Calor o Caliente?

Orientation has been a whirlwind!

It all started in Washington, DC where we were given a one day intensive overview of the Peace Corps expectations, our expected behavior and protocol, and other safety/heath issues. To be honest, we participated in so many activities and reviewed such a wide range of concepts it is hard to remember back to everything that took place. What I do remember is that by the end of the day I had met and talked with just about every other trainee and felt completely comfortable with a group of people who, only hours before, had been complete strangers.

A complete surprise during our first orientation day is that there is another Providence College graduate in my group!! Not only is she from PC, but she was also an Elementary/Special Edu. major...What a small world. Although Megan is a 2009 grad, it is still surprising that we had never met before, and didn't know about one another until our first meeting in DC.

Thankfully, I am not the only Education major/teacher who has never taught Environmental Science before. In fact, the majority of the trainees here are elementary school teachers who have no experience with Environmental Science, so at least we are all in this together. It has become more and more clear that although this will be no walk in the park, our training will be incredible and we can do this.

So far we have been completely spoiled in Nicaragua. We have been staying in a gorgeous hotel in the town of Granada (also a beautiful city), where the staff has been feeding us 3 delicious meals a day and there is an awesome swimming pool. This will definitely not be the Peace Corps lifestyle we should come to expect, but it is a nice environment for us to get to know one another in and not be completely overwhelmed in quite yet. Training each day has definitely been exhausting, but the information is crucial and we have been dying to hear it. It seems that each day we learn a little bit more about exactly what the job will entail, where we will be living, and what our lives will be like. The trainers have no qualms in telling us exactly how difficult our jobs will be, the challenges we will face, and the possibility that we may not be hired at the end of training. Awesome.

That said, I took my first language exam yesterday, as well as a practice class (for three hours) today. They placed me in what seems to be an intermediate level (I am definitely not the worst one here, but no where near the fluent speakers that are kicking butt). I made the common mistake today in my class of saying that it was "muy caliente" outside instead of "muy calor" only to have my teachers giggle and look politely aside...I had a feeling this wasn't quite the right way of saying that it is very hot outside, but figured I got the message across, until a fellow trainee whispered that I had just told the class I was "very horny." A good way to get to know my new teachers. Well done, Katie. Luckily, it was a good opportunity to demonstrate my ability to laugh at myself and move on. I think this will happen quite a bit when I move in with my host family.

On that note, we were FINALLY told who are host families would be today, after many questions about preferences, allergies, etc. I am in a family with a 34 year old mama, a 43 year old papa, a 3 year old son and their 18 year old nephew. I am very excited to be in one of the smaller families, as some of the homes housed up to three generations and seemed fairly crowded. At the same time, I am glad to have host siblings in the house to practice my Spanish with. I can not wait to meet them tomorrow morning.

The next three months are going to be very intense, as we will have Spanish lessons five days a week for six hours each day (broken into 4 hours in the morning of lessons and 2 hours in the afternoon of application in the community). We also have to undertake projects in the community; such as, creating a youth group, planting a garden/composting, and teaching lessons in the local school (ALL when I am still working with limited Spanish...yikes). I am hoping that this is all currently intimidating much like getting all of your syllabi on the first day of classes, but then when you actually get going it flies by...let's hope.

For now, my biggest concerns are picking up the language and getting to know my host family. Hopefully by my next post I can report that I have a lovely host family and that loads of high school Spanish have suddenly come flooding back into my brain (that has yet to happen). Oh well.

Adios!