PC: Pre-Service Training Week Eight (part 2)

This week has been a lot of crafts and a lot of Spanish. Wednesday Spanish tends to consist of us saying a few rounds of the sentences we are supposed to be working on, then distracting our LCF for a good long time with any subject not related to class. We're just supposed to be able to handle conversations in Spanish, after all, so it's all just good practice, right?

We spent some of the morning writing our resumés in Spanish to give to our community counterparts. In the afternoon Kai's host mom came to teach us and some of the women from our women's group how to tie-dye with indigo. It is a surprising amount of work because you have to dip the shirt at least three times and let it oxidize each time by airing it out and rubbing it like crazy. It comes out green, then as it oxidizes it turns deep blue. The indigo is a powder that is added to a huge vat of prepared indigo water to activate the color so it will stick to the cotton of the shirt after the tied shirt is soaked in soapy water. After the baths, the shirts are placed in vinegar water for ten minutes, then you pull off all the strings to reveal the pattern. The excess indigo has to be washed off, then the shirt dries for forever since it's rainy season here. I'm not sure how many washes it needs before it stops bleeding indigo, but mine definitely left my upper half a little blue after a dat wearing it.

Thursday we covered disaster prevention and mitigation, though mostly we just learned about volcanic eruptions and lahars and that since I will be living in an adobe house I need to get into a doorway (sans door) during an earthquake, not outside, because the roof tiles aren't attached by anything so they will just rocket off the house. In the behavior change session that followed, they basically said that knowledge doesn't equal behavior change. Good job on the common sense sessions that morning.

The afternoon was taken over by written guides for our first two months and ideas for community development and business development projects for our sites. That was by far the most interesting, and slightly overwhelming. Clelia told us all these horror stories about bad volunteers in the past and how their communities shunned them. I have my first Project Manager visit not even a month in, and I have to have visited at least a hundred households for the community census (I think my community has around 90 households, so I have to visit every house in my community) before she comes and present the results and my plans for projects at the general assembly that I organize the day she is in town. At least I will be keeping busy!

Friday we just told stories and got a ton of Spanish homework we probably won't finish, since we have all of our women's group stuff and presentations and self-directed projects all due next week.

Saturday, most of the group went to Suchitoto to wander around town and see some waterfalls, and they ended up running into a ton of embassy people with their families. Since I have already been there, I spent the day doing puppy things. The three of us who are taking the puppies bought collars and puppy food and shampoo, and spent the day giving some very unhappy puppies baths. After they warmed up again and forgave us (food is always a good motivator for forgiveness) we spent hours sitting on the ground playing with them and taking photos and videos. They are only a month old and just learned how to walk, but they have crazy energy and are the cutest things ever. I think mine is starting to recognize me - she curled up in my lap to sleep after the bath.

Also, I learned how to make pop top belts last night. Yay arts and crafts! Incidentally, it takes almost two yards of ribbon to make a belt for me with room for my stomach to grow, which is way more than I expected (the ribbon, not the stomach).