Installment #2 Getting down to business!
Dianne and I awoke after our long flight from Fairbanks to San Salvador feeling refreshed and ready to begin final preparations for the Teacher-to-Teacher workshops. This is our fifth year at the Villa Serena Hotel and we were welcomed by the staff like old friends. We also spent time with friends from previous visits. El Salvador is a country of warm and wonderful people. The weather was nice also – about 68 degrees which they thought was cold. We saw people wearing warm jackets and stocking caps! Since Fairbanks had about –40 on Thanksgiving day, we had no sympathy.
Thanks to the Peace Corps in El Salvador, Dianne sent about 14 boxes of books and heavy materials from the States, and they were waiting for us in the hotel. A Salvadoran liaison with the project delivered teacher supplies for our 40 participants that she purchased locally for us. There is a very good Office Depot near the hotel so we finished getting supplies and had copies of handouts made for our first days.
The rest of our volunteers arrived on Friday and Saturday and we immediately put them to work preparing materials, sorting supplies and boxing things up to be ready for Monday morning. They are all such good workers.
On Saturday afternoon, Dianne and I held an orientation meeting for all 10 of the volunteers for the Teacher-to-Teacher project, two of our liaisons, and a former instructor. We had never met the two volunteers from Colorado and the three El Salvador Peace Corps volunteers. What a great team we have! There is so much experience and such varied skills and talents that we are bound to have successful lessons. Dianne will be working with a new morning session instructor from the Universidad de Don Bosco who seems to be very good – just the kind of person she was hoping for. The instructor that I’ll be working with at Universidad de Oriente is also excellent.
On Sunday afternoon, a van came from San Miguel where we’ll be located to pick up our team and all of our materials. It’s only about a 2-hour drive back to San Miguel but we spent an extra 1/2 hour stuck in city traffic. The street markets were so interesting that we didn’t mind a bit. We arrived at the hotel where we’ll be staying and got everything unloaded. The rooms are comfortable and except for no hot water, everything we might need – including a swimming pool!
Our university contact said there was an elaborate welcome planned for Monday, so after making arrangements to be picked up and delivered to the correct spot, we went for our first dinner in San Miguel. We had a planning session to go over the activities for our first day and then made it an early night to get ready to hit the ground running in the morning.
Next Installment: On the Job in San Miguel
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