Update from Nicaland

Hey everybody! 

How’s life up north? Last time we talked I was getting ready to head to Niquinohomo for my 3 month Spanish language check up.  It was a lot of fun to go back to Niquinohomo and meet up with my old training town friends. Spanish class itself was not terribly exciting we just review over grammar structure that we learn while in training. For the most part it was just a review but on the last day we did learn some more complex verb structures which was cool.  The nicest thing about was having a week off from school and being able to relax with friends.  While I was down there I went to Masaya a couple times went to the beach in Carazo and went to Catarina and the mirador with my friends.  After the language workshop a bunch of my friends came back with me to La Dalia. We had a dinner party and then the next day we went into Matagalpa to take in some stuff that the big city has to offer. It was a lot of fun showing my friends around my site and my house.  Although I was glad to get back and just relax by myself.

As for life in La Dalia things are going ok. I have had some hiccups like having to move out the house I was renting. Last week my landlord just showed up at my front door and the said there had been a family emergency and that she needed the house back.  I wasn’t terribly excited to move out and go through the whole process of finding another place to live especially after we had an agreement that I would live there for two years. Apparently contract law here is not what it is in the US, oh well.  I was able to find another place to live with the help of my neighbor without much difficulty.  I just had to spend a few hundred dollars to furnish it and it good as new.  The house its self is in the same neighborhood as where I lived before, so it’s the same style the only real difference between the two is that this one is less finished unlike the first house this house doesn’t have a second floor and more of the brick is exposed.

In other news last week just by chance I ran in to some Swedish volunteers who were helping out with handicapped children in the area. The group was made up of 5 teachers and 5 mentally handicapped students.  My friend Ishmael, the university English professor and I and helped translate for the Swedes while they were in La Dalia. It was great to meet them, and to be able to help them out.

This week I was anxiously awaiting the arrival of Luis and my site visit from my boss.  However I called Luis Sunday went he was back in the country to find out that the Ministry of Education hadn’t paid him for the month of March; he wouldn’t be starting back at school until the first week of April.  So as a result I had to cancel my site visit until both counterparts were available. To make matters more complicated Mariling is going to be leaving on maternity leave within a week or two.  Trying to coordinate a time that is acceptable for all 3 people is proving to be harder than expected.  I am really looking forward to working with Luis when he gets back to La Dalia. There will apparently be a substitute taking over Mariling’s classes while she is gone. I am not terribly crazy about that idea although I realize it is necessary. I feel like I am just a revolving door for teachers, who haven’t received any Peace Corps training.  With all these teachers coming and going the periodic trainings that my counterparts and I receive don’t do any good. For instance in July after the semester end there is a in-service training which is supposed to gauge how things have been going with my counterparts and I, but I will have been working with only one of my counterparts for the past 3 months so it very confusing.  Oh well when it comes to Nicaraguan school every day is an adventure! I could write an entire blog post on just the chaos in school.

As for my new site mate Lauren, she sent me a text saying that she didn’t pass her final language interview and will have to stay in language classes for one more week until she is able to come up to La Dalia.  The same thing happened with the trainee that was living with my host family in Niquinohomo. He like Lauren just barely missed the cut off level and has to stay back another week. I don’t quite understand why Peace Corps is being so strict with this group because in our group there wasn’t anybody held back. In any event Alison and I are excited to welcome Lauren to La Dalia.  I was joking with Alison that we just need a small business and an agriculture volunteer here and we’d have a whole set. La Dalia has traditionally been solely a health post I am the first TEFL volunteer here and Alison is the first environment volunteer in El Tuma. El Tuma is technically part of La Dalia but it’s more like a neighboring village 20 min down the hill since it’s not actually attached to La Dalia.  Lauren however will live in the actual town of La Dalia and work at the maternity house with mid-wives there.

