voluntary Commonwealth Service (CVCS) was proposed in 1961 with the goals of helping where it was urgently needed to build commonwealth understanding and to break down racial barriers among students who would form the opinion in the future. As the first Peace Corps volunteers were sent to Ghana in the summer of 1961, the CVCS sent six under-graduate students to Jamaica for four months. The CVCS and a couple other Canadian volunteer groups became part of the Canadian University Service Overseas (CUSO) in 1964. The unified CUSO was able to obtain half a million dollars from their government to field 250 volunteers.

After the Peace Corps was formed, many free nations followed suit. By 1963, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, France, and Norway all started new volunteer programs. The Japanese were also working on creating a program at that time. Within the first four years of its creation, the Peace Corps had inspired volunteer organizations in nearly all the countries of the free world. This testified both to the perceived inherent merit of the idea and to the prestige of the United States.

The United States was, however, the first nation to incorporate volunteering into its foreign policy in an attempt to demonstrate one alternative to power politics, which in turn allowed it to enjoy generous government funding. The size of the Peace Corps was what distinguished it, which adds to the United States common characteristics - our preference for bigness; our impulse to create programs on a large scale in order to demonstrate that the activity they represent is important.

There was a lot of concern raised over the idea that the government was placing undercover CIA staff into the Peace Corps. In 1961, however, Shriver began efforts to keep spies out. Each Volunteer is required to obtain a national security clearance, and also, any person who had previously worked for the CIA or who was married to someone who had, was automatically disqualified from serving as a Peace Corps volunteer. Then, in 1978, the disqualification was extended to anyone who had had any family member in the CIA. At this time, returning volunteers were also prohibited from joining the CIA until five years after finishing their service.

Originally, the structure of the Peace Corps was much different than it is today. In the 60s, it was based on a boot camp model. A typical training day would begin at 7 a.m. with physical training, followed by eight hours of classes in area studies, languages, job training, U.S. History, current events, and basic first aide and disease prevention. This was six days a week and usually went until 10 p.m. This training was thought to provide “inner discipline,” measuring a man’s stamina, courage and resourcefulness - and in essence, his masculinity. Apparently the training for women was less clear and not as physically grueling, but still demanded physical confidence from them. These training camps were also held in the United States at contracted universities - such as UCLA. It wasn’t until 1973 that the initial 3-month training begain to take place in the host countries.

The first host country for Peace Corps volunteers was Ghana in August of 1961; 6 months after Kennedy had signed his Executive Order and just 1 month before Congress passed the Peace Crops Legislation. The President of Ghana wanted to focus on educating his country, and from the Peace Corps asked for as many English teachers as it could supply. As the Peace Corps only goes to countries that ask for assistance, those first few months were critical for Shriver. After the suggestion from Kennedy to visit different countries to peak interest in the Peace Corps, Shriver spent 26 days traveling to key states in Africa and Asia, including Ghana, Nigeria, Pakistan, India, Burma, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. Unfortunately, in that first year, Shriver didn’t meet his 5,000 volunteer mark. For the first year, the Peace Corps had 2,816 volunteers in the field. However, By 1965, there were 13,248. And From 1961 to 1990, the Peace Corps placed volunteers in more than 100 nations.

However, July 1965 marked the start of downward spiral for the Peace Corps. Lyndon B. Johnson, newly appointed president after Kennedy’s assassination, gave the orders to send massive troops into Vietnam. Before this event, the Peace Corps had grown from 10,000 volunteers to more than 15,000, and Johnson had said he hoped to see the Peace Corps reach more than 20,000 volunteers. Even after Johnson sent the troops into Vietnam in July, it took about a year for the effects to really set in. By 1967, it became apparent that the war was deterring people from volunteering for the Peace Corps. In 1966, the Peace Corps had 15,556 volunteers, but in 1972 a year before Nixon withdrew our troops from Vietnam, the volunteers in the Peace Corps had declined to 6,894. During Vietnam, protesting and petitions were not allowed by Peace Corps volunteers. When this became public that the Peace Corps, which had always emphasized that its volunteers were free men and women able to express their own views, tried to control the “free speech” of its volunteers, the organization began to lose its credibility.

