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There's a girl in our group who is highly allergic to carrots, apples, and nuts and fairly allergic to animals and dust(?). PC put her up in her own house (in my country everyone lives with a host family) and placed her in a town with a clinic that was equipped to deal with allergic reactions. She does just fine.
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Jan 28, 2014 20:40
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I don't want to brag, but my training house has hot water, a washing machine, and a western toilet
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Feb 2, 2014 11:55
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xcdude24 posted:I don't want to brag, but my training house has hot water, a washing machine, and a western toilet Posh Corps X-Treme.
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Feb 2, 2014 13:29
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Tequila Sunrise posted:Posh Corps X-Treme. Yeah well...we might have a latrine, but we've got high-speed internet!
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Feb 2, 2014 15:40
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xcdude24 posted:I don't want to brag, but my training house has hot water, a washing machine, and a western toilet Where are you?
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Feb 3, 2014 04:33
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CHARLES posted:Yeah well...we might have a latrine, but we've got high-speed internet! Speak for yourself. I'm on cell phone internet that barely loads Facebook and won't let me use Google because it thinks I'm a bot.
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Feb 3, 2014 09:09
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I used to have to walk a mile out of my town and stand on top of a hill in a cow pasture in a 2x2 foot area to get to get 2 bars of cellphone reception...if it was windy it wouldn't work, and I dropped calls about 2-10 minutes in on average. You guys are in a different world.
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Feb 3, 2014 11:06
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^^^ My close mate has to do that. The cell service is great in the middle of my market town; I can do SA, obviously, with images turned off, if slowly. Calls are dropped so loving hard even here though.  Tequila Sunrise posted:Speak for yourself. I'm on cell phone internet that barely loads Facebook and won't let me use Google because it thinks I'm a bot. m.facebook.com It will change your life. And if you are ever in a larger city at a cafe or PC bureau, you can send emails to Google support saying you aren't a bot. They will let you back in.
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Feb 3, 2014 12:34
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heliotroph posted:I used to have to walk a mile out of my town and stand on top of a hill in a cow pasture in a 2x2 foot area to get to get 2 bars of cellphone reception...if it was windy it wouldn't work, and I dropped calls about 2-10 minutes in on average. You guys are in a different world. yeah. One of the other volunteers here has to hang his cellphone in a sock off of a very specific tree branch in order to get reception from another country - then he can make international calls to the main office. I've got no idea how he figured this out. El Mero Mero fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Sep 3, 2017 |
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Feb 3, 2014 20:50
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grenada fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Oct 28, 2014 |
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Feb 3, 2014 23:07
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laxbro posted:For those of you that are attached to schools, how do your/the students treat you? The general student body at my school is fairly respectful but my actual students have been driving my crazy. Corporal punishment is widely used in the school system and I think my students are beginning to confuse my refusal to beat them with my belt with weakness. Some of the students are starting to cross boundaries and it is driving me nuts. I teach remedial math and English to struggling 12-15 year olds at a rural secondary school in the Caribbean. My class size varies from 7-14 though I have trimmed down the largest class a bit. No real interaction with my counterpart on actual day to day activities anymore. Let it go. I taught at a rural Kenyan high school where I lived on the compound too and I know exactly what you are going through. Pick the fights you know you can win. Either ignore all minor issues or hand them over to another staff member. Respect comes with time and it's not worth the stress trying to force it out of the students. I'm sure this will start a debate, but I'm not strongly opposed to corporal punishment. Of course there are varying levels or severity from belt whipping, as you mentioned, to a slap on the palms, but if you want to create change in your school, I think you have to look at the issue outside the western perspective. Since they day they were born, my students were told that if they did something wrong, they would be beaten. This is even true for adults in the village. You can find managers beating insubordinate employees, husbands beating their wives, and shopkeepers beating petty thieves. Corporal punishment is "normal" in their lives. Punishing your students using any other method would not be acknowledging their wrongdoing. I know that by deferring difficult students to other teachers, I was still perpetuating the idea of corporal punishment, but from this my students knew that they were guilty and more importantly, that I did not want to beat them. It's messed up how violence is used to motivate and control people, but as volunteer, you can't be completely dismissive of this especially if you are first getting to site. I, and I think many other people other people here, believe that change occurs gradually. Imposing polar views would only make your counterparts resent you. You don't have to accept corporal punishment, but you can't fight your fellow members/students tooth and nail about it every time is brought up. (I'm not accusing you of doing, I'm just saying in general) I found leading by example the most fruitful method to counteract corporal punishment. After about 6-8 months, I finally took initiative with discipline at my site. All students found misbehaving would be forced in read for an hour in the library after school, essentially detention. I can tell you with 100% certainty that they all hated it and wished they were caned. For the students that didn't read and just sat there, I think it had to do something with being forced to think about their actions, it made them respect my authority. I reported this disciplinary success to my counterparts during the next staff meeting and we actually started an intelligent discussion on the effectiveness of corporal punishment. The debate didn't go very far, but it got them to at least acknowledge and alternative. Baby steps... If you have anymore questions, feel free to pm me. Edit: This is all just my opinion from my experience. Pieter de Hooch fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 01:29
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I'm not a teacher, but my two close mates are. They found basically the same as Pieter de Hooch. They actually prefer being beaten with a cane over doing lines or detention because its over with quickly. They choose their battles and while they don't hit students themselves, they either send the kids to the principal to be punished. Its far more important to them to combat teachers having sex with students for changing grades. Basically, pick your battles. Discipline is probably one of the things that doesn't need to be changed as much as curriculum or power relationships.
