Logistics

March 20, 2013

So I suppose I should explain to my friends and family what I am actually doing these days. The basics of my schedule are that I have 9 weeks of training which are split between the Peace Corps training center and my home stay site. We spend more than half of the time at our home stay in order to learn our languages as quickly as possible. Halfway through the training we learn where our permanent site will be and after the nine weeks are over we are sworn in as official Peace Corps volunteers and sent to our site for the next two years.

On the morning of Saturday the 9th we learned what language we would be learning! I was so happy to be assigned to Pulaar, which is a minority language in Senegal (Wolof is the majority language and French is the official language) but various forms of Pulaar are spoken throughout West Africa. It also means that I will most likely be stationed in the north of Senegal. After an hour of survival language instruction that morning, we left to meet our new families. Pretty much all I knew how to say was "mi naanani Pulaar" - I don't speak Pulaar. It was a somewhat overwhelming three days, but I learned so much and I was really happy doing it. Since then I have been back to the training center once for two days, then back out to my home stay for five days, and now I am back at the center again. My family is amazing. I'm going to have to save my description of their awesomeness for another post because I could go on and on forever.