Next stop- St. Kitts =)

This is our last night at the Coubaril Retreat Center. Tomorrow night I will be sleeping at my host families home, where I will remain until the end of October (InshAllah).

One of our activities for training today involved listing three characteristics we identified with. I listed myself as: -
1) A Muslim
2) A daughter
3) A baker

So most of the other volunteers put things like caring, friendly, curious, etc. There are two types of societies: individualistic and collective. Apparently Americans are at the individualistic end of the spectrum and other places such as Japan are at the collective end. I apparently do not identify with the American individualistic qualities (Amie, Abu, you will be relieved to know that I do have good Pakistani qualities).  A lot of our training sessions have stressed how we are representing the United States and how we are trying to help with a cross cultural exchange between American and other cultures. I don't know if I'm going to be such a good representation of the United States.

Another workshop we had involved half of us playing the role of the 'people' and the rest were the 'visitors'. We as the people were given rules to follow such as only answering yes or no questions, no speaking to people of the opposite gender, responding with yes when the person was smiling regardess of the question, etc. The visitor's were told we needed their help. It got pretty funny, but it was actually a great activity because it helped us realize just what kind of communication barriers we might be dealing with.

Last night was filled with games. Ted taught us something that was a cross between charades, taboo and catch phrase (Sophie, I thought of you the whole time), Will taught us all these crazy camp games I'm guessing he used as a counselor, one of which involved kaw-ing at each other like dinosaurs, and then the last one we played was where everyone went in a circle adding a word till we collectively compiled the most absurd sentence you have ever heard. It was good times =)

Then tonight, Courtney taught me and Will how to play some Blue's tunes on the guitar and afterwards, Will taught me a couple of chords and the beginning of this song by the Shins. I look forward to having calluses on my fingers from guitar playing =)

I'm going to miss all the St. Vincent people... This week has been really awesome and I think we have a really amazing group and I'm sad that we have to split it up already. But hopefully we'll be able to make weekend trips etc. Mid service training reunion will be great!