Life of Luxury

Sunday morning I got up and ready to go to Masaya to meet up with our counterpart. I went to Kellie’s and then we waited at the church in town. We found out that our counterpart’s cousin drives a taxi so she had him come pick us up and take us to her house in Masaya, which was really nice. We had a private taxi ride (with a safe driver) and didn’t have to crowd next to anyone on this hot day. Lovely. We arrived at her doorstep and we took a seat in the front room. It was pretty big and full of rocking chairs (these are a necessity in every house here). We met her mom and grandma and chatted with them for a little. Our counterpart’s grandma set up a fan by us—I think Nicaraguans assume we gringos need fans in this heat, which I guess is true haha We talked with our counterpart and somehow we got on the topic of cake and we said that we liked cake too. She told us to wait a minute and she left the room. When she came back, she said that her aunt was going to make a cake and it would be ready by 2pm. What?! This was pretty darn funny, but who can say no to cake? She then woke up her toddler to get her ready and we met her husband. Then, we headed out to the market. We wanted to look for leather sandals and I needed to get another mouthwash (this is pretty darn expensive here, because not many people buy it). We cruised around the market, tried on sandals, and then Kellie and I bought matching ones.

I also bought some small purple maracas that say Nicaragua on them. We were also looking at some earrings and then our counterpart told us her friend had a shop in the market with jewelry so we went over there. As we were looking at this collection, our counterpart told us that she wanted to buy us earrings and one of the cool wooden bracelets there. Well, cool. We picked out earrings and bracelets, and then got a bracelet for Jess since she was at home sick.

After we got what we needed in that market, our counterpart wanted to show us the other market in town, which is known as the tourist market. We took a coche (horse-drawn carriage) over to the other market, which was a fun experience. The difference between the two markets is remarkable—the tourist one is much nicer, cleaner, less crowded, more expensive, and has police guards. This one is actually called the old market because it’s inside what kind of looks like a colonial castle without a roof.

We looked around for awhile, but of course didn’t buy anything because it’s a lot more expensive. *Tip to Nicaraguan tourists: ask to go to the new (covered) market—it has a lot of the same things for a whole lot cheaper! Anyway, our counterpart wanted to take us out to lunch and she apologized that her mother doesn’t like to cook on Sundays because she wants to take a break—she says that on Sundays she usually goes out to a restaurant or orders food to the house (she doesn’t cook). So, we went to a restaurant in the market, which was really nice. The food was great! I tried cacao, which is a chocolaty milk drink and it was delicious. I ate grilled steak (which is pretty thin here, but I like that) served on a hot plate, with pico de gallo on top, and a fried plantain on the side. It also came with rice, refried beans, cheese, and tostones (another form of fried plantains that are round slices that have been squished, fried, and taste like potatoes). It was all awesome! I couldn’t eat it all but I wanted to because it was sooo good.

We then walked over to the central park and then to Pali, which is the local chain of supermarkets. I got my mouthwash there and we found their snack section! We bought some animal crackers and decided we have to come back when we have more money. We then went back to the park and hung out. Kellie & I got a scoop of ice cream from the Eskimo, and then we headed back to their house. On the way back, we found some dancers. Here, the dancers go from house to house doing their dances and sharing food. We watched the end of one of the dances and then walked to another house with them to watch the full dance. These dancers were kids, which is pretty common. They do traditional Nicaraguan dances.

When we got back to their house, we drank some cold sprite, which was so refreshing on this very hot day. Her husband went and picked up the cake and brought it in. We were shocked to see this cake.

