The Envelope Please

And the winner is....Well, after six weeks of waiting and anticipation, of going from our homes to San Francisco to Chengdu, after being farmed out to three training sites and teaching a model course and taking language classes and five days a week eight to five and enduring the heat and the shock of living in a strange land, we finally found out our assignments today, where we will be going for the next two years. As I mentioned in the previous post, the plan was to bring all sixty of us (58 to be precise) together to the hotel where we originally stayed when we arrived in Chengdu and to make the announcement there. They couldn't have known in advance that it would be the hottest day of the year and that the lights along with the air conditioning would be out at the hotel. I have sweated more here than I have sweated at anytime in my life and I sweated more today than I have at any other time in Chengdu.

So we are all gathered in a big ballroom and our chairs are placed in a large circle. There is a map of the various sites in China where the volunteers will be placed drawn on the floor. And we are given a red towel (it wasn't exactly a towel; I'm not sure what it was) and we play hot potato with it, passing it from one person to anothe while the Peace Corps country director for China beats a drum. When the drumming stops, the volunteer with the red towel (or whatever it was) gets up and goes into the center of the ring and is told where his or her assignment is. Some of them are quite far flung and will require thirty plus hour train rides from Chengdu, while some of the assignments are in Chengdu itself. As I mentioned earlier, we knew ahead of time that most of us would be going to Chongqing.

Well, wouldn't you know that of the sixty volunteer I was the second to last to wind up with the red towel (or whatever it was) and find out my assignment. And it turns out I am staying in good ole Chengdu. I will be at Sichuan Teachers College, which is the main institute for training teachers in the Sichuan province. I've been told that the level of students is fairly advanced. There are two PVCs there right now and one of them is leaving (the one I am replacing). So I will go there this Sunday or Monday and while others are taking thirty or forty hour train rides I will take a thirty or forty minute bus ride.

In the picture you can see me standing in the center being told my assignment. If you look closely in the background you can see the red towel (or whatever it is).