Hot Hot Hot

It's been in the 100's the past few days, so basically it's ridiculously hot.  Walking home from the instituto is usually good exercise, but now I'm thinking it could be dangerous as I walk up and down hills and arrive home drenched in sweat with a near purple face.  I have been using my umbrella for shade--never thought I would have to do that, being from Oregon.  At first it was a little embarrassing--who uses umbrellas for anything else than rain, right?  Wrong.  Umbrellas save lives here.  My umbrella will probably protect me from the sun more than the rain here in Nicaragua.  When it is the rainy season, it rains sideways anyway so an umbrella doesn't really help unless you don't have a jacket.  Anyway, because it's so darn hot here, I invested in a fan for my bedroom.  Wow, what a difference that makes!  I can now sleep a little more comfortably.  We all know how miserable it is trying to fall asleep in unbearable heat, right?  Well, I'm sure you can imagine (all of you who are still in the cold months).  I definitely feel a lot better.  Hazzell said she's gonna sneak into my room to sleep with the fan haha

Baseball

This weekend one of my counterparts invited me to go to a baseball game in Boaco.  He has actually invited me several times, but I've always been busy, but this Saturday I had time to go :)  It was actually a pretty fun time.  The teams consist of players from age 16 up to 42 and they wear real uniforms.  It almost looked professional.  Anyway, there were a couple of exciting things that involved foul balls.  There are fences up to protect the crowd, but the fencing is a little too open so a couple foul balls hit the fence and went straight through.  Yikes!  One ball got stuck in the fence and 4 kids ran, jumped onto the fence, and climbed 15 feet up to fight for the ball while the crowd cheered them on.  It scared me a little, but they made it down just fine. 

I bought some shaved ice at the game which cooled me down.  I wish I had some of that right now as I sit in the 98 degree heat :(  Ugh!  I need to buy a fan! 

Workshop

This morning we had teaching training at our school and I was asked to give a workshop for the English teachers on communicative activities.  I planned things and got excited and presented today.  Well, it was going well, but the teachers kept interrupting me and trying to suggest things before I was finished explaining things.  That was frustrating, but I kept my cool and asked them to wait a little so I could finish my point and then we would discuss what they wanted to add.  My workshop took a lot longer than I had anticipated because of all the distractions, but it was good because they didn’t plan for anyone else to do anything for the rest of the training.  I did get the teachers to sign up for a future workshop that Andrea (another TEFL PCV in Tecolostote, Boaco) and I will be giving about our PC TEFL manual that includes activities and lesson ideas for English teachers.  I hope that one goes well :)  

The rest of the day was good though.  One of my friends came in to town to hang out a little and I also talked to friends on the phone to share our TEPCE (monthly school meeting) stories. 

Babies!

A couple from the finca (farm/ranch) has been staying at our house because the wife was pregnant and about to have her baby soon.  She came home from the hospital Sunday with her baby girl.  I think they’ll be staying here for about a month longer with the baby, which should be interesting :) 

 

I still haven’t met my little “nephew” (Ruth’s baby), but I’ve been enjoying getting to know this little one…they haven’t named her yet, but she sure is cute :) 

I’m trying to convince them to name her Alycia because that’s my middle name and it can sound Latina.  The lady helping with the baby said she liked the name.  I told them I would be the godmother haha  Look, don’t we make a good pair?

Let there be internet!

Finally got the internet hooked up in my house! Yay :)

So vaga

When someone is vaga or vago (for men), it means that they are always out and about, not staying at home. The word actually means “wanderer”. Anyway, my host family teases me about being vaga since I like to travel and volunteers swap stories to see who’s the most “vago” of us all. It’s pretty funny. Well, this past week and a half, I’ve been pretty vaga. I did have a legitimate excuse for most of it though :) First, we had a language workshop planned for Monday-Thursday of last week in our training towns in Masaya (and Carazo for the environment volunteers). Volunteers with lower than the advanced language level went back for grammar classes and to see how we have improved since our last language interview back in the end of November. Well, since we were planning on going back to the Masaya area with a lot of others, we decided to go down a little early and spend some time at the beach in Carazo. A small group of us headed out to La Boquita, Carazo Sunday morning and enjoyed the cool waters. It was so nice!


We left in the afternoon to go to our training towns since we had class the next morning. Kellie and I were staying with different families than who we had for training, since our families didn’t have volunteers this time. What Peace Corps does is when the new group of trainees are on their site visit (checking out their site for their 2 years service for a week), they send the volunteers to stay with the families the trainees have as sort of an exchange. So, we got to go back to living with a family where they cook all your meals and you have to remember to tell them where you’re going and when you’ll be back…oh the memories of training :) Anyway, we made it back and got to meet our families and get settled in before going to bed.