It is beautiful, as you can see. Apparently, her aunt makes and sells cakes, so she knows how it’s done. Could we have been spoiled anymore today? We enjoyed the beautiful cake and then planned some lessons for this week (we had to do something professional after shopping and eating cake and ice cream). After the plans were set, and we hung out for awhile, she called her cousin, gave us a slice of cake to take to Jess, and her cousin took us back to San Juan in the taxi. We definitely felt like we were living the life today, and then realized we were still poor Peace Corps volunteers living in a humble town. I love it though. It was a nice break today, but what really was fun was going to Jess’ house after and hanging out with her, sharing funny stories from the day, and then coming back to my house and watching Friends together. I love our San Juan group—we really have become good friends and I’m so happy to be with these wonderful girls.

Sweat

This weekend has been HOT and it doesn’t look like it’s cooling down anytime soon. Great. That was sarcastic. Anyway, yesterday we had a lot of meetings and it’s always not that fun sitting for hours with no air moving through the room. Also, we were all starving and waiting for lunch to arrive, but we were pleasantly surprised to see boxes of Papa John’s pizza!! They told us we could have 3 pieces each, so we grabbed napkins and started stacking. It’s so funny when they bring food to us because we seriously go crazy, especially now that it was pizza. There were 20 of us fighting for different kinds of pizza from 6 large boxes. It was madness, but so awesome all at once. Never have we all been so happy to see pizza (and soda) in our lives. I guess I have been spoiled because I’ve had pizza twice with my family, but it was nice to have it again and eat like a monster with everyone else.


After the pizza craze, we returned back to our meetings and they decided to throw us a challenge: make a 30 minute vocabulary lesson (we had just been discussing teaching vocabulary) to include a warm-up activity, vocabulary introduction, developing activity, and wrap-up activity…oh yeah and we have 30 minutes to create all of this from scratch and make any materials we might need for the lesson. Oh, and they will draw names out of a hat so two people will be teachers, so you might have to teach this lesson to half the group and then be evaluated. WHAT?!? I felt like I was on Design Star or some other reality TV competition. We had a lot of freedom with what we could choose along the lines of what vocabulary and what activities, but I kind of wish there was a little more focus, because so many thoughts were racing through my mind. Well, they finally said that we could work with partners to create lessons for sanity purposes, but we would still have to teach by ourselves if selected as a teacher. It’s of course intimidating teaching to your peers, especially if you’re not feeling too confident in your lesson. Ugh! Fortunately, I was selected as a “student” so I got to participate in someone else’s lesson. Phew! What a relief that was. After the pressure was off, then I kind of felt sad because I liked my lesson and I didn’t want to waste it. Ha! Figures. The lesson went really well and then we all shared what our lesson ideas were and it was cool to hear what everybody had planned.

We then headed back to town. Jess was home sick, so Kellie and I were together and decided to share a mototaxi with the Catarina trainees (Julia Elena, Melissa, and Matt). So, we fit 5 of us in a moto with the driver. As we approached the empalme in Catarina (the roundabout where all the bus stops are in front of Catarina) the moto died. Apparently, 6 people in a moto is too much haha The guy got out and did something in the back and then it started back up, but the Catarina folks got out because we were close enough for them. Kellie & I took the ride into San Juan so we didn’t have to walk along the Carreterra (highway) which was nice. Then, I came home to running water so of course I had to take a shower! Yay! I love being able to take “real” showers here, even if I’m wearing my flip flops and the water is really cold. At least I don’t have to pour cold water over myself and shiver. I have done this too; I’m not that spoiled.

Mototaxi ride

Today we went on our volcano trip, which began with a standing bus ride there and then some diversity meetings. We were waiting for the heat of the day for our hike apparently. Well, we finished the meetings, I sold my family’s peanut butter to the environment group because I gave them my commercial for it last time and they were really excited, and then we packed into the jeeps for our “hike”. Well, they told us to dress accordingly and that we’d be hiking a volcano. Hmmm, not sure why we had to have hiking shoes and “dress accordingly” besides it being really hot. They drove us up to the viewpoint and we got out and took pictures and looked around for about an hour. So, there was no real hike, but it was still cool looking into a live volcano, seeing the smoke, and smelling the sulfur. Then, they brought out the food, which was the real excitement. They had bread, cheese, peanut butter and jelly. The trainees were like seagulls on scraps of food. We hovered, grabbed the slices of cheese, dug into the peanut butter jars, poured two liter soda with one hand because our other hand held our sandwich and chocolate treat. It was fantastic. We had a great time stuffing ourselves before the ride home.

