Where the Sun Shines

Since 2003 I have worked with Canada World Youth and Change for Children in many places throughout Africa and Latin America. This website has served as a medium to share my experiences, to tell my stories from "the field". This year (2010) I will be returning to Mozambique to work as a project supervisor again with Canada World Youth.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Canmore

Camrose

Since I came home (to Canada) in April I have been working in Camrose. For the first couple months setting up this year's program with Bolivia; and then since August I have had a whole new team and counterpart here with me. So far, so good. In general its been going very very well. I am having a great time and the time has been flying by! We have language classes 3 times a week( one each of our program's languages- French, Spanish & English) and have recently started Salsa Dance classes. Naturally a salsa queen like myself, I am LOVING it! Its actually been a great community outreach activity!

I mustnt forget to mention how I am very impressed with how the participants love to discuss great topics, its intellectually stimulating to have that present in this year's team, as we often discuss complex issues and topics such as poverty, personal values, religion, politics, globalization, the environment, etc. It's been very refreshing to talk about this important issues on a weekly basis at our educational activity days. At times I feel like I am back in political science at a seminar class; since the discussions are often very heated and the participants are full of ideas and opinions. Of course at times we have to remind them that nobody's opinion is "the objective truth" and that we all have our personal bias and thus all our ideas/opinions are subjective! This is very important to remind them of, as we are a cross-cultural team, with everyone coming from different backgrounds and different experiences.

It's hard to believe but in 2 short weeks we'll have already wrapped up the Canadian Phase of the program and will be leaving for the Bolivian Phase of the program. I am very excited, but a little sad to be leaving here. Camrose has been treating us very well and it is starting to really feel like home. I have a great "host family" who are really more like room-mates- Jim & Marina. They are only a little older than me and have become great friends of ours(Jaime-my counterpart and I).