In two weeks is Semana Santa, Holy Week in English.  It’s kinda like spring break in the States but with a religious twist. Here everybody usually just goes to the river and hangs out and swims. April is the hottest month of the year so relaxing at the nearest body of water is usually what the locals do.  My friend Sara and I are planning to explore some of the natural reserves around La Dalia and then up in Estelí and surrounding area. Alison and I and some other friends were going to make the trip down to the southern part of the country to check out some islands and the San Juan River which is supposed to amazing with all the wildlife and jungle like landscape. However because April is the hottest month of the year here, Sara and I decided explore the mountains instead of going to the jungle where its certain to be hot and humid…my favorite type of weather.

Everything else is going pretty well just living the Nicaraguan dream haha. As some of you may know I have a slight addiction to peanut butter. My favorite lunch is a PB&J sandwich. I like the real peanut butter none of the artificial Skippy or jif stuff. I brought a 5 pound jar of Adam’s peanut butter with me but sadly it recently ran out. Yesterday as I was walking home from school I stopped by the open air market to find raw peanuts for sale much cheaper than the knock off skippy type peanut butter for sale in the supermarket in Matagalpa. I bought two pounds and took them home found a recipe for homemade peanut butter, which said roast them in then take to them to have them ground. Imagine that I would have delicious peanut butter in only a matter of time. However when I took them to have them ground. The ground peanut substance that came out was more the consistence of cookie dough than peanut butter.  If any of my readers have any suggestions how to improve upon this please let me know.

March Update

I wanted to give a quick update to my loyal blog followers. Not much has happened since my last blog post, but I think short frequent updates are better than long spread out ones.

I guess the most noteworthy thing was a visit from the Peace Corps Nicaragua Country Director.  It was kind of out of the blue Alison was visiting me Friday when I got a call from our country director Carol. She is very nice; she hosted my entire group of Nica 54 over at her house for Thanksgiving. Other than that I have really had much contact with her. So as you can imagine when I receive her call on Friday I was a little surprised. She told me that she and her daughter were heading up to La Dalia to stay an eco lodge for the weekend, that was nearby and wanted to stop by and say hi to Alison and I. Alison and I cleaned up my house for her visit, which was very nice. She loved my house and the area where I lived especially the cooler mountain air. After chatting for a while she took us out to lunch at a nearby restaurant. Alison and I both really enjoyed her visit.

Other that not much is going on. My community English class is going really well. This week I broke up the class into two groups, a beginner group and an intermediate/advanced group. I will teach each group two nights a week. Last night was the first night of my beginner class we spent the evening practicing the English alphabet out loud and spelling our names. We finish with a few basic introductions and salutations and then put it all together with a dialog from our textbook. It’s a good dialog because it covers everything that we learned but I think it was little too long and caused a bit of confusion.  Although I am glad that I split up the class because I feel the students will actually learn more now. Tonight is the first night with the intermediate/advanced students, who are mostly just the university students that have been coming from the beginning. I plan on doing more conversation activities to help improve their speaking skills. I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes.

I am still having difficulties with my counterpart, unfortunately.  I have talked with her but she is still not really listening to me. This as I am sure you can imagine is very frustrating.  I have tried different approaches to talk with her but she doesn’t seem to want to change her teaching methodologies or accept a different role for me in the class. I feel like I’m living the proverb “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”.   She is not rejecting all my ideas but majority of them. Another really frustrating thing is when I make suggestions about planning and grammatical corrections she always gives some excuse about how it is my fault for why something is wrong or not working. It is a real constructive working relationship as you can see. However I am hopeful that things will change by the end of this month.  Luis my other (fluent) counterpart will be back from his two month training in Atlanta so I am sure he will be anxious to share all he has learned. I have worked with him before and get along with him great. 

Also I will have a site visit from a 3^rd year TEFL volunteer at the end of the month as well.  She will talk with both my counterparts and also my school principal. So I am hopeful she can help straighten out the problems with my female counterpart.  My boss was supposed to come up and visit but apparently that fell through so the 3^rd year volunteer is the next best thing. 