The next few days were like a whirlwind of activities, classes, and grammar grammar grammar! We had class Monday through Thursday, 8am-4pm. However, the days went by really fast because these classes were pretty laid back in the sense that we were more comfortable in our language skills and asked a lot of questions about things we had heard in our sites and how we could use certain phrases. It was really interesting and kinda fun to be back in class :) We also had out favorite teacher so that made it even better.

During the week, we made sure to get out in the evenings to hang out with our friends in the area. We met up in Catarina for smoothies, went to Masaya to purchase some things in the market, and hung out with our Nica friends. I thoroughly enjoyed it all, but like I said, it went by so fast, too fast! By Thursday, we were rushing to pack up our things and say goodbye to head up to Managua for the night. When Kellie and I were saying goodbye to a friend, he happened to be talking to another friend who was also going to Managua, but driving his truck there. So, he offered to give us a ride. Yes!! What a blessing :)

Once we got up to Managua, we checked into the hotel and I ran to the hot shower! Oh my gosh I forgot how amazing a hot shower is. I could have stayed in there for hours. But, I was also pretty hungry so we got ready and headed out to find a place for dinner. It was nice to be with friends and relax after a long week.

The next day a group of us traveled up to La Dalia, Matagalpa where my friend Sam lives. We wanted to check out his new place and he wanted to have a little housewarming party. It takes quite a while to get up there, but we finally made it and got some food in our bellies and then the party started. We had music, someone brought Christmas lights to decorate, and Sam’s sister sent him finger-stache tattoos. I’m not sure if you’ve seen these before, but they’re pretty popular back home, as I've seen many pictures on Facebook.

We also danced and sang karaoke to top off the night. It was a blast!

In the morning we made pancakes and headed down the windy, bumpy road to Matagalpa. We checked into La Buena Onda hostel which is co-owned by a past Peace Corps volunteer. This is the hostal that I stayed at in October with other Peace Corps volunteers when we did our teaching practicum week in Matagalpa. It is a beautiful place and so much fun. We explored Matagalpa and had dinner at the Italian restaurant close by. I had a delicious calzone—Mmmm :) Then, after our food settled, we went out to a discoteca for night of dancing.

We went out to breakfast in the morning in town and then came back to pack up our things. We had some time before we needed to leave so we watched a movie in the hostel and then took a taxi to the bus terminal. I left with Greg, who lives in Santa Lucia, Boaco, and we said goodbye to the others. We took a bus down to San Benito in order to catch a bus heading toward Boaco. Well, the buses are always slow and late on Sundays, so we waited for quite awhile. Then, the bus finally came, but it was extremely full so we couldn’t get on. Other buses passed by but they weren’t going where we needed to go. We finally jumped onto an express bus headed to Juigalpa because these ones pass by the empalme of Boaco so we could get off there and then get a bus into Boaco. This bus was also full, but not many people were standing, just the seats were full, AND it was air-conditioned :)

We got off at the empalme and waited. The Boaco bus passed by again and there was no way we could fit. We met an Irish guy living in Boaco and we were going to share a taxi, but they were really expensive and then most weren’t going back to Boaco or told us that so they could take Nicas instead of gringos… :( Anyway, a bus to Boaco finally passed by and we ran, pushed, and grabbed a seat. Finally! What an ordeal! I got home and was exhausted, so I threw down my backpack and took a shower and then sat on the couch and showed some of my purchases to Jasser.

It was quite a week, but it was so much fun and definitely worth it! I was so glad to see so many friends and spend some quality time with them :) I’m ok with being vaga.

Baby Boy!

No, not mine haha  But, my host sister, Ruth, had her baby yesterday!  She had Dylan Osmani yesterday in Granada (where she lives) and I'm waiting for them to come to Boaco :)  Can't wait to see the little boy.  Here's a picture that Jasser posted on his facebook page:

Internet

I`ve gone to the internet/phone provider here in town and arranged to get the internet set up in my house.  Yay!  I did that Friday and they told me they would contact me within 72 hours.  Well, I finally got a call Tuesday afternoon saying it was ready...but my host mom didn´t really understand what they meant, so  Wednesday morning I went there and we picked up the router to set up.  I followed the directions, but not all the lights were on so it wouldn´t work :(  We called the tech line and they told us to do a few things, but it still didn´t work.  So, they said they would send someone that day or the next.  Today I had to come to the instituto, so hopefully they won´t come while I´m gone because they won´t be able to set it up without my computer... gosh, it´s like waiting for the electrician or plumber, right?  I hope I can get the internet set up soon--it will make my graduate research a little easier :)

Dia de la mujer (Day for Women)

Yesterday we celebrated women, which is actually pretty cool in a culture that is dominated by males. They had a little meeting in the beginning of school with the teachers to thank the women teachers and to pray for them. Then, they gave us a longer break in the middle of the day and gave us some snacks to celebrate. They handed out little pink ribbons for us to wear on our shirts for the day. It was so cute to hear the students telling me “felicidades profe” and I got some hugs from the girls, which melted my heart :) A boy in one of my classes gave me some flowers that he picked from a bush—so cute.

