A Happy Reunion

The Battlefields crew at In-Service
Training 2012.

After the few days of workshops with our principals in Richard’s Bay, the twelve other PCVs that were also in attendance, headed out on Sunday morning to Pietermaritzburg (PMB) to meet up with the other 24 members of our cohort as well as new counterparts from our schools, for another week and half of meetings and training sessions. As with all trainings in every sector of the workforce, some sessions were quite well done and some sessions had me wishing for a stick to poke my eyes out just so I would feel better. But it was nice to be reunited with the rest of the volunteers, and we stayed at a beautiful hotel with an amazing buffet provided three times a day. I think I gained something like 10 pounds in the last two weeks. Given that I otherwise live on peanut butter and ramen noodles, I thought it was fantastic.

The days were filled with sessions on how to lesson plan, tips for starting a library, implementing a successful secondary project, and the like. Most of the evenings were free to watch TV or movies. There was a small plaza shopping center about a 20 minute walk away and it had a video store that actually let us check out movies. Passport not required. And on this, our last day, we had no sessions at all – the day was completely free! One of the volunteers made arrangements for us to go to a nearby mall, which means….I finally bought a new camera! I was so happy, and just in time for my upcoming vacation. Pictures will be now accompany most of my blog posts.

Since I didn’t have money to buy anything else (I didn’t actually have money to buy the camera either, but whatever), I decided to go see a movie after my big purchase. I really wanted to see “Skyfall” and luckily it was still showing, so that worked out nicely. Perhaps the strangest part of the experience and the reason I mention it at all, is that in South Africa you buy an assigned seat to see a movie. No joke. When I bought my ticket, which cost the equivalent of only $5 by the way, they showed me a screen with a seating chart and asked me where I would like to sit. I was a bit surprised, so I just picked somewhere in the middle. I cannot even imagine trying to implement this system in the US, but everyone there found it perfectly normal. I find it pretty funny that of all the crazy things I have experienced here, one of the oddest happened in the “first world” as opposed to my village. I guess surprises can happen anywhere.

After a great day of shopping and movie-watching, we had small holiday party complete with gift exchange. From what we figure, it will be the last time we are all together as a group until September of 2013, when we come together again for our mid-service training. I hope all goes well between now and then.