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I like rain and tea

The Bangladeshi volunteers arrived last night so today was our first day of joint training. Most of them were really tired last night since the shortest journey is six hours long but one guy came to play cards with us. We also played the post-it note game and had a good laugh about our struggle to work out John Lennon and James Bond (which took me about 40 minutes!)

We had a quick getting to know you ice breaker first thing where we gave our names, where we were from and drew a picture of something we liked. It turns out lots of people like flowers (or can draw them at least) although one of the Bangladeshi girls likes rain and tea.

The later training could have been better facilitated. It was all interesting and useful information and it's great to find out more about the practical application of development theory but I'm going to have to get used to a different style of delivery. The Anglo-Saxon method, for want of a better term, is a more inclusive facilitation style whereas sometimes I felt like I was being told off for breaking ground rules I didn't even know existed! I've been pretty lucky to have had some good facilitation though and I realise that it can't be easy facilitating sessions in Bangla and English, just as it's challenging for us to listen to. The Chittagong volunteers don't even have Bangla as their first language either so it's no wonder their attention wandered!

Tomorrow we start training from the Centre for Disaster Management and Vulnerability Studies which should be really interesting. Looking forward to it although what I really want now is to get on placement and get stuck in.

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