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.

Back to work...sort of.

My community class had a surprise welcome back party for me the first day back at class. They were so happy that I was back, which helped the transition back to work. It was so nice of them and just reminded me of how appreciative the Nicaraguans are. They made a ton of food and had decorated the room with balloons and everything. We played pin the tail on the donkey with a Nicaraguan twist (you have to dance while you´re looking for the donkey). My sister took pictures that I´ll have to get from her to post online.

School has been fine. This past Monday was the 31st anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution so there was no school. Everyone (all the Sandinistas, that is) goes to some plaza in Managua to hear the president talk (for 2 hours!) about how great the government is and that, oh by the way, he wants to be the president here forever even though it´s illegal. Anyway, in order to transport the masses to Managua this day, the government bought out 50% of the nation´s transportation to assist in the caravans. This left the rest of the country without transportation. Thanks, Daniel. We also didn´t have school on Tuesday because of it...because all government workers are required to attend this talk in Managua or else they´ll lose their jobs and they got back late on Monday night, so obviously they couldn´t go to work on Tuesday.

I went to the town circus last night. It was interesting to say the least. They had some clowns, a tight rope (loose cable) walker and some scandelously dressed overweight women dancers. The stands were constructed of 2x4s that were not nailed together and were bowed in the middle. I´ll put up some pictures soon.

My sister is coming to visit in a week which I´m really excited about. We´ll hike a few volcanoes and it´s turtle egg laying season so I think we´ll get to a turtle refugee too to see that.

Back to Nicaragua

I got back safely and uneventfully to Nicaragua on Wednesday afternoon. I was honestly a little less than thrilled to leave everyone at home and come back but once I got here everything was fine and comfortable again. My family was so happy to see me and we sat around talking for a while when I got back home. The first cold shower was pretty chilly but I think I´ve quickly re-adapted to them again.

I started going to the gym here with my sister. She´s been saying since I got here that she was going to start exercising so I´m glad she finally came around. It´s so nice to be sore again. I was getting bored and sick of my P90x workouts with the resistance bands. The gym is, as my friend Julie accurately described it when she was here visiting this weekend, ¨raw.¨ There are two rooms with a bunch of free weights, bars and benches. There are three cardio machines (a treadmill, stairmaster and bike), none of which require electricity...figure that one out. The two brothers who run the gym are deaf/mute (along with their parents and another sibling) and are former Nicaraguan champion body builders. They´re really nice and have been helping my sister and I with our workouts a lot.

Other than that not much else is new. School starts up again this week. I´m starting my new schedule with just 7th grade in the morning with my counterpart, Scarlett, and 7th, 8th and 9th grade in the afternoon with my counterpart, Ana. I´m really looking forward to spending more time with Ana. Until next time!

Writing from home!

Made it home safe and sound. When I told everyone in Nicaragua I was going home they all rushed to give me presents to take to my family--typical Nicaraguan sweets and crackers. It was really nice and made me realize even more how generous the Nicaraguans are. At the same time they were kind of saying goodbye like I wasn't going to come back which was a little disheartening, but I made sure they all knew it was just for 10 days. My sixth graders were actually angry that they were going to have two weeks of vacation because they said my class gets them out of their houses.

The Carlos Fonseca English extravaganza was a complete flop. The "acto" on Friday consisted of the kids doing their skits in the library for my counterparts and I (although I only went in the afternoon. My a.m. counterpart told me not to go). The kids in the morning did it mostly in Spanish because my counterpart didn't help them or, the three times I asked her, tell me who they were so I could help them. The two groups my afternoon counterpart and I had been working with did really well. The following Monday was supposed to be the big competition between all the schools in my town and my high school was the only one to show up. We combined the morning and afternoon groups into 2 acts (about 60 kids total) to go to the department capital to compete against schools from all over the department on Wednesday. I spent Monday afternoon translating and finding the rhythm to a Nicaraguan song I'd never heard before and Tuesday morning practicing with all of the groups. Wednesday we went to the department capital, Jinotepe, at 2pm when it was supposed to begin. We waited and waited and waited until about 4pm. Only one other school had shown up and they eventually found out that the event had been postponed for a bunch of bogus reasons. Supposedly they're going to reschedule but I don't believe it. What a waste.

