Almost done with Field Based Training!

These past few days have been exciting. Besides finding out what I’ll be doing we had some fun last week. Wednesday night the mayor invited us to his house for a couple hours so we did a little talent show, made hot chocolate and enjoyed ourselves. He wants to invite us back for a longer evening (we were there for less than 3hrs) and said he’d make carne asada for us. Then Thursday we had a mental health break and got to leave Talanga for the majority of the day. We went to the next region over called Olancho to a town where we had Spanish “outside of class” in this little cabaña place that had a restaurant and a pool. All the teachers came and we played games and activities that made us use our Spanish but after that we had our free time to eat lunch, use the pool and just relax. Friday when we got out of Spanish class in the afternoon there was a Peace March starting so we joined in the with Catholic missionaries that are here (and our age) and marched to the park. There’s a whole campaign promoting peace and to stop the violence against children that the Catholic Church is put on throughout the weekend so it was pretty interesting.

I was kinda sad and bummed out a few weekends ago…just sitting around being bored and having too much time to think, but I’m feeling better. We’re into the 9th week of training and I’m ready to be about done! The last week or two we’ve gotten a lot busier with Spanish and doing things out in the community. We have school projects we’re I’m working in an aldea school just doing some activities and charlas (talks/workshops). So we went three times last week and we go three times this week…which is a lot of hours! My group was stressing out b/c the teachers asked us to give a charla about sex education…but I think it went rather well…especially seeing that it was for 4th-6th grades. We broke them into 4 groups and had 4 different, but related, topics and they spent about 30mins with each of us. I was surprised at how well behaved they were! Especially since when I was in the 4th & 6th grade classroom (they’re combined) on Monday it didn’t go so well. All the kiddos were really respectful, didn’t make jokes and didn’t even complain when we went past their recess/snack time! I took on the task of doing masculine and feminine anatomy…whoo…but it went really well. A little hard for the 4th grade to understand, but I made it interactive enough that they were at least able to get a little something out of it. Today we’re meeting the parents at the school to talk about what we’ve been doing with their kiddos and maybe give a little parenting advice. Tomorrow is the last morning at the school and I must say that I am a little relieved…a lot of times I feel like we’re wasting their time and ours by being there.

Things are wrapping up in Talanga. Monday is our last day here…we go back to Zarabanda/Las Cañadas on Tuesday morning, but we won’t even be spending my time there. We get back to our first host families house to freshen up…then go to the training center to meet our new counterparts (or at least a few). We’re supposed to have lunch and dinner with them. Then Wednesday morning we travel with our counterparts to our new site for the rest of the week. We return on Sunday to Zarabanda and finish with 2 more weeks of training…then on the 26th of September I will be sworn in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer!