Staging & Departure to Costa Rica

***Sorry for my delay with this blog, its been a crazy 3+ months, but I'm back at it again and hoping to entertain any followers. Thanks for reading and sorry for the delay***

Staging

I arrived at D.C. around 9:00 PM and wasn't sure if to rent a car (already had reservations, just in case), shuttle or taxi? I opted for a taxi, which is the best choice. It was hard as fudge to carry all my bags. I had easily over 150 pounds of luggage on my back and arms. I went outside to get a cab and guess what? There were over 200 people making a line to get a cab. I had to carry all my bags in the process, which was exhausting, while cooping with the hot humid beautiful weather of D.C. I was able to get a cab within 25 minutes and enjoyed the cool A/C cab ride to my hotel. I checked in and my roommate had already arrived. We spoke for some time and we went outside to get some dinner. After dinner we went back to the room, I took a nice cool bath and off to bed. My plan was to wake up very early in the morning and site see D.C., but I was so exhausted that I ended up sleeping in. I woke up and headed to the hotels restaurant and had breakfast. I then went up and chilled at the room, after some time my roommate woke up; we cleaned up, dressed up and we headed downstairs to the conference room to start staging at 12:30 PM. I won't say what happened in staging, it's a lot of activities and fun exercises;  I think everyone has to experience it for the first time. So I will leave that for everyone to experience on their own. After staging they gave us $13 dollars for the people who flew in a day before for taxi expenses (which didn't cover it all, but better than nothing and I didn't expect it, I was very pleased) and gave all of us a debit card. With $120 dollars for dinner, tips and anything we needed before leaving the country. We ended up going to a restaurant called The Town, I had a burger and two Guinness; my last meal in D.C...delicious.

Departure to Costa Rica

We had a very early start. We had to be in the lobby downstairs at 2:00 AM, we all gathered up and left on a bus set up by PC. We arrived at the airport at around 2:30 AM and made a big line waiting for the counter to open so we could check-in our bags. I had a great issue once again with my bags, I rearranged my luggage in the hotel room and in my great luck, weight distribution was off...again. Which I had to hustle through the line to get the right weight limit, while everyone was checking in.

My recommendation if you can is to get those hanging digital scales if possible, they work great and you will use it again many times while in service. When you may ask? When you travel home or elsewhere, that way you can be within baggage weight limits and avoid a hefty fee, because you can't store the luggage anywhere so your kinda fudged, unless you wanna donate your luggage to a fellow traveler.  Another trick I learned from a fellow PCV is if you have a weight scale you can weigh yourself and then weigh yourself with the bag on, then you just subtract your weight and walaah!. By the way the counter gave us preference due the fact that we were Peace Corps Volunteer wohooo! Go PC! After that experience with my luggage, we traveled to Miami, FL; while walking to the terminal for our last departure we met a PCV who was travelling back home, she notice we were PCV's because of the fact that I had a PC patch on my backpack. I highly recommend having some PC insignia, why you may ask? Well is cool to met other PCV's (your in a special club now), one of them may come in your need and viceversa, also its cool as fudge to represent! Even right now in Costa Rica, I don't know all the volunteers, but some have been seen me in places, and there like oh your the guy with the patch.

After leaving Miami, FL we landed in Costa Rica finally! Super tired, but happy and anxious. We then meet the PC crew with a great welcome at the airport. I won't go through the details, to not give away that experience to those who are planning to come to Costa Rica. I will put in my next post my packing list which I imagine everyone wants to read about. Thank you for reading! Cheers!


P.S. I will post a blog entry every week. So stay tuned!