Rainy Days

Hey everyone,

This week has been fairly rainy, but still hot as per the usual. I have also been free as far as work goes, it's been just English classes. So because of this I've been trying to find some things to do like the dialogue project I'm working on and making a new format for the images on my blog. I will be putting it here first and then if it works well I'll be updating all the other posts to use it. On a side note however, I'm wondering how you guys like the new comment section, I decided to switch it out because Google's comment system wouldn't let me reply to comments on my own site. Let me know what you guys think, I'm thinking about doing a few changes on here, so it would be nice to hear everyone's thoughts.

I've also been doing a bit more reading which has been nice. "Born to Win" has been a book I've had on my shelf for a while, but now I actually have the time to read it. Transactional Analysis is actually the subject I want to focus my Ph.D on, so this book has been good at fusing that field of study with Gestalt experimentation. Speaking of books I'm also planning on getting a Kindle, but unfortunately they don't ship to Timor, so if there is anyone who lives near here who reads this, hit me up!

The third picture here is from the new class my counterpart wants me to teach. It's been alright starting this class a little after my first class because I can reuse old lessons in order to save time and my sanity. In all honesty I've never taught English to adults before, let alone adults who speak a foreign language to myself. Props to anyone who does this for a living or has gone through teaching people who speak a different language from you, because it is incredibly easy to become self conscious about what you are saying.  I've asked my students and some other people I see most days to correct me if they hear me speak incorrectly, but I'm wondering if they are reluctant to do this because I'm still new and they feel like that would be disrespectful. Regardless I can tell my Tetum has been getting better and better which is definitely helping me express my ideas better.

Also this week is the 10 year anniversary of the Peace Corps having a group in Timor-Leste. So if you are from an earlier group and would like to make a comment about where the program has gone since then or about your service in general, reach out to me in the comments or through Facebook and I'll make sure to send your comment to the Peace Corps TL Facebook Group. 

Apart from those things the last few pictures are different thing's I've eaten through the last week. 😂 It's been a long week, but with IST coming up in just a couple weeks the last 6 months have seemed to just fly by. I can only imagine how fast these 2 years will fly by without me realizing it. So this week I'll be leaving you with a quote about how important it is to use that time wisely, so until next time let me leave you with this.

You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end, each of us must work for his own improvement and, at the same time, share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful. 

~Marie Curie

Much Love,

~BW

Discovery

Hello Everyone,

So this week has been pretty eventful, at least for things outside of the ordinary. I have been having class every Monday as always, but this week I've also had a Peace corp interaction. Yesterday I had a couple of people stop by to drop off some extra bug spray and to check out my room to make sure mosquitoes can't swarm in there.  Lately I've been using Soffell which is a lotion based bug repellent that has been great.  Mosquitoes haven't been the biggest concern here, but I am definitely keeping the last time I applied repellent in the back of my head.

On the note of my room I have finally broken down and bought a new mattress, which was one of the best decisions I've made since being here. I can't stress enough in you are at a Peace corp post and you are sleeping on a foam pad (like I was), then find a way to get a mattress.  I have been sleeping much more soundly and I've been feeling better after I wake up in the morning, so that idea to buy a mattress from the TL8s was a 10/10 in my book!

Classes have been going well and I've slowly been finding my groove in how and when to plan my classes. The occasional feedback from my students, juxtaposed by their scores on my placement test have kind of honed into the general starting place for my English classes. On top of that I have the first dialogue of my Tetum Dialogue series translated and am having a few people check out the phrasing to see if it's understandable. This is pretty exciting because hopefully it will get my students and others involved in the process of speaking and listening to English conversations in different environments.  The first movie I'm using is Infinity Wars and it will hopefully be a good kickoff to this project. I'll make sure to keep you all updated on the results of this endeavor.

The pictures below are kind of random, but they are all in order at least. The first one is of an insect that Badinas and I discovered that we are both convinced is a new species, so if anyone want's to throw money at us for discovering it we'll be in touch.  Otherwise if you know what it is, we would love to know. It was super weird and loved to jump around, so if you can tell us what their name is in the comments maybe we'll try to make contact next time.  The next three pictures in all honesty were fillers I took of the office because I knew I had to post today, but they look cool right?! The last one is the bed I bought which definitely set me back, at least until my travel reimbursement comes in from the Dili trip. It just means I'll have to haggle for all of the Red Velvet ice cream bars I get. lol

It's been a pretty nice week and I'm glad to have this outlet (the blog) because I feel not only accomplished after this, but also I feel reset, like I'm ready for the future. I look forward to my conversation with Osseo Sr. in a couple weeks, it'll be nice to give some more goal 3 back to the states. Well, this is the part of the blog where I say I have to go, but thankfully until I see you next time, I'll leave you with this.

