Amanda is my first CBT friend. CBT is culture-based training, it just means the 9 weeks we live in a community and learn Guatemala. They have acronyms for everything because government.
I am very lucky because my language group is awesome.
Tanya, Cliff, Amanda y yo. We had Profe Eduardo for the first three weeks and we just switched to Gladyz. They are our “Language and Cultural Facilitators” but mostly they make us learn Spanish.
If I can tell you one way to survive training, it is to find a friend. Most of it is luck of the draw (where you get placed for CBT) and some of it is your mindset. You need to open your mind and welcome in all the volunteers because you are all in this together. And because Peace Corps is about being open-minded, right?!
BUT if you can find a real friend in the midst of all the change and confusion and discomfort and corn, you count yourself lucky.
Amanda lives down the street at Doña Fabianas. She calls her Doña Fab. We walk to each other’s houses at night and meet each other at the bus stop on Tuesdays with Clint and Tanya. We laugh, swap stories, complain, rest, draw parallels, make observations, encourage each other and support each other. We celebrate when we poop.
Amanda likes to run. I like to sit. Amanda likes to climb mountains. I like paper crafts. Amanda is a social worker. I am a social introvert. So there.
One time I heard my host family say “Chiflada” and I asked what it was, they told me it means “crazy.” So I started to call Amanda “La Chiflada” when she comes up in conversation. The Guatemaltecos love it. I tell them it is because she likes to run for two hours at a time and that is CRAZY!
My family has gotten to asking about her a lot. In fact, my host mom gets confused and often calls me Amanda before she corrects herself. Our training host families are very different so we often tell each other stories. We appreciate our families though! Amanda’s Spanish comes more readily, she majored in it, and so I often let her do the talking (but that won’t get me anywhere on site).
I go jogging with her but not for 2 hours. I usually turn around first but we meet back up eventually. In an experience like peace corps, you must find your ALLIES. We don’t always see things the same way, but we respect each other’s viewpoints. I genuinely learn from hearing her perspective and I appreciate that she wants to climb a volcano and camp inside a hammock. I appreciate it so much that she can go right on ahead and do it without me.
“Manda” means “send” so people often say “que manda?” like “What are you sending me?” and so I say “Que Manda, Amanda?” It doesn’t seem funny when you read it, but I am in the wilderness of word play here so just let me have it. I can’t make Spanish play-on-words because I don’t know enough yet! Glasscase of emotion!
Out of the whole entire world, there is a sliver of a subset of human that understands what “Peace Corps Guatemala” means, from touch-down to take-off and all the tortillas in between.
Find your Chiflada and run with her!
