Problems in Nica

Hello from Nicaragua. Life is hard right now. Spanish has been kicking my butt. I fear i am not learning enough fast enough. I know it's one step at a time poco s poco but i can't help be get dicuraged. It is not what i expected it to be. Even though i don't know what i expected it is not this. The people are great and i'm having fun to some extent but I'm not falling in love with it like in Niger. Don't get me wrong i'm not close to thinking about quiting. I just don't feel as prepared to be successful here as i did in Africa. They say that Nicaragua's training is the best i have not found that to be the case. I can't quite tell what is wrong with it though. I just don't feel prepared technically to teach. I'm sure a lot of my droughts has to do with language though. I have little to no confidence in my Spanish abilities at this moment which is really hurting me.

I now have a class alone for Spanish to help me improve. It is working but i still have along way to go. I can't tell if I'm getting better or not which is frustrating. My new teacher is good and very patient with me. I have a lot of assignments of going and talking with people in the village to gain my confidence. It's scary but very effective. I hope to make a few new friends doing this. I'm also talking more with my family :) I will get there soon i know.

Our youth group is going well we had less kids this time around but that is to be expected since some of the kids were skipping class to go to the last one. We had to change our project a little bit. We are going to make a mural instead of a playhouse out of bottles. It takes a lot of work to make this happen and we only have a month to get it all done it. The kids seem excited none the less.

I taught my first class last monday. It went better than expected i taught it on recylcing and did a game with clay which the students loved. It would have been better with most language background. I'm beginning to see the true importance that language has on my work. The kids got it eventually. I do my next on in two weeks on the carbon/oxygen cycle. Fun which i find is hard to do in english so this should be interesting. I just need to prepare more at least i have more time to do so.

I want to take the time to write about some problems i have noticed in Nicaragua. I would love comments on how i might be able to fix them or help. Also just comments in general on what you think.

Environment
1. Deforestation: The farmers are cutting down trees for farming and making a living for their family. The land that they are using is not fertile and this is the only way they know how to make a living. They use slash and burn. There is also areas that are suppose to be blocked off for conservation that is slowly being sold.

• Possible solutions: Teach farmers other farming techniques, replant trees

2. Trash in streets: Before plastic banana leaves were used as plates and were thrown on the ground this is fine then since it just decomposed. Now they use plastic and still throw it in the streets. There is little to no garbage cans present and the children think it is funny to do so. They have a trash pick up but i don't' know how much it is effecting the trash. Not all villages have a pick up.

• Solutions: Create more trash cans, teach about recycling, do projects using recycled products

3. Polluted water: There is a lot of sun off from erosion and waste. The factories dump waste into the water. The villages dump waste in the garbage. The rivers and lakes are all contaminated and some are incapable of handling life. There are some areas that drinking water is not possible because of chemicals or lack of freshwater. Salt water and fresh water are mixing.

• Solutions: Teach about waste control, teach about the importance of clean water

Social

Teen pregnancy: There are many 15-18 year old having baby with older men or boys in their schools. Parent are afraid to let their kids go out and many girls an locked in the house. They use of contraceptive is frowned upon. Parent will not buy contraceptives for their child yet they also don't want to be grandparents. Sex edu is taught in school with a focus of abstinence but i am unsure how much is taught in homes.

• Solution: Teach parents how to talk to their children

Drowning: Many children drown because they can't swim even though there is alot of water in and around Nica. There are not many body of waters in villages and children/adults alike can't swim

• Teach swimming lessons if water is available, teach about water safety

Obesity: It is considered healthy to be overweight. mother worry when their child begin to loose weight and many of the foods are fattening. This is part of the culture of Nica. Their is little to no exercise done by Nica's.

• Teach cooking classes, teach about exercise and the importance, healthy living

Any other ideas? I'm all ears. Love and miss everyone.

Indpendence Day

Hey Just wanted to give you some information about their independence day. It goes for two days. 14 and 15 of September. It starts off on the 13th though with the passing of the torch. Which is when a torch is passed form Guatemala to Costa Rica. It goes through Hondores, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Each of these countries have their Independence at the same time. Then on the 14th at 7:00 in the morning all of the schools march in a parade throughout my village. See the pictures on my Facebook. Then they did a grand performance in the park. It was really cool and interesting. The next day they repeated the same show for those who missed it the first time i guess. Don't know for sure. Then in the afternoon schools from Managua come and preform.

One week in still going strong! (with some set backs)

MY COMPUTER IS FIXED FOR THE TIME BEING BUT I CAN'T SEE IT LASTING FOR THE WHOLE TWO YEARS.

It's really cute i have two little girls watching me type they are fascinated by it.

So I have been here a week now and I still like my village. My family is nice but i find it hard to start a conversation with them. Mama is very overbearing and acts alot like well a mom. Fancy that. LOL It can get very annoying at times but it is nice to know that she worries about me. The food is good but I'm getting sick of gallo pinto or beans and rice. There is at least a veracity of other foods that i get through out the day. Like sopa de pollo and their version of hamburger with is not a hamburger by the way. The food is very greasy here as well. A lot of fried stuff. Apparently chunky is healthy and good looking in their eyes. They keep trying to get meat on my bones! I can't eat a whole plate full of food lol. Oh well i try but i don't stuff myself and get sick.

