Graduation/Surviving/The Wedding Ceremony

So Peace Corps has their somewhat cheesy and symbolic analogy of a marriage for their volunteers. They look at the intensely long application/interview/waiting process as the “dating stage”, in training we are “engaged” because we have made a significant commitment in coming to the country, but there is still a little time to back out (it’s frowned upon), but it exists. The “wedding” (don’t back out now) just took place last weekend, it was all that I’ve ever dreamed for… but not really. We spent one last week in Zarabanda going over last minute details, more rules and regulations, and processing sessions for days. It was nice getting to see everyone all 52 trainees one last time before getting sent off. On Friday, counterparts/community work partners for everyone showed up at the training center. It was decently awkward, all 52 trainees meeting their blind dates and then being force to hang out with them all day making small talk, it was kind of like a arranged wedding I guess. Friday afternoon we went with our counterparts to the U.S. embassy for the actual ceremony. It was pretty fun for the most part, some good, some corny speeches, and one particularly painful speech on behalf of the embassy, his Spanish was lacking to put it lightly… On Saturday morning all of the new volunteers and their counterparts had to make the journey to site. Fortunately for me, another volunteer who will be working near to me had a counterpart from the Red Cross and they had a car, my counterpart Elda and I were able to bum a ride off of him, he was very friendly too and we got to stop at Lago Yajoa for some pics and then we drove around San Pedro Sula to get a feel for it before getting some Popeyes chicken for lunch. Upon arriving in San Marcos I knew that it was going to be different, but also exciting, it was a little over 100 degrees and the power was out (it didn’t come back for almost 24 hours). I’ve been here for two days now and I’m slowly starting to become accustomed to life here. More to come soon.