Dia De Practica

Dia de Practica- July 24th

In order to prepare volunteer for work post-training, we have 5 Practice Days [1 per week] to plan and execute some sort of activity. Shavonda, who is still working on her Spanish, and I decide to do a Civic Participation/Leadership charla [presentation] together at one of the local schools that we had visited. This would give Shavonda good practice with her Spanish and I could start thinking about Civic Participation charlas I might to in site. We were able to find a teacher to work with and set the date on the first Dia de Practica. Not to brag…but we cruised through the next 3 practice days, developed our presentation. Zero problems. Some groups didn’t know what they were going to do until the 3rd or 4th day because they had to reform their plans a few times. We were good from day 1…until day 5 came around.

After Practice Day 4 we went to Villa Florida for a week to visit a volunteer there and see his work in the community. While in VF the national government announce that they were extending winter vacation for an extra week. That extra week included our 5th Dia de Practica on which we had decided to give our presentation to the class. Oh bugger.

In the few days before our presentation date, Shavonda and I tweaked the material more towards Leadership and Ethics, added a few more activities, and asked the other people in our group to please bring their siblings and any neighborhood kids they knew to our presentation. There would be snacks.

The day of the presentation, Shavonda and I cooked lemon bars and bought some candy. In the end we gave the presentation to 3 Paraguayans (my host sister [Silvana], my host mom, and one of Carrie’s sisters), our 2 language teachers [Aurelio, Pabla], our Tech Trainer [Ricardo], and the rest of the muni group [6 people]. The presentation went well. We made them do some team building activities that were hilarious to watch from the outside. Shavonda’s Spanish was a little rocky and I’m never happy with mine, but I think we kept them entertained.

After our presentation another group that was also planning on working with the schools piggy backed off of our presentation and gave their immediately after ours to the same group. I think it would have been polite for them to bring a few Paraguayans to add to the group Shavonda and I had collected, but oh well. The best part of the second groups presentation was a group photo they took of us. Ricardo wins the silliest face contest. I’m hoping Dina remembers to send me a copy. Isatta had an absolute laughing fit because of it and had to physically turn away from the screen to finish presenting her material.