Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Host Family #1

Now that I'm almost through with training and about to meet my in service host family, I guess I can tell you about my current family for training!

Here's my house:



As I mentioned before, I live with my host mom and dad, Orlene and Rex, and my host brothers, Jake and Jude.  I absolutely love these people.  They take exceptional care of me and obviously want nothing more than for me to be safe and happy in Guyana.  I still torment my little brother endlessly and he finds it funnier than ever.  His favorite game currently is grabbing my hands, walking himself up my legs, and flipping over.  I may have taught him this...lol.

This is Jude:



Jake, my other little brother, just found out he scored high enough on his grade 6 exams to make it into high school, which was really exciting.  I'm super duper proud of him.

Here's a pic of Jake and his cousin Michelle trying to learn to shuffle like me.  It was humorous.



So that's my family.

I'll walk you through a normal day living and training in the hinterland of Guyana, too...

Wake up around 5 or 6 am, take a bucket bath, have your breakfast and tea
Walk 30 minutes down mud/sand roads to the training site or pick up point
Do the training thing for a few hours or go teach at the local school
Walk home.
Hand wash some laundry if you still have day light
Have some dinner and more tea.  Do the dishes with a remarkably small amount of water
Take your second bucket bath of the day, watch the news and hang with family for an hour or so
Tuck yourself in with your mosquito net around 8pm, write in your journal, read a bit, and call it a night.

Throw in some wandering the village and helping harvest oranges in one of the family orange groves on the weekends, and there you have it... the life of a peace corps trainee. lol.

Honestly, I couldn't be happier.

Monday, June 17, 2013

Training

I finally have internet but I have absolutely no idea where to begin with this blog post...

Umm... training is going great and it's almost finished!  Craziness.   Only 2 more weeks until I'm officially a volunteer!  We're in our 8th week of training so far, which has been a mixture of safety, medical, culture, and teaching specific classes.  It's a lot of sitting and listening, but I've learned a lot and, for me, it's totally worth it.

Last week was challenge week for us which entailed hosting a couple teacher training sessions at my school.  (I could write a whole post about the schools here.  SOOO different.  No walls.  Chalkboards and posters dividing classrooms.  Insanity.)  It went way better than I expected, so that was fun.

We've been working two days a week in our practicum schools and I've been LOVING it.  I mostly teach Spanish and do some small group remedial reading instruction.  The irony of moving to South America and teaching them to speak Spanish is not lost on me.  I think it's hilarious.

For the big news, I got my site assignment on Friday!!!!  I'm officially going to be living in Lethem down south in the savannah.  It's more developed than my current training site, but I think it's going to be fun.  I'm going to be living with a 53 year old caterer/baker, so that's going to be absolutely delicious.  I've heard she's an absolutely amazing person.  They're sending out for site visits later this week, so I'lll tell you all about it then.  I'll also update my address for you all.

I know there's a ton more I should tell you about, but words are hard tonight.  lol.

If there's something you want to hear about, though, drop me a question in the comments.  I'd love to fill you in!