I have now survived the first two weeks of training! This week flew by, mostly because there is so much work to do. The theme of Week 1 was “Scare the crap out of the trainees” and the theme of Week 2 was “Put the trainees to work.. while still scaring the crap out of them”.
Week 1 was mostly information sessions on policy, safety and security, health, etc. A guy from the embassy came and told us all of the ways that you can (and will) get pickpocketed, robbed, or burgled- maybe even express kidnapped if I’m lucky. I learned all of the Peace Corps policy and what I could do that would result in “administrative separation” from PC. I was told about all of the restricted areas I can’t visit, highlighted in red on a map in our training center. They are off-limits for various reasons: high crime rates, indigenous people killing American tourists, drug activity near the Colombian border, and an active volcano that is spewing ash right and left. There are also areas that aren’t technically off limits, but you need permission to go to (like Guayaquil- again for high crime rates) and other areas that we can go to, but Peace Corps won’t replace anything that’s stolen there (like the Mariscal Sucre district of Quito) basically because “well, we told you that would happen and you went anyways…” In addition to those sessions, we also learned from the medical officers which types of parasites we can (and will) get, how likely it is that we will get malaria or dengue, and also what constitutes medical evacuation back to the States or to Panama, where there is an American hospital.
We also had a few more subtly scary sessions- including learning how we would be assessed throughout training and Spanish interviews to place us into the correct level classes. I got placed in an advanced beginner/intermediate low class with 4 other NRC volunteers, but I would say that the placements are somewhat arbitrary and not everyone in the class is on the same page. My Spanish has definitely gotten better in the last two weeks, and I am remembering a lot of what I learned back in high school and college, although it’s been 6 years since my last Spanish class at USD. In my interview, I was told I mostly need to work on my reflexive and past-tense verbs, which seems manageable. I only need to have an “intermediate-medio” level of Spanish to be sworn in, and I’m almost there anyways.
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| My Spanish group and fellow NRC volunteers. |
In Week 2, we got put to work. We had our first assessment yesterday, in which we had to make group presentations (in Spanish, of course!) about communities we surveyed a week ago. I had to make a community map and talk about all of the places that are important to the community, where men hang out vs. where women hang out, etc. Our group also had to do a needs-assessment based on talking to community members about what they want to have in their community that they don’t already have- like in the case of our town (Yaruqui), there are no firefighters, no bank, and no after-school activities for teenagers. This was just for practice, but when we visit our sites in a few weeks, we have to do the same types of surveys. I will find out my site in Week 6, then spend Week 7 visiting the area with my counterpart and getting to know the area and my new host family.
On Monday, we have to go make presentations at a high school and a grade school (you guessed it, in Spanish!) about various topics and also make up activities for them to do. Our topic is reforestation. I feel like it’s a little soon to have to give a 45 minute presentation in Spanish about reforestation, but really I just have a lot of work to do this weekend. My part only has to be 10 minutes, but it will take at least 4 times as long to prepare as a presentation in English.
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| My bestie, Jhonny, and I at PC headquarters in Quito. |
On Wednesday, I went to Quito for the first time since arriving to Ecuador (since I don’t count riding from the airport to the training center in the dark and rain really “seeing Quito”). We took the bus from Tumbaco, then switched to a different bus in Quito, then to the Trolebus which took us within walking distance to the Peace Corps office, which is the only office of a US government agency here in Ecuador not located within the US embassy. The office is nice, and we met with the Country Director and other staff and volunteers. They have maps all over the place with pins for every volunteer with their site and their picture. They also have a really elaborate Google map with everyone’s GPS coordinates. I guess it’s nice to know they keep such good track of us! We had another safety session about transportation security- how to mitigate getting robbed on the bus, how to pick out a legitimate taxi, and how we should always carry our valuables in various places on our bodies. Ironically, one of the trainees got robbed on the way back to Tumbaco. She was standing up on a very crowded bus and was holding her purse under her jacket with one hand. She also had her cell phone and about $5 in an inner pocket of her jacket. When she got off the bus she realized that her phone and money were gone, because someone had slashed through her jacket right where the pocket was, like they knew that it’s common for American rain jackets to have pockets there. Another volunteer who was with her had a pocket of his bag slashed as well, although there was nothing in it but sunscreen. All while two PC trainers stood a few feet away! It’s unfortunate that robbing people on the bus all day is a more lucrative career than many of the jobs here in Ecuador, and even more unfortunate that Americans are just seen as a big dollar sign to these people. Let me just say, if I really were a rich American… I would not be riding the public bus around Quito!
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| The slashed jacket! |