My classes are ok, i am in the second to lowest group and the lowest in my group but i am learning alot. I can see the difference when i talk. At least when i'm having a good day. Today was long and hard but i'm sure tomorrow will be better. That is just what happens here. We get a new teacher which i am looking forward to not that i don't like my teacher but i'm really for a new person. She is not what i would call my favorite teacher but i could have worst.

We have visit the school and i saw the class that i am to teach. I will visit it observe next week which i am looking forward to. We are trying to get a group of jovenes (teens) to have a good to teach them about recycling. However no one showed up. We are now trying to get people through the schools and talking to people on the streets. It was discouraging but that happens. Try and try again that should be the Peace Corps motto. Lets just hope we do better next time.

The weather here is strange it rains for like a few minutes to and hour the sunny. But rains most night really scary at times since the roof is a tin roof and it is really loud. Thunderstorms are the worst since they stay right over you and are really loud. I had one a few days after i got here and thought the house was going to blow over! All was well but i hugged my teddy all night long.

I went to the beach yesterday it was beautiful and soo much fun. I can't remember the last time i was there. I really want to learn how to surf! I have fish which was great and the first seafood i had. It was also cool to see different parts of Nicaragua. I have also been to the lookout over the lagoon that i close to my village. But i haven't been in it that is my next goal.

So i'm going to write my typical day for you guys:
6:30-7:00 wake up
7:00-7:50 get ready and eat breakfast
8:00-12:00 Spanish class
12:00-1:00 lunch
1:00-3:00 Spanish activities in my village
3:00-4:00 rest aka me time
4:00-6:00 talk with the family and watch tele novelas
6:00-7:00 dinner
7:00-8:30 Homework and more talking
9:00 Sleep!

Wow that was hard to do in English keep wanted to type in Spanish. I guess that i a good sign.

In my village

Well today is my first full day in my village. I am a bit homsick being away from all of the othervolunteers. There are four of us in the village doing training together. We all are fairly closetogether but it´s not the same as a room together. I am really confused with this keyboard. It isan english keyboard with spanish placement of letters. I have to try different buttons to get theright combination to write what I want. Still can´t find the at key lol. Anyways i got off course.

My village is a small village a little bit away from Masay which is a about 40km from managua. Itis not too noisy however the church likes to shoot off these loud gun like noices at random times through out the day! Very loud and annoying it shoocks me everytime. My family finds it reallyfunny. It is also a very safe town I have already checked in with the police to inform them of mylocation and time of stay in the town to make sure i am safe. There is also no post office so i don´t know how i´m going to write a letter i´m sure that Peace Corps can help with that.

My family, I have a Mama and three sisters two of which are twins. Which i can´t tell apartluckily we just call them twins so i don´t really need to tell them apart. I sometimes wonder ifthey ever get tierd of being called that are wish they had more of a separate indentity. Maybe i will ask them sometime when my spanish is better. I really like my family, they are all reallypaticent with me while i strugle through spanish. They encourgage me to talk although it is hardto get a work in edgewise with Mama. Then she wonders why i don´t talk lol.

Elections are happening soon so it is intresting to see all of the campaining that is going on. I amnot alowd to get involved with the election at all of really talk about it with people. But there are trucks that go through town with loud speakers that broadcast the runnering ideas andinfromation with a flag. It happens a few time a day very intresting. To bad I don´t understandwhat is being said. I don´t see alot of stuff about it on TV at all but that could be because of thestations that are on at home.

has so Training is ok a bit bording. I learned alot of it in Niger but it won´t hurt to learn it again or thatis what i keep telling myself. I find it hard to not fall asleep through some of the lectures. However the people are really nice and i´m finding i´m making alot of new friends. Class so farbeen easy but i know it will get harder later. Right now i just need to talk and get betterwhich is easier said than done. We have a rule that we volunteer came up with no english exseptfor certain times of day. So far with have been somewhat succesful but then we only had one daygive us time. Everything is still new we will get there soon.

Nicarague is beautiful with lakes everywhere and beautiful greenary and volcanos. Reallydiferent than Niger and the Us. Still hace alot to learn about the culture and life here. I will learneventually. It rains strangely here sort of like how it is in New Orleans. A little bit of rain for a short amount of time then sun. So you really don´t need an umbrella beacuse you can just wait itout.

So my computer is broken and i´m running out of time on this computer. I will have to finishsoon. Peace Corps is seeing if they can fix my computer is not i will just use my kindle or publiccomputers. IT will have hard to do my homework since i need to read stuff online but peacecorps with figure soemthing out. So i can´t spell check since everything is spanish so i´m sorry from all the bad spelling. Love you all and miss you.

First Day! HOT AND HUMID

Well I'm in Nicaragua where it is very hot. It's not as hot as Niger though. And it is humid I was outside for a few minutes and was dripping with sweat. It will take a little bit getting use to. I love my new group. We are all getting along well but I will miss my Niger group. It is luxurious we have real bed, electricity, internet and running water. We are rooming with four others for the first four nights before we go to our host families. There we will have our training groups about four people in each group.

