Upcoming months

Hey everybody. Sorry it's been so long since I've updated. I'm in Lome right now because I've been fighting off some sort of flu sickness/they don't know quite what for the past week (don't worry though), but I felt well enough to write up something today.

I've been busy with a lot of official Peace Corps meetings and such lately. After your first three months at post as a new volunteer, everyone from your training group meets back up for a week long "In Service Training and Project Design and Management" Meeting. We all came with someone we work with in village and learned how to design projects, find funding if it's needed, and learned more in depth about ideas we could do to help promote the overall goals of our Girls' Education Program. It was kind of a long week but I came back feeling motivated and I had more concrete ideas of what my community needed and what I could do. I have a really busy rest of the year,but I'm excited!

In May, I'll be taking the kids in my JAM mentoring program on an educative field trip to our regional capital. Then I'll be going to a "training of trainers" to be a camp counselor for Camp Unite (www.unitefoundation.org/newdesign/pdf/Camp_UNITE_Handout.pdf). I'm really excited! I just found out I'll be working with girl apprentices and I think it will be really rewarding.

In June back at post I'm going to start a few projects with different people in my community. My homologue and our NGO are going to start a literacy program with women in my village. I'm also going to work with a coworker and a local microfinance group with a few girls on a vacation enterprise project so that they can earn money for the next school year during the summer. Both would be ongoing summer-long projects. The literacy program could go on for my whole service even! June is also the month of exams, and I've been working already with a few girls so far on studying for the English portion. I plan on continuing to help and encourage them, it can be really stressful for them. The BAC exam here is kind of like the SAT, except you have to pass it to graduate highschool. It can be really difficult, so I hope I can help at least a little.

In July, I'm helping an organisation in a neighboring village run a local week-long camp similar to the style of Camp Unite (see above). Not everyone gets to go to camp unite every year, so the village has decided to create it's own mini-version. I've been helping to organize it since January, and will get to help be a counselor again for one week in July.

In August I'll be planning for the new school year to start. I'll be restarting everything for the JAM program (Training mentors, finding participants, choosing subjects and themes, finding resources/materials, funding, etc.) I also want to teach a health class next year at the elementary school in my village using the "child to child" approach (http://www.child-to-child.org/about/index.html) that I'm really excited about, but will also involve a bit of planning.

There's even more! But I'll leave it at that for now. Before all of this starts, I'm taking a weekend trip to Ghana with Brett that I think will be awesome. There are nice beaches and burger restaurants and sushi and movie theaters and malls and smoothies!! It will be amazing! We are leaving on Friday (hopefully I feel better!) so I'll be sure to update with pictures and news when I get back.

Whatever virus it is that I have, it might be the worst I've ever felt and I had a rough week thinking about how I was possibly going to do it all. Then I thought about this one day I was feeling kinda down in my village. As I was walking to the NGO for work, I saw an older lady walking towards me on the path laughing and talking with some friends sitting on their porches. She had her head turned until just as I was a few steps away from her and when she saw me she looked sort of suprised. It seemed like she was trying to remember how to say "bonsoir" so I smiled and said "Eza" which is good afternoon/evening in Akposso (one of the local languages in my village). You would've sworn she was the happiest woman alive. She was jumping up and down smiling, saying back to her friends how much Akposso I knew. She had this whole conversation with me in Akposso and I followed what I could, but finally I just said "have a good day" in akposso and she squealed again. I could still hear her as I walked away telling her friends how amazing it was. It made me feel like a million bucks. I need a mini version of her I can have with me 24/7!