3month IST

So I finally finished my community diagnostic. I had my 3 month In Service Training Session. It was great. Each volunteer had to bring at least one project partner. I brought the 2 that Peace Corps had assigned me to. We left at 5am on Monday on a moto. Then we caught a bus to Santo Domingo. From there we met up with the other volunteers and their project partners and headed to the conference. It was like an all exclusive gated area. The project partners stayed for 3 days. During those 3 days we presented out community diagnostic and worked on planning for this year. My presentation went well, I started off giving a brief discription about my community and then went into the methodology I used to collect data. I´m a rock star, I went to 100 houses and had my informal interviews with these families. I also drew a map of my community, ok well some people in the community helped to. I created a priority matrix to figure out what projects to start. I collected a lot of info from just talked to people, visiting the school and various meetings. I also did this one activity with the youth group where I split up the girls and boys and had them draw a map and put the places that they liked going to. I also gave them stickers to show what places were a threat to the community. Well......i found out that there are some really strong personallities. Some people stared arguing while others became very competative. Each group wanted their map to look better. They spent so much times getting the lines of the streets straight that they never got around to drawing the places they liked to visit. We ran out of time and I ended up not using the maps. I learned a lot that day though, like to put a time limit and start off with rules. Anyways, back to my 3month IST.....The plannification was the hard part because I was working with 2 youth kids. It was intense so we had to keep taking breaks. After all the project partners left we continued our training for the next 3 day. I was a little worried about sending my youth kids back by themselves but they called me when they arrived. I received so much info that I feel like my brain is about to explode. I want to do so much in my community but I know that I can´t do everything. I think I need to create another priority matrix on my community as well as my life! I´m about 30 minutes away from my site now, I know that I am going to start an english class and an after school study program.

Funny thing: when i walked into the computer lab the guy who works here totally smirked when he saw my big ass bulto (backpack). I really need to start packing light.