PC: Pre-Service Training Week Six (Monday Pre-FBT)
This post is just for Monday because we leave on Tuesday for Field-Based Training and we won't be back until Friday. I will be writing in my journal, but probably most of that won't get transferred to the blog because I am lazy and don't like writing things twice.
I watched the Brotherhood 2.0 where John talks about Feed when he talks about having a Wikipedia in your mind and how that would be cool but then really it wouldn't be cool because someone could just go in anytime they want and just edit your mind. But really in my head I was just saying "I read Feed in middle school. They were talking about it in 2007. That's literally years after I read that book. John's an author I love reading books I love. Life is good." Also, later that year John goes exploring abandoned buildings with M.T. Anderson, who is the author of Feed. I just read Paper Towns, and I feel like that was one of the sparks for Margo's obsession with abandoned buildings in that book. This daily video blog thing is awesome! I'm doing one with my sister, but definitely not as often because I do this blog every day as it is and I barely have enough time to breathe and get work done as it is without two blogs to worry about. We have done three videos so far, and I'm loving it. The next one will have to wait until after Immersion Days, though, because I leave on Tuesday morning.
Monday we watched the inauguration of the national month of community service in the park. The little kids demonstrated a traditional dance, the band played some marching tunes and some of the older kids made speeches about Salvadoran history and community service. After the event we met with the vice-mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán to learn about the function of the alcaldía and the current projects the town council is working on. A lot of it was information we had accumulated from other sources, but it was still a really interesting meeting.
Our post-alcaldía meeting pre-women's group meeting meeting didn't go well. That's too many meetings in a day. I never am good at planning meetings, especially things without kids, but usually we have some good ideas and get into it. It's hard to plan things for this group because it's not our community and I know no one will want to pay for things and probably no one will even show up. I really want to learn how to do most of the things, but the others have no interest at all in actually learning in artisan workshops - they are all about the organizing and leadership talks and whatnot. Tempers were short for some reason and it felt incredibly rushed and unproductive.
I thought about the meeting over lunch and came up with a rough plan for the women's group. Yes, I realize it's in Spanish, but it doesn't actually matter if you understand. The important thing is that I clarified things in my mind before coming to the meeting:
dinámica - construir/hacer algo creativa con pocos materiales
calendario de eventos
votación sobre que quieren hacer y fechas
quiénes pueden ayudar con las charlas
lluvia de ideas sobre de materiales necesarios para talleres
refrigerios para charlas?
fondos personales o de la alcaldía
carta a alcaldía (explicación de taller, materiales, cuando, asistentes, para que sirve este taller)
fecha de próxima reunión
resumen de secretarias
despedida
Once we made it to the Casa de Cultura and got to work writing out our calendar of events for this month with the women's group, things started to look better. We started by 2:30 (half an hour late is pretty good on Salvadoran time) and had a few new women show up for the meeting as well. They were on board with our plan, and we even came up with a materials list and drafted a letter to the town council asking for funds for some of our workshops. If we pull this project off with these women it will be a miracle - we have talks and activities planned three days a week until we leave. I have absolutely no idea how we are going to work on any of our self-directed projects, but this project alone is doing wonders for my beach resolution.
It has been a non-stop day, and as soon as I got home I rushed off (after donuts as a snack - they are two for one all month at Mister Donut) to meet with my group to plan our TFS session that we will be presenting when the Peace Corps director comes to visit. We have a rough outline for now, and it will be done next weekend after Field-Based Training. We ended up talking a lot about group dynamics and our initial reactions to the members of our group. We are a slightly weird and very diverse group of people that somehow has melded together beautifully.
As soon as I walked in the door, Roberto was ready with fajita ingredients for us to test our new restaurant recipe. They were awesome. I can't wait for Friday and their restaurant debut. Roberto is working on sprucing up the pupuseria this week, and making another sign to hang under "La Granjita." He wants to make a mural as well, and print out pictures of the chicken farm, the coffee plantation, the busy restaurant and the pupusa and burrito-making in action to put up on one wall for the customers to see. I can't wait to see it all.
I have this idea to compile recipes and stories into a cookbook for the duration of our service, then gift it to everyone at the end of our service. Maybe if I write it here I will stick to it. So far I want to write and add stories and pictures to the following recipes: pupusas, mango salsa, salsa, guacamole, french toast, banana bread, cookies (no oven), bread, fajitas, cilantro rice, and mexican beans.
