Peace Corps Training

First and foremost, a huge malo e leilei to future Hawkeye Nolan Jefferey Williams! We are so happy to hear mom, dad, brother and baby are doing well. We know your grandparents and aunt Nonnie are already spoiling you!

As for us, Ryan and I have just finished our second week of training here in Tonga.  We still have about seven weeks left as a PCTs before we are sworn in as full Peace Corps Volunteers.  We will continue to post as much as we can however, we have no Internet (or computers!) in our village and have to travel to the capitol city to blog. That is why we are uploading so many posts at one time!

Training is going really well. Ryan and I are working hard on getting to know our host family and learning the Tongan language. Every day, we wake up at about 6a.m., go for a quick run and come home for an ice cold shower. Breakfast is usually fruit, cookies, and coffee. But sometimes there is a special surprise like spaghetti-o sandwiches and hot dogs. Yep... spaghettio- o sandwiches. That's right folks.. when Tongans think of Americans, they think of spaghettios on bread with a hot dog. You haven’t lived until you have had a side of hot dogs with your coffee.This is just Tia’s way of trying to make us American food so we always greet it with a smile.

After breakfast, our Tongan language instructor and two other volunteers from our village come to our house. We spend most of the morning working on language. Tongan is such a fun language to learn. It is SO different from English, but Ryan and I have enjoyed helping each other work on our fluency. Although, Ryan may not enjoy nightly drill sessions where we can’t go to sleep until we master the lesson/ objective I have created for us.  Well, it’s his own fault for marrying a teacher! After lunch at home, we walk about 15 minutes to the next village where all 15 Peace Corps trainees meet everyday to continue our instruction in teaching, safety, and cross cultural training.  Finally, Ryan and I come home for dinner, which is usually eaten with us staring at our plates and playing a friendly game of “guess-that-meat”! Much of the time these meals are delicious and other times we categorize them as “interesting”. 

On Thursday our group went the local village elementary school to get a feel for how Tongan schools operate. We met some amazing Tongan teachers and some super excited kids. They sang to us, and asked us a million questions in Tongan. They taught us some phrases and showed us all around their classroom. It was so incredible.

We have been amazed at the partnership Peace Corps has with the Tongan Ministry of Education. The Ministry has a very clear idea of what they want us to do to help them strengthen rural primary schools. It is very humbling to be a part of everything happening here in Tonga. We are fortunate to be getting such intensive training in preparation to teach when the new school year begins in January!

We miss you all very much. We hope you are doing well and can’t wait to hear some updates so please email or write us whenever you feel like it!