Next week I will be heading back down to Niquinohomo for a week for a 3 month check up our Spanish.  It will be nice to see all of my friends from training again! Then afterwards a group of friends is coming up to La Dalia with to check out my house and site as kind of a homecoming party. It’s going to be a lot of fun! That while I am gone a new health volunteer is coming up to La Dalia for her site visit, she will be working with maternal house and giving talks to the pregnant women here. Alison and I are really excited to meet our new sitemate…there is even a rumor that she could be from Oregon! 

I’ll be sure to keep you all updated to what happens

Hope everything is going great up north!

What I have been up to lately

Hey everybody, sorry that so much time has passed since my last blog post. I have been busy the last couple weekends and time just got away from me. I’m going to try and write shorter posts more often so it is easier for everyone back home to follow what I am doing down here.

 So what have I been up to since January? Well I have got all moved into my house and settled with all my things set up the way I want.  I bought some plastic shelves things last time I was in Matagalpa, one for my kitchen and one for my bedroom.  I took my pcv friend’s advice and took down the all the creepy pictures and other knickknacks that are my landlords and boxed them up and put them under my bed. I am really happy with the way the house is looking now. I’m going to have a house warming party later in March so my friends can see my new house and La Dalia

 Other notable events in February:

 I went to Matagalpa and watched the Super bowl with other PCVs it was pretty fun to hang out with everyone; I didn’t really care about the game although I almost won some money in score pool.  Unfortunately since the game was broadcasted in Spanish I didn’t get to see the commercials which are honestly my favorite part.

I put on an English teacher workshop the second weekend in February for all the teachers in the La Dalia area. I had requested some money from a grant available at the US embassy but for some reason there was a breakdown in communication and I didn’t get the money in time.  We still had a pretty good turnout though; I think not having the money made the logistics much easier. I just focused on what I was going to be teaching and didn’t worry about the other stuff. I was afraid that I had bit off more than I could chew but I was happy the way it turned out. Alison came up and helped me out and I had the assistance from Ishmael the Matagalpa university professor.  The teachers all gave positive feedback so I think I will do another one later in the future, but now I will know what to organize better.

I’m still doing my community English class in the evenings, it is going pretty well. I was co-teaching it with Ishmael but he is now working more at the university in Matagalpa so I have taken over as the sole teacher of the class. I was a little hesitant at first about the class but now that I am in charge I like it much better.  We are using an English textbook that I borrowed from Ishmael which gives us a good guide and base to go from but I am starting to do more dynamic activities so that we aren’t just reading out the book the whole night. I am also still working on the students’ punctuality. It’s an uphill battle but I am determined haha so will see tonight if there is any improvement.

The biggest event of this month has been the start of the school year last week. If had to choose two words to describe school and the whole start up process here, I would say chaotically unorganized.  We had a bunch of boring teacher meeting where I did absolutely nothing except get introduced then sit around and listen to rest of my teachers shout and argue with each other about various topics concerning their new schedules. Organization is not a strong point at Nicaraguan schools it seemed every day last week the schedule would change and the teachers would let the students go a few hours early so they could re-organize the schedule. I don’t know exactly why it took several tries but after talking with my fellow TEFL volunteers I learned that they were experiencing the same thing. In fact I learned today that the teachers are still working out the kinks in their schedules.

One interesting fact I learned at one of these boring meetings is that I got a new teaching counterpart. The one I had before that had gone through all the Peace Corps training and that had several years of teaching experience got moved to another school about an hour away from La Dalia.  My new counterpart’s name is Mariling she is 23 and in her last year of university to be an English teacher. Her English is ok although she doesn’t understand me a lot of the time when I speak in English. She unfortunately didn’t receive any of the Peace Corps training just a quick call from my boss telling her what our role together is.  I don’t feel that she quite understands what I am in the classroom for. So far I have just been sitting on the side while she does the teaching and then I read words off the board for the students to repeat back to me and proof read her lesson plans. When I called my boss for advice she said that I was right this was not my role and that is a common mistake that Nicaraguan teacher make when they first get a volunteer. When we plan together next I am going to bring this up so we can figure out how I can best be of service.  I also want to talk to her about classroom management, because in my 7^th grade classes they students are out of control.  I am confident still that we can work out a solution.

