My home for the next 2 years!

It’s been a fun couple of weeks full of exciting news and fun adventures. We finished practicum teaching, which was definitely an experience. We had to work with switching schools, some coteaching, and designing, grading, and giving assessments. All of which was much more difficult than I was expecting. The designing assessments was the hardest part for me during practicum, because I am used to giving tests that are already prepared and it was very hard to make an assessment based on a class with students that we didn’t really know with levels that vary drastically.

We also took a day trip to Lake Langano which was fun. It reminded me a bit of summer camp because there were canoes, it was on a lake, there were activities around, there was picnic food, and there was music blasting. We hadn’t all hung out together in a long time because we had been separated during practicum, so it was interesting to see how different relationships and friendships have developed since the beginning of PST. The LCF’s came with us, and so it was fun to watch them interact with each other in a friendly and not so serious environment. It was also great to watch them dance to the “American”/rap music that would come on, because they dance so well and so differently than we do in America.

Now to the super exciting news. We got our site placements on Saturday. They had a whole ceremony where they announced sites individually. I’m placed in Adwa, which is in Tigray. It’s a town of 40,000 and it’s about a 30 minute drive from Axum (or Aksum, as it’s spelled here). It’s the site of the historic Battle of Adwa and so there is lots of history in and around my site. I have 1 site mate who is a health volunteer and then I have 1 close site mate who is also health and lives in Axum.

We are back in Addis for a few days before we head to site. We are all enjoying the diversity of food available and the chance to hang out in a Western hotel (it’s more like a resort) for a few days. We met our community liasions, although because of some differences I will be placed with a new community liasion when I arrive to site. I am currently sitting in the hotel lobby with other Tigray people before we head off to the airport for site visit! I will be sure to write and update my blog after I get back from site visit. 

Over and out.