Words of Wisdom

"Go in search of your People:
Love Them;
Learn from Them;
Plan with Them;
Serve Them;
Begin with what They have;
Build on what They know.

But of the best Leaders
When their task is accomplished,
their work is done,
The People all remark:
'We have done this
Ourselves.'"

-Lao Tsu, China, 700 B.C.

Quick update!

Hi everyone!  Thanks for all the birthday wishes and safe traveling wishes I received yesterday.  I'm constantly reminded about all of the awesome people I have supporting me.

So, I'm here!  Safe and sound and VERY tired.  Yesterday was a busy day.  I left home around 7 a.m. for a 9:30 flight out of Bradley (which left about 20 minutes late).  At the airport I met Emily, another environmental education volunteer who is from Windsor.  We got to chat before we got on the plane, and then we shared a cab once we got to Washington D.C.  We had a few laughs about the ridiculous amount of luggage we had to carry, and made it to the hotel with enough time to check in, put our stuff in our rooms, run down the street and grab a sandwich, and then get to staging, which started at 12:30. 

Staging, for those not familiar with Peace Corps lingo, is a pre-orientation where volunteers get to know each other and start talking about the mission of the Peace Corps and what the next 2 years will be like.  I should also mention that it is EXACTLY the same, no matter what country you are going to.  That made the hours from 12:30-7 very boring for me, since I had already done the same exact thing last July.  However, I did help my group win the Peace Corps knowledge quiz, so I guess my experience came in handy.

It's been weird being a returning volunteer in a group of new volunteers.  As much as I don't want to keep talking about Honduras, everyone was constantly asking me a million questions.  I made sure to answer questions the best I could, but I also made sure to not answer any questions that I wasn't sure I knew the answers to.  Training varies a lot from country to country, so I couldn't answer anyone's questions about what our training in Nicaragua will be like.  However, people seemed relieved that they could ask me questions, and I was glad I could help alleviate some of their anxiety.  Now that we're in-country, I think the questions will start to let up, as we become more involved with our training here.

After staging ended, we headed out to find food.  I went with 5 other volunteers to a restaurant with outdoor seating where I enjoyed a burger, fries, and a beer...a pretty good last meal in the U.S. if I do say so myself.  Then we headed back to the hotel, and after a little facebooking, I went to sleep. 

At 2 a.m. our wake up call woke my hotel roommate Rachel and I up, and we crawled out of bed and packed everything up again to be in the lobby at 2:30.  At 3, the bus showed up and we headed to the airport.  Peace Corps loves getting people to the airport ridiculously early...our flight wasn't leaving till 7:15.  Both flights went fine (DC to Miami and Miami to Managua), and we were welcomed at the airport in Managua by Peace Corps staff and a few volunteers with signs, cheering, and a cooler filled with bottles of water (hydrate or die! :-) 

Training started after that.  We are now officially in PST (Pre-service training).  We went to a conference center-type place, had lunch, and got started.  I'm posting right now from that very place.  We have about an hour to kill before dinner, and then we will check into the hotel where we will be staying until Sunday for our orientation.  (In case anyone's wondering, we're 2 hours behind Eastern Standard Time)

Tomorrow we will be having our LPIs (Language Proficiency Interviews), and I will see how much worse my Spanish has gotten since I left Honduras in January.  I was at the Advenced-Mid level on my last LPI from Honduras, so we'll see where I am right now.  Hopefully I can pull off a good interview and get placed in an Advanced class.  After these three days of orientation, which include vaccinations, basic training sessions, and other orientation-type stuff, we will be moving out to our PST community based training sites.  The other environmental education volunteers and I will be living in 4 different towns: Masatepe, Naudasmo, Niquinohomo, and San Juan de Oriente.  There will be a few volunteers in each town, and we'll be divided up by language levels and living with host families.


So, there's the update for now!  There's internet here at the training center and also at the hotel, so feel free to skype/facebook chat/email/whatever.  I'll be here!

All my bags are packed...

Finally finished packing.  Miraculously, thanks to help from my dad, everything fit into my bags.  Off to DC tomorrow on a 9:30 a.m. flight for staging.  I'll be in Managua, Nicaragua on Wednesday morning for a 3-day orientation.  I'll have internet access at the hotel where we'll be staying, so hopefully I'll be able to post again before I start actual training.

 I've added a couple of things to my blog recently.  On the right, you can put in your email address to subscribe by email.  I've also posted my address during training, in case anyone wants to write me a letter via snail mail.  Otherwise, I can still be reached by email and facebook for now.

Hasta luego!

Transitions

Today's the day when most of the Silver Lake 2012 Summer Staff heads home.  It's been a wild ride, and the past couple of days have got me thinking a lot about transitions.  My friends who are leaving camp right now are all going through their own transitions-- getting ready to start the school year, starting a brand new teaching job (yay Megan!), or just going back to their outside-of-camp lives.  No matter how many times you go through transitions in your life, they are never easy.  They're always accompanied by anxiety, anticipation, and uncertainty. 