However, by 1970 the percent of male volunteers was up from 55 percent to 70 percent - this obviously due to the draft for the war. Males who entered into the Peace Corps were not exempt from the draft (except for doctors), however the two directors the Peace Corps had during the war devoted a lot of time and energy into keeping their volunteers at their sites of service. Yanking volunteers from a host country was not fair to the volunteer or the country for which they were serving. A deferment was never granted, but for the most part if a man joined the Peace Corps, most draft boards would leave them alone, it was sort of an unspoken agreement. However, it was up to individual draft boards discretion. For example some small draft boards in Texas would not honor the “agreement” - to them, the volunteer needed to “go out and fight like a man.” In the first year of Nixon’s administration only 150 out of the 7,800 male volunteers were drafted out of their assignments. With our troops in Vietnam and the assassination of both Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, the hope that one person could make a difference, diminished, and the ideals of the Peace Corps began to fall through the cracks. People could no longer sustain faith in America’s good intentions.

In 1969, Richard Nixon assumed the presidency and appointed Joseph Blatchford as head of the Peace Corps. With the new administration came new ideals. Blatchford took the focus away from collage graduates and looked more for older, more technically skilled volunteers. It was said he wanted to get away from the “hippie” types that “infested” the peace Corps in the 60s. It was also Blatchford that eliminated having possible volunteers undergo psychological evaluations during training with the idea that recruits were responsible adults capable of knowing their own minds. The change to older, more mature volunteers reflected the increased need for knowledge in health, food, sanitation and business development in third world nations. When Nixon became president, a lot of people wanted to see the Peace Corps abolished, including the Committee of Returned Volunteers (CRV). They preferred to have the Peace Corps dissolved than have it wither away slowly under Nixon, a Republican president. However, Blatchford stood strong in support of the Peace Corps and its ideals, and thought he had the support of Nixon behind him, which after time, he realized was not the case.

Even with the makeover Blatchford was doing on the Peace Corps, within a year, Nixon had decided to eliminate it. He began slowly, starting with simply cutting the Washington staff by one-third. On March 26, 1970, Nixon began conspiring with other members of congressional affairs and told them to start “phasing out” the Peace Corps, and to begin by having the appropriations cut. It was also suggested to start exposing different Peace Corps “blunders” for Republicans on the Hill to investigate. Nixon told some member of his staff that the Peace Corps needed to be cut after the November congressional elections but not too close to the 1972 presidential election. At this time, he ordered the agency’s budget to be cut by one-third. Only two months after the November election, Blatchford received the proposed budget for the coming year. The Peace Corps’s budget had a proposed budget cut from $90 million to $60 million. With much pleading on Blatchford’s part, this did not happen until 1972, and a budget of $72 million was compromised on. To account for this severe cut, Blatchford began with cutting salaries and non-personal expenses, but still had to cut $5 million from somewhere. He decided the $5 million would come from cutting 2,313 Peace Corps volunteers. Blatchford announced that to Congress in an attempt to play hardball! This removal would be international embarrassment, and he knew it. Unwilling to be made fools of, certain members of congress found the extra need funds Blatchford needed to keep the 2,313 volunteers.

1971 became even more of a challenge for the Peace Corps, under Nixon, a plan was organized to merge all the volunteer groups, including the Peace Corps. Even with extensive testimony that this merger would destroy the distinctive identity of the Peace Corps, it couldn’t be stopped. The merger took time, but came into effect in July 1973.

On June 17, 1972 only three months after the Peace Corps budget crisis, the Watergate scandal began. Two years later, Nixon resigned. Nixon had planned to rein in American commitments abroad because, in his opinion, foreign interventionism on too broad a scale threatened the nation’s power. He also tried to create a more stable world system that would not call as frequently on the resources of the United States to enforce peace. It is thought that there was just no place for a “warm and fuzzy” Peace Corps spreading goodwill through the world in Nixon’s administration. If it could not fulfill a specific foreign policy function that gained the US an advantage in the world, Nixon thought it should be “chopped.” To do this conspiratorially was just his way.

