Typical training day

I thought I would write a blog about what type of things I do in training. We have Spanish class for four hours a day and in class everything is taught orally. We hardly ever have papers, except for homework, but it’s a very involved style of teaching. For instance, the day we learned how to formally and informally greet people, our teacher sent us out into the street to talk to people. When we learned how to tell people our daily routines and who we are, we went to the street to tell random people and ask who they are and what they do all day. Spanish is very different every day.
In my other training classes we focus on a lot of informal education. That means we are teaching class, but it is hands on. You can tell children all day how to wash their hands, but it is more fun and interesting if you are teaching them while having them do it or you show them how to do it. We learn different things like that every day and lately it has been about how to get information from people about their community. We have learned how to do FODA analysis…in English it’s a SWOT analysis. It is the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of a community. I have talked about FREESTOP before and that is basically you just conversing with people asking them random questions out of FREESTOP, but at the same time you are learning a lot of information about the community. Another thing that is a lot of fun is to get kids to all work together on a map of their community, that way you can ask them about certain places in town or see what they really know about their town. Since not a girls go to school, they may not have a school listed in their city, but they may know where all the stores are. One other thing we do is draw a big yearly calendar and ask them questions about certain times of the year. What time of the year are certain foods more popular…what type of sickness do you get during this time of the year…when are you most sick…etc.
Other things we are taught during those four hours are about our safety and security. For example, how to report offenses, how to avoid them, what offenses are most common (in Peru it is said that every volunteer will have some type of theft or robber) and etc. We are also taught about our health. For example, the most common type of sickness (diarrhea in Peru), how to have proper nutrition when all you eat is rice, chicken and potatoes, how to not get sick, what to do when you are sick and etc.
What we do every day is different, but it’s always pretty interesting and fun. They know how to keep our attention here and everything is pretty easy to catch on to.