Good thing I had all that education practice

08-13 Can officially say I have touched base with every house on the main road. Two weeks and one day- it was a blitz! Several  Volunteers suggested the blitz because , they spoke from experience, after the first couple of months you will too shy to visit or talk to people you didn’t meet in the first couple of weeks. And they will also be too shy or insulted to approach you, wondering why they didn’t get a gringa visit. I actually happened across two young girls who had been part of Jessica’s youth group and soccer team. They are very independent and talk to me for about an hour about what they were up to now (working on their degrees for accounting and nursing). They have started looking for a house for me to live in after the 3 month host-family mandatory period that is much closer to them or at least more central to the whole community (right now my house is one of the last ones before Coroazal). They also offered to help with soccer practices and expressed interest in English classes. Got back in time for a late lunch. Isi has started letting me serve myself which I greatly appreciate. It’s partly a health thing and also partly and independence thing. Finally had the incredibly awkward sit-down with Lidia about paying the host-family stipend. Peace Corps gives Volunteers about 1500 cords every month that is specifically to supplement the host family income for food and utilities for the volunteer. Lidia really did not like this and almost refused the money. With only two weeks under my belt and mixed reviews from more experienced Volunteers, it was hard to tell if I was flirting with cultural norms concerning money and hospitality or if my family was just especially generous. I knew that Jessica had paid the first 3 months too and leaned on that as a Peace Corps policy that I just had to follow. Very informal, hand-written agreement that we both signed essentially saying I would pay her every month for the food, utilites and occasional use of the kitchen and we would revisit this agreement in 3 months. Finished the day giving myself a small blister on my thumb while hoeing and cleaing the area I hope to put a demo veggie garden. My host dad says I’m crazy and that the ground is too sticky and everyone waits until after rainy season. Can’t tell if this is true or if he thinks I’m trying to make a commercial scale veggie plot (NO) or what, but it’s a pet project that really can’t fail because it’s engaging the youth around my house and I’m going to learn something about growing conditions and seasons no matter what.

First day observing Profesor Julia in class today. Very similar to field placement and teacher training classes in college and that familiarity actually helped me situate myself. Like most classes, it’s organized chaos. Any given day, there might be 30-60 students in one room with another 30-60 younger students learning in the other room only separated by a concrete wall. You can hear both classes at the same time. Lots of rote memorization and repetition. They apparently have all the same classes everyday from 8-12 or 1. That means about 30-40 min classes, but it completely up to the teacher too. There is a national curriculum and the classroom is covered in colorful posters with rules of the classroom, all of which are the Spanish equivalent of what you would see in a Kindergarten or first grade classroom. They have manualidad class (arts and crafts) on Thursday and Phys Ed on Tuesday. I will be helping out with these two classes. Still a little nervous about it. Super sore after just one hour of kicking the ball around with the young boys around my house. They picked up volleyball really quickly and even Isi came out of the house to pass the ball around a few times. This was huge because she rarely leaves the house and I have never seen her play a sport. She is super self-conscious because she has a very strong lisp that everyone in the community has told me about. It makes any language harder to understand, but I think we have just fallen into the habit of having her repeat anything she says to me twice. The first time is usually just to figure out that she is talking to me. I am starting to pick up the most frequent question and phrases she uses. Also tried and completed a bracelet made of folded recyclced Ranchitos (Dorrito) bags. Yet another example of being stared at and trying to explain something I was learning for the first time too. Luckily, once I was done, the interest in collecting the chip bags exponentially increases. The picture of the finished product was definitely worth a thousand words. To back up for a second, we are collecting these bags because Nicaragua has a huge solid waste problem and no real official trash collection system. There are pockets of areas (like Praderas for example) that half oil barrel drums cut in half with painted messages on the side that this is where you “botar su basura” (throw your trash) but the typical sight is all sorts of trash lining the streets and front yards. And what was even more frequent in Masatepe was to sweep the trash up everyday it was dry enough and burn it. Toxic plastic fumes-yum! My host family here uses less so wastes less, but will still burn the trash pile if it’s dry or looks like it has collected enough. More often than not, the women will also use the plastic bags and other trash bits to help start or feed the cooking fire, thus breathing in those fumes. Starting to see the room for improvement?