Home has been really nice. I've already been here for a week and it's flown by. I was expecting it to be weird and overwhelming with the air conditioning, free wireless internet and readily-available hot water but it mostly just feels like a continuation of last summer before I left for Nicaragua. The hard part will be re-adjusting to the inescapable heat, cold showers and pay-by-the-hour Internet cafe, but it shouldn't be too bad. My grandparents and an aunt, uncle and cousin came down to visit from New England which was really nice. I've eaten lots of healthy, grilled (not fried!) food and have spent a lot of time with my family and friends.

With the rain, come the flies...

So I´ve learned that the first few months (May and June) of rainy season are also fly season. Gross! Everyone and their brother has been sick. Mostly just with a cold, but I was lucky enough to get an amoeba and a parasite! I either drank a bad batch of water or the flies contaminated my food. I´m completely fine and recovered now. It really only lasted one morning before the PC docs were able to diagnose it and get me on antibiotics to make everything stop. I feel pretty lucky actually that I made it over 9 months here without getting sick! That might be a Peace Corps Nicaragua record.

School has been on and off due to meetings and ¨actos¨ as usual. This Friday (tomorrow) there is an acto/competition about Carlos Fonseca, an important dead Sandinista. The kicker is that everything´s in ENGLISH! What does that mean? A) That I´ve spent several hours helping kids translate their skits and poems and writing out pages of phonetically-spelled English, not to be confused with Swahili!, and b) that no one is going to understand anything that the kids are saying except for me and my two counterparts. Haha. Should be interesting.

Not much else has been going on. Our kitten has been missing for the past 3 days, so I think it´s official that it´s lost/dead/stolen. We have bad luck with pets here.
My community classes just had another round of tests. Everyone in my more advanced class passed! And only two failed from the other, beginner class. A great improvement from the 50% passing rates on the last tests. Success!
Countdown to when I get home is at 11 days! I can´t wait to see everyone, go to Trader Joes and Target and eat good food!

HELLO rainy season.

Rainy season has officially begun. In fact, it hasn´t stopped downpouring with the exception of 5 minutes here and there for the past 2 days. It rained so hard yesterday that SCHOOL WAS CANCELED. That is not a joke. It rains here for 6 months out of the year, but yesterday it warranted canceling school. Hmm. And I´d thought I´d seen it all in terms of excuses to cancel class. Wrong. The best part is that no one thought to let me know before I trudged out in the rain to walk to school. I put on my hat, raincoat and shoved my bag underneath that coat so it wouldn´t get soaked. 10 minutes later I arrived at school, soaked through to my underwear, at the time when I usually have class to find the teachers sitting in the teachers´ lounge doing nothing and no students in sight. Apparently when it rains really hard the kids don´t show up (some claim their parents won´t allow them to leave the house) because a lot of them have to walk from somewhat far away towns and would arrive soaked. I´m not entirely sure what the solution to this is since it will be raining pretty consistently, or so I imagine, until November. We´ll see.

I haven´t decided yet if I prefer sweating all day long during the dry season or not being able to go anywhere without getting soaked during the wet season. My jeans and sneakers are still soaked through from yesterday morning and are showing no signs of drying in the near future. I haven´t figured out what´s going to happen with the laundry situation either. I can hang my clothes up in my room to dry but only after they´ve dried partially outside so I don´t flood the floors, which won´t happen if it never stops raining. But now it´s really damp and moist inside too with all the rain so it´ll take several days for it all to dry in my room. I´m sure I´ll figure something out in the next few days since the rain is sure to keep up and my pile of dirty clothes is stacking up.

In other news:
-Some family from Managua brought us a kitten to kill the mice (He´s already killed one). His name is ¨Chele¨ which is what they call people with light skin (he´s white and orange).

-I saw someone with a t-shirt from Joe´s Crab Shack the other day. It didn´t say where the restaurant was located, so I just assumed it was Maryland.

-My grandmother and I stole some limones dulces (sweet lemons--cross between an orange and a lemon) from the abandoned yard across the street. My mom told us we were going to get diarrhea from them because they were stolen.

-I´ve implemented assigned seats, a warning system and started giving out stickers to kids with good behavior in my 6th grade class. Results have been incredible and have made the class so much more enjoyable!

-A neighbor and family member left for Costa Rica to work with her husband and left her 3 year old son with us. The 14 year old son pretty much lives on his own and (due to the lack of parents and guidance) is doing poorly in school and has been getting into drugs. Apparently she´s not coming back until December! And I´m not sure if that´s just to visit for Christmas only to return to Costa Rica or if it´s to stay and actually raise her own children...hopefully the latter though I sort of doubt it.

