3-month IST

Hello!

My, it's been a while. Today has a theme.

Since last Wednesday until yesterday afternoon, I have been at my 3 month In-Service Training for my Community Economic Development at Peace Corps. For those of you who are geographically savvy, we were in Guaigui, La Vega. Actually, the facility we were using is the former house of a former DR president, Balaguer (maybe spelled incorrectly, who knows).

In any case, this was a pretty important mark in my service so far. Basically, the first day and a half or so was a work session with the volunteers and our project partners. I was able to bring someone from Fundelosa, my main project, as well as someone from the candle business I'm working with. I have mentioned my diagnostic several times over the months, and this was the culmination of my diagnostic project. Each of us gave a 20 minute presentation summarizing the results of our diagnostic reports (mine ended up 12 pages in Spanish). After that it was working and planning projects and priorities with our partners. I didn't really feel like this part of the event was particularly useful, because the work sessions were mickey mouse and I really didn't come away from it with any better idea of what I'm going to do as a volunteer.

Things improved greatly after the project partners left and we began the training portion of the week. I got some really good ideas for projects and how to go about some ideas I had already come up with. I learned about a free opensource accounting software (which I have been unsuccessful at downloading, grr) and some tips for teaching English (which everyone wants but the idea has been too intimidating for me to seriously consider). We spent some quality time with the other volunteers and got to hear about projects the more experienced volunteers have been working on.

I'm going to be translating my diagnostic into English for archiving purposes in case I might want it for a job later on or something, and I'll be sending one or the other or both to people who seem interested, but if you want to make sure I send it to you, just shoot me an email.

La Vega is (I think) the "best" Carnaval site in the country, and actually attending was a "training activity" for our group. The other sectors had already finished their ISTs, but since ours was still in session they still wanted us to be able to go. You can see lots of pictures on my Picassa site (link to the right). I don't really know much about the history or point of Carnaval other than in most countries it coincides with the beginning of Lent, but not here. Basically it was just a lot of people with the monsters parading by. They have these balloon things filled with wax so they are really hard and if they wail on anyone whose ass is available, especially if you enter the street. There were a bunch of us there, and it was a pretty good time but I don't know what the fuss is about, other than it was a fantastic opportunity to take some really striking photos. I didn't end up getting hit at all, but I was being really careful. Several people in our group have rediculous bruises.

Up until IST, the name of the game at site has been working on the diagnostic, getting a sense of what's going on and getting integrated into the community. Some people have already been doing work and actively participating, but not me so much. Now that IST and diagnostic is over, this is when we are to begin planning and implementing organizational, community and personal projects at our sites. This is overwhelming on a number of levels, and getting started is the hardest part, I think. I have lots of ideas of things I might want to do, but figuring out what order to pursue them and how to go about it is tricky. I am feeling nervous about going back to my site today, but part of that is just that this is the longest time I've been out of site. The nice thing is that I have a meeting on the 29th in the capital, and I'm going to go in a day or two early to use my "free" days for February, so I have about a week in my site and then I'll be out for three days, so it will be good for me to get in and be able to come back out again before too long.

In any case, it's strange. There is so much to say about what I'm doing here but it's pretty impossible to describe. Someone described PC to me as like developing a photograph, and that the image won't become clear until sometime after the whole experience has concluded. She was exactly right when she said that. I really want to have some way to record my evolution and experiences over this time, and I guess this blog is the way to do it. It will be interesting to look back a year or so after I return to the states and remember how I was feeling and all the things I went through. As much as there's so much that can't possibly be included, I hope I am at least getting the general idea across. Let's just say whatever one thinks PC will be, it will be different. Better, worse and just generally different.

Okay, that's all for now. Keep the emails coming, and thanks for all the support!

More later!