I know it has been a while...

sorry guys...i´ve been pretty bad about updating this thing. where to start..?

this past week we each went to go visit a current volunteer. i didn´t have too far to travel, while many others in my group were taking 8 hour bus trips to exotic locations. if you couldn´t tell, i was pretty upset with the situation at first, not because i was staying in the same department, but because i´d already visited and observed this volunteer. i was really looking forward to checking out how another volunteer lived, but didn´t get the opportunity...it turned out to be a good time, nontheless.

crap, i forgot to bring the picture of the scorpion. sorry.

we have a youth group in our community of about 15 kids. they laugh at us when we try and communicate. anyway, we decided to plant trees at the institute as a community project, but the first two times, none of the youth showed up to plant. nicas are interesting in that way...they´ll swear up and down that they´ll come to a meeting even if they have no intention of going. it´s kind of frustrating. in the end, we had to go to their school and take them out of class to plant the trees. good story, eh?

so we have our second class this week. the theme is ¨my life in 10 years.¨ i´ll let you all know how it goes on tuesday.

we went to an active volcano yesterday: volcan masaya. it was pretty cool. here are some pictures:

we went on a little bit of a hike, and this is what the volcano looks like from a distance.

these are the chicago peeps. on the left is danica, owen is in the middle, and i´m on the other end. in nicaragua, if you want to point at something, you use your lips similar to what we´re doing in this picture...

this is a picture of the majority of nica 47. i think there are 8 people missing...
oh, and i was going to have someone send me a pumice stone, but i found a great one on the volcano.

yesterday we also celebrated avi´s birthday. it got a little out of hand...we all drank too much, but had a good time overall. kat´s on the left, then me, then owen, and bobby is on the right with the dog.

So, we get all the info on the possible sites next week, and we find out where we´re going the following week. we don´t really have a say in where we go, but we do get to discuss with the country director where we´d like to go and why. we´re all super curious about where we´ll be living for the next two years. once we get our final site placements, we go and visit for a few days and stay with the family with which we´ll be living for at least the first 6 weeks of service...

first day of class...

i had my first class today:
-51 students
-51 students in a classroom the size of my old cube
-51 students in a classroom the size of my old cube and all with mouths that talk out of turn

no, it wasn´t bad. i think it probably could´ve gone better, but for my first class, i´ll take it. my facilitator said that i sounded confident in my spanish...and, well...i´m glad it sounded that way. i´m pretty encouraged, actually. i´m excited to be a teacher, but it´s definitely a lot of work.

oh, and i had my first encounter with a scorpion. i didn´t get stung, but i have some pictures that i´ll post next time i get to the internet.

another note: i eat avocados every day that are the size of my head.

miss you all!

i´ve survived my first hurricane...

well, i´m surviving it right now. it´s only a category 1, but it´s pretty crazy. i guess it´s the first tropical storm of 2008 - hurricane alma - and it´s about the size of the entire country of nicaragua.

did i forget to mention the fiesta we went to..? the one where the bouncers wouldn´t let us leave..? yeah, that was pretty cool.

next week we start teaching in classrooms...in spanish...we need to fill 45 minutes with material while keeping 15-16 year olds entertained. my first class is on tuesday, and needless to say, i´m more than a bit nervous.

ok, must get back ´home.´

oh, and ps, i love the letters. keep ém coming!

another day in san juan de oriente...

I can’t believe I’ve only been gone for 2 weeks – it feels like ages ago that I was waiting until the last minute to pack for this adventure. Which, by the way, I did a crappy job of doing… But anyway, this is where I live:

Yeah, that´s a volcano.

My room temp was about 80 last night, and I was definitely wearing sweatpants. They say it typically takes a person 2 weeks to fully adjust to a climate, and I’m pretty sure I’m close to achieving that goal. That’s not to say I’m not sweating in the 95% humidity, 95 degree heat during the day, it’s just a small milestone of the many to come…hopefully.

My host family is awesome. We can’t really communicate that well (maybe that’s why we all get along..?), but we most definitely try. It’s interesting, living with a family, because I haven’t really lived under someone else’s roof for a solid 6 years. I can’t say I miss the “where are you going?” and the “what time will you return?” questions, but I imagine it could be much worse. Oh, and I just found out that my family has a finca, so my host brother and I are going to check out the mango groves and avocado trees after my classes today. Yeah, I have classes on Saturdays.

