Pictures!

OK so only 3 pictures but it's more than I had...still have some technical difficulties so again look at facebook for more pictures!

The classroom where most of our training sessions take place

My room - completely equipped with my mosquito net

The street going to my homestay house

Model School

Well Model School has officially started and is in full swing. Model School is basically summer school for community kids - and for us (as trainees) it is our opportunity to practice teaching in front of a real class with real students.



Last week we had an official opening ceremony - complete with us (the trainees) singing the American national anthem (the Cameroonian students sang the Cameroonian anthem as well). Then last week we mostly just observed various classes - so I watched some trainers and current volunteers teach English to different levels.

Then this week we had our chance to start teaching and I started right away 8:00am Monday teaching terminale (basically 12th grade) English. Each class is one hour and I had two periods on Monday. And while the classes were not a complete disaster, let's just say teaching English to Cameroonian students is not quite the same as teaching French to American students. During the first 10 minutes I got a little worried when they did not understand my directions of just 'read the text with a partner' but rest assured things have gotten better. After re-grouping and getting some feedback from other trainees and volunteers, I had one last class with terminale today and it went a million times better. And really I think this general cycle of things not going so well at first but then gradually getting better is going to be the theme over the next 3-4 weeks of model school as we all learn and adapt to teaching in Cameroonian schools.

So another part of Model School is clubs - every trainee is expected to work with a club and there is a big 'soiree culturelle' (cultural party) at the end of Model School when every club presents what they have been working on. Clubs meet every Wednesday (classes end early specifically for clubs) so tomorrow will be our first official meeting and students will be able to sign up for a club. Some how I signed up for the dance club - not really because I can dance or that I even enjoying dancing but I do feel pretty comfortable in my ability to teach others dance and besides I am hoping that the students show us (there are 2 other people doing dance club with me) some African dance.

And one last note - so my host family just had a bunch of family come into town to stay with us for a while. And some of the visiting family is from France (I mean they are Cameroonian but live in France). So last night we were eating dinner together (fish, rice, 'couscous' - not what you think) and the family member from France pulled out some candy (as desert for everyone). Oh my gosh - never thought peanut M&Ms would be so good...I haven't had any American candy since I have been here but the minute she pulled out the M&Ms my mouth started watering - they were so good. Also so if anyone wants to send anything, I think peanut M&Ms would be a great idea....

Site Visit Report

Ok so I have officially survived my first independent traveling experience in Cameroon - my site visit.

So last week everyone went to visit their sites for a little less than a week. My site is in Banyo - which is in the norther region of Adamawoua. So here is the break down of how one gets to Banyo (from Bafia):

1. Take a van from Bafia to Bafoussam - about 2.5 - 3 hours
2. Go to Mayo Banyo Voyage and buy ticket for first bus next morning to Banyo
3. Spend night in Bafoussam (try to find semi-nice hotel)
4. Get up at 5:00am and go to agence (Mayo Banyo) where you fight for a 'good' seat and load your luggage then wait for about an hour till van actually leaves
5. Ride about 10 hours in van with about 20-30 other people (van has technically maybe 20 seats) on dirt road
6. Arrive at agence in Banyo and again scramble to get luggage/bookbag & find moto taxi to take you to final destination....

So when following all of that, I arrived in Banyo (quite exhausted) around 4:00pm last Thursday (July 1) and fortunately I have a post-mate aka another volunteer lives in my same town. Her name is Anna and she's been here almost 2 years so she was gracious enough to take care of my during my visit.

Now about Banyo. During my visit I tried to cram in as much as possible to learn about my site so here are a few things I was able to learn:
- Banyo is surrounded by mountains so absolutely gorgeous
- My lycee is semi-far from my house (about at 10 min moto ride) and it overlooks the town so again a beautiful view even if it does take some work to get there
- I live right next to the Lamido (basically like the mayor) and the main mosque so I have a great wake up call every morning around 5:00am
- My house is really great- electricity and running water on a pretty regular basis. A living room (with a fireplace hmmm will that ever get used?), 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, a kitchen - oh and its a circle house so very exciting.
- There is a pretty big marche in town everyday and I can find just about most foods that you would want to eat (relatively speaking for Cameroon that is).

So those are just a few things about Banyo. Oh and Happy Late 4th of July to everyone in America! I was also fortunate enough to actually celebrate the 4th of July with other Americans. There are some missionaries at my site so Anna, I, and her boyfriend went to their house (the Smith's) and they made hamburgers, potato salad, German chocolate cake and ice cream - we even 'saw' some fireworks that's to say Mr. Smith had created a document with pictures of fireworks from various cities in America so yes still fireworks though - a very nice little celebration. And overall my visit to Banyo was a super success.

And now I am back at training (we got back Monday) and officially finishing up week 5. Model school has started and I will be teaching next week - Terminale and Cinqieme (basically 12th & 7th grade) English so we will see how that goes. Oh and tomorrow is an exciting training day- mountain bike training!

Well everyone should watch this Sunday - July 11th - the end of the World Cup! What will we do now that soccer will be over? ...

Catch Up

Well I have some extra time today so I thought I'd try to actually write some info on here about what exactly is going on and what exactly I have been doing for about a month now.

First, I have extrat ime today because I am acutally not leaving for my site visit until tomorrow morning. Second, I really really tried to upload some pictures on here but blogger just does not want to cooperate so no luck - but I was able to put some on facebook so if anyone is interested look there.