Well that I all I have to say right now. I am going to post this today before the library closes. I will keep everybody updated on how things go at school more regularly from now on.

Check out this link to see pictures of my house
 http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2410042&id=11521764&l=6ad39c1fe2

2011 Happenings

1/18/11

Well a lot has happened in the first weeks of the New Year. After I got back from Niquinohomo, I had a chat with Alejando about when I was moving out. It wasn't the most welcoming conversation but I had told him before that I planned to move out after my obligatory six weeks were up, so it wasn't completely unexpected. It did catch me a little by surprise though. I told him that I hadn't had the opportunity to look around as much as I had hoped given the fact that I had been sick in Managua for the better part of December, but I would get right on it. So the next day I hit the streets looking for places to rent. I talked to some the other teachers in town to see if they knew of anything and got a few leads. I ended up going down to the Barrios de los the Maestros (Teacher neighborhood) and asking around just about a how much the average rent is. As luck would have it, one of the teachers I know, knew of a places that was for rent. She said would talk to the owner when she got back to town and see if I could rent it. Great I thought this is working out wonderfully. The Peace Corps had told us that it was better to find a Nicaraguan who could help with the negotiations because you'll end up getting a better price. Sometimes people like to aprovechar de los gringos as they say here because people see a gringo immediately think they can take advantage of him and make some extra money. Not something that is unique to Nicaragua obviously. I told my teacher friend I had to go to a conference but I'd be back in a week.

The conference that I went to was a counterpart training conference. My two counterparts Luis and Marlon from La Dalia came with me to the Vistamar beach resort. It was an awesome place to have a training because it was right on the beach, but also a cruel torture being so close to the water and being stuck in a conference room all day. It wasn't all bad though we had a decent amount of time to relax in hammocks and go swimming in the ocean and pool. The water was lovely!! Nice and warm nothing like the Oregon coast where you feet go numb after the first ten minutes. During our free time my friends and I went swimming, body surfing and picking up shells. It was a lot of fun. We also learned a lot in the conference as well. We talked about teaching strategies, American and Nicaraguan values, the difference between Nica and Gringo time and the importance of communicating and working together. I think my counterparts learned a lot and had a good time. All the counterparts left the day before the volunteers did, because we had more session planned with TEFL 51 the group that came in a year before us. Although we had met them all in training charlas they really hadn't met us. We played some getting to know games and then had more sessions about various topics.

After a nice all expenses paid retreat at the beach it was time to head back to site. I was anxious to get back because Micheal the PC safety and security coordinator was coming on Friday to check out the house that I was going to be renting. The landlord upon seeing that I was gringo raised the price from 800 to 2000. Everybody including myself was surprised that she was taking advantage of me to such an extent. Needless to say I didn't get the house so Micheal and I went to look at some other possibilities that weren't quite as nice. I was pretty depressed over the weekend and worried about finding something in my price range. Monday I went out with Alejandro ready to look again. He said he knew of a few people that might have something available. After looking around in the morning we found a teacher in the Teacher Neighborhood that was going to rent me a room in her house for 600. I was really excited to move. Today as I was packing up my stuff I got a call from another one of the teachers in the same neighborhood,  She said she was moving in with her dad and would rent me her entire house FURNISHED FOR ONLY 1000 CORDOBAS!!! I couldn't believe how lucky I was! The house is great two stories and with a tv, 2 beds, a fridge and even a hammock all though I think I'm going to use my own hammock. The only thing I need to buy is a cooktop and gas tank! In the backyard there is a mango tree and mandarin orange tree!! So if anybody wants to come visit me I'd be happy to host you! You just have to make it up the miserable road from Matagalpa, although it much better in a SUV that in a school bus, haha.

In other news yesterday was the first day of my community English class. It was a good turn out of about 8 or 9 people. Most were English teachers a few university students and one actual first time English student who was completely lost. I am working with a university professor to start a Dalian English Teacher Association (DETA) to improve their methodology and pronunciation and other topics that they want to work on. I'm excited for the prospect of DETA because if everything works out will I leave DETA will continue without me. We'll see in two years from now.