Once Nixon was out of office, it was already too late for the Peace Corps. The harm was done. The number of volunteers had already dropped, and kept dropping even when he was out of office. The number of volunteers hit an all-time low in 1987 with only 5,212. The number of volunteers hovered around 5,000 from the 70s through the 90s, reflecting an uncertainty of Americans about their world role. However, even with the dropping numbers, the Peace Corps continued to be the largest of the volunteer sending organizations in the world.

With the election of Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, in 1976 came some hope from many Peace Corps supporters. However, they were gravely disappointed. He made no efforts to restore the Peace Corps autonomy and he waited five months before even appointing a director. The head of ACTION, which the Peace Corps was now part of thanks to Nixon, Sam Brown, had a very different idea about how the Peace Corps needed to act. He insisted that all English-language programs be removed and replaced and that we only work with the poorest of the poor countries - based on GNP. And Brown demanded that the Peace Corps pull out, rather than phase out any countries that did not meet that criteria.

The Peace Corps was pulled out of its slump in 1980 by its 10th director Loret Miller Ruppe, who was actually the heiress to the Miller brewing fortune. She was the director of the Peace Corps for eight years - longer than any other director. When the Regan administration appointed a former intelligence office as the head of ACTION, Ruppe laid her reputation on the line and lobbied for the Peace Corps returned autonomy because it was a direct violation of the traditional Peace Corps prohibition on any connection to intelligence gathering. To her delight, Congress supported her, and 10 years after the Republicans led the Peace Corps into ACTION, another Republican got it back out. It was Feb. 22, 1982 when the Peace Corps was reestablished as its own agency.

The number of volunteers began to rise again the mid 1990s, averaging 6,800, and now, the Peace Corps is standing even taller. In just 16 days, the Peace Corps will have its 50th anniversary! The mission and the experiences of the Peace Corps volunteers have hardly changed during the last 50 years, meaning it must be doing something right. There were some up sand downs, and some people had their doubts, but I’m excited to begin my journey, and am proud to represent an agency that has gone through so much, but has held on to its beliefs and is still just as much beneficial to the third-world countries of this world, if not more, than it was when it began 50 years ago. I agree with an article that I just read on the plane in the Alaska Airlines magazine. The next phase for the Peace Corps will be embracing the 21st century and all the technology that it has to offer. In the world we live in now, we need to use all the means we have available to us to help third-world countries become self sustaining! Last year, there were 8,655 volunteers in the field, and more requests from host countries for volunteers than the agency could send due to a budget constraint of $400 million. Now, more than 200,000 volunteers have served in the Peace Corps in more than 139 countries - I think Kennedy, and the recently passed Shriver, would be happy with where we are today.

You can't rain on my parade!!!

What I go through to learn Spanish. Today, just like any average day in Seattle, Washington, started out not too bad - a little hint of sprinkle in the air. Then, as soon as I strattled my bike and started on my way to Spanish class, it became more of a drizzle than a sprinkle, and about halfway there, it became more of a light rain than a drizzle. Then, of course, in the 25 minutes it took me to get from house to classroom, it was all out raining. I was completely drenched. Why didn't I wear my rain gear? That is a very good question that I cannot actually answer except with something as inconsequential as: my blond got the better of me. I don't know why I don't have my rain pants in my backpack whenever I ride - it will be something I don't forget from now on, that is for sure. Sitting in Spanish class for three and half hours soaking wet is not the most fun I've ever had. Then, after class, I always study at a near by coffee shop, so I still didn't have the opportunity to get dry. At least at the coffee shop, I got something nice and warm to drink and it was probably a good 15 degrees warmer than my Spanish teacher keeps her classroom.

So, eight hours after leaving the house, I returned. I was still a little damp - especially my feet. I hope I don't get sick! I did get warmed up on my bike ride home, and then got changed pretty much the second I walked in the door, so hopefully I'm ok. I had lots of vitamin C today, and I always have a ton of fluids, so hopefully I can ward off any sickness that may ensue.

