Adventures In Guatemala (and elsewhere): Experiential Vacation Cycle

Experiential Vacation cycle

Here in peace corps we set pretty specific lesson plans, visions, goals, and objectives. Using the peace corps MAPA (motivation, application, practice, assessment) lesson planning format and MARTE (how to set proper goals) I will now write out my vacation using what I will call the experiential vacation cycle ( Peace Corps has broken my brain).

Name of event: VACATION

Session 1:Stateside Success

Date: June 12, 2015-July 2, 2015

Time: 456 hours

Facilitators: all you guys

Materials:

All the food

All the people

All the traveling

Objectives:

1. By the end of the session the participants will have eaten more delicious food than is considered technically healthy.

2. By the end of the session this participant will have visited as many friends as humanly possible

3. By the end of the session this participant will leave feeling refreshed and ready to go back to Guate for the remaining time in her service.

So I am coming to the states for 19 days! While at the moment that seems like a pretty long time, I know in reality it will fly by. I have made some brief goals for myself to facilitate the smoothness of this trip, they are as follows:

1. Don’t bore people with weird anecdotes from Guate.

2. Try to remember that normal people aren’t like PCVs and don’t talk about their bowel movements, or lack there of…especially not while eating.

3.Don’t throw toilet paper in the trashcan, paper flushes in the states

4. Shower, preferably with water so hot it might actually scald me

5. repeat #4

6. Drink out of faucets. Because I can.

7. Eat everything.

8. Don’t speak Spanglish

9. If someone says something offensive be direct because I can be, because I am no longer in the center of an indirect language country

10. Celebrate all the moments, cherish them, it will be another year before I see most of these people again

11. Go to The Chocolate Moose at least 10 times

12. DRIIIIIIIIVVVEEEE

13. Meet someone. On time.

14. Dress in whatever way pleases my heart; maybe I will even show a little cleavage. Whut?!

15. Friend cuddles and hugs and all the love

16. Try to remember that other people are less starved for affection and might not want cuddled or held for uncomfortably long hugs.

17. Remember that other people still have a comfort zone even though I don’t anymore

18. People don’t kiss cheeks upon meeting in the states.

19. Have fun <3

That’s brief, right?

In short, I think I need to warn everyone in advance that I am a little different than I was before I left. I mean, I guess everyone is. There have been so many changes in everyone’s lives, people have new babies, new husbands/wives, they’ve taken huge steps in transitioning, eek! I am so excited to see how far everyone has come. I also hope that everyone can please remember that I have spent the last 15 months speaking English as my second language and apparently have struggles conjugating verbs correctly, can’t spell in any language anymore, and often times just lose words mid sentence because I am accustomed to only explaining certain things in a different language. I thought it was hard to learn my elevator speech in Spanish, but now after trying to make the English version happen I have realized that I doooooonn’tttttt know wooooords.

Also, I greet people with cheek kisses or arm pats, there aren’t many hugs here. But I will hug the shit out of all of you.

On a more emotional note:

I AM SSSSOOOOOO EXCITED TO SEEEEEE YOOOOUUUUUUU AAAALLLLLLLLLL