Homestay family assignments!

There's so much to say about the past few days here at the retreat site! I wish all of you could experience this with me, minute by minute, to know exactly how I'm feeling right now. But this is just the best I can do:

Today we were finally assigned our host families for training! That's the latest news; let me try to start at the beginning. Yesterday was a day full of assessments, paperwork, pictures, reading the training manual, etc. We were given language assessments individually with our future facilitadores, or facilitators, which are the language trainers we'll be studying with all throughout our 11 weeks of training. They are all Nicaraguan (I believe), who don't speak any English. They will ONLY be speaking Spanish with us during training. So we sat down with one of them and had a simple conversation, led by them, so that they could place us in a language level category, such as Novice, Intermediate, Advanced, and Superior, with each category containing low, mid, and high breakdowns. In order to successfully complete training for swearing in on July 29th, we must all be at at least an intermediate mid speaking level. (We find out this Monday which level we start at based on yesterday's assessments). I think my "interview" went pretty well. I spoke pretty freely with my facilitadora, understood and answered all her questions as best I could. At one point she pulled out a laminated card and asked me to read the statement, which was something like "You've arrived late to a meeting. Explain why and appologize to your counterpart" or something along those lines, and we did a little role-play based on that situation. Man! I hadn't even really been late to anything but that made me feel all nervous like I really had been! Yesterday we also did our medical interviews, recieved our malaria pills, and signed paperwork opening our PC bank accounts.

So today, based on our language assessments yesterday, we were placed in groups of 3 to 8 people, my group being 6 people. This was the group that's all about at the same level of speaking. After some more language sessions with this group (like Spanish musical-chairs, where the loser had to pick a card about a simple category to talk freely about like movies, books, traditions, and other self-discussion topics to make us talk comfortably in Spanish). We found out that my group of 6 was later going to be split into two groups of 3 based on that session, and that that would be our 'training group' companions for the next 11 weeks. So, later that afternoon it was revealed to the whole group of aggies and business trainees who are final groups were, which towns we'd be living in, who our first language facilitators will be, and, drumroll please! who our host families are! So last but not least, my two PCT (peace corps trainees) companions who will live in my same community are Paige and Ryan. My training community will be El Recreo near Diriamba, south of the capital of Managua.  My host parents are both 45 years old, and I have a host sister who's 14.  How crazy that my sister back in Santa Barbara is the same age!  Parallel universes.  I also have an abuela (grandma) who's 70.  Plus there'll be more families in the community who I'll be interacting with during this crazy 11 weeks. 

Trainig's literally going to be like a college semester of 18 units.  Non-stop language training, classes on gardening and composting, community banks (where the community organizes a bank of money that they all contribute to to raise money for projects), youth groups, and community integration.  Plus there's tons of reading.  They gave us a sack of like 10 books/pamphlets to read.  And we have to keep a journal on top of that to turn in to our training staff so they can see how we're progressing.  And on top of all of that, we still have to live and communicate with our family and practice our Spanish with them. 

Oh jeez, there's just so much more!  If anyone has more questions please comment and I'll try to respond. Hopefully I can find time later to keep up on blogs and pics.  Hope everyone's doing well back home.  Sam, good luck on your play!  I wish I could see it!