I have been thinking a lot today about what I will be doing in Honduras. I'm hoping that, like the woman in the book I was reading, I will be working mostley with babies and pregnant mothers. I know this kind of work would get depressing when and if babies and/or mothers die, but helping most to survive would be one of the most satisfying jobs I can think of. I was talking to my dad about it when he was in town the other day. He was the one that brought how hard it would be to my attention. And, he is right. I can't imagine anything harder than day after day seeing sick children that are on the cusp of dieing. I know I am the type of person that would get attached to each and every baby I work with and if one died, it would be more than I could bare.

But, at the same time, I would be helping many of those babies to live! I could be responsible, or at least partially responsible, for some of those babies surviving and becoming amazing children and adults. I now that everyday would be a struggle for me to hold my emotions in check - not cry, not get too attached, not let me emotions get in the way of performing my duties, but I know I can do it.

I don't even know if this is what I will end up doing during my service in Honduras - I can hope, but I won't know until May, really. Until I finish training and get my assignment, it is going to be a big mystery. I know that I will be working with HIV prevention and Child Survival of some sort, but the specifics are a bit blurry and the different opportunities seem almost limitless.

The next two weeks are going to fly by. I can't even believe it is down to 15 days tell I leave. This is ridiculous. Thanksgiving, when I first found out where/about when I would be going, seems like it was only yesterday, yet that was about 80 days ago. I leave to go to my grandparents house in South Dakota tomorrow, and I will be there until Sunday, so I can be back for my Spanish class on Monday. I'm paying good money for those classes -I'm not about to miss one (and I need all the practice I can get.) But, these 6 days at my grandparents house are going to fly by because I haven't seen them in about 10 years, and I haven't been to South Dakota in 17 years, so there is going to be a lot to talk about and see, which will make it go by very quickly. Then, when I get back to Washington, I will only have 9 days left until I leave, which are going to fill up very fast.

Monday, I have Spanish class, Tuesday, I will work on packing and gathering all the rest of the things I keep thinking of that I want to take with me to Honduras, and then Tuesday evening i'm having dinner and going to a movie with a couple girlfriends. Wednesday and Thursday will be more Spanish and more packing. I'm sure, by this point I will be freaking out about the amount of stuff I've managed to accumulate that has to fit into two rather small bags. Only being able to take two suitcases that don't exceed 80 pounds seems a bit on the low side, especially for me. I'm the type of person that really likes to over pack. I like to be prepared for everything - I get that from my lovely mother. Friday, I am going to go up to Bellingham with Jessica to see more friends and say goodbye to everyone, as well as just see Bellingham. Both of us have been away for so long - her in Americorps and then in Germany, and me stuck up in Alaska doing chemo. So, this is our opportunity to go around Bellingham and see all our old hang-out spots and tour the campus! Sunday, my friends and I are getting together for a brunch for the official goodbye, and then it is back to Seattle. Monday is going to be crazy. I will finish packing for Honduras as well as pack up all the stuff I am leaving behind and put it all in the attic. I will try to work on Spanish, but I doubt if that will happen because I will be pretty antsy. Monday night will be devoted to hanging out with Sarah! Hopefully we can go to dinner and spend some quality time together, although I'm fairly certain she has a test the next day!

Then, Tuesday morning, my flight is at 8:30, so we'll have to be out of the house by 6:30 I think - the traffic won't be bad that early in the morning, and I am not the type of person that needs to be at an airport 2 hours early. I am more of a hour, hour and a half type of gal.

So, like I said - the next two weeks are going to fly by. I know I'm going to be running around like a crazy person, and I will be super stressed out. Hopefully the trip to Bellingham will be a time for relaxation and fun before the last two days of super stress before I get on that airplane to Atlanta.

Hopefully, I will get to see Mt. Rushmore while I'm in South Dakota. I haven't seen it since I was five, when I still called it "Mt. Mushmore!"

What to expect???

