Almost been here for a year!

My sister just left from her almost week-long visit on Saturday. It was really nice to see her and we had a lot of fun. She didn´t even complain about the cold showers! We went to Granada, Masaya, the Laguna de Apoyo and San Juan del Sur where we went on a nighttime tour to see sea turtles laying and hatching from eggs!

This week on Monday and Tuesday I went to a rural community school to co-teach with an English teacher/neighbor/brother-in-law of my afternoon counterpart at the high school. I´ve been helping him in the morning with his English (he´s a math teacher who got stuck teaching English) and he wanted to show me he classes, so I went. We went on his motorcycle which was a little frightening (and not allowed by Peace Corps, don´t tell!) but he went slowly so it was ok. The kids there are completely different than the kids at the high school here--they are respectful and actually interested in learning. It was remarkable and refreshing. On Wednesday we only had English class until 3pm and he was going to keep teaching (math) until 5 so I decided to take the bus (that passes only 3 times a day) home. There is a point in the road that dips down and turns into a river when it rains hard because that is where the water drains from all nearby towns. When the bus arrived to this point the river had risen and the road was impassable. We all had to get out of the bus (so it´d weigh less and not slide into the flooded street/super fast current) and wait for the water to go down. It took about an hour before it was low enough to cross. During the rainy season that is a normal occurrence there and quite a hassle for those traveling to those rural communities daily. I was asked if there were rivers like that in the US. I said yes, but not that crossed streets and that if it did cross a street a bridge probably would have been built.

School has been about the same, though I haven´t been much because of my sister´s visit and then the two days out in the countryside. The one day this week I was actually going to go there was no class because the kids went to the circus to raise money for a student who had been in a motorcycle accident and is really poor.

Yesterday my community class organized for a photographer to come take a group picture of us. Next week they have another text to finish off this part of the ¨course.¨ Hopefully they´ll all pass like last time.

I was selected as a judge/test corrector for the English part of a test that the kids in the municipality were taking to see who is the best student and go on to the department level of the test. The test was full of errors (made by local English teachers) and I had to go through by hand and correct all of the tests that we were about to give the students. A bunch of other ¨judges¨ there had a lot of corrections to make too for the other subjects on the test. I´m not sure why the tests weren´t reviewed before the same morning that they were going to be taken by the students. Because of all of that, and the usual Nicaraguan tardiness, the kids didn´t start taking the test until 2 hours after they were supposed to!

Not much else is new. I´m looking forward to seeing my boyfriend when he comes back to visit in 2 weeks.