CED Training

It has occured to me that, with all the things that I write on here, there is not that much information on what we're doing on a day to day basis. So, today I wanted to fill you in on what I've been up to for the past couple of weeks. Normally, I have Spanish class in my community with two other trainees three times a week. On Tues. and Thurs., however, we hike to the neighboring town of Tarbaca (there's a bus, but where's the fun in that?) To study business and economic development stuff specific to Costa Rica along with safety, security and medical procedures generic to Peace Corps. With the flooding and landslides throughout the country, though, things have NOT been normal.

Usually, at this point in training, the trainees would be sent to another volunteer's community to study the technical aspects of their projects. It is normally an intensive and challenging week that incorporates business theory with Spanish and cultural immersion. Sadly, the normal tech training that we normally had planned was canceled and replaced with a condensed week of business theory.

For this past week, our CED group was in Tarbaca for the whole week. During this time we conducted a market survey and started

a mock company. For most of the week we went over the technical specifics of a business plan. That means, roughly 6 hours of marketing followed by 6 hours of accounting and so on... We basically covered what a normal JA program would cover in 18 weeks. What's JA you ask? Well...

This is actually a great place to plug the JA program. The Junior Achievement program is a program designed to educate young people about the world of business and entrepreneurship. If you want to learn more specifics, you can check it out at www.JA.org.

We also recently had another birthday, and this time - thanks to the internet, the entire Diaz family was in attendance.