A Day in the Life

Training typically lasts from 8 in the morning until 4:30 in the afternoon. About half of the day consists of general information for the entire group and the other half we break into our language groups. My group is wonderful. It’s 4 of us volunteers and our 23 year old instructor. We talk about all kinds of things and go on field trips. He is able to make our language lessons fun because he puts the boring stuff in a context where it’s actually interesting. Never before have I had such thorough Spanish instruction. I’m learning things I really should have learned years ago, and actually caring about what I’m learning.

The big group is also wonderful. We have a fun time with the learning activities they give us and enjoy going to a colmado after training every once in a while for a cold drink. Cold drinks are a real special treat in this country as everything is hot and sticky pretty much all the time. In a few weeks we will all be heading into our 4 focus groups for Community Based Training. The Health group is pretty small with around 13 volunteers. The Water and Sanitation group has just 6 volunteers. Community Economic Development is bigger with around 17 volunteers. The biggest group is Youth, with the remainder of the 52 volunteers. The Health group is going to stationed somewhere near the coast, which will be lovely as we have not had a chance to go (nor been allowed to even think about going) to the beach. But our Health trainer promises us that we will go at least once. :) It seems as though the place where we are going for this training is going to be in the middle of nowhere, so I anticipate not having too much of a social life or too much outside entertainment. That is exactly the reason I brought many DVDs and my ipod with portable speakers. Well, the ipod was actually more for the kids in my town because honestly, who doesn’t think an ipod is awesome. Also, I’m hoping it will trick them into still thinking I’m cool even though I’m not very good at baseball. And really, I just want to be popular with a group of kids for a change. :)