-My mom has converted to gringa guacamole. She´s made it a few times now with my recipe instead of hers!

-I´m officially coming home during our mid-semester vacation. June 28-July 7. I can´t wait!!

Not so fast...

Well, I spoke too soon. Monday was a half day of school because of some meeting that the teachers absolutely needed to hold. Tuesday was a normal, complete day of class (though I guess it´s more normal to miss class than have it). Wednesday was the Mayor´s birthday, and since all of the teachers are really Sandinista like the mayor, they had to celebrate for him at school...another half day of class. Today is the 31st anniversary of my town´s ¨liberation,¨ a.k.a. when the Sandinista´s took over, so there´s no school. And tomorrow, since the kids probably wouldn´t show up since it´s Friday and they didn´t go to school on Thursday, there´s supposedly a meeting, and no school. What a joke.

In other news, some relatives of my host family who live in Managua brough us a kitten. We named it Chele, which is what they call people with white/light skin because he´s white and orange.

Back to work

Matiguas was a blast! I left a very unproductive (as usual) TEPCE early on Friday and got to Matiguas around 3pm. We woke up at 5am the next morning to go to Jocelyn´s family´s farm where we milked cows, rode horses and herded cows! We ate lots of delicious chocolate cake that they make at a bakery nearby her house and went out dancing Saturday night. Sunday we went to a swimming hole called ¨Agua Fria¨ (Cold Water) and amazingly survived the bumpy trip driven by a crazy German guy in his ancient, falling apart car, who works with Jocelyn´s family. Monday morning I bought cuajada (a type of cheese) to bring back to my family. It was a really fun trip and nice to see Jocelyn and Julie. I was still really happy to get back to my family, my mom´s food and my bed (and mosquito net!).

Monday night I resumed my normal work schedule with my community class and Tuesday we finally started up with classes again in the high school, though we´ve already missed some English classes for meetings and doctor´s appointments. I don´t think we´ve ever had a complete week of class without interruption.

Other than that, not much else is new. My mom killed a gigantic spider for my last night that I found in my room. Since it´s been starting to rain all of the animals are coming out of the walls or wherever it was that they were living peacefully without bothering us. I recently found a gigantic colony of ants (huge ones, and some with wings) living in the top of the tank to my toilet, which is now cleaned out and securely sealed shut.

Saturday I have a meeting with the other nearby PCVs in Masachapa, a beach town in the department of Managua. ´Til next time!

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!

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...

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.

Routine established.

I made it through the first week of all my community classes. The youth and adult classes are gigantic (50-60 people in each class) and, surprisingly, the adult class is more difficult to manage than the youth class. The youth pay more attention and don´t talk as much with each other while I´m talking, and for this reason they are already ahead of the adult class, after only 2 days. Still, both classes are way too big and would be so much more productive with smaller numbers. Last night I had a few adults sitting outside the classroom because there wasn´t anymore room inside. The delegate from the Ministry of Education (my main Nica boss) came by to check it out. I think he was a little shocked by the overflowing classroom. Unfortunately, I don´t have any extra time in my schedule to break them up into smaller groups.

The sixth grade classes have been a little more challenging, though I was able to consolidate two groups into one so I have two sections instead of three now. The kids don´t seem to absorb much or anything of what I´m teaching them, despite the fact that children are supposed to be able to learn foreign languages easier.

Sunday was the anniversary of Sandino´s death. Sandino is like Nicaragua´s George Washington, except he led the revolution and started the Sandinista movement. At school yesterday, Monday, to honor this date, there was an ¨acto¨ at school. I felt like I was in East Germany getting ready to go off to war. They played military songs that condemned the gringos/yankees and were chanting things about patriotism, solidarity and, of course, ¨Viva Sandino!¨ Some kids dressed up in military fatigues and the majority of the 600+ students had an FSLN (Sandinista) or Nicaraguan flag. The best part is that they made me sit in front of everyone with the honored guests-- the mayor and the delegate from the Ministry of Education--so I had to feign enjoyment.

I started to think that things with my iffy counterpart were going better until the other day. She came up with excuses for not planning three times in a row. Then she showed me her plan book where she had copied (alone), word for word, from a manual made by Peace Corps that we use for ideas (not entire plans). I asked her nicely if we could do it together next time. We´ll see how that goes.

