Last week marked 6 months of services in La Dalia. Things are going pretty well over all. In these 6 months my outlook on my service has adapted to life in Nicaragua and the reality of the education system here.
It’s difficult to motivate some of students to study English or even copy today’s lesson in their notebooks. At the beginning this was very frustrating for me but now I am focusing on helping those students who want to learn, and helping my counterparts improve their English. Right now Mariling is still on materiality leave, so currently I’m working with Luis and Ishmael who both have good levels of English I just help with improving their speaking. I am not sure what will happen when Mariling returns but I am hopeful things will improve.
Over this pass month I have been working with my sitemates to on cross-sectoral projects. A few weeks ago a couple other environment volunteers from Leon came over to help out Alison build a improve stove for one of her rural schools. This was the first time I had help a project of this kind but I really enjoyed it. This type of stove is good because it has two chambers and uses the heat more efficiently and therefore uses less firewood. The mothers of the students will use this stove to cook food for students at the school instead of having to bring it from home. With my other health sitemate Lauren we are planning to do an HIV/AIDS pool tournament for the men in town. I am excited to start that.
School has been going pretty well. Lately class has been cancelled a lot recently for teacher trainings and student performances. May 30th was Mothers Day here so there was no class that Monday. Class was also cancelled the Thursday before for a student performance dedicated to the mothers of the students. It was pretty fun a lot of mothers came to the school and the students sang, read poems and did traditional dances for all the moms watching. Then later that week it was children day and so class was cancelled again for student performances. I have told that this is the norm and to expect it more this year because of the Presidential elections at the end of this year. So I am just taking every day as it comes.
Lately I have been feeling a little stir crazy. I don´t know why exactly because I am starting to develop friendships here and whenever I am gone my friends always ask me when I am coming back. I really like that people are missing me when I am gone, it gives me a since of purpose here. I have taken a few weekend trips here and there with friends or to visit friends which I feel is very necessary for my mental health, but I am always glad to be back in my house sleeping in my own bed.
Six months in my Peace Corps service is not going exactly how I thought it would, and its definitely different from what I learned and did during my first 3 months of training. I know this is normal real life can never be replicated over again so I am just going with flow and trying to make a difference any way I can.
Next month during our one week of vacation from school TEFL will have a in service training for 4 days in Esteli. I am really excited about the IST but not terribly excited that they scheduled it on the one week during the where we have a week off from school. All the other sectors didn´t have to sacrifice their vacation to go to an IST I don´t understand why we do. In any event complaining about won´t change the date what done is done. I am looking forward to it to get some extra motivation to help me make it through the raining months
That´s all for now, hope you are all well!
