Inglish Plis

I feel like my English is getting worse, not that it wasn't already hard to understand! hahaha just kidding, but seriously. Well our Workshop on Wednesday and Thursday (last night), went really well! We had a whopping 12 people show up AND they liked our claps and fun games we had prepared for them. As a side note, we have them make the workshop rules that they will abide by (i.e. be on time, no cell phones, etc.) followed by a consequence. Guess what happens when people show up late? They have to sing or dance. 5 people showed up late last night so that was really fun to see them get into their songs and belt out their amazing voices. We've been coming home pretty tired, but it's been really rewarding nonetheless.

I'm still a bit frustrated at the fact that things move really slow here and I'm kind of figuring out why. You see, people will delegate their responsibilities to others and call it a day. Or only person has the information you need and they happen to be out of town. Or people forget what you told them only a few hours prior.

Example A:

I needed to send a package and I wanted to send it via DHL so I called my manager and asked him what he knew about DHL. He said that he and the assistant manager would take me (and Ashley) to the DHL location  to send it and take us home afterwards but to meet them in the center at 2pm. I made this call at about 11am. SO, Ashley and I showed up at exactly 2pm, waited 20 minutes, called our manager only to find out that he forgot he was going to meet us  was now too far away from the center. He delegated the responsibility to a volunteer and asked him to take to DHL (which was a 30 minute walk) ONLY to find out that I needed to show my ID and I didn't have any because I didn't know you have to show IDs here to send stuff. I wasn't informed. We pretty much wasted 2 hours doing nothing. BUT the story didn't end there. I figured it'd be easier to send it via FedEx since the Employment Center works with FedEx and they would come pick it up on the same day. SO, we went to the center (because I had to talk with the immigrations guy anyway) and I brought my package to send. They told me to go talk to this random guy who had the phone number for FedEx to pick up the package. But he wasn't there. NO ONE knew where he was or when he'd be back. AND apparently, he was the ONLY ONE with the number. I asked if they could find it online, but apparently it wasn't online. I got on one the public computers and found the phone number within the first 3 minutes. I called FedEx and arranged for them to pick it up no problem. THREE MINUTES. I was not very happy yesterday. I wasted 2 hours in the center only to find out they could have just come to my apartment here. LESSON LEARNED for sure.

Things definitely work differently here. For better or for worse, Ashley and I had to learn that we should expect things to not work out the way we want them to, and if we do, we need to constantly follow up with people.

Oh well, we did our shopping yesterday and for the first time ever, we have FRUIT and VEGETABLES! We are excited, we washed them with a food disinfectant we got from the pharmacy and went right to work with those fruit and veggies. I had a banana today, I was HAPPY.

Today's our last workshop of the week! And later this afternoon we're meeting with one of our 1st workshop participants, Yesenia, so that should be really fun.


Later Gators! :)

Cristina