I was officially nominated into the Peace Corps on June 23, 2010. I was officially Invited to the Peace Corps in November 2010. However it took some time to receive my invitation packet in the mail and then get it shipped up to me in Alaska because I had gone home for Christmas. I gladly accepted the invitation on December 10, 2010. I am just realizing how fast this has all actually been happening. To me, it feels like ages because the few weeks here and there between each step has been torture, but when I pull back and look at the bigger picture - it will only have been 8 months from nomination to departure, and that is even with all the health hoops I had to jump through. Some people have to wait a year even with out any time added for special circumstances.

I feel lucky and honored. I was put on sort of a fast track at the beginning - everything happened so fast from turning in my application to having my interview and being nominated. Had I not had to wait until September to send the Peace Corps my 6-month check-up lab results, maybe I would have been out of here 3 months ago? Who knows. I love how it has all come together, though. I think it was the perfect amount of time. I was able to work and pay my car off, have an awesome vacation and road trip with two of the most fantastic girls ever, spend thanksgiving with family I hadn’t seen in years, spend Christmas with my immediate family, and spend New Years with friends I hadn’t seen in forever. I am also leaving in a week to see my other grandparents that I haven’t seen in more than 10 years. If my application and invitation process had happened faster, I would not have been able to do all that.

I think the travel and visiting was important. I feel like if the Peace Corps stuff had happened too fast, I would have ended up in another country not fully prepared for what to expect. And I would be terribly homesick. Of course I am still going to be homesick, but I don’t think it is going to be as bad because I had the opportunity to see everyone before I left. Having 8 months between nomination and departure has also given me time to thoroughly read my handbooks and welcome books, and I have been reading books written by other volunteers and people in Honduras. All of this, I think, has prepared me for what it is going to be like when I get to Honduras. Obviously, it is going to be nothing like what I have been reading - papers and books never does anything justice. It is going to be a new and exciting and scary experience that I will have never come close to taking part in before, but that is what makes it so completely wonderful.

Yesterday, I received another e-mail. This one had more attachments for me to read and papers for me to fill out. The 13 page document that was included was very informative. It told me all about what I am going to be doing in training and what is going to be expected of me. It talked about the location of our training facility and our host families. I found out that the training location, Zarabanda - about an hour away from Tegucigalpa - does not have internet service. This particular piece of information made me a little sad, but I’ll deal with it - nothing else I can do. So, everyone needs to be prepared to not here from me for a while, but to monitor my blog because one day a bunch of posts will show up at one time! I want to keep you all informed about what I am doing and how everything is going.

Reading this Bridge to Pre-Service Training, Honduras documents, I actually found myself getting really nervous. It all happens so fast. We arrive in Honduras and our belongings get dropped of at our host-family’s houses while we are shuttled to the training facility. This is were we are introduced to the people at the training facility and then we meet our host family and go home. The next day we dive in. We begin orientation to language, safety and medical training, begin survivor Spanish, have a one-on-one interview with a language specialist to determine where we are with our language so we can be put in the appropriate class, and we start the first batch of vaccinations/immunizations. I have yet to learn what specifically I will need on the shot front, but I will find out when I get there I suppose.

The first three-and-a-half weeks of training is in Zarabanda and focuses on language and cross-cultural training, safety and health, and has an introduction to technical project training. We live with a host family during this time and have roughly a 7:30 to 4:30 work day.

The second phase is field based training and includes technical project, community development and language training. Safety and health training also continues during this time. However, FBT is split into three projects and trainees and staff move to new communities and live with new host families. For this six-week section trainees work together on different community projects, involving community members, and often have longer work days and can expect to be working on weekends.

During post-field-based training, we go back to Zarabanda and back with our original host families for the final week-and-a-half of training.

Volunteers meet with the language specialists frequently during training to monitor the progress in learning the language and to ensure they are in the appropriate classes. If a trainee does not reach the “intermediate mid” range before the end of training, he or she will be unable to move forward and become a Peace Corps Volunteer.

