And It All Comes Full Circle

I just put two trainees from my sister group, G33, back on the bus to their training communities *sad. This weekend was their volunteer visit; and looky there I’m a volunteer, so they came to me. Usually the PC only sends one trainee to each volunteer, so I was curious why I was getting two, a guy and girl, other than being and exemplarily volunteer of course. On Thursday had the epiphany that they must be married couple. Nope. Good try though.

It turns out both of them are doing presentations on the Construye Tus Sueños class I’m teaching. It is a new program so the trainers don’t know anything about it other than what is written in the manual, and I think I’m the only volunteer teaching it, so both Lindsay and Brett had the good fortune of being sent to visit yours truly. It was also lucky for them that I teach my CTS class on Friday nights, so they actually got to see the class in action.

Actually I was a bit mean. The trainees have only been in the country for about 3 weeks, so their Spanish is still developing. I had them do a critical thinking word problem with the class and lead a short discussion about a story involving a boy who wants to sell caramelos. They did very very well. I was most impressed by the fact that they didn’t balk when I suddenly told them they were going to be doing part of the class, oh 2 hours beforehand. If they keep that attitude up, I think they’ll do just fine as volunteers in a few months.

During the weekend I took them to the 2 good restaurants in my town, we visited another volunteer who was about to finish up his service, visited the muni, etc. I was sad that I didn’t get a chance to take them out for a night on the town. Campo 9 is pretty conservative, so there isn’t really a good socialization scene for anyone not in high school. I had planned to take them out for the night to Coronel Oviedo with some other volunteers and their trainees, but a certain someone didn’t call me to tell me when they went to Oviedo. You know who you are. I did feel bad about that because I remember that one of the best parts of my own volunteer visit, behind making pierogies, was going to a birthday party. Oh well, they can party it up another time.

On the third night Rachael, a volunteer who lives near me, came to stay the night because the rain made it difficult to get back to her site. Fortunately I have my big bed, which can hold 2-3 people and a spare 1.5 twin mattress that can hold 2, so everyone got to sleep in a bed.

The last night in particular ended with me in stitches from laughter as we all surfed through awkwardfamilyphotos.com, scary easter bunnies, www.textsfromlastnight.com, failbook.com, and learnfrommyfail.com

This morning we continued the theme with shitmydadsays via twitter, http://crazythingsparentssay.com/, and the best of Katt Williams and Eddie Izzard on youtube. Note to self: remember to ask for a dvd of their performances in the next care package. Oh what a night and morning. There is nothing like laughing at the misfortunes of others to bond volunteers together.

Ah yes, all and all a good few days. I did my best to convey to them all of the wisdom I’ve accumulated over the last year including
1) 1 mil chipa is gross
2) All of the people who work at the terminals on this ruta are effing s%*& heads
3) No, I don’t know what he said either
4) Please don’t be like g29; don’t do anything that threatens our ability to go to the Chaco, Alps, or Palace hotels. You are also responsible for making sure the rest of your g follows this rule
5) Yes there is a lot of gossip in the PC, the frightening thing is a high percentage of it is true
6) I told the trainees some of the crazy stories I had heard. Lesson: If you do something stupid, it will be remembered For-Ev-Er.


Other highlights:
Brett is allergic to rabbits and does a great Australian accent. Lindsay is my new microfinance guru. Both did a slight impression of Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally in the café when they took a nice hot shower in my newly installed shower head.

Yea I’m lucky, I’m definitely got the cool trainees.  Hope to see them around soon.