I kicked off June with a week of welcoming a new group of volunteers to Liberia: Peace Corps brought LR-8, the newest cohort of education volunteers! I got the opportunity to to help out with the first week of their pre-service training (PST) in Kakata.

The staff and resource volunteers (current Peace Corps Volunteers helping out with PST) came the night before to set up Doe Palace and were excited and ready the next day to welcome them at the airport. Until we got the news that morning that they hadn’t actually left Washington DC yet! Their flight was cancelled and they were rescheduled to come in two days later. So we had plenty of time to finish prepping and extra time to beautify Doe Palace–made a ton of signs and finished the awesome wall of masks from each of the 16 tribes in Liberia!

And then two days later they finally arrived! After days of travelling, the group of 45 new trainees arrived at the airport and we were there to meet them that evening cheering and waving our glittery signs.

Then we headed to Doe Palace for a marathon couple of days of training. After the traditional kola nut welcoming ceremony, we began their crash course in living in Liberia! We taught them about all of the small small things that are now normal to me after being here for a year: how to take a bucket bath, how to bucket flush the toilet, how to wash clothes on a wash board, how Liberia’s dual currency works. We also had sessions about different foods you can find here and how to treat your water before you drink it. We talked about integration into Liberian culture and as resource volunteers, we shared our own experiences.

It was a very busy couple of days but it was fun to meet and get to know the LR8s! After those busy few days, the trainees were off to visit some current volunteers at their sites to get a taste of what life as a volunteer will be like. While I didn’t host any of the LR8s, I had a different site visit of my own: my mom and sister Kathryn came to visit! I left from PST straight to the airport to meet them, more coming soon about their trip to visit me in Liberia…