Also, We're all going crazy

I want to be as real as possible on here.  I can’t say everything, because this is a public blog, and therefore I’m not going to write specifics, especially anything negative, that would be traced back to my host family, or people in my village, etc.   But 26 months in the Peace Corps won’t be all roses either, and I don’t think keeping this blog annoyingly cheerful when I’m in a bad mood would help me or my readers.

That being said, we’re all going crazy.  And by we I mean Bots 13 in training. 9 weeks of sitting in training, at least 2/3 of which is review, some of which changes, makes for a reallllly long 2 months.  And it’s a necessary beast, because we ARE getting lots of good information.  Really good language training, really helpful cultural information, necessary other information.  But we are at the point of climbing the walls and really wanting to be at our sites.

Part of the problem is that PC is filled with bureaucracy and requirements from PC Washington that we can’t escape.  Part of the problem is that Botswana is also really good at bureaucracy.  And part of the problem is that we have a group of people highly educated in different areas that all need to be put on the same page, so most sessions are new information for some people and review for many more.  Also some of the sessions seem completely pointless, like when we get outdated health information that we know is wrong, or when we get a 3 hour session on information that could have been given to us in 30 minutes if we didn't have to do group work and make a flip chart.

We’re currently trying to gather information about our sites and getting anxious when we hear that not all of the housing is set up yet, or that it seems most schools didn't know they had to pick us up and take us to site.   I’m sure most of this will be resolved, and my situation seems pretty good, but it does raise anxiety levels.  That with our boredom = crazy.

On the plus side, we met our supervisors and/or counterparts (teachers we will be working with) yesterday and most of them seem very nice and eager to have us.  My counterpart seems super nice and helped me make a game plan of things I can do at my site, like running after school clubs and teacher trainings.  So there is a use for our training J

So… slowly going crazy.  Only 3 weeks of training left!