We're Here!

Finally in Suriname, it’s been over a year in the making, and a relief to finally be here. The very first thing to hit me, once we got out of the plane was the air, a thick wall of humidity and heat, wow! The weather here currently averages about 90 degrees during the day with about 90% humidity, fun stuff. We are staying in a facility called NAKS, which is kind of like a camp in a way, its four dormitories that surround a central communal building with grass all around. We all share rooms, two to a room. We’ll be here for the first week, getting introduced to the Peace Corps Suriname staff, getting immunizations, phones, and other basic things. We also have a quite full schedule of classes and guess speakers to teach us as much about Suriname as possible in the week or so here. We’ll also have our sites chosen; this is very exciting because that’s where we’ll be spending the next two years of our lives.

Miami

Well, Miami has come and gone, well at least in a couple more hours it will have. What a city, so far I’ve loved what I’ve seen from the hotel that I’m staying at which is as close as possible to the airport, I think the furthest that I’ve ventured out from the hotel is to the Checker’s a block or two away. That’s my Miami experience, very exciting! So as for Miami, let’s just say, next time I’ll be here for WMC.

I’m here for Staging anyway so don’t feel too bad for me. Staging took almost a whole day, it was basically an overview of the general policies of the Peace Corps and a chance to do some team building exercises to get to know each other as much as possible in a day. Here I’ve met all the volunteers who will be coming with me as part of SUR 16, the 16th group to be coming to Suriname, they’re a great group of people, looking forward to getting to know them. Right now we’re all going to catch a flight to Suriname which has a brief layover in Trinidad & Tobago, we’ll be arriving in Suriname about 12:30am its local time.

Some Contact Info

I'm set! I'm now ready to take off, literally.

Tomorrow I fly to Miami for staging, this is where I'll meet the 23 others of my group who are going to Suriname and get to take care of the last of the last of the paperwork that will need to be completed. I'm looking forward to meeting the others in my group, we've had some email communication so have "spoken" a little. On Wednesday we then fly out Suriname!

Now, how about some contact info, sound good? I think so...

The mail to address is the Peace Corps office in Suriname, they'll hold on to whatever packages for me until I can pick them up. The email is my general email and the blog is this blog. The phone is a Google Voice account that I'm going to use primarily for voicemail, I'll try to check it as much as possible.

Mail:  Peace Corps/Suriname

         Matthew Day

         P.O. Box 9500

         Paramaribo-Zuid

         Suriname

         South America

Email: zeronero@gmail.com

Blog: http://daystravels.blogspot.com/

Phone: Google Voice (Voicemail) 415-843-1316

And I'm off...