Last post as a trainee!

Last week was our last full week of training.

On last Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings all of us Education trainees went to Sarakata School in Luganville and had teaching practice in grades 1-5. We were divided into groups of 3 and assigned a grade level. On each day 2 of us taught and 1 observed and then we switched the next day so that each of us taught twice and observed once. Myself, Cole and Nicole were a teaching team in class 2. It went really well and was nice to be in the classroom!

Nicole teaching 

Cole and I teaching

On Friday we had a fun little Bislama practice session where we were given two places in town with 10 or so questions for each place. We had to find our way to that place and then ask the questions in Bislama and have the person answer in Bislama. Cole and I worked together. We had to go to Wilco which is a hardware store here in Vanuatu, the handicraft market, the Police Station and Beach Front Resort. We had nearly 3 hours to complete our activity. Cole and I decided to go to the other 3 places first, finish at Beach Front Resort and then hang out there until it was time to go back and debrief with the trainers! Solid morning! Good Bislama practice and good fun!

Friday afternoon a big group decided to head back to Beach Front for a while. Cole, Jeffery, Lucas and I walked there together. There is a bridge, called Sarakata Bridge, on the way to the resort that people jump off of for fun. We had heard about it and decided we were interested in doing it! We got to the bridge and were all a bit nervous and unsure. A Ni van guy came along, saw our interest, took off his shirt and jumped off like it was no big deal. So, after seeing someone else do it and come up fine we decided we HAD to do it! Also, by this time a group of about 20 to 30 locals had formed to watch our jump. The four of us climbed over the rail and got in position. We counted to three and only Cole jumped! Jeffery counted and jumped next and then Lucas and I counted and jumped together! The jump was about 20 feet. Lots of fun! After our jump and then a few relaxing hours at Beach Front we headed to a local kava bar where Cole and some other folks had kava and I had a cheeseburgerJ Here are some pics of us jumping off the Sarakata Bridge...

We left Luganville on Saturday, but our flight wasn’t scheduled to leave until 7:30 p.m. so a group of us took the 45 minute bus ride to Champagne Beach for the day. Champagne Beach has been called one of the top 10 most beautiful beaches in the world, so we thought we should check it out. It was in fact a very very beautiful beach. We swam, at lunch, swam more, applied sand masks, and then headed back. We took showers and finished packing when we got back and then headed to the airport around 5:30. As I said, our flight was supposed to leave at 7:30. It left around 9. Again, island time J Here are some of our Champagne Beach pics. I will add more to facebook eventually...

When we got to Vila we went to the hotel, dropped off our things and then went to dinner at one of the only places in town still open. By the time we finished dinner it was close to midnight. We went to a club called Voodoo and hung out and danced until around 1:30! The latest we have stayed up since we've been in Vanuatu!

We mostly had a lazy day on Sunday. Some cool things did happen though….Our papa from Nguna came into Vila to see us and to pick up the food we had brought to him from Luganville. The market here in Vila still isn’t open and island food is hard to come by. We brought them island cabbage and avocados and we brought our Lelepa family peanuts and reef sandals (Rex is known for breaking sandals and needed a new pair!)!! Papa Luna hung out and chatted with us for about 30 minutes and showed us pictures of the damage, which sucked to see, but he had the best positive attitude about it all the whole time! We will see him, mama Christina and our Lelepa family on Thursday at our swearing in ceremony! After our chat with Papa Luna, we ate breakfast which was provided by our hotel staff in honor of our arrival! So sweet! That afternoon our luggage that had been in storage since week one, and our things that were left in Nguna/Lelepa pre cyclone evacuation were brought to us in truckloads. It took 6 full truckloads to deliver it all! We hadn’t seen some of the stuff in 11 weeks and some in 4 weeks. We went through it to see what all we had and realized that WE BROUGHT SOOOOOOO MUCH STUFF! Our room is packed FULL! It is truly ridiculous. In order to get it all to our site we are going to have to put a large amount of it on a ship to be delivered to us a few days after we arrive at site. We thought we had done a good job at packing light, clearly we were wrong! After living off of what we did for 11 weeks, I must admit that we should have listened more carefully and packed far less. Oh well, live and learn!

The people whose sites were destroyed by Pam found out on Monday where there new sites will be. They were all given envelopes right before our lunch break and read their new sites aloud to the group! It was a long awaited, exciting time for them and I was very happy for them to finally know where they will be serving for the next two years!

Hannah, the one whose dad was very sick and went home to be with him and her family, is coming back on Friday! Her dad has started chemo and is doing much better! We are so happy for her and her family and can’t wait for her to get back!!!

This week we have had our medical posttest and our final Bislama oral assessment. We have to pass them both in order to swear in. We both did well on the Bislama assessment (we are both consider "Advanced!) We aren’t sure yet about the medical posttest, but we think we did fine. We have also had sessions on First Aid, Finances (when we get paid, how we get paid, how much we get paid, etc.), Peace Corps policies, satellite phones, receiving mail and shipping things to our islands, and monitoring and evaluating our projects in order to make sure they are successful and sustainable.

This morning we had voting for one of the two main committees we have, VAC (volunteer advisory council). The other committee is called GAD (gender and development). In order to be a part of GAD you fill out a lengthy application and the current members of the committee choose the new members. In order to be a member of VAC people are nominated and then voted in by the members of our group. Nominations were yesterday and voting was today. I was nominated and voted in this morning! 8 of us were nominated and 4 voted in. We will be flown into Vila 4 times each year to meet with the committee and advocate for volunteers, work on improving PC policies, plan and implement staff development and work on improving the volunteer resource room. I am excited to be a part of it! There are 8 of us all together on the committee. Cole is going to try to be a part of a committee that is a work in progress now dealing with disaster relief, or on the volunteer newsletter called the VanAm.  

Tomorrow we will no longer be trainees. After 12 weeks, one evacuation, one cyclone, a new lesson learned, a new culture learned, and lots of great friendships made, we will finally swear in and become official Peace Corps volunteers. We can’t wait. It is bound to be a fun filled day packed full of good times and lots of emotions! We are excited to see our families, to celebrate afterwards and to finally start the next chapter of this adventure! :) :)