Monday, April 16, 2012

A Training of Sorts

So I've been here for a over a year now and guess what that means? Time for my group to start sharing our experiences with the new trainees. I was chosen to do the session on writing and gave it to the new group of TELFers on Friday. Here's the story of that weekend.


On Thursday I left to go to Elbasan  I got in to my hotel around 6:30 and called Ymer, the professor who was going to present along side me. He told me he'd be around soon, so I decided to relax with a beer while I waited. He showed up around 7:15 and bought us more beers while I ran up stairs to gather the materials I had prepared.. We talked for about 10 minutes before he told me that he had tobe somewhere in very soon. My friend Sergio's parents were visiting and Ymer was taking them out for a fancy Albanian dinner. He invited me and before you know it I was sitting down with my buddy's parents.
It was a great dinner full of tasty food like frog legs and stuffed peppers.We had some nice Spanish wine which of course that led to long conversations about the Peace Corps and life in Albania. I really like Sergio's parents and it seemed to me that they had a great time.At the end I tried to pay for my meal since I was originally included
in this meal but Ymer wouldn't have it.

The next morning I headed over to the school to give my presentation. It was supposed to be based on a session design that was created by folks back in DC, I thought that the design was so boring that it would put
the trainees to sleep so I threw out about 50% of what Washington sent me. It went really well but my changes threw my manager, Agim, a curveball because he wasn't expecting me to change anything. The session designs are part of a pilot program to standardize trainings and Agim is supposed to send them feedback about their effectiveness.So I kinda screwed that up but Agim said it was fine and that he liked the changes I made.

The next hour or so was spent chatting with some of the trainees over lunch. I ended up hanging out with them for the whole day pretty much.I was talked into attending the session when the Ambassador came to talk to the group. At any other time I would have bee excited to hear what he had to say but I felt really under-dressed  because I was still in jeans. It went alright though. About an hour later the trainees figured out where they were going to be spending the next 2 years. It was pretty cool to see them all excited and stirred up. The guy who is now living with my family in Kuqan, Jason  is going to be placed in a town that's not to far from me so that's cool. I spent that evening hanging out with him at my host family's place.It was really fun hanging out with all them and Jason and I got along really well which was cool because I was worried it would be a little weird meeting him.


Long story short I had a great time meeting the new trainees and I wish them well.