More pictures to come of my house but you can get an idea of what the house looks like in my site visit photo album on facebook

Well that's all for now, hope 2011 is treating everybody well so far!

Happy Holidays!

12/27/10

Merry Christmas everybody! I hope everybody had a great Christmas.  Sorry for the long lapse in updates, I had come down with a bronchitis-like lung infection. So I ended up spending two weeks in Managua. There wasn't much to report since I spent most of my time going to see the PC doctors, hanging out in the PC office chatting with all the volunteers who were going back to the States for Christmas and watching A LOT of tv.  I was kind of sad that I missed the Purissma festival which celebrates the virgin Mary on December 7^th  Although I did get to see some cool fireworks from my hotel. It was nice to stay in the hotel I had hot showers, free wifi and was able to watch American TV channels. Just by chance when I was channel surfing I saw that On the Rocks the A Capella group from my university was competing on The Sing Off on NBC. It was pretty cool to see the guys I went to school with and used to listen to every Friday in the student union, on national television. Unfortunately they didn't win, they got eliminated in the semi-finals. I personally believe that they got robbed because there was a group of washed up 60's era soul singers that had a professional career but “fell on hard times” according to them. I don't think they should have allowed them on the show since the rest were college and amateur groups but oh well I'm not a tv producer.

After returning to my site after my extended absence I picked up right were I left off … not doing much.  Everybody is still on vacation but the town is hopping just like back home. Everybody is out shopping and selling everything from coffee beans to clothes and backpacks. I have lately been spending my mornings sitting on the porch with a cup of coffee that I have made myself (big thanks to my dad for coffee filter he sent me!)  reading the newspaper trying to improve my Spanish and watching the world go by. Its really nice way for me to ease to the morning, since Nicaraguans are much more morning people than I am. I don't if this a real common thing for Nicaraguans to do but I think its not that unusual however I usually get a few visitors usually trying to sell me something because I'm a “rich gringo” sometimes I buy their stuff  sometimes I don't.  Another interesting thing I have learned is that  Nicaraguans in general like their coffee super sweet. My host family adds like a cup of sugar to the pot and think its odd that I don't add any sugar to my coffee. But seriously what they are drinking is more coffee flavored sugar than sweeten coffee.

Recently I have met this Nicaraguan guy Milton through Alejando.  He is around my age and has been pretty nice showing town and introducing me to his friends. Unfortunately he is introducing me as “This is Sam his a Peace Corps Volunteer teaching English, he doesn't go to church.” By that he means I'm not Evangelical like he and his friends are. I have mention before that my family in the US is Protestant a type of Catholic, but it doesn't seem to matter. I don't want to get into a religious debate with them, (even though Catholicism is a much older and historical religion than Evangelicalism before they split off, that is a bag of worms I don't want to open)  because its pointless and their religious fervor is much stronger than mine.  However in a town that appears appears to be very religious/Evangelical I don't want to be introduced and known as a godless heathen. For two obvious reasons, one I'm not and two it could make the next two years very uncomfortable and difficult to get work done in the community.  So I'm going still hang out with Milton but I think I am also going to go by the Catholic church in town and see if I can meet some other friends who aren't quite as judgmental.

Right now I am spending the Christmas holiday with training host family because my host family in La  Dalia doesn't celebrate Christmas, not sure why but it has something to do with their belief that Santa Claus is a pagan devil. I can accept that but since I don't share that belief I came down south and have really enjoyed my time here. It has been really nice to see them and catch up with. Christmas is celebrated much differently here. The majority of the celebration are done on the evening of 24^th. We had a nice dinner with chicken stuffed with vegetables and other meat, it was really good.  For dessert  we all had rum cake called sopa borracha  drunk soup and couple other delicious things. The rest of the evening we spent hanging out with family and shooting off fireworks and waving sparklers. Unfortunately something I ate did not agree with me and I spent most of Christmas day resting in bed or in the bathroom. I am still recovering I don't want to travel back sick to my stomach but I'm feeling a bit better than before I think in a few more day I'll be good as new.

