Three month IST…In Service Training

It is official, three months of community diagnostic has passed. Many meetings observed, cups of coffee drank, dominoes and cards played and heart to heart conversations had, on to our official time of service. Nearly 6 months in country, 6 MONTHS, WOW! After a three-month training and three months of evaluating the community and organization, now the magic happens… This past week we experienced our first of many In Service Trainings. We both presented our community diagnostics with our Host Country National Project Partners to the other 22 Youth, Family, and Community Development volunteers, our directors, and our Peace Corps Volunteer Leaders. Very Exciting! It was great to share with our peers and learn about their adversity and personal feats. It was a comforting reminder we are not doing this alone, we have a strong support system and a director who truly cares about us. In the conclusion of our presentations we presented our official Plan de Trabajo (Plan of Service). Based on the information we found, our interviews and observations, we are both ready to start up our activities and serve our communities. Dan will be coaching baseball, swimming and soccer, working with the caregivers at the orfanato, running both a girls and a boys science group, and leading initiative games with the staff throughout the year. I will be continuing English lessons and a running group, I am starting a girls group, and I will be teaching yoga, sexual education, environmental education, literacy and adult literacy. In addition, I am trying to move into the school library to work and lead classes in exchange for renovating the space and hopefully, acquiring more books…wow, somewhere in the next year I hope to drink a bit of coffee, go to the beach and maybe make a few new friends. My personal goals; I hope to master the Spanish idioma (language), every other day I hope I will do yoga, every week night we will shut the door at 9pm and at least once a month we will take some sort of trip or go to the beach. Tall order, but here we go. Wish us luck, go through your children’s books in Spanish and please keep holding us in the light, Phoebe