In other news, I think my pet chicken ran away, was stolen or was eaten by a bigger animal. I haven´t seen her in over 3 days. Her single, working mother (me!) didn´t have enough time to pay attention to her. Oh well...at least I won´t have to deal with convincing people not to eat her.

I just got BUSY!

Holy cow. In the past 24 hours I went from just 17 hours of classes at the high school to 17 hours at the high school plus 15 hours of English classes in the community (1 group of adults, 1 group of kids, 3 groups of 6th graders). I got the mayor to pay for an announcement (a guy in a truck drives through town with a microphone) for my community English class. 115 people came! I divided them into 2 groups of about 55 each, which is a lot, but I´m pretty sure the numbers will dwindle as the class continues. Then, this morning, the principal of my high school and the principal of the elementary/middle school asked if I could teach the sixth graders so they come to high school with a basic knowledge of English. I think it´s all feasible. I should be able to use more or less the same plan for the majority of my classes outside of the high school which will save some time. I´m only here for 2 years so I guess they might as well take advantage!

Everything at the high school has settled down now and is going much more smoothly. The schedules are finally set and I have been CO-planning and CO-teaching, instead of flying solo, with both counterparts. Yay!

Spoke a little too soon

So school has started...sort of. Tuesday, the supposed first day of class, was only what they call here an ¨acto¨ or a form of presentation. It consisted of a prayer (church and state are NOT separate here), 2 piñatas/dance contest, music and a reminder of all the rules that will soon be ignored and not enforced. The second day of school actually started classes, but this week and next are supposed to just be ¨diagnostic testing,¨ or seeing what the students do and don´t remember from last year.

I am going to be teaching first and second year (7th and 8th grade) kids in the high school. When I arrived at school the second day for the morning classes, my counterpart was in a different class and asked me to make up the plan for our next class together. The whole point of the PC TEFL project is to CO-plan and CO-teach so it´s sustainable (when I leave the English teachers can keep doing what we were doing when I was here), so there´s one rule broken (didn´t co-plan). Then, once class started, my counterpart left me in the class alone with 60 kids for about half an hour. Second, and more important, rule broken (didn´t co-teach). Classes in the afternoon with my other counterpart were a little better.

Some of my classes are composed of mostly kids who are repeating a grade. There is even one kid in first year who is in first year for the fourth time! The worst part is that when we ask them what they remember from English class last year, we get blank stares. It´s been a struggle just to get them to spell the numbers from 1-10. So there is lots of room for improvement, from the students to my counterparts. Hopefully once everything at is settled down and organized (they are still fiddling with the schedule) it will be better...

My dad was here in Nicaragua last week. I got to see him and watch some of his surgeries in Managua on Tuesday and Wednesday. Between him and his friend they did 20 knee surgeries in 3 1/2 days! On Friday I brought him back here to my town to meet my family and see where I live. Saturday we went to the Masaya Volcano, Laguna de Apoyo and the market in Masaya. It was really nice to see him and to have him see my new home!

Last weekend four new PC trainees in the health group arrived to my town for their 3 months of training. They all seem really nice so far. I´ve been running with one of them in the mornings.

Hopefully next time I write I´ll be able to report some positive news from the school front.

Work has finally started!

Lots has happened since I wrote last, sorry!

Tyler was here for 11 days visiting. It was great to see him and to show him around what will be my home for the next 2 years. He brought me a ton of stuff, including a lot my sister Cristina sent along (thank you, Cristina!), the ingredients for hummus that I was missing and enough peanut butter to last 2 years. We went up two active volcanoes, swam in the Laguna de Apoyo (200m deep crater lake that used to be a volcano), visited my friend Julie in Leon and went to the beach, and went to Granada and Masaya. If you have facebook, you can see the pictures he took.

Everything at school started, finally, this past Monday. It´s just registration and teacher meetings, but at least it´s something to do! The first day of school is February 2nd.

