Second half of Peace Corps training

3/23/16

It's almost time to swear in and finally become an actual Peace Corps Volunteer! Training has been long and has had its ups and downs, and I am ready for it to be over. It will be weird though to finally go to my site and be the only volunteer, since during most of training I've been with a core group of 9. I'm looking forward to it though!

All matching our last night in the first training village.

The first half of training, which I've written about already, consisted of living with a host family while having classes all day during the week. It culminated in wokabaot week, where I spent a week at what will be my permanent site. The second half has been similar,  although now I know more Bislama and feel more comfortable in general, so that's nice.

After wokabaot week I moved to a different training village on an island off the coast of Efate. Adjusting to a new host family was easier than I thought it would be, I think in part because this village has already hosted Peace Corps training. During this time, the education group (16 of us) worked on 2 projects- 1 made a library at the primary school on the island, and 1 made an activity guide for a book of kustom stories. I worked entirely on the library. It had its fair share of delays and mishaps, but with everything the final outcome was more than I was expecting. Once I get to site working on the library there will be one of my projects, so it was good to see how much work goes into it and what needs to be done for it to be successful.

Even though we had a lot to work on during the second half of training, it often felt like vacation because this island is so beautiful!  I've gotten to go snorkeling in crystal clear water, and see giant clams, big blue starfish, coral, lots of cool fish, dolphins, and a dugong. I've ridden on small boats almost every day. This island has a beach with a beautiful view that I went to multiple times. I've seen red sunrises and sunsets of pink clouds. Even though I've been here two months, I still can't believe I'm in the South Pacific.

530 am bathroom wake up isn't so bad when this is the view!