3.26.08 First Charla!!

I have 2 exciting things to mention…one is my project for Spanish class and the other is that today, we gave our first charla at the high school in La Paz about HIV/AIDS!

So first, my project. Everyone in the advanced class gets to do a project instead of having formal Spanish classes for the rest of FBT. I guess they have more advanced speakers than they originally planned so they didn’t have a project for me and Jorge told me that they would come up with something because I’m too advanced to be with the intermediate class, despite me being with them during Santa Lucia. Anyway, I suggested that I could give health classes at the elementary school in Yarumela and Jorge told me he liked my idea! So I’m going to get the resources for the llavarse las manos y cero basura and I will get to give those classes at the elementary school here! I’m so excited about it! And depending on how old the highest grade is, I might even do an HIV/AIDS class. Plus the rest of this week we are spending getting more training that is definitely material I could use with that age group. Yay!

Second…today we had our first charla! We have spent the past 2 days in an HIV/AIDS ToT [training of trainers] to prepare us to give a charla to a group of high school students in La Paz. The training went really well...the majority of the time we spent just doing the activities ourselves so we knew what to do. I was actually really surprised that I was already familiar with a lot of the activities and that they are very similar to the training that I gave to my volunteers at the Condom Co-op. And while it was a good refresher for me, I can’t even imagine how I would feel if I didn’t have a health background…so I’m sure my peers who are in that category were feeling pretty overwhelmed. The training is good…but I feel like there are a lot of things that could be covered more in depth so I would definitely like to get involved with the editing of manuals and training and that type of thing. I mean, I know a lot of facilitating and presenting workshops is just practice but there are also some important things that I think should be included.

Anyway, yesterday after the training was over, they divided us into groups of 4 and each group gave the same presentation to a group of 25 high school students today. I was a little bit nervous the night before, not necessarily about the themes but more my ability to facilitate a workshop in Spanish because I’ve never really done it before. But 10 minutes into the charla, I felt really comfortable and energetic. I got to facilitate 4 sections of the charla…including lenguaje de la calle, where they had to write all the slang they could think of for biological terms which is probably my favorite icebreaker ever that we always did in the Condom Co-op trainings. I felt really good about everything, including my ability to just sort of go with the flow despite everything being in Spanish. I was really flattered because afterwards, the PCV who had been watching our charla told me that I speak really strong and clearly and that I have this unique laidback way of facilitating but that I still get my point across and make sure everyone understands. She also asked me if I had done this kind of work before and when I told her yes, she told me it shows. :) I just feel so good doing this kind of work…I know its what I am supposed to do and what I love.