A volunteer that lived with my family during his 3 months of training, Luciano, came back to visit. He helped me catch a lonely, lost baby chicken that had been wandering around the house for a few days. It´s now my pet/daughter and is named Lucy in honor of Luciano, her godfather. Ha! It´s been a blast. She eats rice out of my hand. We recently just untied her so she can wander around the yard and the town all day, but she´s learned where her home is and comes back every night to sleep.
My host grandmother´s brother died the other day. He had been sick with cancer for a while so it´s good that he´s not suffering anymore, but the viewing, funeral and burial were really sad. Viewings here are 24+ hour events. The whole town is invited, even the drunks, and sits in and outside the house in plastic chairs for as long as they want, until the funeral mass starts the next day. I went with my host mom and sister at 8am and came back to the house at 2am, but my mom stayed until 5am! Now that he´s been buried, they have 9 days of praying sessions at his house, which my grandmother will go to.

It´s actually been pretty chilly here at night. I had to shut the window to my bedroom for the first time ever...and I´ve slept with socks a couple of times!
My dad gets to Managua with a friend to do/explain some knee surgeries on Sunday. I hope to visit him in the city while he´s there, before he comes to my town for the weekend!

Happy Holidays!

I made it through my first Christmas away from my family alive and well, though a little nostalgic and jealous that they got 2 feet of snow in Maryland and now they´re all skiing!

For the 9 days before Christmas, there was mass at 6am, which I thought was unnecessarily early until I learned that it used to be at 4am. I only managed to get out of bed to go twice. My host mom brought noise makers and maracas and had no shame about making as much noise as possible, along with some neighborhood kids. Apparently these masses used to be more fun but since it got pushed back to 6am a lot of people chose not to attend in protest.

My two best friends here, Julie and Jocelyn, who were here with me during training, came back to visit for Christmas so we could all be together. We made hummus, ate a whole pack of oreos dunked in peanut butter and got pizza. We stayed up until midnight on Christmas eve because that´s what they do here. Christmas morning was a little anti-climactic, as Christmas always is. We didn´t go to 9am mass like we were going to because my host mom and sister slept in late. Everyone opened their presents and then we just sat around the house doing not much of anything all day. I got to talk to just about everyone in my family which was really nice. We went dancing at the local disco that night with my cousins - together we comprised about 45% of the people who were there.

In other news, I saw a scorpion on the sidewalk the other day, the big green bird my host mom just bought somehow disappeared, and I just got a haircut for 50 cents.
Tyler, my boyfriend (for those who don´t know), is coming tomorrow!

Operation Hummus = Success

I finally hunkered down and bought the absolute minimum ingredients to make hummus, Nica style. 2 cans of garbanzo beans, a lemon and almost a whole head of garlic. No sesame tahini or olive oil, and I used the blender. And it worked! Even better is that Nicaraguans have a weird aversion to garlic, so I don´t have to worry about anyone eating any of it.

So last Monday was the Purísima. Several families set up altars of the Virgin Mary in their homes. A ¨professional¨ altar-making guy actually came to our house to help out. He set up a big screen of mountain scenery behind the Virgin Mary statue and put a ton of flowers that were cut down from nearby trees around it. For the past week my family had been collecting food, candy, plastic cups and bowls, little towel, toys, trinkets, keychains, combs, earrings and whatever else they could think of to hand out to the masses of people that would come. At 7pm we officially opened the doors. Groups of 2-10 people came in one at a time, stood in front of the altar, and sang sections of songs dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Before anyone could sing, however, someone had to yell, ¨Quien causa tanta allegría?¨ (Who causes so much happiness) and everyone would respond ¨La concepción de Maria” (The Conception of Mary). After they sang what minimal segment of the song they deemed deserving of their ¨brindi¨ (treat), my host sister or mom would hand each person a little gift, which was picked appropriately and meticulously based on age and gender. For a good majority of the night there was a massive mob of people waiting outside for their turn to come in and sing. Unlike trick-or-treating, everyone partakes in the Purísima- parents, babies, small children, teens, old people, town drunks, non-Catholics who don´t know the songs. For a lot of people, the prospect of free food for their families is worth waiting in lines with their small children until midnight. I put up some pictures and a video on facebook if you want a better idea of the whole ordeal.

Tuesday was the actual Immaculate Conception. We went to a 2-hour mass in the morning and then packed up and went to the nearby river. The river is conveniently located behind a family´s house, and they take the liberty of charging an admission fee. They have essentially claimed ownership of the river, which I didn´t know was possible. It was really beautiful- situated in the middle of dense jungle. But then all the noisy kids came, and the drunks, ruining the peace.

