A typical day as a Peace Corps Trainee

I have now been in Mexico for a few weeks and if you were wondering what exactly has been taking up my time here this is the blog post for you…

For each Peace Corps assignment there is a training period, which is what I am currently undergoing.  So if we are being technical here I am not a full-blown volunteer right now, I am a Peace Corps Trainee, or PCT.  The amount of time one spends as a trainee depends on the country of service and how long each office feels is necessary to prepare their groups.  For me, the trainee period is 10 ½ weeks.  In this time they try to cram in as much information as possible so you feel prepared when you actually get to your place of service.  In order to cram in all this knowledge this is the typical day-to-day schedule for me:

The street I live on with my host family (these purple trees are everywhere a beautiful!)

7:30- Wake up and get ready

8:00- Eat Breakfast with the family. If you ever want to challenge yourself in the morning try waking up and immediately speaking a foreign language…I don’t care how many Sodokus you do in the mornings, nothing wakes your brain up quite like this.  This is also when my Spanish is at its worst so by the end of breakfast you figure your day can only go up from there…

8:30- Begin the walk to the office.  I meet up with 2 other PCTs who live nearby and we walk the 20 minutes to the office together.

9:00-5:30 Training.  A day's sessions/lectures will vary but here is a list of the variety of topics we may go over in a given day:

              -Peace Corps’ international development approach

              -Peace Corps’ guidelines/rules/stories/general information

              -Lectures on how to stay healthy/be able to self diagnose yourself…cue the gross                     pictures now

              -Sessions on Safety and Security

              -Sessions on Mexico’s history/culture/politics…the Political Science major in me really enjoys these lessons

              -Sessions on Mexico’s Environment/Natural Resources…because I am an Envionmental Education volunteer this important stuff for me to know

              -Sessions on Environmental Education…ie what is environmental ed, how do you design and implement projects at your site, this is the practical knowledge I will need for my assignment

              -Spanish Class

              -Spanish Class

              -Spanish Class

              -Spanish Class

We do get breaks between sessions.  Each session/lecture can last anywhere from 1 hour-2.5 hours, it just depends. We eat lunch every day from 1:00-2:15.  3 days a week Peace Corps provides lunch and the other 2 days we get to walk around and find our own places to eat nearby which is usually successful, but sometimes we come back with some interesting stories about what we ate.

You can see here that we have a lot of Spanish class.  We are divided into small groups according to our Spanish level.  My class has 4 people in it which is a great size for a language class as it guarantees a lot of talking.  Spanish class is actually one of the more fun times of the day…despite it often taking up half the day.  Classes are fun and interactive and fly by, something I can't say this is true for all of the sessions though...

5:30-7:30: After a long day of training it is nice to finally be done and walk home.  Some days we will go out for a beer after training, other times we will explore the city some, but most often people just head home after a long day at the office.

7:30: Usually I am back by 7:30.  I am greeted by my host mom’s daughter and 17 month old granddaughter as they come over every afternoon and stay until around 9pm.  This makes for a rowdy household to come home to as we all play with the granddaughter and I chat about my day….in Spanish.  I will eat a light dinner around 8 or 8:30 as the lunch meal (aka comida) is the big meal of the day

9:30: Finally the day comes to a close and the house is a little more quiet as all the family has gone home.  This is when I usually retreat to my room and do my homework and just decompress from the day, but sometimes I will sit and chat with my host parents for longer or watch whatever soccer game is on TV as my host dad always seems to be watching.

...and this ends my typical day as a PCT

On an adventure day…they served great cold drinks here, think milkshakes and frappes

View of Queretaro…you can see the old aqueducts in the background

A narrow street in the Central Historical District in Queretaro