Day 2 of training: Internet and email?

Had a nice chat with my dad yesterday and he reminded me that I need to spend time on adapting to the culture and understanding more about the trainees and who they are. He's right and so that's what I focused on doing today.

The women struggle to understand me because I speak too fast and in an intonation that doesn't register for them. When I speak to them as a group, very few understand what I'm saying. Sometimes one of the managers from Camfed steps in and repeats everything I've said and then they all nod. Ha.

Today began with asking for feedback...which of course could not be an american style blatant question type of way. So, my approach was to have them write down their fave part of Day 1 training, what they wanted to learn on Day 2 and what they felt comfortable doing after Day 1. Then I asked for volunteers to share their thoughts and each one of them wanted to speak! Learned that they LOVED typing.

With the internet working sparingly in the morning, I had them write some "emails" in Word and we worked on using the Mouse (Mouserobics is a great tool!). The whole day was spent on my feet, going from person to person, answering questions. Exhausting but fulfilling! Felt like I made some good progress today, especially with the ones that were behind yesterday. Saying "Good job!" goes a long way! Loved seeing the proud smiles on their faces.

The last exercise of the day was to write me an email telling me about themselves, their lives and their stories. Can't wait to read about where these women are from. To me, that will be one of most interesting parts of this week.

They are eager to use the internet tomorrow and especially to set up facebook accounts. Though I'm not sure how I feel about spending class time on that so we probably won't....