What to expect???

I was officially nominated into the Peace Corps on June 23, 2010. I was officially Invited to the Peace Corps in November 2010. However it took some time to receive my invitation packet in the mail and then get it shipped up to me in Alaska because I had gone home for Christmas. I gladly accepted the invitation on December 10, 2010. I am just realizing how fast this has all actually been happening. To me, it feels like ages because the few weeks here and there between each step has been torture, but when I pull back and look at the bigger picture - it will only have been 8 months from nomination to departure, and that is even with all the health hoops I had to jump through. Some people have to wait a year even with out any time added for special circumstances.

I feel lucky and honored. I was put on sort of a fast track at the beginning - everything happened so fast from turning in my application to having my interview and being nominated. Had I not had to wait until September to send the Peace Corps my 6-month check-up lab results, maybe I would have been out of here 3 months ago? Who knows. I love how it has all come together, though. I think it was the perfect amount of time. I was able to work and pay my car off, have an awesome vacation and road trip with two of the most fantastic girls ever, spend thanksgiving with family I hadn’t seen in years, spend Christmas with my immediate family, and spend New Years with friends I hadn’t seen in forever. I am also leaving in a week to see my other grandparents that I haven’t seen in more than 10 years. If my application and invitation process had happened faster, I would not have been able to do all that.

I think the travel and visiting was important. I feel like if the Peace Corps stuff had happened too fast, I would have ended up in another country not fully prepared for what to expect. And I would be terribly homesick. Of course I am still going to be homesick, but I don’t think it is going to be as bad because I had the opportunity to see everyone before I left. Having 8 months between nomination and departure has also given me time to thoroughly read my handbooks and welcome books, and I have been reading books written by other volunteers and people in Honduras. All of this, I think, has prepared me for what it is going to be like when I get to Honduras. Obviously, it is going to be nothing like what I have been reading - papers and books never does anything justice. It is going to be a new and exciting and scary experience that I will have never come close to taking part in before, but that is what makes it so completely wonderful.

Yesterday, I received another e-mail. This one had more attachments for me to read and papers for me to fill out. The 13 page document that was included was very informative. It told me all about what I am going to be doing in training and what is going to be expected of me. It talked about the location of our training facility and our host families. I found out that the training location, Zarabanda - about an hour away from Tegucigalpa - does not have internet service. This particular piece of information made me a little sad, but I’ll deal with it - nothing else I can do. So, everyone needs to be prepared to not here from me for a while, but to monitor my blog because one day a bunch of posts will show up at one time! I want to keep you all informed about what I am doing and how everything is going.

Reading this Bridge to Pre-Service Training, Honduras documents, I actually found myself getting really nervous. It all happens so fast. We arrive in Honduras and our belongings get dropped of at our host-family’s houses while we are shuttled to the training facility. This is were we are introduced to the people at the training facility and then we meet our host family and go home. The next day we dive in. We begin orientation to language, safety and medical training, begin survivor Spanish, have a one-on-one interview with a language specialist to determine where we are with our language so we can be put in the appropriate class, and we start the first batch of vaccinations/immunizations. I have yet to learn what specifically I will need on the shot front, but I will find out when I get there I suppose.

The first three-and-a-half weeks of training is in Zarabanda and focuses on language and cross-cultural training, safety and health, and has an introduction to technical project training. We live with a host family during this time and have roughly a 7:30 to 4:30 work day.

The second phase is field based training and includes technical project, community development and language training. Safety and health training also continues during this time. However, FBT is split into three projects and trainees and staff move to new communities and live with new host families. For this six-week section trainees work together on different community projects, involving community members, and often have longer work days and can expect to be working on weekends.

During post-field-based training, we go back to Zarabanda and back with our original host families for the final week-and-a-half of training.

Volunteers meet with the language specialists frequently during training to monitor the progress in learning the language and to ensure they are in the appropriate classes. If a trainee does not reach the “intermediate mid” range before the end of training, he or she will be unable to move forward and become a Peace Corps Volunteer.

