29 April 2010

Who needs school?

So I already had a pretty good grasp on the fact that education here is much less important than it is at home, but this last week eliminated any lingering doubts. There is a national baseball tournament in town and the ONLY possible places the mayor could find for the 100+ players to sleep were the high school and elementary school. So there are a bunch of old, fat men/baseball players living in the schools, which means we can´t possibly have class. At first they were only supposed to be here until Tuesday, so no class Monday and Tuesday. Then Tuesday night rolled around and they still hadn´t left. No class Wednesday. Friday is TEPCE, the monthly meeting with all the teachers from the area to evaluate the last month and plan the next month, so no class Friday. That left today, Thursday, as the only day for class. But who is going to show up for just one day of class? No one! Not even the teachers because they know the kids won´t come. Technically there was class today and even knowing that the kids wouldn´t show, the teachers were supposed to show up. When I got there this morning, the vice-principal and the janitor lady were the only ones there. I signed my name in the attendance book and turned around and left. What´s more is that Saturday is ¨Day of the Worker¨ and because it falls on the weekend this year, no class Monday either! It´s comical and sad at the same time. The kids miss class here more than they receive class, and it´s accepted as the norm and has been for who knows how many years. At least I´ve still been able to have my community classes at night...in the same elementary school that is occupied by baseball players.

The other night I made gringa-style guacamole for my family. Here they make it with just avocadoes, onions and hard-boiled eggs. I took out the eggs, added cilantro, tomatoes, lime juice and chile. And they liked it (though they added a bunch of salt to theirs)! Well my mom and sister did. My grandmother is afraid to try anything new and refused.

Tomorrow after TEPCE I´m heading up to Matiguas, Matagalpa to visit my friend Jocelyn!

22 April 2010

Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day everyone! Two posts in two weeks!! Woo hoo!

Today, to celebrate earth day, the kids got out of school early (what else is new?) so they could go around town picking up all the trash that wouldn´t have been there if they hadn´t thrown it on the ground in the first place. And I was greeted by a pile of burning trash (the more plastic bags, the merrier!) when I got to the elementary school this afternoon for my 6th grade class. Ha.

I only went to school in the mornings once this whole week because my counterpart´s daughter is sick. The only reason I went the one time is because I didn´t know she wasn´t going to be there and was guilt-tripped into teaching alone. I explained to the principal that if I teach alone (which is against the Peace Corps and Ministry of Education rules) I´m not capacitating my counterpart which is the goal of the project. She said she didn´t see a problem with it, but if I was uncapable of handling the kids alone (not the issue) then I could leave and she´d have them copy random sentences on the board that they wouldn´t understand. So I stayed and taught alone, but after that day I was sure to call my counterpart before going to school to see if she was going or not.

I´m not entirely clear what´s going on with Danny Ortega and the Sandinista government here, but I´m pretty sure he did something unconstitutional again, which provoked a bunch of riots in Managua in the past few days. Everything here in my town is fine and I have no reason to go to Managua, don´t worry! My host sister´s boyfriend was over last night after we got back from my community English class and was saying apparently some pro-Sandinista things. My sister just sat there nodding her head and playing along (My family is very, very anti-Sandinista). When the boyfriend left, my mom let my sister have it. She said (with a wide array of Spanish curse words) that the boyfriend can´t ever talk about politics again in her house, that he should have known better and that my sister´s an idiot for not putting him in his place. The yelling went on for a good 10-20 minutes. I knew my mom was super anti-FSLN but I´d never seen her so outwardly-passionate and intolerant about it before! Today she explained to me that the Sandinistas kick people out of their houses so they can give (for free) those same houses to Sandinista supporters who then turn around and sell them for profit, or stay there to live. One way in which they literally ¨buy¨ the people and the elections. I´m not sure how accurate that is, but based on the politics I´ve seen, it wouldn´t surprise me too much if it were true.

I think that´s it for now! Off to my community class...

15 April 2010

I´m still alive!

Sorry for the delay! I know it´s been almost two full months since I´ve written. I´m going to try and recap them as succinctly as possible:

-My pet chicken is officially MIA/dead. Poor Lucy.

-I bought a ¨new¨ but of questionable quality bike for $70. Within 4 days it had a flat tire that I had to get repaired. It´s currently making all sorts of squeaking noises which makes it quite embarrassing to ride. Getting it checked out is on my current to-do list.

-I ended up giving my morning 6th grade class a quiz because I was so frustrated that they weren´t learning anything or paying attention. Bad idea. About half showed up for the quiz and the next day only 4 of 20 came. In the meantime, my boss came to visit and talk with my counterparts and see how everything´s going. She suggested a more relaxed, fun approach to the 6th grade classes which doesn´t include homework or quizzes. The new outlook on life has made the class much more enjoyable but I haven´t been able to re-start the morning class despite several pleading attempts. They don´t believe me that it´s fun now! Good news is the afternoon class is upwards of 30 VERY enthusiastic kids who sprint into the classroom when they see me coming.

-The principal at the high school gives my morning (not so great) counterpart the last period on Thursdays free so we can plan. Drastic improvement in planning! Didn´t get to test it out too much this week though because classes were cancelled all the time. Once because there hadn´t been water at the school for 2 days and the bathrooms smelled bad. The justifications for canceling class never cease to amaze me.

-We had a week-long Spanish workshop with Peace Corps. Sitting through class for 8 hours a day for 4 days was painful but I learned a lot and filled in some major gaps in my ability to communicate everything I want to say.

-An uncle across the street gave me a really ugly hat that says ¨I love Jesus.¨ He then asked, about 2 weeks later, why he still hadn´t seen me wear it. Busted. I wore it to school and from school the next day and made a point to show him.

-Tyler came back to visit again for Holy Week/Easter break (Semana Santa). He brought dog treats for his favorite street dog, Samsung, which my family won´t stop talking about. We went back to our favorite crater lake, the Laguna of Apoyo, and went to the Isla de Ometepe (the big island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua). We stayed at a coffee farm and hiked up one of the volcanoes on the island. It took 7.5 long, muddy hours roundtrip.

-My grandmother sat me down the other day and very seriously asked if she could ask me a question. I, nervously because she´s never serious like that, said sure. She proceeded to ask if I knew how to climb trees because there were a few ripe avocadoes in the tree out back. I said sure, not actually knowing how to climb trees, as long as there were branches and it wasn´t a coconut tree. There were plenty of branches, but they were flimsy! I had never been so high up in such a wobbly tree before. It´s a miracle I didn´t kill it, or myself! The guacamole they made with the avocadoes was worth it though.

-My two community classes took the final test for that ¨level¨ last week. I had about a 50% passing rate between the two of them. We started up again this week with the next level for those who passed and the same level for those who didn´t pass and a handful of newcomers. Everyone told me that no one who failed would come back because they´d be embarrassed but 20 of the 28 have come back so far! Now I need to figure out how to make it interesting for them but not move too quickly for the new people...

I think that´s about it for now! I´ll try to write more frequently from now on! We have semester break in the beginning of July so I´m looking forward to coming home to see everyone over the 4th.

Bambi

Bambi

World Map

World Map

my bed

my bed

my sister and her novio

my sister and her novio

the little birds in my kitchen

the little birds in my kitchen

a street and street dog

a street and street dog

the church

the church

the park

the park

an interesting mode of transportation

an interesting mode of transportation

viva la revoluciĆ³n

viva la revoluciĆ³n