Saturday, August 28, 2010

Second Site Visit!!!

First, I'd like to say happy birthday to my twin sisters Laraine and Christine! I love you both.
Last night all of the RAP'ers found out where we would be going to stay for the next two years! This is my site description: "You are replacing Mr. Marky. This is a third generation site near a river and school. 40km from the Mwinilunga boma and 330km from the provincial house. You are close to the Fishers farm (where you can buy meat and real butter) and also close to the source of the Zambezi, a national monument. In your free time you will be able to bike through Nkanji Game Reserve and see greater kudu and zebra. Your house is covered in green vines and is a beautiful site during the rainey season."
My closest neighbors are Michelle (40km), Hunter (40km), Jack (70km) who are all 2010 RAP Volunteers. Mark and Sydney (20km) who are 3rd year extension Volunteers, and Erin a RED '09 Volunteer.
Before going into what we will be doing and where we are going for second site visit... I wanted to talk about what is going on with our PC group. We have lost yet another trainee from the CHIP program. She was MedSep due to lying on her application. All the RAP'ers are still here and the CHIP'ers have lost 6 people to ET (early termination). Many have said that it's because the RAP program does a lot more hands on work. But that is just the excuses.
Today we took our second language test in which i feel pretty good about how I did. I made a 92% again. Learning the language in 10 weeks is no joke. But I am trying. Today we (the trainees) have a soccer match against the trainers in which the volunteers have NEVER won. Our group of trainies has informed me that we will win though. I am going tobe playing, which means I am going to be the laughing stock for all the Zambian trainers, my fellow trainees, and all the people watching the match. Soccer is not my sport. Now, on Sunday we leave for our second site visit. Myself and the other RAP Lunda speaking volunteers will all be going to Mwinilunga to be hosted by Mark, at my future site. We have a lot of things that will be going on such as meeting new people, working with fish farmers, practicing the language with the locals and doing 4 hours of language training each day with our language instructors. That will be done the first 7 days of second site visit. After the 7 days we are going to be left alone at our site for 2 days. By we, I mean the trainees. We are going to be left alone out in the bush for the first time. I am looking forward to finally being able to cook my own food and have the time alone for the first time in a long time. Once we get back from second site visit we have just about two weeks of training before swearing in and becoming volunteers and not trainees.
I hope everyone is doing well back home and I miss all of you. GOD BLESS
Much love from Zambia, Africa

1 comment:

  1. We miss you too. This all sounds so very exciting yet terrifying. I'm proud of you.

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