Full Circle

This week, from Sunday to Wednesday, I found my role reversed as I hosted a trainee for her volunteer visit. After about a month of training, when they’re heads are juuuust about to explode, all the trainees are sent off to visit volunteers to see what their lives could be like in just a couple months. After my volunteer visit I remember I was excited to see how much freedom volunteers have compared to trainees but obviously the thought of living on my own in some random town was still scary.

Let me back up a moment & explain some more fun Peace Corps details. In Nicaragua, training groups come in three times a year in January, May, and September. Each year the same sectors come in at the same time, unless they decide to change things, which was the case this year. My group of TEFL volunteers came in May 2008 with the Small Business (SBD) trainees, but at some point the decision was made to bring the agriculture volunteers in with SBD so the new group of TEFL trainees this year came in September with the environment group (health is our last sector and they come alone in January). The group before ours left in July so we’re the only TEFLers in-country right now and assuming no new changes are made, we will be gone before next year’s group of trainees come in so this is my only round of training in new volunteers.

My goal was not to freak this girl out too much, but also to give her a realistic sense of what volunteer life is like and I think I did that. We went to the beach twice, she went to class with both of my counterparts and saw the different dynamics I have with both of them, and I feel like she came away with a somewhat better sense of what she wants to have in a site. And after hearing some more about the new group, I’m excited to go next week and present How to Teach Vocabulary and in two weeks I’ll also be presenting a nearby town at the Site Fair and come December I’ll have a new neighbor (keep your fingers crossed!)! Barring this town getting cut from the list or the chosen trainee going home, we will once again have two TEFL volunteers in the department of Managua. Que cool.