Halfway There

Time flies when you're training to be a Peace Corps Volunteer.  Our first week or so felt like an eternity, but now all of a sudden I've been here a month!  This is the end of Week 4 of training which is about the halfway point.  Yesterday we took our second language proficiency test, so I'll find out today whether or not I have enough survival Spanish skills.  My Spanish has definitely improved over the past weeks, but there's a long way to go.  The language instructors are very good, and it probably is good that most of them don't speak any English. 

Being in the training community feels a little bit sheltered.  We have basically every day scheduled out for us with 8 hours of class, trips to Panama City for training, or visiting other parts of the country.  Sometimes I don't really have time to process things before moving on to the next topic.  Mostly we've been getting into how to build capacity in a community and to train others in technical aspects of water and sanitation systems.  That would be a challenge even if we didn't have to use a different language.  Thinking about being in my site and doing all the community analysis, training sessions, meetings, and everything else is a little bit overwhelming right now.  Luckily we still have more time to train, and we'll have a lot of time in site since there probably won't be a whole lot else to do out in the campo. 

Some of the guys at our tech classroom

Just hanging out

Randolito has a lot of energy

The family has two parrots and lots of chickens that like to come into the house

Developing my Spanish has helped my relationship with my host family and the rest of the people in the community, but it is somewhat of a struggle.  When you have to ask someone to repeat everything they're saying and talk slowly it limits the conversation a little bit.  It's also frustrating to not be able to say exactly what you want to.  As a result I talk about the weather a lot with my abuela, and do a lot more listening than speaking.  I've found the little kids are very difficult to understand.  You would think since we're at similar levels in speaking ability, it would work out nicely.  But I guess they don't understand that I really don't speak Spanish much and that I can't understand when they mumble something very quickly.

Next week is our tech week, where we travel to a community in the comarca to get some hands on technical training.  We'll do some surveying, aqueduct and latrine construction, and give educational talks to community members. 

Here are some pictures from during training:

https://plus.google.com/photos/117791930515994738830/albums/5745410663019420417?authkey=CJS-wbr0reTLQg