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Feb 4, 2014 08:34
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Hey fellow overseas volunteers. Back in 2001, I did a short 8-month stint in Guyana, with another month added on in Trinidad and Tobago. I was originally supposed to go to St. Lucia (yay, sun and beaches), but at the last minute they changed me to Guyana. It was through VSO Canada, and I was mainly doing IT work. During the stay though, I ended up doing just about anything you can think of, from clearing land, building roads, teaching schoolkids, graphic design, web design, and ferrying supplies to native villages. Was quite the adventure, and I certainly got to see an endless amount of stuff most people will never get to see in their lives. Lots of ups and downs, but overall it was one of the best times of my life. Lots of great stories in here as well.
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Feb 4, 2014 12:02
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Pieter de Hooch posted:Let it go. Thanks for the response! I'm just passing the one year mark at site and I think all of the frustrations with my work site are coming to a head now. I agree with you somewhat in regards to corporal punishment at schools. The reality is that the students often get beaten way worse at home than they ever would at school. It is definitely a cultural mindset. The students beg me to beat their peers. They'll sometimes take off their belts and try to hand them to me! I am still going to switch over to one-on-one tutoring with the lowest students at the school. I am a special education volunteer but am pretty much teaching unmotivated students right now. I would rather spend the last year of my service working with actual 'special education' students as well as helping the teachers understand basic special education practices. That along with after school activities would be very fulfilling and a great way to spend the last year of my service. I gave teaching the remedial program my best effort, on to other things.
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Feb 5, 2014 00:34
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RagnarokAngel posted:Where are you? Morocco. Getting assigned a training spot seems to be a total crapshoot- some people are having to drive 10 miles for internet, share rooms with host family, etc.
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Feb 5, 2014 15:11
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xcdude24 posted:Morocco. Getting assigned a training spot seems to be a total crapshoot- some people are having to drive 10 miles for internet, share rooms with host family, etc. I'm always surprised at the things people expect going into this. My training site had no internet, and even when we went into the big city about once a month for some special training we'd only have time to use internet for maybe half an hour a day. I had my own room during training, but since my host family's home was basically two rooms it was only really "mine" from about midnight-6AM when they were sleeping. If you are expecting to have internet and Western-style privacy in Peace Corps, I have some bad news for you.
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Feb 11, 2014 05:13
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Tequila Sunrise posted:I'm always surprised at the things people expect going into this. I'm not really sure that's what xcdude24 was trying to get across. He was saying "some people have to drive 10 miles for internet" (adorable btw) in comparison to his own "posh corps" set up that he mentioned earlier on this page. At least, that's how I took it. Btw xcdude, I think I know someone in your training group. How many PCVs are there? Know a girl named Natalie?
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Feb 11, 2014 05:33
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problematique posted:I'm from the Foreign Service megathread getting processed to start soon. Do PCV ever mingle with or hang out with US Embassy/Consulate staff besides the initial swearing-in and the 'let's evacuate this joint' type affairs? I know in Ukraine, some volunteers always seemed to have friends in FS. I talked to some PCV's from Turkmenistan and they said they would have holiday events with the embassy (Thankgiving football games, FS vs PCV's)
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Feb 11, 2014 14:43
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Pocket DeSade posted:I know in Ukraine, some volunteers always seemed to have friends in FS. As with many things in the FS, "it depends".
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Feb 11, 2014 15:15
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The Ambassador here lets us use his pool once a week, and we get invited to a lot of events* to participate. A couple FSOs hang out with us, but not many. Its mostly marines and sailors that stop off in the port for R&R that hang out with us. Mostly that fact that our primary ways of having fun involve getting drunk in foreign dives.  *The ones without alcohol, because we are apparently a bunch of frat bros.
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Feb 11, 2014 15:29
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Have you got just gotten new VRF and SPA/financing forms? Because Benin just did, and I have no idea what PC/Washington is up to. For some reason, both forms seem to require constant internet connections and constant refreshing; and they can't be used on Macs, which is the computer of choice for ~60% of PCVs. Do they just forget how they lived when they were PCVs? I have to travel 5 hours from my village to get a half-decent internet connection, and half of the PCVs here don't even have electricity. My group is pretty pissed off at these new things.
