It´s Already Almost October

So I finally have time to sit down and update my blog. I´d been planning to go to the Cyber (Internet Cafe) for a while to do this but our medical and technical sessions kept running late and it would be 6pm and time to get home for dinner before I knew it. A lot has happened since last time I wrote (I have my journal in front of me so I´ll remember it all). First, I ate pizza. It had ham on it which was not ideal, but it was pizza. It was also with the priest of the Catholic Church, which apparently is normal. My mom and two of her friends were there, too. My family took me to a beautiful place called Mirador de Catarina. It is a tourist trap of the Masaya area overlooking a perfectly blue lake which is overshadowed by the Masaya Volcano. You have to take a horse down a steep and windy path through the jungle to get to the water...one day I hope to do it. And hike up the (active) volcano! I have pictures but this computer isn´t recognizing my camera so I´ll have to try again on a different one another time. I ate a lot of what is considered ¨street food¨ that day (fruit drinks/frescos in a blastic bag made with unpurified water and food in a plastic bag). If I were going to get sick here, it would have been after that food, but I was fine!

I have also started co-planning with my Nicaraguan counterpart. She is great--very interested in working together and learning from each other which will make the process run smoothly. We were supposed to teach together for the first time last Monday but she forgot until that day that she had a doctor´s appointment in Managua that afternoon...typical. We´ll teach together for the first time next Monday.
I´ve only had 2 cockroach experiences so far. I consider myself lucky considering my friend, Julie, has had 6 in the past 3 days! My host mom killed the first one and the other one disappeared before I could get to it. It´s very comforting sleeping under a mosquito net!

I´m slowly becomming a professional clothes washer. It´s true, we wash clothes here against a rigged stone slab. The clothes lines in our patio (backyard) connect all of my family´s fruit trees and provide the ants with a perfect means of transportation. There are usually ants all over my dry, clean clothes when I take them off the line. Things could be worse!

My training group and I started our youth group at the school. We had a big turnout of 17 people at the first meeting, which dwindled down to 12 at the second meeting. They decided that they want our big project to be singing ¨Thriller¨ by Michael Jackson in English and learning the dance. Should be fun. We´re going to try to film it at the end of our 8 weeks with the group and put it up on YouTube. There´s a huge Michael Jackson following down here.

So I´ve been busy and it feels like time is flying by. I can´t believe October is next week already. I have Spanish class from 8-12 and 1-3 most every day. Co-teaching will start to be every Monday afternoon. Youth group meetings will be an hour on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Co-planning is once a week for at least an hour. And then we have tons of medical and technical info sessions (charlas)...usually Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. I´ve been managing to run about 5 days a week which has been great. The food is still really good. I´ve been eating lots of rice, beans, tortillas, eggs (I´ve retrained myself to like them), cheese and plantains. The only downside is that they use a ton of salt and a lot of things are fried. I usually watch a telenovela with my family from 7-8 every night and am in bed by 9. I generally wake up a couple times to roosters during the night (they do NOT just crow at dawn) before getting up at 6am to run. I still feel really safe here and am having a great time!