My host dad's brother and his family came down from California to visit and we went to a quincera a big coming age birthday party for girls when they turn 15. We eat, drank a lot and danced late into the night. It was a lot of fun, the first one I have ever been to.    

Before I came down to Niquinohomo I went to a coffee plantation with my counterpart Luis. This coffee plantation is out in the middle of nowhere about an hour outside of La Dalia. The owner of the plantation has set up a summer camp for the children of the coffee pickers so that they don't have to work in the fields with their parents. I was really impressed that he was so socially conscious avoiding child labor. At the camp I played soccer with the kids in the morning and then in the afternoon, we had an English class were Luis and I taught them some basic introduction phases and a little about family members. It was pretty fun, I am planning on going back with Alison in January.

Well that's all for now I hope everybody back home is having a great holiday season!

First week in Site

So my first week in site has been pretty slow. I have had a lot of free time, a lot of free time! In my daily fight against boredom I have spent the majority of my day reading, listening to music and NPR podcasts and playing solitaire. I haven't been couped up in my room the whole week, today was actually the first day since I have been here that spent at all home. I have been hanging out a lot with my sitemate Alison, she is really cool and I am sure I would go stir crazy during these vacation months if I didn't have her company.

Monday she and I went to the City Hall and met the mayor, city manager and an environment official. They all seem really excited to work with us, which is great. Alison has already worked some with the environment official because she is an environmental education volunteer. Other than the people at City Hall I have had a bit of difficulty getting to know people around town. When I was here during my site visit I met this very nice lady who worked at the library she seems interested in working with me in the future. However when I went back she wasn't there, I have introduced myself to other couple people in the library which I think would be a good place to possibly do some community English classes but they seem kind of apathetic. I told another Peace Corps friend of mine who is on her second tour with Peace Corps, she told it more likely that they don't know much about Peace Corps or what to make me and not take it personal. I think this good advice which I am taking to heart. Right now I'm less concerned with get secondary projects started and more concerned about just meeting people and making friends. Once I make some friends I know won't be so bored.

On Tuesday I went to visit Alison at the school where she and my host dad work they had a little graduation for the students and then a secret Santa party where they give each gifts. I didn't get a gift because I wasn't part of the school but it was fun to watch. Later that night I went to a family gathering with my host family for some family member high school graduation. The power went out shortly after I arrived so the family chatted and ate dinner around a single candle, it was pretty interesting.

Wednesday Alison came up to visit me and we went back and talked with the city manager about renting a house here in town. He said he knew a few places he would check on and get back to me. It really nice to have his help since there is no real estate agent or even classifieds here it all by word of mouth and occasional signs on houses. The rest of the afternoon we spent at the internet cafe. I found another internet cafe which is much faster than the one in library. Its a little more expensive but totally worth it because I can Skype with my family and download podcasts much easier. My counterpart Luis came up from Matagalpa to visit with me and finish up a group essay the he and Alejandro are working on for their university class.

Today I haven't really done much I just hung out some with my host family and watched movies with the little kids. Nothing to exciting. Although this evening another English teacher Ishmael came by to talk about the community English class we talked about during my site visit. Ishmael is a really cool guy. His English is amazing he has almost a native accent which is even more impressive considering that he has never been to the US. He teaches English at the university in Matagalpa and with works with various NGOs around the department. What we are planning on doing is having a English teachers class where we focus more on advanced topics class discussion and other things the teachers want to work on. The second class would be for community members who are not English teachers. I am really looking forward to working together with him. He also might have an house I could rent which would be really nice as well. I won't be moving out until the first week of January so I have some to check out my options and get my final choice approved by the PC Safety and Security officer.

Tomorrow I'm going into Matagalpa to run some errands and meet up with fellow PCVs for lunch it will be a nice break. Sunday Alison and I have been invited to help cut coffee as a fundraiser for my host family church. Its going to be an interesting experience I am sure I'll be sure to report on how it goes.

