Training wrap-up

It seems like so far this week noone wants to do anything. We had Spanish class yesterday and noone went. We were in the training center, we just didn´t make it into the classroom. A couple of us were actually busy skipping class to complete our asesoria (consulting) assignments for our technical (business) training class - talk about last minute work, hey this sounds familiar. Didn´t we do that our last year in high school? Anyways, in my defense, at least I was writing a paper in Spanish. :)

Mirsa, my Spanish teacher, came by and gave me some stuff to work on during the first 3 months of training so I can better my Spanish and move up. Great, more homework. But I´m actually looking forward to the next exam to see how much I will improve.

Eventually, the Spanish teachers decided we had had enough free time and rang the bell so we would all go to class. We played stupid little games like pin the tail on the donkey, threw water balloons, costal races (like big sack races) which were supposed to be Spanish exercises. These actually were a bit amusing. I took some pictures.

Tuesday we went to the PC office in the capital. We had different meetings all day from U.S.A.I.D., the embassy, and Cindy (the PC director).

USAID
USAID gives out the SPA (Small Project Assistance) grants of up to $3000 per project, if you fill out a bunch of paperwork and it gets approved. I might be helping the coop do this in the future.

Visas
The embassy talked about the infamous topic of visas. Apparently many volunteers get asked about this. It seems that everyone here wants to go to the US, but the US won´t allow them in, unless they have proof of travel elsewhere in the world, or they have some mega business that they can´t leave behind. Basically the embassy thinks along the lines that everyone they let in isn´t planning on leaving, so they are very strict about letting people in and only let those in who have a reason to go back to their own country. Oh, you´ve got family in the states? Hmm, denied. It´s pretty interesting how that works.

PC Jeopardy
Cindy had us play Jeopardy based on the PC policies and rules and regulations. At least I got to eat some Snickers and M&Ms, which I do actually do miss. hint, hint

Tonight we are all going to Antigua to celebrate our graduating from high school, oh sorry I meant training. Almost all of us our planning to stay at this one hotel which costs 50 Q a person to share a room, a bit steep since we normally pay about 25-30 Q a night in Antigua, but we get private baths in the room and cable tv (not that we´ll have much time to watch it). I´ll post some more about the party tonight and graduation tomorrow and I will definitely take some pictures.