Happiness, true happiness, is an inner quality. It is a state of mind. If your mind is at peace, you are happy. If your mind is at peace, but you have nothing else, you can be happy. If you have everything the world can give - pleasure, possessions, power - but lack peace of mind, you can never be happy.

~Dada Vaswani

Much Love,

~BW

A Holistic Approach

Hey Everyone,

You guys are going to love this one, I went to Dili recently for a S&S meeting and didn't take any pictures. I'll make sure to take some next time, but for now I have a few including one from me planning my English lesson on ABC's and 123's. It's been interesting planning lesson's because I definitely don't have a process down (at least not one I'm sticking to). I have found however that I am good enough at improve and public speaking that I can run through these lessons without needing to stick tightly to my lesson plan (#humblebrag).  Chilling with my friend's here in Baucau has been great and I'll give a shout out to my friends in the Foho! 

I went to the PCMO during my trip to Dili to check on my health (mostly relating to weight I've lost) and I found out I've lost almost 30 lbs.! I'm actually under 200 now which is a strange thing because not only are my pants all baggy, but I've also found myself not recognizing myself in the mirror. Mum, I'm feeling great though and she said my blood test came back showing I'm getting all the nutrients I need, I just need more calories.  Over all the trip to Dili was a great chance for me to meet up with some friends and reconnect a bit before my actual reconnect in March.

Besides that fun stuff (and the pizza I had witch made me extremely happy) I've just been doing the same ol' thing I do every week.  I got to my taxes and have been discussing a way to to use my microphone here. At this point I've had a lot of interest in a dialog series I'll be hosting on Sound Cloud and embedding here for anyone to use.  It will be a three part dialog that will be English-English then Tetum-English and finally Tetum-Tetum. This will hopefully be a nice tool for my class, but also I'm hoping it can be something future PCV's and PCT's will be able to use when trying to learn English or Tetum. If you have any ideas, or if your looking for some kind of resource I can help create let me know, because I'd love to help bring that to Timor. I've also been thinking of recording my English lesson's, but that is still tentative because dang that would be a lot of work to tack onto my 8-5!

Living here is hard, adapting to life here is hard. I never take the fact that I have a plane ticket back home on deck, but at the end of the day I look at what I'm doing as an investment in the person I will be in the future. Someone who I can trust to commit to something he plans. Someone I know will stick to their guns when the chips are down. Someone whose personality and happiness is tied to something that extends past their living situation.  I'm doing this for my reasons, but if you are reading this and have a different situation then I have some unfortunate news. Nobody can make your decision for you...

We grow up being able to rely on others to make the big decisions for us, usually our parents, but sometimes our teachers or just relying on an external locus of control to blame our circumstances for the choices we chose to ignore.  This injustice is unfortunate because it trains us to look for advice and other peoples answers to our situations. The thing is though that we are all in charge of our futures, each person is able to make the decision that would be best for them. This can be a liberty and it can be a freedom, but it can also feel like a curse because often to open a door we need to close one first.  I hope this helps you, but at the end of the day your choice will be your own and the only thing you can control after you make your choices is how you feel. Stand behind your decisions, make them yours! Don't let anyone make your decisions for you! Don't let someone take your life away from you! I'm making my decision to stay here because it's a choice I made and one I choose to stand behind. 

If you are going through something or have to make a choice that will affect your future, I hope only that you make the decision that is yours. rarely are things black and white enough to where you can know if you made the right choice, but one thing you can know is if YOU made the decision or if someone made it for you. I got to go plan a Saturday and Monday English lesson now, but until next time I'll leave you with this.

Happiness is a choice. You can choose to be happy. There's going to be stress in life, but it's your choice whether you let it affect you or not. 

~Valerie Bertinelli

Much love,

~BW

Community Visits

Hey everyone,

So the reason there are so many pictures here is because I had an exhilarating adventure with my work. We took a trip out to some of the Eastern communities we work with and I was blown away by the beautiful scenery and the wonderful people we met. The trip itself took about 3 hours to the point where we would have to go off to each community of which we visited 5. All together the trip took the entire day and required a lot of walk, climbing and traversing uneven (rocky) terrain. I was extremely tired by the end of it, but glad to have gone through that experience since it gave me a lot of insight into the work my organization is going with the communities in East Baucau.  Thankfully we were able to make it back home before it got dark, but the trip was a long one.

