One Month!

So, we’ve officially been here for a month now, and it’s flown by.  Weekdays have been filled with Spanish classes and technical training and weekends are filled with family time, cleaning, washing clothes (by hand) and hanging out with friends.  (Have I mentioned yet how hard it is to wash all of your clothes by hand?  Not to mention the fact that it rains almost everyday, so it takes like 4 days for everything to dry on the clothesline).

Here are some highlights since my last post:

• We had our first visit to our self-directed project site.  Julie, Constance, and I are working with Vicente Chavez School, which is located about 30 minutes away.  It is a very small school, with students in grades 1 through 6 all in one classroom with one teacher.  When we went there, we observed the classroom for awhile.  The students were mostly copying work into notebooks or using workbooks.  The teacher went around and gave each grade level their assignments.  Seeing a classroom with 40 students of such varied ages was really different than anything I’ve seen before.  I’m looking forward to working with the kids this week.  Besides observing, the major reason we were there was to talk with parents and use our community analysis tool to help us learn more and gather information about our project.  This part was kind of a flop.  There were 7 or 8 moms that showed up, and they did not have anything at all to say to us.  We asked some questions and sat in awkward silence for awhile.  We had Carlos, one of the Spanish teachers, with us, and he helped a little with the language stuff.  It was a little discouraging that the parents didn’t really want to talk to us, but on the bright side- it means that we can pretty much do whatever we want with the students for our project.  We’re going to be going there again on Thursday to talk to the kids and meet with the teacher to get a better idea of what we’re going to be doing with them.

• This week we had a training on dental hygiene.  In conjunction with Colgate, many of us will be implementing a dental hygiene program once we get to our sites.  Sandra, our Project Director, is a licensed dentist, so she did the training along with a current volunteer who has implemented the program in her site.  I learned more than I ever needed to know about teeth and dental health (and learned how to say it all in Spanish).  Then, on Friday morning, we all went to the school here in Las Cañadas to give charlas (short presentations/trainings) on dental hygiene.  My group gave our charla to a class of enthusiastic first graders.  It went really well and was a great confidence boost.  I felt really good about my Spanish and I think the kids actually learned something!

• This Saturday, we participated in a race that went through the huge national park, Parque Nacional La Tigra, that is near where we’re living.  We went into Valle de Angeles around 7 to register and get our numbers and t-shirts.  There was a 25K and 10K.  We did the 10K and planned to walk the whole thing.  There were some pretty intense athletes there, which we didn’t really expect.  The walk was beautiful.  There were great views of the mountains, and as we got higher and higher it was more like a jungle.  At the top, we were literally in the clouds, which was super cool.  To say that this hike was difficult would be an understatement.  However, we had an awesome time walking together (and pretty much came in dead last- haha). 

• On Sunday, my host family threw a baby shower for Patty, the cousin that lives behind us who is having a baby girl and is due on August 22^nd.  We spent the whole morning decorating, and I helped chop up vegetables for the food.  I think in all there were probably about 50 people there, which was crazy.  We had set up lots of chairs outside for everyone because the house is really small.  Luckily, the weather was great.  All week, my family had been asking me to help them with baby shower games.  Baby showers are a U.S. phenomenon, as demonstrated by the fact that there isn’t even a word for baby shower in Spanish.  When they told me about it, they said, “Vamos a tener un baby shower.” Haha.  I told them about a couple of games that I had heard of.  One of them involves people tasting baby foods and guessing what kind they are.  Something must have gotten lost in translation, because my host mom had both the person eating the baby food and the person feeding them be blindfolded, which turned into a crazy, funny, messy game.  We had a piñata and ate some great food: chilaquiles and jello with fruit.  After the baby shower, my family told me that I did a great job all day and was really a part of the family—helping to set up, run the games, and clean up afterwards.  Now they said I just have to start learning to cook!

There are a lot of things coming up.  This week we have our second language interviews.  Mine’s on Tuesday morning.  In the first interview, I was Intermediate-Low.  Two weeks ago, I got moved up to the Intermediate-Mid class.  I’m confident that I’ll get Intermediate-Mid on this interview, and I’m going to do my best to try to move up another level to Intermediate-High.  We’ll see how it goes!

On Sunday, we are going to be heading out for our volunteer visit.  From Sunday through Thursday we’re going off to visit a volunteer, work with them, and stay with them in order to better understand what life will be like when we finish training.

In other news, it’s August, which means you have 4 weeks to buy your international phone card so you can call me on my birthday.  Which also means that birthday cards need to be put in the mail soon. Haha Just kidding!  (Well, sort of)

Miss you all and hope everything’s going well!

p.s.  In reading over my blog posts, I’ve realized that my vocabulary in English is going downhill.  My writing is definitely not what it was before I left.  It must be a side effect of learning so much Spanish so quickly.  My apologies!