They dropped us off back at the main entrance to the park and then we had to wait on the side of the highway to flag down a bus. That took awhile. Every bus stopped for us, but they were all going to different places so we had to wave them off. Finally, the right bus came and about 17 of us piled on to the already crowded bus. I stood next to the driver. Yikes. We made it home safe.

Tomorrow, we’re planning on going to Masaya to meet up with our English teacher at the high school. She wants us to see the festivals there, meet her family, and then go out to lunch. It should be fun :)

Co-Teaching

I had another successful English class, but it was not without frustrations.  We did a lot of review, which is very important, to reinforce the new vocabulary and grammar.  However, my counterpart and I still need to work on co-teaching.  I feel like I’m teaching the whole class and she’s my assistant teacher, which is not the way it’s supposed to be.  Hopefully we can figure this out so we can work together.  It’s difficult because I don’t think she has co-taught before, and the school system is very different here, as well as the culture.  There are many factors that we have to consider, but we can definitely work through this.

Work It Out

So Monday night was the second time of a successfully completed work out dvd. Woo! This time, my host sister, Caridad did the work out with me. She was wanting to work out, but we never found a good time, until Monday night! My host cousin joined in and the little kids too. It was hilarious! I feel wonderful from working out and I want to get back in the routine. I haven’t really been working out here because it’s so hot that I sweat when I’m sitting on the couch, so there’s not much motivation to get hotter… We did the work out dvd in the evening which was nice because it wasn’t very warm. I hope we can keep it up!

Here are some things I forgot to mention last time…


Our “Standfast” is over, which means that we are allowed to travel outside of our training towns and the road conditions have improved since the hurricane weather.


I fed the dog. I usually would be against feeding scraps to the dogs here, because nobody wants the dogs in their houses, but they keep coming back because there’s food. However, I was eating what I think was beef and it was cooked a little weird so it tasted funny, and my only option was to toss it to the dog out the door, besides eating it but I definitely couldn’t do that. Maybe I started a bad habit because for dinner that night I had a large chunk of fried cheese and I couldn’t make myself eat the whole thing and the dog was just lying on the floor so nicely so, he got some cheese too. I felt like a kid getting rid of veggies underneath the table, which I never did when I was little ;) I think this dog might just become my friend while I’m here, although I’m never gonna touch him because he probably has fleas or some disease. I feel horrible for all the dogs here. I want to be back in a place where I don’t fear touching dogs because of what they might pass on to me.


New professor! Our new profesora is Blanca, and she happens to be my host brother’s mom. I guess he would technically be my host “brother-in-law” because he’s my host sister’s husband, and his mom isn’t my host mom. Gosh, it sounds like I’m describing a soap opera, but really it’s not that dramatic. Anyway, she is wonderful and such a difference from our last profe. I’m not going to spend more time comparing them, but I want to say that she is a great language teacher and really focuses on communication and teaching us new, relevant vocabulary to practice. Our classes have been great so far and I feel more confident in practicing my Spanish. She also came to our youth group last night to check it out and I felt it went well. We did a lesson on asking and giving prices because our town has a lot of shops, and about 80% of the people who live here are artisans—let me know if you want some pottery ;) I really want to buy some because it’s so great, but it’s not a good idea now because then I would have to carry them all over Nicaragua with me… Anyway, things are great and we’re very happy with our class.

Also, I tried bag drinks for the first time and I’m still ok :)  I don’t know why everything comes in bags here, but they do and that’s how we have to do it.  So, you bite off the corner and drink.  We tried chocolate, then went back the next day and got chocolate and strawberry (different bags).