Now - what exactly has been going on .... well a lot of training pretty much. We have a very jam-packed calendar of 10 weeks of training (so currently on week 4). Training is Monday- Saturday starting at 8:00am each day. Then Mon- Fri we finish as 4:30 and Saturdays we are done at 12:30. Training varies each day but is broken down into 4 sessions with breaks and lunch. Some sessions are language which means a class with just 3 people and a language trainer. Others are technical which means we learn about education and teaching. Then other times we learn about medical or safety info - those are the really fun ones when you learn about all the possible bugs or illnesses you can get. Training takes place at 1 of 2 locations. First there is the main building often called the SED buildng (for the business people) and then there is the lycee which is where us education trainees are most of the time.

When we are not in training, everyone is either just hanging out at the nearby bar or obviously at their homestay house. We do have a curfew (7:00pm) so were not exactly doing too too much and besides it gets dark here around 6:30 and unlike back home where it is still light even when its dark, there are not street lamps here so you don't really want to be walking around after dark. But also in case anyone is not aware, the World Cup is going on right now which just happens to be taking place in South Africa so as you can imagine that is a pretty big pasttime right now and pretty much what I watch with my host family all the time.

Then one last side note about life here - so my diet basically consists of carbs right now - lots and lots of bread and beignets which is quite all right with me (for the time being) and I am actually enjoying it. Also, running water and electricity not quite standards here. We are lucky to have electricity 4 days a week and running water is extremely rare - like I've had 4 showers with running water since I've been here (and I shower twice a day). But all in all it's really not all that bad. And I hope that my own sight has as much as my homestay here.

Well hopefully I have made things a little clearer. And I am sure after my site visit this week I will have even more updates so we'll see in a week!

Posting

Week 3 is coming to a close and today was a rather exciting day. First, we all got new language level placements (we just retested on Wednesday) and I have officially passed the required language level needed to serve. (Everyone must reach Intermediate-High in French to be in a Francophone area- if that makes any sense to anyone). But the more exciting event today was that all of us education trainees were officially given our post sites. So here is my official city that I will be living and working in over the next 2 years:

Banyo- in the north region of Adamawa (Cameroon- of course)
So as of now I know nothing about this city but we will all be visiting our sites in just 4 days so next I am on the internet I will have lots more to say about Banyo (hopefully).

So for posting, they put everyone's name on the board and you went up, got your name and unfolded to reveal your post and region

Welcome sign from the workshop right before heading out to site visit

The set-up for the workshop - very snazzy...

So outside of the excitement of learning our posts, everything else is going just like clockwork. Training is stil very busy but going well and we are learning a lot. My host family is still going really well although the number of family members have dwindled down to just 3 people (lots of family members come and go- kind of hard to explain) so it's rather quiet at home which is nice- I've been catching up on reading. But right now I am to go finish preparing a 30-minute grammar lesson presentation for tomorrow so again sorry I have not written a lot but I hope, hope to soon really write more and explain things and maybe add some pictures!

First Week

Ok so I actually wrote this a week ago but just now had the opportunity to post:

so exactly 1 week now that I have been in Cameroon but I must say that is feels like it's been much longer and I don't mean that in a bad way but in the sense that so much has happened and changed in 1 week that it feels like a lot longer (so I will certainly not be able to include everything). But I also must first say it's even weirder to think that 2 weeks ago I was graduating college and now here I am in a little town called Bafia taking bucket baths every day.

We (and the 42 other trainees) arrived in Yaounde last friday evening (June 4). We were bused to our hotel and had a huge dinner. While in Yaounde for 5 days, we were mostly at the hotel or being shuttled to and fro to the Peace Corps Office. Some highlights below:

Saturday night we went to a show highlighting some African dance - very amazing- I think the first moment I actually felt like I was in Africa

Sunday night we had dinner at the PC Country Director's house and got to meet the ambassador to Cameroon

Monday night we finally got cellphones! So by the way - here's my number if you would like to call me in the next 2 years : 011 237 70 83 80 34

Tuesay we arrived in Bafia! - about 2 hours north of Yaounde. This is our training site where we will be until we finish training in August.

So upon arriving in Bafia, we all met our homestay families. What an experience. Everyone was of course nervous but also excited. But my first night went very well and my family is super nice.

But just real quickly turning to actual training - we have training 6 days a week. So I get up at 6:15am every day and off to training for about 8 hours. Very long but it's nice to stay busy.

So I know this is rather short but as you can imagine, internet is a little slow and hard to come by at least right now in the beginning. But overall everything is going great and every day gets better and better.

my very first day

well I haven't written in a while (clearly) - Ireally dont know where the time has gone - it's been 3 months already - crazy!

I am sitting in my hotel room write now in Philadelphia- my staging location. I have finished my very first day. I am exhausted but even more excited now for everything thats to come.

Back tracking a bit now but since receiving my invitation in February, I slowly but surely started preparing for everything. And once again there was a lot more to everything that I expected. Very intense getting things in order to leave the country for 2 years and I really don't know how most people even do it - fortunately I had a lot of help from my mom and I didn't have too many things like a house or my own apartment or anything to worry about. But still of course I waited until the last minute to do some rather important things kind of like packing which I didnt finish until ooh about 5 minutes before I walked out the door this morning. And I was so worried about going over the limit but apparently I have no concept of weight as my 2 checked bags were only about 60 some pounds all together.

everything pre-packed

and everything packed (actually in my hotel)

And now I sit here in my room - all the months, weeks, days, minutes that have been leading up to it all and now its here. I arrived this morning in Philadelphia and my great friend Ashley picked me up and took me to my hotel- she even got to see some of the other volunteers I'll be with. And then she was off and it all started. What a long day - but it was so great to finally meet everyone. All the planning, researching, worrying about what to pack and if i have enough - its all over now. It's all still a bit surreal - maybe it hasn't hit me yet. But forreal -

tomorrow I am off to Africa.