Online Meet-and-Greet

We had our online meet and greet thing with YCI last night and everyone got to introduce themselves, chat a bit and talk about our hopes and fears for the project. It made me feel a little bit better knowing everyone else is just as worried about all the same things. The language barrier is going to be pretty intimidating, but as long as we try our best the locals will try too. Everyone also seemed to agree that we're all worried about making a difference while we're there. It's hard to know if the youth will understand our teaching concepts and really gain anything from the activities we'll do with them but we got a good reminder that we're only there for a short time so we may not see our influence but it's definitly there.
Ben did our country introduction presenation and he was reeeally helpful and gave us some tips and ideas I never would have thought of. He talked about how the culture itself is really laid back and being on time for anything is not nearly as huge as it is in our culture. He used a duvet cover as a sleeping bag instead of sheets since it's so hot there at night (never got below 18 at night for them) and he gave us some good workshop advice. While one person ran the workshop the others would take notes on attendence, quotes, what worked and what didn't, etc.
We also learned that our internet stick that we'll get on arrival to share works in our homestay so we can blog from anywhere. Once I get my new battery for my netbook I'll have 9 hours of power too in case of power outages. Ben's group had a 48 hour blackout at one point.
One other thing I didn't think of is that there's a lot of red dust and sand so if we bring cotton clothing and that gets in it Ben says it stains really badly. I'm going to have to re-think some of my wardrobe now!
I'm going over to America Land today with my friend Kevin, so I'll be getting my mosquito nets, bug spray, and any other useful things I can find. :) I guess I'll update again closer to my going away party.