Hasta December

November has flown by. 5 months have flown by. This is the longest I’ve been out of the states but it doesn’t feel that long. I think maybe because I’ve lacked a regular schedule so some days and apparently months seem to fly by with nothing accomplished (or having done nothing substantial maybe is a better way to say it). I’m not looking to go home anytime soon. Two Fridays ago I met with another volunteer from a nearby town who has 8 or some month left to go. It felt great meeting with her because she’s doing SO MANY great things. However she is also working in the Municipal which is like local government office so she is surrounded by extremely motivated, active people and has about every resource at her fingertips. She also has tons of experience I will be able to learn from and she works in my local government office so I learned that many of the resources she has I will be able to use which I am very excited about (contacts, money, etc). She’s also in a city-like atmosphere (small city) which I think makes things a little more progressive and easier for her. However I still love my little campo town and it made me realize how much work we really need and I just hope I can do something substantial.

This past week I had my ‘reconnect conference.’ Which is usually at around the 4.5 month mark and we are accompanied by our counterparts but they changed it this year to the 3 month mark and without counterparts. Us volunteers split into groups of around 20 to present out CAT presentations (community assessment tool). It is basically a presentation in spanish on what we learned from our surveys and assessments of our towns as well as our project ideas. It was super interesting hearing about other peoples towns and projects. Some people are already doing amazing things or have amazing ideas which is great and crazy. We also had a series of seminars on various topics, some more helpful than others. I had said before I went that after reconnect I was going to really get going, start really planning everything I want to do and on days when I find myself unoccupied at least going to the subcentro and volunteer at the front desk for a few hours. The idea is that I will be working M-F somewhat regularly. I had said that before and reconnect did a good job of motivating me to do that and get going.