The Halfway Point

Ahhh Midservice: That point about a year in where they haul in what's left of your cohort and examine the shattered remnants of what used to be Peace Corps Volunteers.

We're the first environmental group in Guyana, and in some of the most remote locations. None of us have regular email access, and about half of us don't even have cell service at our sites. My site, which is one of the easiest to travel from, still takes an inordinate amount of prep and about two days to get from site to Georgetown.
With this in mind, Peace Corps emailed us our travel arrangements.
No calls were made until the day before some volunteers needed to actually find a ride for the first part of the trip out.
It's a good thing we're pros now. Just a few rolled eyes and some good-natured grumbling (from my fellows, who have better temperaments than I do), and everyone made it out on time.

I, on the other hand, almost didn't make it. After a distressing morning of no-transportation-available which left me barely making it to the airport only 15 minutes before the flight left, I was in one of those moods that leaves small children fleeing in terror, and causes wise adults to clear a very large path around me. Then we had our medical exams. Oh goody.

The good news is I'm probably not dying. At least not from TB (which was a legitimate concern. It's not rare around me at all). The bad news is staff stomping into the exam room with paperwork while you're half-naked on the table is also not rare. This did not improve my mood.

Luckily the Guy 29 group is well used to my gremlin-mode, and never fails to cajole me out of it. Plus there was a pool. That always helps.

I know Peace Corps is hoping I'll go into detail about all the training sessions they had, and all of the other technical stuff at the Midservice "trainings" but that's probably more boring to read about than it would be to write about, so I'm going to do us both a favor and instead post silly pictures.

Lance telling some crazy story

The boys enjoying the pool

Jon. I'm pretty sure this is just his normal look.

Our very own "Creation of Adam"

I won't tell you how long we spent trying to get that shot perfect. I'm perfectly happy letting you assume we nailed it perfectly on the first try.

Dylan sporting his glorious mutton chops. Despite our many entreaties, he shaved them off after this picture.

After our IST several months before, the boys decided not to shave again until Midservice. Since Kirsten didn't want to get left out of the fun, I styled her hair into the manliest beard ever.

The Beard-y Pic. Also, the cover of my next album. Also, I need to start a band...

Dylan, Thomas and I made a quick daytrip out to visit our first host families, from back before we moved to our sites.

Jennie and one of her grandbabies

New-mom Orlenna napping with her baby

Of course I dragged Daniel to the creek again.

He started it. I just finished it.

Thomas was with us, and at one point I became slightly concerned, because the creek is fairly isolated, and I looked up to see this:

Yep. This is definitely a murderer.

Luckily most of the time he looks more like this:

This guy probably wouldn't murder anyone.
(You can read his version of events at tomstravellog.wordpress.com . If he did murder someone, you'd find it there.)

So there you have it. Six of us have survived a whole year, and they're keeping me in high spirits with their shenanigans. The best part about Midservice was having all of us in one place to hang out for awhile.