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.