Countdown to Site Assignment

Sorry it´s been a while since I´ve written. Everything has been going well and I am quickly approaching the end of my 11 weeks of training. This Wednesday we find out our site assignments!

The volcano two weekends ago was awesome. We had an incredibly boring charla about diversity and then Peace Corps drove us to the top, but other than that it was great. There was a lot of hiking around and exploring to do at the top. Pictures are on facebook, on the link I posted before this post.

Two Mondays ago when I was walking to the school to co-teach I saw a mass exodus of students walking away from the school. When I arrived, my counterpart told me that they had all left to go to mass...during my class. Go figure. Luckily, I was able to teach this past Monday and it went really well. Hopefully I´ll teach again this coming Monday also...but you never know what could happen! I discovered an air-conditioned, Internet-equipped computer lab at my school which was a bit of a shock. I felt like I was on another planet with all the air conditioning and technology around.

Last Wednesday and Thursday, and basically the entire weekend, were the ¨fiestas patronales¨ in my town. It´s basically a huge celebration of the patron saint for whom the town is named. The people were constantly setting off ¨bombas¨ which are basically bombs, minus the destruction. They´re so loud, and they start going off at 4am. I also paraded through the streets for hours (it took 2 hours to walk 6 blocks) with the procession. The people were carrying the really heavy wooden table holding the patron saint idol adorned with flowers through town for 9 hours, singing and dancing and playing music the whole time. There were also fair-like rides parked in front of the park (actually, they´re still there). Think zipper, but in a third world country. And I went on it! There was a bit too much wiggle room so my head kept hitting the ceiling when we´d flip, but it was pretty fun nevertheless.
I´ve gone to a couple of parties with my sister and cousins on the weekends. One of my cousins is trying to teach me how to dance. Every Nicaraguan can dance REALLY well. It´s actually embarrassing to dance with them because I´m so horrible. Trying to learn, but it´s going to take a while.

This past Saturday I went back to Catarina, but this time down to the water, with my friends Julie and Jocelyn, and our Nica friend Carelia. It was beautiful (pictures on facebook)! It´s a giant crater filled with the bluest, cleanest, clearest water I´ve ever seen. We swam from 9am until 4pm with about an hour break to eat lunch.
I ironed my jeans for the first (and probably not the last) time in my life. I swore I´d never do it, but there´s really no other way to soften up your clothes once you take them off the clothes line. I suppose I should buy some fabric softener.
In other news, Daniel Ortega is well on his way to changing the constitution so he can run for re-election in 2011. Think Honduras and/or Venezuela. Nothing crazy has happened yet, luckily. We´ll see. But don´t worry, if anything were to ever happen, Peace Corps definitely has everything under control!

I think there is a tarantula lurking in my bedroom. I only got a quick glimpse of it the other day and haven´t seen it since. My mosquito net is my best friend.

Pictures

It´s much easier to post pictures on facebook, so here they are!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2225381&id=1613510&l=41f82fe19e

Back from Volunteer Visit

I co-taught my first class a week ago this past Monday. It was pouring rain so we practically had to yell to hear anything. Then it got really dark so we had to wait around while a student ran around trying to find a light bulb to plug in so they could see the board. It was interesting to say the least.

Our youth group is still going strong. They decided to change the song for our project to ¨Billie Jean¨ after looking at the words to ¨Thriller.¨ Last week we gave a charla on self-esteem which went over really well. I think the kids really enjoyed it- they don´t get to talk about stuff like that very often, or ever. Tomorrow at our meeting we´re going to make a small fire outside the library (which is completely normal and acceptable here) to roast marshmallows and make s´mores. Should be fun.

There was a cockroach INSIDE my mosquito net the other night. I hadn´t been tucking it under my mattress because of the way it was configured around my bed, but it´s definitely tucked in now. Luckily my family fumigates the room with cockroach killer so it fell out of my bed and onto the floor, providing the perfect opportunity to kill it, while I was pacing around the room trying to figure out what to do. Aside from it brushing against my arm, everything was ok!

Saturday I went on a mini-pilgrimage with my host mom and several other town members touting the Virgin Mary and accompanied by a band, a car with loud speakers and faux fireworks. We walked for at least an hour down a never-ending dirt road, eventually arriving at the Virgin Mary´s resting spot. Apparently a lot of people were staying there overnight for a mass the next morning, but my host mom and I walked (and later hitchhiked) back to town.

These past few days I was on my Volunteer Visit in Rivas. The point is to stay with a volunteer to get a feel for their lives and sites. We went to the beach when I got there on Sunday. It was beautiful and very relaxing. We were busy the past few days with her community English classes and her classes at the school. We had to haul water from a well one day because there wasn´t any to shower with and we´d just come back from the gym (yes, there was a gym!). There also wasn´t any gas to cook with so our meals were interesting. Fun trip though! Learned a lot and had fun. Back in my training town now. We´re all climbing the Masaya Volcano on Saturday!