I think that was the part that made me the most nervous. On our first day, we have an interview where we sit down with someone and they decided where we are in our language skills. The idea of that makes me really nervous, so I can’t even image how I am going to react when that situation actually presents itself. I hate public speaking. I always have. I know this is not me having to get up on stage and recite something in Spanish to people, but it is still me being put on the spot. What if my mind totally draws a blank? What if I go to speak in Spanish and it just won’t come out of my mouth? I don’t want to look like a complete idiot. I guess this is where the Spanish classes that I am taking right now come into play. Hopefully by the time I leave, I will be a little more comfortable with my ability to speak Spanish, so I won’t have to be so nervous when I meet with my interviewer! Hopefully you guys won’t find me back in Seattle in May instead of moving into a Honduran community to begin my service.

The other things in the Bridge document that were making me nervous was just all the information about what they will be teaching us and how they expect us to take everything the teach us and apply to a bunch of situations. All of this while working on our Spanish and having to practice giving talks and demonstrating things in Spanish. I know that this whole training session I will be completely out of my comfort zone. I have never been one to try a lot of new things. I don’t like the idea that I will not be very good at something, so I tend not to try it when I’m with a bunch of people. I prefer to figure out if I am good at something or not on my own, and work on getting better at it before I go out with other people to try it. So, Honduras is going to be a new experience for me, that is for sure. I guess I just have to keep in mind that I am going to be there with 54 other people who are all struggling just like me. We will have to really work together to figure things out and make the best of everything.

I like to imagine myself becoming one of the “leaders” - someone that other people look up to and asks advice from. I really hope to become that person for people. I know that I have it in me to be a good leader. I love to help people work through their struggles, and I like to think I have the type of mind that works well in awkward, unfamiliar situations. I’m going to try really hard in Atlanta and Honduras to give the best impression of who I am. I need to be the helpful, smart, quick thinking gal that I always am, but make it noticeable to the staff around me. I don’t mean any of this to sound like I just want to be noticed and looked highly upon by the staff. I want to stand out as a leader and helper just because that I is the type of person I am and I just hope they can see it. As a volunteer, I want to be put in a community and project that I will be the most helpful in. I want to end up doing the most effective work I can while I’m in Honduras. Which means, during training, I need to not let my fears and nervousness get the better of me. I need to show everyone who I am and what I have to offer so they can select the best placement for me.

I am nervous for everything training is going to put in front of me. Especially now that I am reading this book called “Margarita: A Guatemalan Peace Corps Experience.” This book, like the previous one I read about Honduras, is from 1988, but it still gives me an idea of what it is going to be like from a trainee/volunteers prospective.

In Margarita’s training class 46 of the original 57 trainees became volunteers. Some just couldn’t hack it and didn’t want to stay, but the rest were not selected because they either did not show promise during training activities or they were not where they needed to be language-wise. This book, being from more than 20 years ago is a bit of an aged description of what it is going to be like for me, but again, I can get an idea. Margarita left from Miami, FL with six suitcases - we are only allowed to bring two that don’t exceed 80 pounds. She was often able to travel to the city and spend the night in a hotel to have a nice hot shower and a restaurant-cooked meal, and I‘m not sure how much of that will be allowed, now? She was nervous about her language skills all through training as well, but she made it, which was very encouraging to me.

I have not finished the book yet, I’m about half-way through, but up to this point, she seems to be doing very well in her new community. Integrating nicely, working with the women in the community, teaching women and school children how to eat from all the food groups to get good nutrition, helping malnourished children, and other things along those lines. This book has been very inspiring to me. Margarita, whose name is actually Marjorie, but in Spanish there is no translation for that, so they call her Margarita. Well, she is very proactive about talking to school principals and asking if she can teach health and nutrition to the students, and even sit in on other classes to work on her Spanish. It has been giving me great ideas for when I’m in Honduras and is getting me very excited. Margarita was a nutritionist before she joined the Peace Corps, so she obviously has lot more knowledge and was most likely put into that field because of it, but reading what my job duties could entail, it sounds like I will be doing the same sort of thing.

I hope when I get my assignment for service, I can be as proactive and as good as Margarita at integrating into my community and being ready to dive in and help in any way that I can.