Peace Corps Plans

Well, the letter my Mom received had tons of information and things to start working on, and I decided that it´d be best for me to come back and start working on this stuff. Visa and passport applications (I need a special PC passport, and to renew mine as well) can take six weeks, and with the holidays it could be longer, and I don´t want to push my luck and screw up some paperwork at the last minute. SO, I´m flying home on Saturday!! It´ll be sad to be leaving Central America, but I´ve had a great week at the beach, and I can´t be too sad when I reflect on all the great experiences I´ve had in the past four months and the amazing experience yet to come!

I´ll go back to Boston, stay there for a couple weeks, go to Florida with the family for Christmas, then go to New York for New Years and a couple weeks after that, then go back to Boston for the last week or so before I leave! I´m excited to take advantage of post-holiday sales :)

AND, I´ve learned more about my position in Paraguay. The Early Elementary Education (EEE) program trains local teachers in new and creative teaching techniques. The problem is that teachers there tend to use memorization and rote learning, which results in poor student learning and a dislike of school. Something like 25% of students drop out before 3rd grade, 44% before 6th grade. The dropout rate isn´t surprising, b-c with the poverty there, what family wouldn´t want their kid selling bread on the street earning money? The local teachers are aware of this problem and are eager to learn new, creative, student-centered teaching techniques, which hopefully I can help them with. The EEE volunteers run trainings, do observations and make recommendations for in-service teachers, and apparently some also teach at the Teachers College, which would be kind of cool.

Another cool thing I´ve learned is that in Paraguay, Spanish is usually people´s second language. The indigenous language that I´ll be learning is called Guarani. PC specifically says that if I want to perfect my spanish, Paraguay is not the case, b-c my training will focus more on learning Guarani. How cool is that?? I´m going to be trilingual!!!