Whoa, Nelly...

April 18, 2009

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
-Confucius

We are expected to swallow an incredible amount of information (and starchy foods) during the course of our training, and this quote rings true with respect to what information I am actually able to retain. The next three weeks are going to be the most intense thus far, so I figured I’d try to sum it all up, at least in order to get it all straight in my own head.

Tomorrow, the 4 other trainees in my Spanish class and I will be facilitating a community analysis with an 8th grade civics class of 40 students. This would be a relatively difficult task for me in English, so I won’t lie, I’m a little nervous about doing it in Spanish. Just to add to the good times, our boss will be there to evaluate us. We still need to fit in two more sessions with this group and carry out a community service project with them before training is over, but our training schedule is packed to the brim so I’m not entirely sure how that will happen, but I’m sure it will.

Next week I will be visiting 2 current volunteers who live near Buenos Aires, in the province of Puntarenas (relatively close to Panama). We will stay with families in Térraba (a rural town with a high indigenous population) for the first 3 nights, and then move in with other host families in Santa Cruz (a more urban town walking distance from the center of Buenos Aires) for the last 3 nights. We are being matched with different groups in the communities for our nonformal educational activities that we have been planning for the last couple of weeks. My friend Jon and I will be doing a workshop on the importance of exercise, and teaching kids how to play the greatest basketball game of all time, Knock-Out (some people who are not so smart call it Lightening). If you do not know this game, you should be sad. In order to stop being sad, I’m going to have to insist that you go find a 10-year-old, or anyone who I ever went to elementary school with, and learn it…like, now…I’ll wait here.

We also have two other projects going on right now. One is a complete analysis of our training communities, which will be our largest project before swearing in, and the other is a detailed report of all of our training projects, including their objectives, methodologies, and outcomes. These are both due right after we get back from our site visits, the first week of May. After that, we are almost home free (in terms of training, that is). There are of course those 24 months of service, but there will actually be some stability in our lives at that point. By the way, May 8th is the most anticipated day of training, and perhaps the most anticipated date during our 27 months in country, because we find out our future sites. The whole day is apparently spent at this big park/retreat place with all kinds of fun outdoorsy stuff to do. A group of us decided to head to the beach the following day to celebrate, and take advantage of the one free night we get out of site during these 3 months.

After receiving our site placements, we meet our new bosses in San Jose, and then travel with them to visit our future homes for a week. When we return to our training communities we will only have about 2 weeks left before our final evaluations and swearing in ceremony. I will officially move to my 2-year site on May 30th (my birthday)!!!