I haven't put too much thought into this next transition that I'm about to embark on.  I've been busy all summer supervising a group of crazy 16 and 17 year olds as they learned to live in community and worked harder than they ever had before.  Now I'm trying to enjoy my last few days here at Silver Lake, a place that has given me more gifts and growth experiences than I can even begin to explain.

This was a difficult time for me before I left for Honduras-- having to say goodbye to everyone.  Last summer I got my James Taylor Tanglewood Concert/Cryfest with all of my close friends.  This year I first have to say goodbye to all of the people I've grown so close to over the past 9 weeks at camp.  Then I have go head home, start thinking about packing (because I haven't been thinking about it at all yet), and say goodbye to everyone else.  Oh, transitions.

Transitions suck.  There we go, I said it.  But without them we'd always be stuck in one place, and what's the fun in that? 

 

Less than a month away.

Yesterday, I was talking about the Peace Corps with a friend of mine who I work with at camp.  I was telling her that I'll be gone for 27 months, at which point she turned to her daughter and said, "That's longer than she's been alive."  Crazy stuff.  27 months is a long time.

It's a crazy mix of emotions this time around.  I'm nervous about embarking on this new experience, yet not as nervous as the first time, because I know that I can handle it.  I'm anxious about the preparations required to pick up and leave for two years, but not as anxious because I know what to pack and what not to pack.  I'm sad about having to say goodbye to my friends and family, but after having to do it once before it (hopefully) should be easier.

I get asked all the time about how I feel about leaving, and I can't really put it into words.  I constantly have to remind myself of why I'm doing this.  The best reminders are when I talk to my H-19 friends, look at pictures of my time in Honduras, or talk to a friend from Sulaco.  My Peace Corps journey is just beginning, and right now I can't wait for the next chapter to begin.

I'll be heading to DC on September 4th (which is also my 24th birthday) for staging, and leaving for Nicaragua on the 5th.  I have to say goodbye to my camp family kids on Sunday, finish out another week and a half of camp, and then begin the whirlwind week and a half of preparations once I get home.  I'm trying to enjoy each moment, but it's going by way too fast!

One year ago...

One year ago today, I said goodbye to my family and headed to the airport on my way first to Washington D.C. and then to Tegucigalpa, Honduras to embark on what I thought would be 27 months of Peace Corps service.  Things didn’t exactly work out as planned, but I have had a chance to reflect on and learn from everything that has happened in the past year, and I have definitely grown and changed because of my experiences. 

            They say that the Peace Corps is “the hardest job you’ll ever love,” and boy was it hard.  Being away from my family and friends, learning a new language, living with a host family, eating beans and tortillas everyday, sleeping under a mosquito net, and the lack of certain household amenities like showers and hot water could have been enough to make my Peace Corps experience unpleasant.  However, the positives outweighed the negatives.  Genuinely kind and dedicated Peace Corps staff, welcoming host families, and gracious community members all made my time in Honduras worthwhile.

            To celebrate the one year anniversary of my trip to Honduras, here are the top 10 things I’ve learned in the past year:

10.  Chill out!  Seriously.  There’s nothing like spending a weekend doing nothing more than doing laundry, reading a book in a hammock, going to the river, and walking around town.  Relaxation is an art that I think I am close to mastering thanks to my time as a PCV.

9.  It doesn’t have to be perfect.  Anyone who knows me (family, friends, classmates, coworkers, professors) knows that I am a perfectionist.  I experienced so many new things in Honduras: doing professional development with secondary school teachers, teaching dental hygiene, doing reading interventions in Spanish, and meeting with parents to plan a parenting school.  And none of those things went perfectly.  I had to hope that things would go well, but accept that it wasn’t going to be perfect, simply because it was something new and difficult for me—a lesson that I wish I had learned a long time ago.

8.  I get by with a little help from my friends.  Friends from the Peace Corps office, friends in my training group (H-19), friends at home.  Phone calls, skype chats, and crazy virtual reunions once I got home are what has kept me going through it all.  Friends are great, and I appreciate them way more than I ever have before.  There’s nothing like 11 weeks of Peace Corps training to solidify a great group of friends.

7.  I’m stronger than I thought.  There were times that I was frustrated.  I hinted at it in a few blog posts, and my mom and dad definitely got an earful over the phone at one point or another.  However, I dealt with things, pushed through tough situations, and worked my butt off to make things work out.  I definitely impressed myself with my strength.

6.  Kindness is everywhere.  I had some pretty amazing host families and counterparts.  They threw me a birthday party, let me celebrate Christmas with them, cooked my meals, taught me how to wash my clothes, gave me rides to places, introduced me to their friends, bought me sodas at work, and genuinely welcomed me into their homes.  I only hope that someday I can learn to be as kind and caring as the Chavez and Canales families and my counterparts and co-workers in Sulaco.

5.  A new level of friendliness.  Wouldn’t the world be a better place if everyone said “Good morning” or “Good afternoon” to everyone that they walked past all day long?  There’s nothing that makes you feel more accepted and welcomed than having people greet you on the street, and that is the norm in small-town Honduras life.  Yes, I was the only “gringa” in town, so everyone knew my name, and yes, I did have to put up with the “piropos” (cat calls), but I loved walking around and greeting everyone in town.  I’ve tried to raise my standards of friendliness since returning home.