This week I also helped one of one of the fellow volunteers in the breakfast club with a computer issue trying to get a printer driver to work over internet speeds slower than DSL. It was a fun challenge, but the food I had there was some of the best I've had in a while (Thanks for the food B, you're an incredible cook!).  I've also been trying to work on some computers here without having the appropriate equipment, which has become somewhat of an interesting challenge. However, I can't wait until my tools get here from the states.

This week was wrought with highs and lows, which is something you should expect if you're planning on joining the PC. It may seem obvious, but imagining yourself lower than you may have ever been is an important thing to think about.  It's also a good exercise for anyone who is about to go through a challenging period in their lives. Are you someone who doesn't handle sickness well? Are you someone who would give up when things get bad? Do you thrive in the dirt? Being able to make sure that you won't give up in the face of difficulty is important to being able to finish a challenge. One thing I can say though is that the PC will stretch your tolerance to uncomfortable and difficult situations.  

I've been behind in my posts recently which has been for a lot of reasons, but just know that I don't plan on stopping this blog. So if you check this regularly or have been wondering why I haven't posted yet, just know I will be putting something out soon enough. I can't wait to see you all again, so until next time I'll leave you with this.

We are a nation of communities... a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky. 

~George H. W. Bush

Much love,
~BW

Part of the Community

Hey all,

It has been a few days since my last post, but that's because I wanted to talk about my first actual lesson here. The class went pretty well and I'm glad people in the group are enjoying my teaching style, at least from what I've heard so far. Before the first class I did a quiz with all of my students to find out their levels in English and it seems that most people are at level 1 (Elementary). This is actually ideal because I can introduce English lessons without having to wonder if everyone already knows what I'm talking about. However this also plays the opposite way as well, because I rarely know if everyone is understanding what I'm trying to convey or not.

I have been trying to use what I've learned about teaching to help my students become comfortable in my class. The stigma of having a wrong answer here, or the fear on being incorrect is very real. My class has been a bit shy early on, so one of the ways I got around this was to show them that failure is the best way to learn. When we aren't afraid to fail we open ourselves up to more experiences and gain a lot more confident in being able to approach difficult situations in a healthy way.  I'm hoping that this idea can help them with our programs as well, because being willing to fail is extremely important in innovation. 

Some of you may have also noticed that I added a new page to my site that includes a few podcasts as well as some English resources for my students. If this can help you at all I hope you take advantage of it. I'm also going to put in a survey so if there's anything you want to suggest then it'll be easier for you! I've also noticed that a lot of my readers here are from many different countries so if you want a google translator built into the page let me know. Se karik imi hakarak tradusaun iha lingua diferente, hakerek nebaa iha fatin okos.

I have to go eat some lunch, but I'll be doing some work on the site later as well. I look forward to hearing from you all and miss everyone back home. You know what I say though, "Until next time, I'll leave you with this!"

Good, better, best. Never let it rest. 'Til your good is better and your better is best. 

~St. Jerome

Much love,

~BW

Teaching English

Hey all,

This week has been a little crazy, but let me give you all a brief overview. This last weekend a few of the TL8's went with us to the pool which was a great bonding experience and opened my eyes to what the next year might look like for myself and my friends here. So for that shout out to the Breakfast club. Then yesterday (Jan, 8th) I gave my first sudo-lesson to my org and gave out an exam to test their proficiency in English. The results turned out as I thought, gut it also yielded some interesting findings that I plan on using in my future lessons which will be happening every Saturday.

The Protestant church around the corner has also alluded me up to this point since I'm usually to tired to head over and take pictures after work, and I wanted to get this post out. Regardless the church is in major need of repair anyways, so we'll see if I do something with them in the future.  The 8-5 work week has kinda grown on me, and makes finding what to do everyday a bit easier, since I have a supervisor. That being the case I am also limited on the scale of my personal projects, since anything outside of work needs to be done solely in my spare time.