Pizza! Pizza!

My family made pizza again last night, and this time Kellie and I helped out, which was super fun. Also, I made garlic knots to introduce to the family. Unfortunately, we did not have butter, so I used garlic and a little bit of oil. It worked well, but they just weren’t drenched in garlic and butter like I usually like :)

Earlier yesterday, we had meetings in Diriamba, which is in the department (state) of Carazo, so we got together with the environment trainees too. It was about a 45 minute ride, and the energy was low, so I decided to introduce “Deaf Karaoke” to my friends. I felt the time had arrived to share this magical experience. So, the rules are, you choose an upbeat song on your iPod/MP3 player that you know at least the majority of the words, and then turn it all the way up and sing your heart out. The catch is, your audience can’t hear your music, and you can’t hear your voice, making it difficult to see in tune. Soooo, you sound absolutely horrible which is hilarious to your audience as your voice is cracking and you’re trying to hit those high notes, but just can’t, AND, you think you sound like a rock star because the music is blasting and you just hear the real singer. Everyone wins in Deaf Karaoke. I started us off with “Bleeding Love” by Leona Lewis, and then Andrew belted one out, and Sam began his song, but we arrived at the museum, where our PC driver quickly exited. The environment trainer came and opened our bus door, but we all told him we weren’t ready, and we allowed Sam to finish. It was hilarious, as everyone eventually joined in. I hope we continue this game on other trips because it really is a good bonding experience; embarrassment certainly brings you closer to people.

After we all got back, I went shopping in Masaya with my host brother to get ingredients for the pizza and then returned to co-plan with the English profe. I brought back Snickers for Kellie and Jess so we enjoyed some of those while we were hanging out. Then, the pizza making was postponed for awhile because my host mom needed to make the bread first, so we took this opportunity to work out. I brought exercise dvds with me and Jess shared some leg and ab exercises. This girl is tough. She does yoga everyday too, so we’re gonna have to learn some of that.

Today I washed my undergarments, as these are not included in the washing clothes agreement our host families have made. It took me about an hour to wash everything outside in the pila and I am definitely missing washers and dryers. We actually do have a washing machine here, but we don’t use it that often because it’s only when we have running water. Dryers don’t exist here, so everything hangs outside to dry. Today is finally a nice, sunny day so I took advantage of that. We’ve had so much rain lately that all of the trainees have feared running out of socks and underwear… Some clothes were washed on the one nice day last week, but it then rained on all the clothes. This makes clothes smell bad because they sit in the rain forever and then take forever to dry because it’s still damp outside. On the other hand, my host mom took my clothes out of the washer and put them in a bucket for some reason. I’m really not sure why she did this because they were still wet. I finally asked her if I could hang them up in my room and she gave them to me. Two shirts were dirty at the bottom because there was dirt in the bucket. Hmmm. Well, I kind of made this obvious by leaving them out, dirty side up, while I put the other clothes away, and then my host mom gasped and said she would wash them again. I don’t understand the bucket thing. There are others’ clothes in buckets too. I’m just happy it’s sunny out and my clothes are hanging to dry.

This morning there was a parade celebrating the translation of the Bible into Spanish. There were a lot of people participating and it went in front of my house. It was pretty cute because they had Noah’s ark, complete with little kids dressed up as animals.

One Month!!

Well, I made it a month so far, which is pretty awesome! I’ve gone through a lot and I’m getting itchy legs from the recent weather changes, but besides that, I’m excited to reach the one month mark. It seems like it was only yesterday when we were staying at the hotel in Granada and enjoying the air conditioning in this new, tropical place. Now, I have a mini fan in my room that I bought for almost $10 at the market in Masaya. Things are actually pretty expensive here, at least things in the market. Food is pretty cheap. I’ve noticed though, the things that I want to buy such as mouthwash, body wash, a fan, etc. are things that are not in very high demand here, so that’s why they’re more expensive, which is unfortunate. Instead of body wash, they use bar soap here, which I have gotten some, but I don’t really like using bar soap because I’m afraid I’ll drop it in the shower and then I wouldn’t want to use it again after that. Who knows what on the floor and walls of the showers here, and that’s why I wear flip flops in the shower.


