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!

An Array of Emotions

 Time I wonder what the heck I am doing here: when I'm sitting in my room, reading the Bislama I'm supposed to say at the community meeting the next day, and a cockroach crawls on me.

Time I know why I'm here: when I have a good storian (chat) with my host family.

 Time I'm frustrated about life here: when schedules change or are non existent and I don't know what's going on.

Time I realize a childhood dream come true: when I'm organizing books to go into a new library.

Time I'm sad I'm here: when I miss life events of people from home.

Time I laugh at the absurdity of the situation: when a group of us takes a boat ride back to our training village in a complete downpour, gets drenched as if we'd just gone swimming,  but the rain lets up as soon as we reach land. 

Time I'm happy I'm here: swimming in the ocean with my 4 year old host sister, her latching onto me and  making up stories about who knows what, looking at the beautiful surroundings and remembering how lucky I am to be here.

Beginning of Peace Corps Training

2/16/16

I am hoping to get internet in a few days, so I'm writing this in anticipation of that! I'm typing on a phone as my laptop is in storage, so I'll see how this works.

Let me set the scene: I'm currently writing this in bed under my mosquito net, listening to the sound of the ocean waves, and watching two lizards scurry around on my wall.

I have now been in Vanuatu for 3.5 weeks. I've been living in a village on the east coast of Efate, an island of Vanuatu, with a host family although by the time I post this I'll have moved.  Days have been spent having classes on things like Bislama,  medical, safety, and education. Evenings and weekends have been spent talking Bislama with my host family and learning things such as making simboro, a common food here. There are a total of 38 volunteers in G28, the group I came with. We are split between 4 training villages,  and in a week and a half we will switch villages and host families. It will be good to experience another village here, but it will be sad to leave my current host family as they have been extremely good to me. I have two host mamas and there are always at least 5 or 6 (or more!) kids running around the yard. The house is small (there are actually 2 houses- 1 mama in each) and are made of tin, so very hot. The kitchen is a seperate building (they cook over a fire) as is the toilet and bathing area. There is no electricity, but there is a solar panal so there are a few lights at night. I brush my teeth looking up at the stars every night- the view of the stars from here is incredible. 

The weather here is very hot and humid. I don't think I've stopped sweating since I stepped out of the plane! There are a lot of bugs everywhere- mosquitoes, ants, spiders (which left some gross bites on my legs), huge flying red cockroaches, milipods, and just lots of little different bugs everywhere. I feel like I constantly have bugs crawling on me!  There are fruit trees everywhere here. Papaya and coconut are especially plentiful in this village, but I've also had pineapple, bananas, mangos, and watermelon.I'm really liking eating fruit every day! 

Many of my fellow volunteers have been getting sick, but so far I've stayed healthy. I know my time will come eventually! We had a whole medical session on fun things we can get such as worms and other things that can go wrong medically- not very pleasant. 

This was just a big mishmosh of what came to my head as I was writing it. Sorry if it's all over the place!