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Feb 12, 2014 16:30
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Slaan posted:Have you got just gotten new VRF and SPA/financing forms? Because Benin just did, and I have no idea what PC/Washington is up to. For some reason, both forms seem to require constant internet connections and constant refreshing; and they can't be used on Macs, which is the computer of choice for ~60% of PCVs. Do they just forget how they lived when they were PCVs? I have to travel 5 hours from my village to get a half-decent internet connection, and half of the PCVs here don't even have electricity. My group is pretty pissed off at these new things.  We get the vrf sometime this week. And yes it sucks.
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Feb 13, 2014 02:32
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Slaan posted:Have you got just gotten new VRF and SPA/financing forms? Because Benin just did, and I have no idea what PC/Washington is up to. For some reason, both forms seem to require constant internet connections and constant refreshing; and they can't be used on Macs, which is the computer of choice for ~60% of PCVs. Do they just forget how they lived when they were PCVs? I have to travel 5 hours from my village to get a half-decent internet connection, and half of the PCVs here don't even have electricity. My group is pretty pissed off at these new things. How is Benin? I have a friend going in June to do CED. It is actually pretty nice since I will be going to Sierra Leone for math education at the same time.
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Feb 13, 2014 04:12
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How long do you have to wait after submitting stuff for your pre-medical clearance? I know I'm being impatient, but the wait is nerve-wracking.
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Feb 13, 2014 05:04
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Shouldn't be too long, if you don't have any problems. If you do, then it might take longer. 2-4 weeks maybe?GenSpecific posted:How is Benin? I have a friend going in June to do CED. It is actually pretty nice since I will be going to Sierra Leone for math education at the same time. Benin is pretty great. Ask her if she has gotten onto the Benin Peace Corp 2014 group on Facebook yet. We all post things there for the people coming in. What CED volunteers mostly do here: 1. Business clubs at the local high school, including a business plan competition at the end of each school year 2. Teaching basic accounting/planning techniques to local businesses and farming/women's groups. Pretty hard, since a lot of them are illiterate! 3. Basic informatics for local NGOs, government offices, etc 4. English teaching (everyone gets pulled into this )Tell her to ask to go to the northern half of the country. Its harder to get around and a lot less 'foreigner' food and items, but the people are so much nicer. The people in the south are hilariously sexist and very jaded over aid workers. The northerners are a lot more laid back and nice to foreigners because they never see us. Though 5 months of 110 degree heat at night does suck a bit...
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Feb 13, 2014 09:52
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GenSpecific posted:How is Benin? I have a friend going in June to do CED. It is actually pretty nice since I will be going to Sierra Leone for math education at the same time. Only CED I knew was a buddy of mine who was living close to me ( relatively speaking). I never actually saw him work, but he did get to travel to literally every major location in Mongolia on his HCA's dime and sleep with lots of girls. Seemed like a sweet gig.
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Feb 13, 2014 15:58
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grenada fucked around with this message at 01:13 on Sep 25, 2014 |
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Feb 14, 2014 02:03
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Tequila Sunrise posted:I'm always surprised at the things people expect going into this. Im not complaining- in fact, at hub this weekend we were all talking about how our biggest complaint is that were fed TOO much. In other words, we all kind of realize how easy our situations are.
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Feb 16, 2014 19:14
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Presumably we're still in the running, but my spouse is having to do a lot extra clearance regarding weight (BMI too low [but it's actually fine]). I haven't heard anything since I submitted my stuff, though, so I guess I'm cool. 
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Mar 2, 2014 16:08
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N. Senada posted:Presumably we're still in the running, but my spouse is having to do a lot extra clearance regarding weight (BMI too low [but it's actually fine]). Don't guess, check for yourself. Its a bureaucracy*, things WILL get lost and need to be redone. *I now speak French and am almost finished with a degree in Public Affairs/Administration. Why can't I spell this bloody word still?
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Mar 2, 2014 18:54
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Application process is looooong. Spouse has to visit with a therapist now to talk about her medical history. Time marches on.
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Mar 16, 2014 06:47
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Its pretty much understood that the process is so long and terrible as a way to weed out people. If you can't deal with paperwork, how can you deal with your local government's bureaucracy while sick with giardia and tired from constant malnutrition in 110 degree weather?  Good luck!
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Mar 16, 2014 07:28
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Just received my official CoS date. I'll be home by June! Now just have to find the motivation to continue my work for the next two months.
