27 Months of La Pura Vida

As hard to believe, I am officially more than half way through my pre-service training.  Six more weeks and I will be swearing in on heading to my permanent site for the next two years!

This update will mainly be about the last week in Pacayas called Tech Week.  Tech Week is more or less a week of putting into practice all the tools we have been learning about in class the previous 6 weeks.  Between the 20 CED trainees, we split up into groups of 6 or 7 and went to three different sites where a successful volunteer had a number of activities planned for us where we could gain real life experience working with real businesses, school and youth on the activities we have been learning about during Tech training.  Obviously, with no practice other than the notes we had, it was fairly challenging but we had a LOT of support during the planning phase as well as during the actual implementation of the activity.  While we were being "evaluated" on our abilities, it was less of an evaluation by Peace Corps staff and more of an opportunity for us to see how comfortable we are with a variety of activities.  Regardless, it was still challenging and nerve racking having three Peace Corps staff sit in on every activity and immediately receive feedback after the activity.  

The first activity we did was a DiCE analysis of a macrobiotica (health supplement store) with an amazing woman who was very passionate about her business and healthy living but struggling with getting business in a fairly poor agricultural community with little extra income.  A DiCE analysis consists of three main parts; reunion informal, a series of questions regarding 5 different aspects that effect her business such a business administration, environment, health, community issues etc. (although we only focused on the business administration aspect of her business because each sections takes over an hour to get through all the questions), and finally giving recommendations and a follow up.  The reunion informal is really just an opportunity to introduce yourself and learn a little about the business owner and how she sees her business.  It isn't really supposed to be an interview or a chance to talk about the business but just build rapport.  During the questions portion is when you really have the opportunity to dive into the real intricate parts of the business and find what tools they have used, the systems for accounting, inventory, human resources etc. but done so in a conversational manner rather than an interview format.  The recommendations should be based on the information gathered and should be realistic and achievable for the business.  For example, for Dona Carmen in the macrobiotica, we suggested she write a mission and vision statement for herself to really spell out how she sees her business and where she wants to go and then write out a marketing plan to better market her business to the community (as well as a few recommendations on where to start). 

Our next activity was an English class to 7th grade students in the local colegio that specializes in agriculture, tourism and hotel management with its students.  Long story short...it was pretty disastrous.  For this activity, we split into groups of 2 and had to manage separate classes.  One group had 9th graders and the other had a group of 11th graders.  Our students spoke almost no English contrary to what we had been told we my partner and I we caught off guard quickly and transitioned to speaking Spanish almost immediately once we realized they didn't understand English.  Our activities we used went well but didn't really get our point across sufficiently and at the end of the lesson when we asked the class what they learned, we got a lot of blank looks and one girl who said "nothing"...about as bad as it gets.

The next activity was a FODA (or SWOT in English) of a local gym.  Again, the owner was incredibly passionate and proud of his business but struggling with competition and trying to communicate the advantages of his gym to the community.  The biggest challenge of this activity was that instead of telling him what we saw as his strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats, we had to guide him to discover that himself (in Spanish...).  However, I think my partner Airon and I were actually fairly successful in getting the owner Pedro, to discover some new opportunities to get involved in the community and advertise his business and its advantages to the larger public.

Lastly, we were to teach a computer class to a group of adults the volunteer had worked with previously.  However, no one showed up to the class and we ended up teaching a session and participating as a "student" in a session.  As unfortunate as it was that we weren't able to teach a session to an actual tico audience, it did open all our eyes to how much preparation is necessary for a tech session even though the entire lesson plan is laid out step by step for you.

That's all for Tech Week.  Have a four day week this week of classes and then about 25 trainees and I are headed to Manuel Antonio national park for Friday and Saturday which should be a great time and a needed break from host families and training.

Hopefully more about that next week.  

OH and next Friday, May 8th, I find out my site assignment for the next two years so I will probably write something after that as well.