Peace Corps Training: IST & SIE PDM

Peace Corps occasionally has additional trainings and conferences throughout our time here. PST (Pre-Service Training) was the first 3 months I was in Indonesia and that was the big overview training in education, culture, language, etc. Now, after 3 months at our permanent sites, we have another training called IST (In-Service Training).

At this training, each volunteer brings one of their Indonesian counterpart English teachers with them to the training. This can be full of challenges and benefits due to the different cultural backgrounds and ideas.

It's interesting because if you had asked me at the end of PST, if I would miss all the other volunteers, I'd probably have said no.... haha! Mostly because during PST we were with each other all day, every day for 3 months, including weekends and after class. However, after being away from each other for 3 months, it was a nice little reunion! I have an opportunity to see the volunteer who is somewhat close to me, which is great and I don't know what I would have done without that. However, for the others, I only really see them at trainings and conferences like IST.

All of the volunteers were worried that our counterparts would only want to hang out and stay together with us during the evenings as well, which is the only time all the volunteers can hang out together. However, I think many of the counterparts were equally tired from the whole day of training and wanted a break as well. As bad as it sounds that we didn't want to hang out with our counterparts, it was mostly because we see our counterparts at school every single day whereas we see the other volunteers once or twice when there are trainings only.

Below are some photos from the training.