I watched the Brotherhood 2.0 where John talks about Feed when he talks about having a Wikipedia in your mind and how that would be cool but then really it wouldn't be cool because someone could just go in anytime they want and just edit your mind. But really in my head I was just saying "I read Feed in middle school. They were talking about it in 2007. That's literally years after I read that book. John's an author I love reading books I love. Life is good." Also, later that year John goes exploring abandoned buildings with M.T. Anderson, who is the author of Feed. I just read Paper Towns, and I feel like that was one of the sparks for Margo's obsession with abandoned buildings in that book. This daily video blog thing is awesome! I'm doing one with my sister, but definitely not as often because I do this blog every day as it is and I barely have enough time to breathe and get work done as it is without two blogs to worry about. We have done three videos so far, and I'm loving it. The next one will have to wait until after Immersion Days, though, because I leave on Tuesday morning.
Monday we watched the inauguration of the national month of community service in the park. The little kids demonstrated a traditional dance, the band played some marching tunes and some of the older kids made speeches about Salvadoran history and community service. After the event we met with the vice-mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán to learn about the function of the alcaldía and the current projects the town council is working on. A lot of it was information we had accumulated from other sources, but it was still a really interesting meeting.
Our post-alcaldía meeting pre-women's group meeting meeting didn't go well. That's too many meetings in a day. I never am good at planning meetings, especially things without kids, but usually we have some good ideas and get into it. It's hard to plan things for this group because it's not our community and I know no one will want to pay for things and probably no one will even show up. I really want to learn how to do most of the things, but the others have no interest at all in actually learning in artisan workshops - they are all about the organizing and leadership talks and whatnot. Tempers were short for some reason and it felt incredibly rushed and unproductive.
I thought about the meeting over lunch and came up with a rough plan for the women's group. Yes, I realize it's in Spanish, but it doesn't actually matter if you understand. The important thing is that I clarified things in my mind before coming to the meeting:
dinámica - construir/hacer algo creativa con pocos materiales
calendario de eventos
votación sobre que quieren hacer y fechas
quiénes pueden ayudar con las charlas
lluvia de ideas sobre de materiales necesarios para talleres
refrigerios para charlas?
fondos personales o de la alcaldía
carta a alcaldía (explicación de taller, materiales, cuando, asistentes, para que sirve este taller)
fecha de próxima reunión
resumen de secretarias
despedida
Once we made it to the Casa de Cultura and got to work writing out our calendar of events for this month with the women's group, things started to look better. We started by 2:30 (half an hour late is pretty good on Salvadoran time) and had a few new women show up for the meeting as well. They were on board with our plan, and we even came up with a materials list and drafted a letter to the town council asking for funds for some of our workshops. If we pull this project off with these women it will be a miracle - we have talks and activities planned three days a week until we leave. I have absolutely no idea how we are going to work on any of our self-directed projects, but this project alone is doing wonders for my beach resolution.It has been a non-stop day, and as soon as I got home I rushed off (after donuts as a snack - they are two for one all month at Mister Donut) to meet with my group to plan our TFS session that we will be presenting when the Peace Corps director comes to visit. We have a rough outline for now, and it will be done next weekend after Field-Based Training. We ended up talking a lot about group dynamics and our initial reactions to the members of our group. We are a slightly weird and very diverse group of people that somehow has melded together beautifully.
As soon as I walked in the door, Roberto was ready with fajita ingredients for us to test our new restaurant recipe. They were awesome. I can't wait for Friday and their restaurant debut. Roberto is working on sprucing up the pupuseria this week, and making another sign to hang under "La Granjita." He wants to make a mural as well, and print out pictures of the chicken farm, the coffee plantation, the busy restaurant and the pupusa and burrito-making in action to put up on one wall for the customers to see. I can't wait to see it all.
I have this idea to compile recipes and stories into a cookbook for the duration of our service, then gift it to everyone at the end of our service. Maybe if I write it here I will stick to it. So far I want to write and add stories and pictures to the following recipes: pupusas, mango salsa, salsa, guacamole, french toast, banana bread, cookies (no oven), bread, fajitas, cilantro rice, and mexican beans.
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