4.  I can do a lot of things I didn’t think I could.  Okay, so this one goes with number 7, but I never thought I’d be able to learn so much Spanish and be able to do things like talk to a roomful of parents about their issues with their children, run a baseball practice with 30 kids and only 12 gloves, do a 10K hike through the mountains, and run a day camp with little to no resources.  Who knew?  In the future I’ll think twice about underestimating my abilities.  I left Honduras feeling like I could do anything…and that’s a pretty cool feeling.

3.  People need hope.  More than anything else, it is hope that keeps people going.  Sometimes I felt that, even if I wasn’t doing much, just by being in Sulaco I was giving people hope by letting them know that someone was thinking of them and recognizing that they needed help.  I didn’t get a chance to do anything dramatic or complete any huge projects, but sometimes what people need most is to know that someone is thinking about them and recognizing their need.

2.  Simplify, Simplify, Simplify.  When I got home, I was overwhelmed.  By technology, by the pace of life, by people rushing here and there always on a deadline or complaining about something small and usually insignificant.  I definitely miss the simple life.  Taking time to talk to people face-to-face and spending genuine time together with people you care about is something that we don’t always remember to do in our fast-paced, technology-filled world.  In my opinion, it’s better to live more simply.

1.  Things don’t always happen the way you planned them, but that isn’t always a bad thing.  Yes, I was disappointed when I didn’t get to finish out my Peace Corps service in Honduras.  However, the lessons I learned, the ways that I grew, and the friends that I met are reason enough to be satisfied and grateful for the short experience that I did have.

That last one is a big one for me as of recently.  I’ve found myself back at Silver Lake for the summer, a camp where I have worked for many summers.  I’m in a completely new role, in charge of a group of 13 high schoolers for the whole summer as they work together and live in community.  We’re only a few weeks in, but so far it’s been great.  I didn’t think I’d be back here for another summer, but I’m glad that I am.  I’ve been able to put into practice all of the lessons I’ve learned—being friendly and kind towards my co-workers and the campers, simplifying my life, appreciating and building friendships, and striving to do my best rather than trying to be perfect. 

Everything’s supposed to happen for a reason, right?  I’m back in a place that I love, working with people I love, and getting ready to embark on another Peace Corps journey.  Life is good.  The past year has been challenging, exciting, and exhausting, and I wouldn’t change a thing.

Hasta luego!

-Sarita

Camp friends! (part of the Silver Lake Coordinator Dream Team 2012, believe it or not!)

           

Take Two!

After being sent home from Honduras after only 6 short months of Peace Corps service (much shorter than the 27 months I had been expecting), applying for re-enrollment was an easy decision for me to make.  On the one hand, I did consider settling down, finding a job, and moving on with my life.  However, I wasn't satisfied with my short service in Honduras and my work in Sulaco.  I had so many ideas and projects that I was planning on starting during the new school year, and I left in January feeling like I had barely accomplished anything.  Although I had to accept that the situation and decision was completely out of my control, it was a hard thing to do.  I felt unsatisfied, guilty, and disappointed about leaving.

During our conference in Tegucigalpa in January, we had the opportunity to speak to representatives from the Peace Corps about re-enrollment.  I talked to them about my preferences and picked up all of the forms I had to fill out to make it happen.  I told them that I was only interested in going to Spanish-speaking countries.  I had learned so much in 6 short months in Honduras (moving up from Intermediate-Low Spanish level to Advanced-Mid), and I didn't want to stop there.  I also discussed my preferences of project.  In Honduras I was a youth development volunteer, and they asked about my thoughts on teaching English.  I had done that a little bit in Sulaco, but I wasn't interested in having that be my main project.

After a few months and some phone calls and emails with Peace Corps, I got my big blue folder in the mail last week telling me that I'm headed to Nicaragua to be an Environmental Education volunteer.  According to the information I've received, I will be assigned to work with at least 2 elementary schools and will be planning and co-teaching environmental topics, as well as organizing projects like gardens, composting, and re-forestation.  It also seems like I'll get a chance to do secondary projects that will help me utilize my Youth Development training that I had in Honduras. 

I am so excited and pleased with this placement!  I'll get to go back to Central America, keep learning and speaking Spanish, work in an area that I am passionate about, and get plenty of classroom teaching time.  I'll also be a bus ride away from Honduras, and I'm hoping I'll get a chance to go back and visit (although I think the Peace Corps may restrict travel to Honduras). 

So, I'll be leaving for staging on September 4th, which is also my 24th birthday.  On September 5th I'll arrive in Nicaragua and start my 11 weeks of training, being sworn in at the end of November and then beginning my 2 years of service.  I've been talking to people about my new assignment, and I've gotten a few people telling me about how I'll definitely have no regrets when I get older and will be glad of all the great experiences I've had.  I hope this is true, and I am excited about my next adventure.

For now, I've got a H-19 reunion in Chicago, a few weeks more of substitute teaching,  and an amazing summer as camp family mom at Silver Lake to look forward to before I head out to Nicaragua.  Things are looking up!