PC: Pre-service Training Week Five (part one)

Welcome, friendly readers. I have been informed that my posts are too long, so I am breaking them up into two per week unless nothing internet-worthy happens in my life. Given what's on the internet these days, it would take a particularly boring day to merit no mention at all on the interwebs. Also, the fact that this is week five means that I only have five more weeks of training. That's crazy.

Sunday we all boarded the Peace Corps shuttle once again for the ride back to Nuevo Cuscatlán after our Immersion Days. The bus was buzzing with stories from everyone’s weekend accompanied by photos on tiny camera screens. We got home around noon and I took the chance to relax and read and update my blog (which takes a surprisingly long time every time I sit down to it) before the pupusería opened. I made myself a burrito, which about half an hour later turned out to have been a poor choice as I had been nursing an upset stomach (I ate only fruit all weekend) and real food did not sit well. Despite the stomach I made it to Anne’s birthday party to watch all the festivities and envy everyone eating chocolate and vanilla cake. The family adores her, and went all out for the party. They started with a dance party, moved on to musical chairs, continued with a piñata, let everyone sit down for cake, then decided that the birthday girl (and some of the guests afterwards) needed to be thrown in the air 23 times. Catherine and Kai tricked Anne beautifully by taking a picture with her to get close enough to smash cake in her face. That, of course, turned into a war with quite a few casualties. Anne’s host mom makes gorgeous jewelry, and she gifted each of us a matching set of earrings and bracelet or necklace. I left soon after everyone tried throwing Kai in the air and only made it to eleven throws before almost dropping him.

Monday we were back with our Spanish group, sitting down to a lesson on when to use preterite and imperfect and listening to music to identify just such instances. In the afternoon we had our last chance meeting planned with the women’s artisan group, and it was finally a success! Nine women came and we made it through our agenda, creating a directiva at the end and asking the women to write down their goals for the group which we will revise and present at the next meeting. It was incredibly exciting to see the women showing off their work and getting into the idea of setting goals and getting organized. Fingers crossed that they’ll show up for the next meeting. I consider myself incredibly lucky to be working with the Spanish group that I have because both of the other trainees have lots of intense work experience and are really good at this stuff so I’m learning a ton from them.

Emily and I met up to try to work out the rest of free weekend, securing transportation and calling a lifeguard and making sure everything is on track for Friday. Also, a new Watsky song came out, so I’ve been listening to that and his others on repeat whenever I have the computer on. It even has a line about Peace Corps, which just makes me smile inside every time I listen.   

Tuesday started with a debrief of Immersion Days with Clelia. It turns out we are terrible finders (writing that just made me think of this, at which point I burst out laughing in the middle of an empty room) because Clelia hid the eight slips of paper with the questions we were supposed to answer all around the training center, and we only found five. To give you an idea, the training center is only two rooms with whiteboards, chairs, a couple of tables and a mini kitchen. In the end Clelia gave up and found the rest for us as we paired up to discuss our experiences. Alex surprised herself by really enjoying the English classes she participated in with her volunteer. We came back to share in a group circle, and the general consensus was that although fun, the projects weren’t really what we will be doing and the living conditions were much better than we will be living. The most rural placement was Mario with Greg, and Greg is primarily working on projects that are closer to COED than Youth Development. I’m sure Clelia put him there to see how he handled a small rural site in the middle of nowhere so she can do the same when it comes to our own site placements. Mario’s going to be our own SSV, just you wait (don’t worry if you can’t remember this acronym I mentioned on Thursday of week three. I never explained it because it’s a running joke in our group). 

We transitioned into a health session on STDs with a Peace Corps video on HIV from returned volunteers. Evidently health education wasn’t such a big portion of training in the past, especially safe sex and sexual assault response. They are for sure covering all their bases now because after the general meeting we were in for another session on sexual assault, pretty much the same information we got last time and far too many breakout groups that didn’t add anything to the session. I understand that Peace Corps wants all the sessions to be in 4MAT, but sometimes it doesn’t make any sense to structure things that way. Health sessions, for example. We just need the information, we don’t need our opinions. 