I'M A REALLL VOLUNTEER!!! (to be said with a Pinocchio voice)

11/26/10

It's official! I am finally a volunteer I finished my 3 months of training and now I am setting off my quest to improve Nicaraguan high school students' knowledge of English. All 43 of us came down to Managua on Sunday to get ready for the swearing ceremony the next day. The ceremony was great very similar setup to college graduation without the gowns. We had two people from our group give valedictorian speech in which they thanks the training staff and our host families for all their hard work and congratulated us for making it through training to become full fledged volunteers. I am really grateful for my host family. Especially after the problems I had with first host family, my second family took me in as own of their own family members. In fact my group of Nica 54 half environment and half TEFL is one of the few groups that made it through the entire training without somebody having to return back the States for medical or behavior reasons. Although I had nothing really to do with that I'm very proud of my group overall, and it was great to see all the same faces at the swearing ceremony that were in Granada.

The ceremony was held a super nice hotel in Managua. In attendance was the American Ambassador, as the keynote speaker, our Peace Corps Country Director, Training Director, and Program Directors. They all gave motivating speeches congratulating us on the progress we had made so far inspiring and motivating us for the challenges and successes we are going to have during our service. I really enjoyed the Ambassador's speech. He is a 30 year career diplomat and has worked around the world and he told us that no matter what projects and aid the US gives to developing countries, the most effective way to facilitate change and serve the people is by doing what we are doing. By living amongst the people we are serving we are showing them another side our American culture. His speech give me chills it was definitely on of my proudest moments. I really hope that I can improve my community stereotype beliefs that American are only good for their money filled wallets. I know there are already a few English teachers in La Dalia who have seen the professional and economic benefits of learning a foreign language, my only hope is that I can plant that seed it my high school students' heads.

After the ceremony I took my host mom out to lunch to thank her for all love and support she has given me, I wish that the rest of the family was able to come but they were busy with school and work. After lunch I returned back to the hotel to get ready for an early Thanksgiving dinner at our Peace Corps Country Director's house. The food was amazing!! I wasn't really expecting much since Nicaraguans don't celebrate thanksgiving and so probably wouldn't have all the traditional supplies. I was just happy to spend it with friends. I was dead wrong this was an amazing Thanksgiving with all the fixings you could possible imagine! Everything from sweet potatoes with marshmallows to cranberry sauce, green beans, and of course lots of mashed potatoes stuffing and turkey. I was very impressed it was so much fun the perfect send off for us all.

I was really excited to get to my site and start getting settled except I ended having to stay in the hotel in Managua for a week and get over my bronchitis that has been with me for about 3 weeks. Its been kinda boring especially after most the volunteers left on Tuesday. Fortunately there were other volunteers who were sick and so we were able to keep each other company. As infirmaries go the hotel the we were put up in was really nice. Wireless internet, cable tv with american channels and a pool I felt kind of spoiled and a little a sad to leave. However I made it back to La Dalia today (on saturday) I am just as glad to be back to my site. Managua is in nice to visit but like any big city its expensive and much more dangerous than my site.

I had hoped to get back before Friday so I could attend the last TEPCE teacher conference of the year, and introduce and establish myself, but it didn't work out. I don't really know what I am going to do over the summer break. I don't start teaching until the end of January. Its kind of a weird feeling having all this free time. During training we were always scheduled to do something, attending charlas, co-teaching and planning and daily Spanish class. There was always something to do and now we are really on our own, I am both excited and nervous about being on my own. As result I don't know how much I will have to write about until school starts but I will try and keep up on the weekly schedule. This week I am going to meet the mayor and police and librarian so I can start reading more in Spanish. I am also going to go visit my site mate who lives down the road. She is and environment volunteer and so has more of a to do list before school starts so maybe I can help her out with that.

Well that's all for now

Hasta pronto!

A rainbow of Peace Corp Polos

The new Matagalpans!

Ambassador Callhan and I 

The New TEFL volunteers with the Ambassador

For more pictures check out my facebook page. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2397380&id=11521764&l=c56394a9cc