If I had it my way I most likely would have gone to graduate school right away; a mistake I’m sure. I could have easily started graduate school in the fall of 65 and finished my PhD by 69. That is probably what I would have liked to do at that time. Well it was kind of the line of least resistance that I chose not to go to graduate school. Just because I could not think of anything better to do at the time. But if I did not have a strong motivation to join the Peace Corps when I left, that changed when I got there.

At peace Corps training I did read something about Eastern Africa. We read Allen Morehead, “The White Nile”, Katherine Marshall’s book “None of your laughter” They were given to us during Peace Corps training. Also there was a Paul Bohannan book on anthropology. My thoughts in reading these books: I enjoyed the stories because the Moorehead book was about explorers. We were taught a little about Swahili, about 45 hours a week on the language. The bulk of the time was spent on student education classes and student teaching. I enjoyed student teaching. I found the education books kind of dull. I could not figure out why we were student teaching in Spanish Harlem and BellevueP sychiatric Hospital for training.

We were New York for three months on training: Herran high school and Bellevue Hospital. I had a suspicion that they did not know what to do with us before they sent us out. They thought it was good training because there were a lot of black people in Harlem and in Bellevue. I thought Bellevue was horrible, those poor kids were nuts. I student taught for about 8 weeks, History. I think it was 10th grade. The kids were by today’s standards working class kids. They were mostly black, some Hispanics and a few whites.The male history teacher was white. It was a bad neighborhood. Well you could tell by looking at it. It was an inner city school. We traveled by subway every day. I liked the subway every day. I did not feel too nervous in New York. It was a lot of fun, lots to do. We enjoyed 2 or 3 plays – “Funny Girl” with Barbara Streisand and “Man from La Mancha” I think there was a third one but can’t remember. We went to the movies a lot – the Bleacher Street theatre. They would show exotic French films. We had gone to a lot of European films in Ann Arbor so there was an attraction. The French films; I seem to remeber they were French comedies. However, they were mature films with real themes and real issues; not like Doris Day.

During training, there was a lot of concern and discussion about the American invasion of the Dominican Republic. There was not much thought of Vietnam Many of the Peace Corps volunteers were left wing. They were heavily eastern. The Midwestern and Southern trainees really stuck out. They were from Connecticut, PA and points northeast. I was not directly escaping from the draft and we were married. Married exempted you from military services.

Strangely, I don’t remember thinking much of Uganda or Africa during the three months of training.