These are two girls that live with me:


Speaking of food, pineapples are white here, not yellow. They’re just as sweet, but somehow quite a bit more tasty. They seem fresher, just like the avocados (which happen to have bright green casings here). I drink freshly blended juice for breakfast and dinner each day. On the contrary, I’ve never had so much fried food in my life. Gallo pinto, although really only rice and beans, is fried, and we consume that at least twice each day. Oh, and I think I had an omelet with hot dog the other morning, but it could’ve been some other form of mystery meat. Back to the fried food topic - I’m pretty sure that if my host mom wanted to attempt to burn down our house, she’d have enough grease in the kitchen to give it a wicked shot. Wait, does concrete melt..?

Oh, and sorry for the atypical vocab word - did I mention that one of my current sitemates is from Boston..?

So I sleep under a mosquito net, which makes it difficult for flying beasts to penetrate my sleeping bubble. Inevitably, one or two find a way in throughout the course of my 7-hour toss-and-turn-fest. The other night though, it wasn’t the dengue-carrying, malaria-spreading fiend that attacked me – it was a spider that was hanging out in my sheets. And where did this frisky little spider bite me, you ask? Let´s just say it wasn´t on my legs or feet...
Whoever said that roosters crow in the morning was so wrong. Last night, for instance, the roosters started in at 10:30pm, and stopped at around 7:30am. Nonetheless, it´s still a beautiful country:

This is a lagoon that was formed by a volcano - once we finally got down there it was amazing, but the hike back up was treachorous.

Oh, and one of the guys in my group is named Avi. Every time I see him I say “Avi-ously.” I’m really annoyed with myself for doing it, but I just can’t help it…luckily he doesn’t hate me…yet.

More soon!

Spanish class for how many hours a day?

6. Need I say more?

San Juan de Oriente is great so far. The people here are so accommodating, and besides the occasional cat call, I have nothing negative to say about Nicaragua. Well, maybe the heat...

There is a transportation strike going on right now, so we cant do much besides wander around our town. If youve seen anything about it on CNN, Im sure it was about the one violent act that occured. Honestly though, I couldnt feel safer where I am right now.

Ill update ASAP.

Oh, and I totally had pancakes for breakfast the other day. Score.

Miss you all!

i like rice and beans

I arrived at my host family’s house yesterday with a greeting from my Spanish teacher. Yeah, that’s right, I’m living with her parents. No pressure to learn the language from my new sister or anything…

I’m living in San Juan de Oriente for the next few months of training. It’s a small community of about 4,000 people. There are 3 other trainees that are living within walking distance, and about 4,000 little ceramic shops in between my house and the nearest trainee. No lie. Even better, here is what comes up if you wikipedia the name of the town:

"The patron saint festival in San Juan de Oriente celebrates the birth of John the Baptist on the week of June 24. The celebration consists of many processions with statues of John the Baptist, fireworks, and most famous of all "chilillo" a dance/sport where two "chinegros" use dried bovine penises fashioned in the form of a saber complete with leather handguard to whip their opponent. After a few seconds somebody in the costume of a yegüita (mare) enters between the two people ending the bout. While no winners or losers are declared, the hard whipping does leave marks or scars."
...
The weather is hot. And by hot, I mean disgusting. Everyone is constantly sweating – even the locals. The humidity is stifling and I’m pretty sure that all of my clothes, shoes and books will be moldy within the hour. It rained last night which cooled my room from 89.9 degrees to 86.8. I expect I would’ve slept well with the 3.1 degree drop in temperature, but the roosters started in at 2am, after the dogs had been incessantly barking since about midnight. There were fireworks going off all night which were so loud they sounded like gunshots through my half-open window. I kept having dreams that I was getting up to grab my earplugs, and somehow never made it to my “closet.” Speaking of my room, my mosquito net is pretty cool. It’s this really ugly shade of green that compliments my skin tone perfectly.

We have running water every other day, and have electricity every day after 11am. I’m not sure exactly what “running water” means here, because the toilet doesn’t flush and we bathe with buckets.

Food: for lunch yesterday I ate rice, beans, chicken and potatoes. For dinner we had gallo pinto (beans and rice), with bologna tacos made with homemade corn tortillas. I know it sounds strange, but they were pretty good. For breakfast I had rice and beans in a tortilla. Maybe I’ll just update the food section if I ever eat anything other than rice, beans or tortillas...

The kids here are adorable, and so photogenic. I want one.

More soon.

Love and miss you all!

san juan de oriente

safe and sound in a beautiful country...

i'm moving in with my host family tomorrow - they live in a relatively small community called san juan de oriente. the town is known for the pottery, so i'm super pumped to get my hands dirty if given the opportunity. oh, and my nica mom makes her own peanut butter and all of the other trainees are super jealous.

my computer is dying, so i'll write more asap.

miss and love you all!