Oooooh, we also went to a beach party in Manatuto last Sunday which was pretty baller. I saw the ocean, heard a Timorese band try and cover early 90's-2000's classics so that was cool. The Ocean was beautiful and I feel like we had a really good bonding time as a group. I posted some of the pictures below, but for the most part we just ate by the beach. All in all though the view of the ocean was great, and I learned that my counterparts (and maybe most HCN's) love to take an overabundance of photos together. XD

This week has been good at getting me to look at the next few months and what they will look like with my organisation. It has also made me wonder how things will change over time. Neither of these are bad, but I hope for anyone planning to join the PC you take a step back and realize that 2 years is going to be a long time. I've already seen a few of my friends leave for many different reasons, but don't be upset with yourself if you aren't able to give two years of your life to this task. It's a huge commitment and as much as it's worth it, like most things that are worth it, this commitment is not an easy one.

Sorry to leave you all on a serious note, but I do look forward to sending out these posts whenever I can, they certainly give me a place to reflect on what has been happening. Let me know if any of you have something specific that you'd like to see for the next post, but until then I'll leave you with this!

Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment. 

~Jim Rohn

Much love,

~BW

Update #2

Hey everyone,

This is just a basic update, because unfortunately I'm still sick. I've been resting often, but my stomach troubles still persist. I am in contact with my PCMO in Dili, but due to my symptoms they suggest I stay at my site and wait it out. I am pretty sure I know what I have, and if I'm right then I should be able to just wait it out. Regardless the holidays have been less than excellent.

This is a good lesson for myself and one that I hope any soon to be volunteers will take to heart. The lesson is that you will get sick, period. Don't be afraid of that fact, because it is something that is natural when you move to a new region for an extended period of time. Just know that the PC has your back, and you should always update your PCMO on the symptoms you are experiencing.

I just hope that this news doesn't upset my loved ones, and that you all know I have the situation under control (with the help of my PCMO). I will try to make the next post's on time it has just been difficult as of now due to my intestinal situation. 

I love you all and sorry for the lack of pictures in this post. However, until I message you again, I'll leave you with this!

"Riches do not respond to wishes. They respond only to definite plans, backed by definite desires, through constant persistence." 

~Napoleon Hill

A Brief Intermission.

Hey everyone,

Sorry for the lack of content recently, I've been sick for the last few days and have been taking it easy. In a few days I plan on taking some pictures of the local Protestant church down the street, so my next post will be on that. Just know that I'm always trying to look for stuff to post up here and it's because I want to share my experience with all of you! It just so happens that right now that experience is a stuffy nose and gastrointestinal issues lol. I look forward to posting about the church later this week, but until then I'll leave you with this!!

"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other."
~Abraham Lincoln

Much love,

~BW

First Week of Work

Hey all,

Sorry I'm behind on posts, but I've been getting used to the new work. I've also found myself to be tired pretty often, but I chalk that up to having to speak Tetun exclusively while at site. I guess I can't say exclusively, because I have been able to speak English with a couple people, and I'm planning English lessons as well. Regardless, this will be a period of high adaptability for me and my fellow TL9's.

Most of the pictures below are from the place I'm working. I've been doing a lot of planning of English classes as of late, but I just found out my Saturday class was cancelled. It's a new experience trying to plan classes for people who don't speak my native tongue. I have had luck however in forming my lessons by using a lot of resources as well as the curriculum from Ontario's ESL program, which has given me a goal to strive towards. The people here are extremely nice and I honestly couldn't ask for a better site!

I will keep this breif, but in the future I plan on uploading my lesson plans, as well as the resources I use so that anyone in a similar spot as mine can be successful. I'll try to get back of a regular upload schedule, but until next time I'll leave you with this.

"Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace." 

~Dalai Lama

Much love,

~BW

The New House

Hey Everyone,

So I've been living in my new site for about 4 day's now and the transition has been pretty smooth. Last Friday I had orientation at work and went around to a bunch of the places my organization works with. It was interesting and made me realize how different my site is from others. 

Regardless today I will most likely be going through and repairing laptops and PC towers. I sure hope my tech repair kit comes in the mail lol, because this is where I need it! I'm interested to see where my work is steered. Are they going to use me to fix computers or something else. Whichever way the wind blows though my sail is sure to follow. 

Just like is normal daily life we can be sidetracked by assumptions about the future and feel slighted in some way. I encourage all of you to recognize the moment's in your life where you let expectations dampen an experience. When you find this happening try to wipe the expectations from your mind and just live in the moment.

I hope your future is full of love and amazing opportunities. Until we get to walk that road together, I'll leave you with this.

"There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it." 

~Dale Carnegie

Much love,

~BW