A Day In The Life

What do you do all day? One of my friends recently asked me this question in an email. I think it's a fairly common question asked to PCVs, so I thought I'd write a blog post about it.

As you can probably imagine each Peace Corps volunteer's experience is different, as is their work, even if the program is the same. It varies from country to country and, within the country, region to region. As you have probably noted by now, my location is fairly modern, at least when considering what people think a "typical PCV experience" is like (a mud hut in the middle of Africa with no running water, right?). I happen to live in a city. I live in my own Soviet era apartment with running water, gas and amenities. The city I live in has a pretty stable infrastructure which means we have pretty regular access to gas and electricity. When the electricity goes out, it comes back on fairly quickly, whereas in other regions, it may be out for days.

With that said, my days are (typically) quite full. My regular course days are on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I teach 3 courses; two TOEFL classes and an English conversation club. Tuesday and Thursdays are open days and I typically spend these tutoring. Currently, I'm tutoring a few of my TOEFL students on writing a five paragraph essay. Today I have 3 appointments with students starting at 1 pm. On these days, I also work with my counter-part on various items for our organization (working on ideas like developing a budget to discussing grant opportunities).

I also serve on three committees, these are committees which are country wide and not just limited to my community. These committees are:

1. The Writing Olympics committee, I'm currently working on putting together an awards ceremony for the winning students and their families, as well compiling their essays for print.

2. The Training of Trainers (TOT) committee for GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) Camp. Our committee is currently reviewing applications from women throughout Azerbaijan to be facilitators at the camp (more like camp counselor+facilitator+teacher). I just negotiated a location for the women to room. This was a definite source of pride for me because it shows I've been able to build relationships in my own community (we're holding the training here in Ming). I'm also working with one of my sitemates on creating one of the training sessions.

3. The Programming and Training Advisory Committee (PTAC) is comprised of PCVs and PC staff. Members work together to improve and develop training in PC Azerbaijan. This is a committee PC Washington requires in all PC countries. The committee meets 4 times each year and because I am a newly selected member, I can't really give you more than the blurb which we received when they were seeking applications. It peeked my interest in EST (Early Service Training) and I applied.

I also read and correct essays, prepare lesson plans and go guesting. In between, I send a LOT of e-mails. I honestly don't know what people do without the internet because it's how we send reports and often receive PC information. They just changed our reporting to a computer database when the AZ8s began their service and now we email digital files for reporting information. (We report on things like "number of people served" etc.)

I stay really busy, but it's great! I really do enjoy my work.