I think that was the part that made me the most nervous. On our first day, we have an interview where we sit down with someone and they decided where we are in our language skills. The idea of that makes me really nervous, so I can’t even image how I am going to react when that situation actually presents itself. I hate public speaking. I always have. I know this is not me having to get up on stage and recite something in Spanish to people, but it is still me being put on the spot. What if my mind totally draws a blank? What if I go to speak in Spanish and it just won’t come out of my mouth? I don’t want to look like a complete idiot. I guess this is where the Spanish classes that I am taking right now come into play. Hopefully by the time I leave, I will be a little more comfortable with my ability to speak Spanish, so I won’t have to be so nervous when I meet with my interviewer! Hopefully you guys won’t find me back in Seattle in May instead of moving into a Honduran community to begin my service.

The other things in the Bridge document that were making me nervous was just all the information about what they will be teaching us and how they expect us to take everything the teach us and apply to a bunch of situations. All of this while working on our Spanish and having to practice giving talks and demonstrating things in Spanish. I know that this whole training session I will be completely out of my comfort zone. I have never been one to try a lot of new things. I don’t like the idea that I will not be very good at something, so I tend not to try it when I’m with a bunch of people. I prefer to figure out if I am good at something or not on my own, and work on getting better at it before I go out with other people to try it. So, Honduras is going to be a new experience for me, that is for sure. I guess I just have to keep in mind that I am going to be there with 54 other people who are all struggling just like me. We will have to really work together to figure things out and make the best of everything.

I like to imagine myself becoming one of the “leaders” - someone that other people look up to and asks advice from. I really hope to become that person for people. I know that I have it in me to be a good leader. I love to help people work through their struggles, and I like to think I have the type of mind that works well in awkward, unfamiliar situations. I’m going to try really hard in Atlanta and Honduras to give the best impression of who I am. I need to be the helpful, smart, quick thinking gal that I always am, but make it noticeable to the staff around me. I don’t mean any of this to sound like I just want to be noticed and looked highly upon by the staff. I want to stand out as a leader and helper just because that I is the type of person I am and I just hope they can see it. As a volunteer, I want to be put in a community and project that I will be the most helpful in. I want to end up doing the most effective work I can while I’m in Honduras. Which means, during training, I need to not let my fears and nervousness get the better of me. I need to show everyone who I am and what I have to offer so they can select the best placement for me.

I am nervous for everything training is going to put in front of me. Especially now that I am reading this book called “Margarita: A Guatemalan Peace Corps Experience.” This book, like the previous one I read about Honduras, is from 1988, but it still gives me an idea of what it is going to be like from a trainee/volunteers prospective.

In Margarita’s training class 46 of the original 57 trainees became volunteers. Some just couldn’t hack it and didn’t want to stay, but the rest were not selected because they either did not show promise during training activities or they were not where they needed to be language-wise. This book, being from more than 20 years ago is a bit of an aged description of what it is going to be like for me, but again, I can get an idea. Margarita left from Miami, FL with six suitcases - we are only allowed to bring two that don’t exceed 80 pounds. She was often able to travel to the city and spend the night in a hotel to have a nice hot shower and a restaurant-cooked meal, and I‘m not sure how much of that will be allowed, now? She was nervous about her language skills all through training as well, but she made it, which was very encouraging to me.

I have not finished the book yet, I’m about half-way through, but up to this point, she seems to be doing very well in her new community. Integrating nicely, working with the women in the community, teaching women and school children how to eat from all the food groups to get good nutrition, helping malnourished children, and other things along those lines. This book has been very inspiring to me. Margarita, whose name is actually Marjorie, but in Spanish there is no translation for that, so they call her Margarita. Well, she is very proactive about talking to school principals and asking if she can teach health and nutrition to the students, and even sit in on other classes to work on her Spanish. It has been giving me great ideas for when I’m in Honduras and is getting me very excited. Margarita was a nutritionist before she joined the Peace Corps, so she obviously has lot more knowledge and was most likely put into that field because of it, but reading what my job duties could entail, it sounds like I will be doing the same sort of thing.

I hope when I get my assignment for service, I can be as proactive and as good as Margarita at integrating into my community and being ready to dive in and help in any way that I can.