#letgirlslearn and End of Phase III

I haven’t written since July and boy do I wish I had. So much has happened that I need to catch people up on a lot. The biggest news is that tomorrow is September 1st and this marks the first day of school in the Kyrgyz Republic. The first day of school is actually more like a giant assembly and not much of actual getting down to school work. It’s considered a holiday and we will probably just meet for a short time to welcome students and teachers back. But after all this training, I can’t believe my school year officially begins tomorrow! Time to teach English!

Now to back track a little:

In the middle of July I participated in the GLOW Camp where girls from four villages came together to learn about HIV/AIDS, healthy relationships, bride kidnapping, leadership, discrimination, public speaking, healthy eating, our bodies, teaching others, and volunteerism. At the camp we had six volunteers and three counterparts who taught lessons on the topics important to the GLOW program.  Also this year we had peer leaders, girls who had gone to camp the previous year, who taught some sessions. It’s always better to hear information from someone near your own age. Along with the sessions we had classic summer camp activities like swimming in the lake, cabin decorating contests, movie night outside, a talent show, and a camp fire (s'mores included). I was able to bring along my host sister and we had a great time.  I also had my counterpart who picked five other girls from our school who she thought would be good leaders for our community. The girls were happy they made new friends with people from other villages and got some questions answered on topics not openly talked about. My counterpart and I taught lessons on self-esteem and identity, healthy relationships, and public speaking. It was good to lesson plan with my counterpart and see her teach. We got closer and learned how to work with each other during this time. At first we had planed to teach in English, but most of the girls knew Kyrgyz only, so we had to switch up our plans. I took more of a back seat during the lessons, but had helped plan the lesson, the activities, and helped pass out papers during the actual lesson. It was a challenge at first to get my counterpart thinking in a different way, but we got it down and the lessons went great! I’m so proud of what we accomplished! Next year I hope to run the GLOW camp once again and continue to share valuable knowledge to young girls. #letgirlslearn

Part of the GLOW camp requires girls to take back the knowledge they learned from camp and teach others in their villages. This way the girls get to be leaders, the information spreads, and students are more likely to listen to their peers. One of the volunteers in my city and I had an idea for one of the girl’s lessons. Of course our girls will teach at other schools in Balykchy, but for World Aids Day we wanted to do something a little special.  Taylor, the health volunteer in my city, came up with the idea to make a video about HIV/AIDS and have our GLOW girls create and star in the video.  We will produce and film the video together. On World Aids Day, December 1st, we will show this film and have our GLOW girls give one lesson on HIV/AIDS to three other schools in villages around Balykchy. After the day is over, the video will be added to the rotation of health videos at Taylor’s health clinic. Taylor and I are currently writing the grant for this project, but we hope to get it funded so we can start working on the video soon. I am so thankful to have such a wonderful site mate who is taking me under her wings and letting me work on this project with her. Also it’s a great way to get our GLOW girls back together and give them teaching experience. I’ll update later on how this is progressing.

After GLOW camp, my counterpart needed a break before school started so we stopped our English club at school. We really only met four times with our students, but they seemed to enjoy the time they had with us. We worked with grades four to eight in the morning for an hour and then repeated lessons right after (with more English vocabulary) for grades nine through eleven. I was still wanting to work on things and keep busy because I had two weeks left before I went back to my village near Bishkek for part III of training. I had some girls from English Club and GLOW Camp who wanted to work on their English for a test coming up in September. This test is called FLEX and sends students from other countries to America to study in high school for one year. The test has three rounds; the first round is English grammar in multiple choice form, the second round is essay writing, and the third round is an interview and role play. Most of my girls do not need help with grammar. Their English is very good and they made it past the first and second round last year. What we focused on in the two weeks I was able to work with them was essay writing and interview questions. Essay writing is hard because students are not taught the five paragraph essay or they do not have much practice in arguing their own ideas. On top of this, the questions they are given are hard. Questions like ‘what are your three biggest weaknesses?’ are hard for students to answer. The culture is very positive here and hard times or negatives are not openly talked about. 

My girls and I worked on critical thinking and driving deep into their lives to find reasons why they REALLY wanted to study in America. I felt like a two year old asking ‘why?’ and ‘why?’ over and over to try to get to the bottom of a thought. After my two weeks though, girls were talking confidently about themselves, both negatives and positives. They were also casually adding in how going to America will help them with their futures even after a question about their weaknesses. It comes so easy to us Americans to talk about tough times and how we overcame them, it was hard to figure out how to extract that information from the girls. In the end, I was happy to work with them and provide support for one of their dreams. These are great girls and I wish them the best in their applications this year! 

After these two low-key weeks, I went off to my first host family and back to the training site near Bishkek. I took the train with other volunteers from my city (Balykchy) to our training villages. The train took about four hours and was a relaxing ride through the mountain passes. In our last phase of training, we got more specialized training in our sectors (teaching english, health, or business), more language lessons, and time to eat food in Bishkek.  Overall this time was very nice to meet back up with all the volunteers in my group and hear about their permanent sites. We would go out often to Bishkek to eat food and hang at coffee shops. The small comfort of being together and tasty, ethnically diverse food, was great. Now, we have all left our training sites to start our two years of service. We will have more trainings and meetings during our service where we will be together again, but most of our work will be within oblasts and at site. 

For now, I’m enjoying my last day off before school starts by celebrating the Independence of the Kyrgyz Republic.  In 1991, the Kyrgyz Republic left the Soviet Union and became a democratic state. With this excitement in the air, I’m ready to begin the school year and put to use the training I received the past four months.