A few people have asked me what a typical
week of training is like. Here is my best attempt at explaining a typical week
here in Pio XII.
Typical Weekday-
I wake up at 445am everyday with the roosters and try to fall back to sleep until my alarm goes off at 545am.
I start waiting for the bathroom around 545 since I live with 9 people. Sometimes I get in at 6am and sometimes not until 715am. It depends how many people are waiting to shower and how long each person takes. I have to leave my house by 750 so sometimes I am cutting it very close. My breakfast usually consists of a piece of bread, which is not a slice but instead more like a roll. I also am served instant coffee with sugar. I love it! It reminds me of the taste of Nescafe. Delicious!
Three or four days a week we have Spanish language class from 8 until 12 and then again from 1 to 3. Six hours of Spanish language multiple times per week. I take classes with 3 other aspirantes that live in Pio XII with me. We go to one of the aspirantes house. For the first few weeks, it was at my house. Now we are in the center of town at another aspirantes house.
Usually we have a volunteer visitor once a week to go over something from the curriculum of the entrepreneurship class we are here to teach. We use some of our Spanish language class time to go over it.
We also co-plan and co-teach once a week. Our co-planning sessions last a little over an hour and my class lasts 45 minutes.
We have a youth group that we meet with once or twice a week for 2 hours each time. We have to plan for these meetings because each one has a particular theme. We give them charlas (talks) about different things such as self-esteem. We are working on making a new product that we will bring to a Peace Corps competition. We have picked out product and I will share the details after the competition (mid-May).
We usually have two full days of charlas from the Peace Corps staff. They have been specific to our work here and also generic ones from DC. Some examples are: Roles of the Volunteer in Development, Youth as a Resource, Classroom Management and Malaria & Dengue. The majority of them are interesting but sometimes it is hard to sit through 6 or 7 hours of talks.
At 7pm my family watches El Man es Germán, a show out of Colombia. It is on every weekday and the younger members of my family (7 and 12 years old) LOVE the show. Everything stops when it is on, even Uno. I have played about 300 rounds of Uno during the past 6 months. The 7 year old I live with LOVES Uno! Typically, he cannot get enough unless his show is on. Usually we eat dinner during the show. Afterwards, two episodes of The Simpsons in Spanish are on and we usually watch that too.
Weekends
For the first month, we had charlas on Saturdays also but recently we have been having the weekends free. We try to do something as a large group once per weekend. Two weekends ago 12 of the 15 of us went to a place nearby for karaoke. And this weekend, 9 of us went to the Laguna de Apoyo.
We usually have something we need to catch up on during the weekend too. One Saturday we co-planned with our high school teacher and this past Sunday we met with our youth group. There is only so much time so we have to fit in the required activities whenever we can.
Sunday nights my family and I typically watch a movie. I do not think copyright rules apply here. You can buy a bootleg DVD here for 25 cordobas, or $1, and most discs have at least 2 movies. I have watched a bunch of horror movies, The Impossible, Flight, and a few others. Sometimes they are dubbed in Spanish and sometimes they have Spanish captions. I am trying to learn more Spanish by watching the movies. There are also movies on most evenings on the few channels we get. The other day we watched How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. My host sisters loved the movie!
Overall, we are kept very busy. People go to bed pretty early here. The sun goes down around 620pm and by 9pm half the town is sleeping. My host family goes to bed later than most, around 1030 or 11pm. Luckily, I live with a bunch of night owls.
I wake up at 445am everyday with the roosters and try to fall back to sleep until my alarm goes off at 545am.
I start waiting for the bathroom around 545 since I live with 9 people. Sometimes I get in at 6am and sometimes not until 715am. It depends how many people are waiting to shower and how long each person takes. I have to leave my house by 750 so sometimes I am cutting it very close. My breakfast usually consists of a piece of bread, which is not a slice but instead more like a roll. I also am served instant coffee with sugar. I love it! It reminds me of the taste of Nescafe. Delicious!
Three or four days a week we have Spanish language class from 8 until 12 and then again from 1 to 3. Six hours of Spanish language multiple times per week. I take classes with 3 other aspirantes that live in Pio XII with me. We go to one of the aspirantes house. For the first few weeks, it was at my house. Now we are in the center of town at another aspirantes house.
Usually we have a volunteer visitor once a week to go over something from the curriculum of the entrepreneurship class we are here to teach. We use some of our Spanish language class time to go over it.
We also co-plan and co-teach once a week. Our co-planning sessions last a little over an hour and my class lasts 45 minutes.
We have a youth group that we meet with once or twice a week for 2 hours each time. We have to plan for these meetings because each one has a particular theme. We give them charlas (talks) about different things such as self-esteem. We are working on making a new product that we will bring to a Peace Corps competition. We have picked out product and I will share the details after the competition (mid-May).
We usually have two full days of charlas from the Peace Corps staff. They have been specific to our work here and also generic ones from DC. Some examples are: Roles of the Volunteer in Development, Youth as a Resource, Classroom Management and Malaria & Dengue. The majority of them are interesting but sometimes it is hard to sit through 6 or 7 hours of talks.
At 7pm my family watches El Man es Germán, a show out of Colombia. It is on every weekday and the younger members of my family (7 and 12 years old) LOVE the show. Everything stops when it is on, even Uno. I have played about 300 rounds of Uno during the past 6 months. The 7 year old I live with LOVES Uno! Typically, he cannot get enough unless his show is on. Usually we eat dinner during the show. Afterwards, two episodes of The Simpsons in Spanish are on and we usually watch that too.
Weekends
For the first month, we had charlas on Saturdays also but recently we have been having the weekends free. We try to do something as a large group once per weekend. Two weekends ago 12 of the 15 of us went to a place nearby for karaoke. And this weekend, 9 of us went to the Laguna de Apoyo.
We usually have something we need to catch up on during the weekend too. One Saturday we co-planned with our high school teacher and this past Sunday we met with our youth group. There is only so much time so we have to fit in the required activities whenever we can.
Sunday nights my family and I typically watch a movie. I do not think copyright rules apply here. You can buy a bootleg DVD here for 25 cordobas, or $1, and most discs have at least 2 movies. I have watched a bunch of horror movies, The Impossible, Flight, and a few others. Sometimes they are dubbed in Spanish and sometimes they have Spanish captions. I am trying to learn more Spanish by watching the movies. There are also movies on most evenings on the few channels we get. The other day we watched How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. My host sisters loved the movie!
Overall, we are kept very busy. People go to bed pretty early here. The sun goes down around 620pm and by 9pm half the town is sleeping. My host family goes to bed later than most, around 1030 or 11pm. Luckily, I live with a bunch of night owls.
No comments:
Post a Comment