One thing that has started to give me anxiety is the fact that its culture to be late to just about everything. Coming from an American culture that works off being on time and ending on time, I've found it especially frustrating to know that being late is excepted, rather then frowned upon. We had a presenter yesterday that showed up 30 minutes late, and it didn't even phase him. Its going to be a huge adjustment for me.
Last night we needed to de-stress from a long day of training so we decided to go to a lil hole in the wall bar down the road from our compound called the "stress off bar." It was great getting to use our money for the first time because they use Eastern Caribbean Dollar here, which is alot different. We danced the evening away and got some great info from the PCRV's (Peace Corps Response Volunteer).
Today was really boring training wise. We had the safety and security officer from the office come and talk to us today about unwanted attention and intimacy thresholds in our new culture. It was interesting to hear the way they view certain common tasks, such as if a woman dances three songs or more with the same man it typically means you're going to sleep with him tonight, or that if a woman is alone at a bar it means she is a prostitute. Things in American culture that we just take superficially and don't even think twice about are completely different here, and its very intriguing.
So tomorrow we are headed off to Grenada to another new environment, but one that will be more stable (at least for the next 7 weeks). I'm excited to meet my new host family and hope that the experience will be everything i can imagine.
Here is to the challenge...
These are the group pictures we took today. One is with just the PCV's (Peace Corps Volunteers) and then one with the PCV's and PCRV's (Peace Corps Response Volunteers).
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