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Mar 23, 2014 09:27
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Oh neat, dunno how I never noticed this thread before. I'm going to be graduating in May with a master's in Japanese Pedagogy and am thinking about signing up for the Peace Corps. There's a post in Thailand departing in January 2015 that I might shoot for, so I'm thinking I should be applying soon. I've met with a recruiter here (Ohio State) and am leaning more and more toward doing this each day. Has anyone here done the university English teaching route? I'll have 6 years of English and 1 year of Japanese language teaching experience so I think I should be pretty qualified for it, but there's a lot less information about this part of Peace Corps than about the more commonly taken paths.
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Mar 25, 2014 03:18
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Laopooh posted:Oh neat, dunno how I never noticed this thread before. I'm going to be graduating in May with a master's in Japanese Pedagogy and am thinking about signing up for the Peace Corps. There's a post in Thailand departing in January 2015 that I might shoot for, so I'm thinking I should be applying soon. I've met with a recruiter here (Ohio State) and am leaning more and more toward doing this each day. Welcome to our China. Do you know China? How about it? (only half kidding) Do you want to teach English at a university overseas? I'd consider looking around for other options. I mean, apply and see where they'll send you? But, keep your options open to doing other things, like teaching on a contract basis instead of joining the PC.
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Mar 25, 2014 05:18
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Monkey Fury posted:Welcome to our China. Do you know China? How about it? China? I think I'm missing an in-joke here.  No, I want to volunteer. I wouldn't mind doing any of the peace corps jobs, but I figure since I'm qualified for that post that I would be able to provide the most doing that. If I get accepted though I'll go wherever and do whatever they ask.
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Mar 25, 2014 05:47
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It's okay  almost every one in China teaches at the university level, hence the "Welcome to our China"I also happen to have very mixed feelings about serving in China, because there are people down the road making 8-9x what I do, with fewer teaching hours. Volunteering loses its appeal when your role as a "volunteer" becomes "cheap English teacher" Also if I hear another PC staff member say our stipends are in line with what local teachers make I'm going to shake my finger and say words
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Mar 25, 2014 06:26
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Monkey Fury posted:
Well of course everyone is making 10x what you do, you're a volunteer.
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Mar 25, 2014 11:08
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Monkey Fury posted:It's okay PC China volunteers actually are better off on pay compared to local teachers because our housing is free.
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Mar 25, 2014 11:20
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Disclaimer: my Peace Corps experience involves me literally living in China's Silicon Valley or at least the place China wants to become its Silicon Valley. Take it all with a grain of salt. I also promise I'm not this grumpy or cynical about everything  I just haven't seen a lot of sunshine in the last two monthsTequila Sunrise posted:Well of course everyone is making 10x what you do, you're a volunteer. Thanks for the reminder, I did not know that I'm telling someone to look further and wider if they want to teach at a university -- or elsewhere -- because there might be better options than the PC based on what you want to do or where you want to go, but if they want to volunteer, more power to them. I know there are plenty of PC communities worldwide that have a true need for a volunteers, but some countries -- cough -- have too many sites where the need is nowhere to be seen. This is a problem PC here acknowledges and is working to fix, and I really hope that the efforts between the PC and our partner organization to define a set of criteria that will largely avoid volunteers being sent to sites without a need bear fruit. But, I'm not going to hold my breath -- our partner organization is about as intransigent as you might expect a large Chinese bureaucracy to be. Considering how much an English teacher can fetch in this part of the world, it's a good thing to think about. But, if someone wants to volunteer, good -- it can be a very fulfilling and great experience, just be very clear with the PC in what you want, and now that you apparently get some say in where you go, it should be even easier to have a better idea of what you're getting yourself into. Rush Limbaugh #1! posted:PC China volunteers actually are better off on pay compared to local teachers because our housing is free. Based on conversations with my co-teachers, I'm going to say this one is site-dependent. Compared to other PC volunteers we do well, but local teachers here are getting their real salary, and then some. Dining card money (600 a month here, and teachers are allowed to withdraw the surplus at the end of the month), housing subsidies, transit reimbursements, "research" bonuses (based off the lesson plans us foreigners must hand in at the end of the semester!), gifts (like watches and jewelry), commuting bonuses for teaching at the secondary campuses, and lord knows what else. This is AFTER all the anti-graft poo poo that has been going on in this country, especially my province. I am also based in one of the major urban centers here, so I am a bit biased and salty about this, and it is likely my local teachers are just getting the benefits of having that shiny urban hukou/teaching where they do. But, I hear similar stories about the larger schools in CQ, so I dunno. Housing here is also really cheap, assuming you aren't living in some super posh neighborhood. Maybe I just don't like the statement -- like there's an assumption we're too dumb or naive to ask how much our coworkers make, especially when it's one of the first questions you're asked by every person you meet here. I sometimes imagine China to be a proto-Ferenginar. One of the teachers here once just laughed at me and said, "I would never work your hours for what you get paid, and I'm Chinese!" And I laughed, too, but now and then I just kind of go, "Yeah..."
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Mar 25, 2014 12:49
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