Reflecting back on my time here so far, I really have learned a lot and gone through many interesting experiences. I’m enjoying training and getting to know my group better, but I’m really looking forward to finding out where I’ll be for the two year stint. We are having a site fair in a week and a half which I’m not exactly sure what that consists of, but I’m assuming they’ll explain the different areas available for us to live and then we get to put in our preferences. That will be exciting, but then we don’t find out our sites until 3 weeks after that I think. So, I’ll keep you posted.

I’m not sure if I mentioned this before, but we changed language professors this past week because we do 3 week rotations, and we were not getting along well with our professor. I won’t go into too many details, but we just weren’t feeling like he cared much about us and our learning. After having a great language professor, this was very discouraging. We discussed this with our PC staff and our class had been observed by his coordinator, and well today we found out that he’s no longer our professor. We kind of felt bad for him, but we were also relieved because we would leave class feeling discouraged. I guess it’s good to know that PC really takes our feelings into consideration and they do care about our language learning. (This professor did get complaints from the previous group as well)

Anyway, we went to TEPCE today, which I can’t remember what it stands for, but it’s a monthly meeting where all of the high school teachers get together and then break into their subject groups and share experiences, strategies, ideas, etc. with the others and then plan the curriculum for the month. We decided to go with our counterpart to see what it was all about and try to learn something. She warned us that they can be really boring, but we went anyway. There were about 10 PC trainees there from the 3 or 4 surrounding towns and we had pretty good discussions with the language teachers. For the most part, they were really excited for us to be there and expressed their gratitude for our help so far. Most of the teachers seemed really open to trying new things and really enjoyed hearing our suggestions. There were some quiet teachers, and I think this was mainly because they didn’t speak as much English. We heard that the meetings are usually all in Spanish, but since we were there, they decided to practice their English, which is great for them! I thought it was really brave of them and they very humbly expressed their need to improve their language skills. I was really encouraged when I heard them saying these things. I hope that when I’m in my site that I’ll have eager teachers to work with. That makes it so much easier when the teachers are willing to try new things and are excited to have PCVs. But for now, I just have to keep working hard and trying my best in the given situation.

Here’s to another month full of adventures!

Heat wave (Thurs., Sept. 30)

Well we had some warm weather yesterday afternoon and a little today, but besides that, it’s pretty much still cool weather, which I am enjoying. It only rained a little this morning, more like sprinkling actually, and then it stopped, so it’s all good. I know a lot of people are waiting for all of their wet laundry to get some sun, but I really prefer the more temperate weather, which I know is not common here, but I’m soaking it up while I can. It seems kind of funny, soaking up the cool weather while the sun is somewhere else, but I’m soaking it up. It’s not like I’m missing out on getting a sweet tan or anything because my skin is seriously incapable of tanning, which I have come to accept. Also, that means that I won’t be so wrinkly as I get older, right?

Anyway, we’ve been pretty busy again this week with lots of meetings, but they were really interesting and informative so that’s good. It’s always fun to meet new volunteers and hear their stories because the volunteers give the charlas, sometimes with the staff, but today it was all volunteers. They have such unique situations in their sites so it’s neat to ask them about their experiences and find out all the tips and secrets. So, we pretty much had a full day of meetings and we had been wanting to go back to Catarina for ice cream, but we weren’t sure if the place would be open in the afternoon because it has such weird hours—pretty much just when they want to be open. Anyway, Jess and I took a bus back from our meeting in Masatepe and walked to Catarina. AND, the ice cream shop was OPEN!! We asked for banana splits and the young girl told us they didn’t have them. So, we were of course bummed out and were trying to figure out what to choose instead because we had our hearts set on banana splits. Well, then an older lady walked in from the back and asked the girl what we wanted. We asked her for banana splits and she said YES! Wooo!!! This was awesome! So, she made us banana splits and we savored every little bite, including the gummy bears on top. I remembered to take a picture this time to share :) Hope I don’t make you too jealous!