I taught 4 classes that day and I was feeling so great up until that last class. 8D is not my favorite class. During the other classes, the students laughed, had fun, and even told me they liked my class. Well, 8D was asleep. One student answered my questions while the others stared into space, played with their cell phones, and copied homework for other classes. I tried to make the class more interesting and I had taught this lesson with other sections and the students enjoyed it. I even taught the lesson with a class of 50 students and it went really well. However, this class not so much, and there were only 30 students. They were disrespectful—didn’t listen to me and kept sneaking their cell phones out and doing math after I told them this was English class. It didn’t help that my counterpart kept “stepping out” of class so he wasn’t there to help me with discipline. To make things worse, I had them using magazine pictures to describe people, as I had done with the other section, and they drew on my pictures. This was really frustrating because now I can’t use those ones again. Instead of doing the assignment, they goofed off and ruined my materials. Ugh! I’m glad I got to go home after that. It’s too bad that the school day had to end like that because the rest of the day was good and I felt confident about my lessons. I’ll just focus on the good :)

Celebration

This week began the celebration of the city of Boaco’s 116th anniversary. We had an assembly at the school and the students gave the teachers gifts that were from Boaco—t-shirts, hats, bags, mugs with Boaco things on them. I need to find out where I can get my hands on some of these items because they were pretty neat :)

The town has been pretty alegre (happy) with all of the celebrations going on—there’s a fair in the central park, rides in the field by the Instituto and concerts and dance performances in the park. There wasn’t school yesterday because of the anniversary celebration so I went with Hazzell and her friends to the aguas termales (hot springs pools). It was pretty fun, even though I was hanging out with a bunch of high schoolers haha After we got back I did a little English tutoring and then I went to a dance performance in the park with Jasser and one of his friends where they had a folklore dance group from Managua.

Then there was also a concert in the park. It got pretty crazy as they started throwing people up into the air and some people jumped off the speakers into the crowd. We stayed further back in the crowd.

It was all fun, but it was a little weird because nobody was dancing. I was tapping my feet and swaying a little to the music and then I looked around and everybody was standing completely still—some were singing along. It was so weird because it was music with a good beat and they liked the music, but apparently Nicas don’t dance at concerts, only in clubs? I started dancing a little and trying to get Jasser to dance too, but he was too embarrassed haha Oh well.

Saturday night we went to the carnival games. I was a little hesitant to get on the rides, but watched others for awhile. I did join Jasser and his friends on some rides, but it was so funny. Like many things in Nicaragua, it was very unorganized. They did have tickets to buy and use on the rides, but the rides didn’t have lines. There weren’t bars or gates holding people back from the rides so when the ride stopped, the people ran to find an open seat or push the other people off who had just ridden. It was crazy! Walt Disney would have had a fit!

I did enjoy some of the rides, although the bumper cars were pretty jerky and didn’t have seatbelts. There was a ride that I refused to go on, but many people, beyond their better judgment, decided to ride. It was one of those big bowl type things that people sit on the edge and hold on the bars as it spins and the centrifugal force is supposed to hold you to the sides, you know without seatbelts or bars or anything in front of you. Well, the thing spins, and then bounces, so the people did their best to hold on as their legs were flailing about and their bodies bounced up and down on the hard plastic seats. Oh, and here’s what you were waiting for, some people actually lost their grips in all of this and fell off the seats into the middle as the ride continued. But no, they didn’t stop the ride; they just watched the people struggle to climb back to the seat or fall more toward the middle and fall victim to the laughter by the onlookers. I kinda felt sorry for them, but did they really not see that coming? Later on in the evening, Jasser and two of his friends decided to take on the challenge of the ride. Jasser and one of his friends slide of their seats and they had a chain holding onto others’ legs to keep them from sliding into the middle. They eventually got back to their seats without too much injury. Every person I saw exiting that ride was examining their arms, legs, and neck to check for bruises and pain. Hmmm…really, people?! Needless to say, I did NOT go on this ride. Here are some pictures of what we did do though:

This is the same ride as the last picture, we're just upside down and spinning backwards...felt dizzy after this one!

