Almost done with training!

This coming week is our last week of training. We have a bunch of charlas and events in Managua to finalize the ¨bridge to service¨ and finish up the technical stuff. Swearing in is a week from this coming Monday.

Last week was my ¨site visit.¨ Everyone went to their future sites for 4 days to meet everyone and get a feel for everything. I stayed here, of course. It was nice to not have Spanish class or technical training sessions, but weird having so much free time. It rained pretty much nonstop the whole time thanks to Hurricane Ida. The Carribbean Coast of Nicaragua was hit really hard; luckily we just got rain here. I went walking every morning with my host mom. She showed me a few paths through the campo that I hadn´t seen before. One was particularly beautiful...very quiet and peaceful and it winds through fields of sugar cane, plantains, beans and corn. I co-taught once more with my counterpart, Ana. Class went well until we asked the kids to close their notebooks, at which point they immediately forgot everything we had been talking about for the past hour. Welcome to the world of teaching! I met my other counterpart, Scarleth, during my ¨visit,¨ too. She is very nice and low key and seems excited that I´ll be staying here.

I finally unpacked and rearranged my room since it will be my room for some time now. I found an etch-a-sketch and some glow-in-the-dark stars that I gave my sister. They were a hit.

This past Monday we went to the U.S. Embassy in Managua. It´s pretty removed from the busy city and was really quiet and calm. There were automatic flushing toilets and you could put the toilet paper in the toilet (instead of in the trashcan next to it) which were new concepts. Everything was also excessively air-conditioned...I had goosebumps for the first time in a few months. We learned about the extensive list of scholarship programs that the embassy offers. I hope to get some kids from my town to the United States to study or visit with one of them.

Yesterday we had the big presentation with everyone´s youth groups from our TEFL group and the group of environment volunteers. Almost all of the TEFL groups made videos of a Michael Jackson song for their final project. The environment groups made some interesting stuff with recycled materials--piñatas with food wrappers and newspapers and bracelets with coke bottle tops.

This afternoon I´m going to Managua with my host mom and sister for an uncle´s birthday party. It sounds like it´s going to be a lot of fun. We´re staying over at their house to avoid leaving Managua at night. On the way back I´m going to meet Julie and Jocelyn to go to the beach! Next time I write I will officially be a PCV!

Staying here!

I found out on Wednesday that I´ll be staying here in my training town in Carazo for my two years. It was one of my top 3 choices so I´m really happy. Everything here fits me well...it´s a small, safe little pueblo, my family is great and I love my counterpart (still have to meet the other one I´ll be working with). I was a little bummed to not get to see a new place in Nicaragua and start fresh somewhere else, but everything here is great so I think it´s best I stay anyway rather than risk going somewhere new that´s not as good. I think my family is happy to have me stay. It also saves me the hassle of moving all of my stuff to a new place by myself on an over-crowded Nicaraguan bus. I´m pretty close to Managua here which will also make visits easier! :)

A couple days ago a fumigation truck drove through town. I had no idea what was going on since I only understood ¨fuming truck¨ and ¨hide¨ when my abuelita was talking to me. Before I knew it she was running into the kitchen calling me to follow her and a truck passed by spraying chemicals all over the place. There were kids and animals in the street and a girl standing in front of my house waiting to buy something from my family´s convenience store...they were all blasted with the chemicals. The windows are always open so naturally it came inside the house, too...I think that´s actually the point so it will kill cockroaches, or whatever else it´s supposed to kill, though it seemed a bit questionable at the time. The fumes/chemicals hovered in the air for at least 15 minutes. And I saw a cockroach in my room last night...

There was a horse show here last weekend. Basically everyone dresses up as cowboys and there are hundreds of horses walking through the streets which you can mount at your own will. There are also ¨professionals,¨ or at least people who knew what they were doing, on the horses, making them dance! Even the horses in this country can dance. It was pretty amusing, and so were the cowboy outfits. Afterwards there was a big party and I went with my entire family. We danced for about 4 hours without stopping. I think I´m slowly learning, though it´s going to take a good majority of my two years here to get up to par with the Nica dancing standards.

I didn´t get to teach when I was supposed to again. There was a teacher workshop going on during my class, surprise! There seems to always be something going on from 4:20-5pm on Monday afternoons.

It´s been raining every day here for a while so I accumulated a mountain of dirty clothes. Today, finally, there was some sun so I took a risk and washed most of it. I´m not sure what happens if it keeps raining and you can never wash your clothes. Today is the first day of summer here, though, so we shouldn´t be seeing much more rain until May.

Tomorrow is Day of the Dead. My aunt, uncle and cousins from Managua came here last night with a basket full of beautiful, gigantic hydrangeas to put on the graves of family members in the cemetary here.