After coming home from the cyber and chatting with Kellie, I got ready for The Office—so excited that I can watch that here! My host mom told me she was going to make me plantanos fritos and fried cheese for dinner, and I clarified with her: platanos fritos de maduro, but she said no, the other kind. Then I asked her is those were the sweet ones and she said no, to which I made a kind of disappointed “oh” sound. Fortunately, she picked up on this subtle hint and said she could make the sweet ones and I said, oh yes please. Then I told her that I prefer the sweet ones. Woo! I have been waiting for this opportunity to come up because I’m not too crazy for the other ones because they just taste like potatoes. If I’m going to be eating some extra carbs, then they might as well taste good, even though they probably lost all nutritional value… Also, when she said she was going to make it with fried cheese I was a little disappointed because their cheese is kinda weird and really salty and frying cheese, is that really healthy?  I was wanting to ask for gallo pinto too because fried cheese and bananas is not really a dinner is it? Well, fortunately for me, she did add gallo pinto (some protein!) and the cheese was mozzarella—awesome! I was super excited about that. Yay! So, dinner ended up to be really good, but I might be a little sick because there were so many bananas and they’re pretty sweet and I did eat a lot of fried cheese haha It tasted really good though… I do need to ask for more vegetables though. I haven’t had much lately since my stomach got better and I don’t have to have an all veggie diet. Hmmm…I wish I had a little more say in my menu, but maybe I just need to speak up a little more. I did ask my host mom for eggs for breakfast because I needed more protein to hold me throughout the day, mainly because I had just been eating bread and fruit for breakfast which was good but didn’t last me very long before I was hungry again.  Now, she makes me eggs every morning, and will usually add ham and sometimes cooked tomatoes and onions, which is great! I just don’t want to inconvenience them too much, but I guess I would prefer someone to tell me what they liked so they were happy and feeling healthy. It’s just hard when I’m in another culture staying at someone’s house to request certain foods when they’re already providing me with a place to live and everything else here. It’s a little struggle, but I guess I just have to figure it out.

This is Jessica--we were walking in Catarina and a herd of animals approached us.

Bad/Good news: First, the bad news is that we’re not going to do the volunteer visit next week because of the current weather conditions. Apparently, some places have bridges under water :( Also, it would be too difficult for PC to reschedule all of the visits so it’s canceled. Bummer! However, there’s some good news for us coming up… We got an email from PC telling us that we have the opportunity to go to Managua for Thanksgiving and spend Thanksgiving dinner with Embassy families, which would be awesome! They’re trying to arrange that and we need to get a group together so we can pack into hotel rooms so it’s not too expensive. Also, we might be getting phone chips which make it free to call/text any PC volunteers, staff, etc. which is also super cool. So, even though there’s some bad news, the good news outweighs the bad. We’ve gotten to talk to a lot of volunteers so far and we’ll meet more in the other charlas coming up, so I guess we’re still getting some volunteer experience through those.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to teaching again next week, so I’ll keep you all updated on that. Oh, did I tell you about this last time? It went well, but we had a few breakdowns in the lesson because the students’ English level is much lower than I had expected. I guess I assumed too much from what the English teacher told me about the class, but working more with the students will give me a better idea of where they are regarding English. I need to communicate a little more with the teacher and make sure our roles in the class are clear because that was an issue as well. We just need to prepare more and go over what we want to say in class to get the students to understand the content and meet the objectives. It all comes with more experience…

Here are some pictures of my classroom.  The teachers move to different classrooms, but each class is reserved for a certain grade, this one is 7th grade.