PACT Workshop

   This weekend I held my very first PACT workshop for JSS students in my village. The goal was to train the current members as well as some new Form I students who were interested in joining PACT in basic counseling skills, decision making, communication, leadership, and being positive role models, and to work on team building. Two other PCVs came to my village to help me with my workshop and co-facilitate. Twenty seven students attended and two were Form 1s, which was great. The two guidance counselors even attended and were there for support if we needed them. They sort of sat back and watched, but they seemed interested in what we were doing and thanked us afterward. The workshop went very well. My PACT students are great. They seemed genuinely interested, actively participated, and really came together as a team.  It was so great seeing how enthusiastic they got when they successfully completed their team building activities and how they cheered each other on. Even some of the shyer students really stepped up. I'm very proud of all of them. It was also great getting to spend time with the PCVs who helped me. I learned how to make homemade mac and cheese with the help of my friends, and I successfully made homemade pizza on my own this weekend. I told them not to help me so I could learn on my own lol). We also watched a lot of "Glee", which is always a good time.

   In other news, the ten students from Werda who will be attending GLOW camp (Girls Leading Our World) in my district have been selected. I collected their applications this past week and met with the head of guidance to select the 10 students on Friday. It was a very difficult decision because I would have been glad to take all 14 of them who applied if I could, but 10 was the limit. We announced the GLOW students after the PACT training yesterday, and I was impressed by how maturely the students who can not go reacted and with how careful the selected students were not to rub in how happy they were. I'm looking forward to the camp even more than I was before  because of how much fun I had with the PACT workshop. 

   It has been quite hot here.  For all of this week it has looked like it may rain, but then the sky clears up! I really hope that it rains soon because it is hot, and sometimes just a little rain makes a huge difference here. My friends left to go back to their villages today so I'm just relaxing now with Dobby curled up next to me on my couch. I'm in a bit of a funk today, and it is hard to pinpoint why exactly that is, but I know it will pass soon because that's how it goes.