The smell of horse droppings lingered through the air Sunday morning as the horses filed into the streets for the hίpico, which is a parade of horses which ends in the central park where there’s a big celebration. It felt like a rodeo and the seeing all the cowboys and cowgirls got me excited a little jealous that I didn’t have boots, a hat, and belt buckle to show off. Jasser informed me that the celebration in July is bigger and I can wear my cowgirl getup then :) I’m looking forward to that!

The Boaqueños lived up to the Nicaraguan standard of tardiness as we sweated in the heat of the day waiting for the parade to get organized. After waiting around for a couple of hours and watching the disorganization, I realized it was just a bunch of people on horses drinking beer so it wasn’t all that exciting anymore. We did go up to the park and hang out for awhile and take pictures and danced a little, but apparently if you dance in the street people think you’re drunk…I thought it was a big fiesta, go figure. We went to a place later to go dancing, but I came back early because I had to be at the Instituto this morning at 7am. It was so nice when I got home because we live just far enough away from the fiestas that it was quiet. However, at 11:30pm I awoke to loud, live music. What?! I got up and looked outside and there was a band playing on the porch of our neighbors house. Are you kidding me? They decided to start at 11:30pm? Fortunately, it didn’t go past midnight, but still…

All in all, the anniversary celebration was pretty fun and I enjoyed celebrating with Jasser and his friends and experiencing it all.

Surprise!

I went to the Instituto yesterday for the afternoon class with my new counterpart. She had been gone last week but fortunately she was here this week. So, she had told me before what she was going to teach and had asked me to help with pronunciation. I had expected her to teach the lesson and for me to jump in and practice pronouncing the new vocabulary, and then she would continue. However, I sat down in the class and she introduced me, wrote down some sentences on the board and then asked me to come up and handed me the marker. Surprise! I taught the rest of the class. I made the lesson interactive and the students even laughed a couple of times, and it was appropriate laughter :) I’m really glad that I have had teaching experience because this would have totally freaked me out before. It’s pretty intimidating standing in the front of a class full of 50 students who don’t speak your first language, and then try teaching without a plan. Fortunately, it was only a 45 minute class and not a bloque, which is 90 minutes. After that class was the next section of the same grade (7th) so I taught the same lesson again. I thought this would be a little boring having to do the same lesson again, but it was good because I changed a few things to improve the lesson. My counterpart told me she really liked the lesson and I felt good about it too. It wasn’t the best lesson, but good for improvising :)

P.S. Yesterday was also exciting because two students saw me walking through town and called out “Hola profe!” (profe=profesora= teacher) to me. I’ve always heard kids saying that to my counterparts, but now it was for me :)

6 Months!

I can’t believe half of a year has already gone by. February was like a bat of an eye and now it’s March. Whoa!

The school year has started out slowly, as I had expected, and today we had an assembly where the principal gave a short speech about completing the first month of the school year and starting month two. It’s kinda funny because the students have only had about 9 days of school so far, and most of it is review, but whatever. The assembly lasted about an hour, meaning that the entire first period was gone and about half of the second too. Along with classes starting late and doing a prayer, singing the national anthem, and taking roll for a 40 student class, there were only 20 minutes left of what should have been a 90 minute class. This drives me crazy, but I just have to get used to not following a schedule and losing class time.

This past weekend since I was feeling better, I traveled over to Leon to visit friends and hang out with other volunteers. We had such a good time and there was only one other TEFL volunteer (Sam), but lots of environment PCVs. We went to a movie, the beach, shopped a little in town, and danced into the wee hours of the morning. I’m extremely sun burnt, but I’m still glad I went. It was a nice weekend to celebrate 6 months of being here in Nicaragua.

Today I went to the Instituto (I missed the bus by a few minutes so I had to take a taxi) and observed classes and helped out a little. I was informed by one of my counterparts that since I came in the morning and I was staying for an afternoon class, I got to eat lunch with the teachers…for free! Woo! That means I’ll get free lunch 2 days a week. :)

One of the teachers in my school came up to me in the afternoon and asked if I could help her with some English work from her weekend class she had been taking. I agreed, and met her after her class. She was really sweet and excited for me to be helping her because she said she felt lost in her class. I had already been at the Instituto since 7am, and it was about 4pm when I told her that we would have to continue tomorrow or another time—the students came into the classroom for their next class so that allowed me to make the transition and leave. I invited her to my community English class that I’m starting next week, so that should be fun. I’ve also been helping my host cousin (who has a daughter in one of my classes at the Instituto) with her English homework from a weekend class and she’ll be attending my class. I’m excited to get it started. We’re going to meet for about an hour and a half, 2 days a week. I’ll let you know how it goes…