The day ended with the first group TFS presentation. The idea is that each group takes a topic (conducting an effective meeting, the volunteer as co-planner, the volunteer as co-facilitator, conducting an assessment, etc) and has an hour to teach the topic using the 4MAT structure to the rest of the group. The first group was teaching how to conduct an effective meeting, and they had the brilliant idea to teach the material and then apply it to a meeting on free weekend. Brilliant. We needed to talk about all the logistics anyway, so they got two birds with one stone and everyone was engaged and on task throughout the activity. 

It rained from 4 pm until late into the night, but I promised Emily that I would go with her to aerobics class. Rain of course cancels everything here (I get the feeling people just don’t like showing up for things, so they look for reasons to cancel them) but there were four of us and we were ready for exercise so we went to a house, blasted music, and just danced for an hour and laughed a ton.

I spent the evening after dinner helping Josiel (the ten-year-old) with math, playing games with him, chatting with the family and playing with Diana. She says my name now, brings me things (usually juice bottles or coins) and sits happily on my lap. I’d call that building confianza. Roberto and I talked about the civil war while I played with Diana, and I lent him Turquedad de Izote while I try to motivate myself to do homework and read I, Robot and The Twelve Caesars before the end of the month. Free weekend is going to be a whole lot of music, reading and beach time. Sounds fun to me. 

Wednesday morning the LCFs (Language and Cultural Facilitators) switched classes to give us our mid-PST language interviews. It’s an hour-long conversation to assess our Spanish level and anything we need to work on for the final interview at the end of PST because we all have to show improvement, regardless of our current level. Evidently I talk nice and clear, but preterite and imperfect are the bane of my existence. Our entire conversation was about the past, both what I did the last time I was in El Salvador and what I did for three months bumming around Chile and Argentina. This story was the one that exposed my complete lack of preterite and imperfect storytelling skills.

After lunch we dropped by Luke's house to wish his abuela a happy birthday and eat some cake and coffee. Niña Carolina is awesome and I love stopping by to chat with her about anything. She was our aerobics partner on Tuesday night too for the dancing fun. From there we headed off to meet with the local school director to learn everything about the school system in Nuevo Cuscatlán. Schoolchildren are provided uniforms, shoes, notebooks, pencils and basic food supplies, so there is no reason not to attend public school. In Nuevo Cuscatlán attendance is high and the school has over 800 students, but not nearly enough teachers. Most classes have at least 36 kids, and usually over 40. The school receives $13 for every student every year from the government to use for projects in the school that will benefit the kids, but very little to pay teachers. Teachers only work half days and it would not benefit them to work full days because a half day is full pay and anything more than that is less than half pay. The government provides supplies for meals, but it's basically beans, sugar, rice, oil, and fortified drinks. There is very little variety and makes it next to impossible to give the kids a balanced diet. It sounds like there are good school organizations and activities for the kids and they have a good relationship with some NGOs as well. Most of the kids in Nuevo Cuscatlán continue their education after 9th grade thanks to the scholarship program the mayor implemented to pay in full for anyone who can maintain at least a 7.5.

After the visit it was back to niña Carolina's to take advantage of some wifi and watch some fútbol and get super frustrated at the impossibility of uploading a video to youtube. After a brief trip home and some reading time (I'm actually reading Good Omens, which is funny but not even on my list of books I should be reading), we all came back for the birthday party (70th!) and an introduction to the whole family. We had delicious tamales filled with chicken and peppers, bread, hot chocolate or coffee or soda, and cake with fantastic frosting and strawberries inside. I also tried raw chocolate for the first time, and it is amazing (just make sure you're not allergic before tasting!). I have unfortunately been off and on with stomach issues, so I have to be careful about the amount of stuff I put in my body and how often so I don't have a perpetual stomachache. Basically that meant staring longingly at the hot chocolate and eating the cake with gleeful abandon. I ended up in some of the pictures, so when the family looks back at that birthday party they are all going to ask "Who was that gringa?"

At home I worked on some homework while Roberto looked up fajita, bean and guacamole recipes to try out in the pupuseria. Next week we will have testing days to see how they turn out. Now I'm off to bed and lights out after a few minutes of reading while catching up on the opening night with the Judas Redux cast from August 25. Sometimes I just like to geek out, and being in El Salvador hasn't changed that one bit.