My host mom bought a large green bird from a man walking through the streets carrying a shoebox of them. We already had 2 little green birds, but the anomoly of this one being able to talk (supposedly, it hasn´t said a word yet) was a selling point. The 2 birds got kicked out of their cage to accommodate the new one; they now roam around the kitchen floor trying not to get stepped on.

My host sister and I put up the fake Christmas tree the other day. Complete with lights and tons of decorations. Wasn´t quite the same as a real tree with Christmas music playing in the background, but it will suffice.

I´ve been walking a few days a week with my host mom. She´s showed me a bunch of new paths and windy roads that pass through neighboring villages. Yesterday we stopped at a sugar cane mill. We walked right up and poked around, watching the workers make candy/a block of pure sugar with it. My mom walked right up to a big vat of the processed sugar, stuck her finger in, dug out a big glob, handed it to me, and then repeated for herself. No one thought anything of it. We also passed by a house that sells milk and I carried back a Coca Cola liter of warm milk, fresh from the udder.

I went to a rosary praying session (they have become increasingly frequent since the Immaculate Conception) with my sister yesterday and they gave everyone a plastic cup of candy. Included in mine were two gold coin candies, which I assumed were chocolate. I got back and took out my secret stash of peanut butter to dunk the chocolate in. When I unwrapped it, to my surprise, it was pink! Gum. Talk about disappointing.

This morning when I was running I saw a guy wearing Boston College athletic shorts, almost identical to the ones I have. I was so excited. I stopped and said, ¨your shorts are from my university!!¨ He sort of laughed with me and looked at me like I had ten heads/was white, not to mention I was running at 6am on a Sunday. Anti-climactic.

Tomorrow I´m going to the beach with the teachers from the school for their end of the year party...even though I didn´t teach this past year, they invited me anyway.

Officially a PCV

As of a week ago Monday I am officially a PCV instead of a PCT. We finished training and swore-in on November 23rd. The next two days was the All Volunteer Conference, where all 170+ PCVs in Nicaragua got together to talk about the meeting´s theme, food security, and to share ideas about projects, good recipes, etc. I learned that making hummus in a blender instead of a cuisinart, and without any sesame tahini, is possible. Hopefully I´ll try it out soon. Despite chowing down on two containers of hummus I found in a Managua grocery store, I am still having withdrawal.
A couple weeks ago I met with two people from Wisconsin who have been working on a Sister City Project with some nearby communities. They have built schools and latrines and are currently focused on getting materials and snacks to the primary school kids and training the teachers. They want me to help with the teacher training. It should be really interesting. The communities are really poor and isolated. The teachers in the school live in my town and commute there for the week--travel between here and there is limited and complicated. The teachers arrive on Monday afternoon, teach on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and leave on Friday morning, leaving the kids with 3 of 5 days of class...if they´re lucky.

The U.S. ambassador in Nicaragua talked to us on one of our last days of training. He was surprisingly frank about U.S.-Nicaraguan relations (they´re not the greatest). It was fascinating to hear his side of the story and compare it to what I hear from the people I live with or see on the news. The upcoming presidential elections in 2011 will be interesting to say the least.

My last day at home before becoming a PCV my host mom decided to help me make one of my favorite concoctions-chicken, broccoli and pasta-though I was mostly just doing what she told me to do. I´m pretty sure she doesn´t think I can cook. It was entertaining. First, we used chao mein noodles. The chicken was boiled and then shredded (I left it in too big of chunks, my host mom shredded it again after I finished). She cooked the broccoli (with celery) until it was mushy. Then she proceeded to re-cook/fry the chicken with mustard, 1000 island dressing and (I think) chicken sausage. It didn´t taste too terrible, and everyone actually liked it, but it was a far cry from anything I´d had in mind. Nonetheless, they were convinced it was Italian food...but also kept calling it ¨chao mein.¨ The next night all of us PCTs were in Managua and went to a real Italian restaurant for dinner. I got pasta with broccoli and tomato sauce...and the USAID guy who was there with us paid for everything!

I saw an old woman wearing a shirt that said ¨Everyone loves a drunk girl¨ the other day. I´m not sure where they find shirts like that, but they´re everywhere. I like to assume that no one really knows what they mean.

Monday is the Purisima, or Immaculate Conception. From what I´ve gathered, it´s like Halloween, but you have to sing for your candy, it´s not just for kids, and it´s religious. We´ll see...

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.