Thursday, 6/12/14
So today was my first day at training and it was
a very long day, but at least not as long as yesterday. So getting up at 8:00 am for breakfast was a huge change in my old schedule. The breakfast was awesome though and well
worth it. They have honey here that is out
of this world and the peanut butter is more like homemade peanut butter and is
great. I also ate pink rice, ground beef
and eggs, but the honey on the fried bread is what made it.
Following that we had a meeting with the staff
and were introduced to them, our schedule for the day, and a little info about Madagascar and our training. I
knew that
our training group was one of the pilot groups for the new TEFL program, but
did not realize that we were the very first group to do it; the others not
starting till September. We then got all
of our gift bags (notebook, pens, small dictionary, flag), our medical kit (a ton
of medical supplies and a lot of meds), and a cookbook. This was followed by our shoots, of which I
got three (Rabies and Hep A & B), a medical review, and a “medical” meeting
where we learned about our water filter, chlorine tablets, and a common sense
(to me anyway) discussion about food preparation.
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| My language classroom in the Peace Corps Training Center in Madagascar. |
There was lunch and some breaks in there but
nothing to talk about and then we started our language lessons. What to say about that…I was in a group with
only two other people and the teacher.
Walking into our little round classroom the teacher started off by
speaking Malagasy. I was fortunate
enough to have had seen some of the words when I was doing my own study prior
to coming to Madagascar, but this was the first time to actually hear it
spoken. It was two hours of our teacher
barely speaking English and do not even get me started on the word for
window. I think all of the groups fell
into the trap of pointing to the window (one of the only things in the room)
and asking “What is that in Malagasy (but in Malagasy).” It is a really long word, if you want to
know, which basically means small door. All
in all it was a pretty good first session though.
We ended the day with a bunch of us laying out on blankets star gazing
and listening to one of the volunteers play the guitar and singing.
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