Staging was boring! They did the exact same thing when I went to Niger. It was very repetitive and I just wanted to go to bed. Unfortunately I still had to participated which I guess was a good thing in the long run. It was nice to be away from home though. Wonder how long that will last until I get homesick. I know I will eventually. So mom dad cheer up I will miss you!

We are all so tired. We had to get up at 2am to get to the plane this morning so none of us got much sleep. I also didn't sleep well the night before I left so we are all running on little to no sleep. Luckily Peace Corps Nicaragua understands that and hasn't planed that much stuff for us to do. We had lunch when we got here which is good since I was hungry. NO BEANS! Yet! It was really good too, chicken, rice, salad, and roles. They had potato but I did NOT eat it. We will dive into everything tomorrow. So wish me luck! I’m excited to finally be here but my exhaustion is winning out a lot of the positive emotions. We will get to go to bed early tonight so all is well. Not much more to report right now since nothing is really going on. Just relaxing and getting to know each other.

Love all of you guys and will keep you up dated. XOXOXO

My own thoughts and feeling uncensored

I realized a few days ago that I have informed you about the logistics that have been going on but not my own emotions and thoughts. I want to take this time to tell you about that.

When I was evacuated I was not sure if I was really ready to go back out again. I did look into direct transfer which would have me going to another country right after Niger but luckily no programs were open for me. I look at that now as a blessing in disguise. I know that I would have been fine if I did do something like that but I feel better coming home first. My fear wasn't that I wasn't ready for the challenge that a new assignment would being. My fear was not being able to serve my new village to the best of my abilities. I was unsure if I would have too much connection to Niger and the people there to be able to put my all into a new country. Since I have been home I now feel ready to take on the challenge and know that I can give Nicaragua everything that I gave Niger if not more. I have the experience of doing it before. I know what worked and didn't work last time and can improve on it. I have the confidence and go get it attitude that is needed for this job back again.

The time home was not easy even though I knew that I had to be home. I found that the first few months home were wonderful but hard. The reverse culture shock was quite a shock. I can remember going into a grocery store and wanting to get out. There was so much food! I would think that just the produce area would be enough food to feed my village for a month. The idea of so much food and how we don't appreciate it was saddening for me. I walked through the store in a daze. Mom described me as a zombie and I'm sure that is what I looked like. All I could think about was how much I wanted to be back in my village. I also went to a few of the meetings and events that return volunteers had and talked with people who were back in the US. It helped to here from others and listen to their stories.

As time passed I got adapted to like in the US and my enthusiasm to re-enroll came with a vengeance. The frustration I had with the Peace Corps happened soon after. I was offered a place in Jamaica which I later realized I didn't want. I didn't have the time to think it through and I said yes to it. I felt bad telling them no after saying yes but I remembered what on return volunteer told me. I was to be stubborn and get what I wanted, that is what I did. I was then told i was going to El Salvador. By the time that I got excited I was told I was changing. I was given an option that didn't sound like what I wanted. I was frustrated, by that point I was in US for about 4 months and just wanted to get back out and work. I was told soon after that I was to go the Nica. Yet I was to leave later, about a month later. I didn't have many options and was just glad to go and get what I wanted. Even it it meant more time at home. It was that or not going. Disheartened I began to plan my summer.

My friend from Niger began to go out and I was hearing about there wonderful adventures and wishing that I could share in their fun. I was becoming jealous of their adventures. I wanted to join them so bad but was stuck here at home. In what was beginning to feel like a prison. At this point in time I was realized that I was not going to be able to live with my parents for much longer. I had to find a way to get out of the house. They were driving me crazy just like parents were suppose to do. Not only was there a delay in my return to service but there were issues with my medical getting done. It felt like one set back after another as if I would never get to Nica.

Going to camp gave me a focus for my anger and frustration it was a distraction from the systematic life I had at home. I got to learn more Spanish and have a freedom that I wasn't getting at home. During my time at camp I tried to contact Peace Corps because I had a medical hold on my account but didn't know why. I had not number at camp that I could give them. I gave them my email in hopes that they would be able to email me about the hold. They never got back to me and I never talked to anyone in Peace Corps. It was very frustrating and with my time in the US winding down I began to fear that I wouldn't be able to go.

Coming back home and having a month to get ready was a good idea. There was still a lot of things that I needed to do, pack up my room and finish packing for Peace Corps. I also wanted to be able to say good by to my friends. My life was busy which helped distract me. However I still had a medical hold on me. I had to find a way to get rid of the hold. I didn't understand why I had to have a test when all of the past test came back negative. Peace Corps contacted me finally when I could give them a phone number. I guess it was security reasons but I will never know. However I got it done and all was well in the end. A huge weight was lifted off my shoulder.

Now it is the forever waiting for the day to come. I'm all packed and have been for two weeks now. I am only waiting nervous, and excited for the day to finally come. Having strange Peace Corps dreams and being kept up with nerves. Hope everything settles down when I get to Nica. I know it will. 4 days to go! But who's counting? LOL.

10 days left!

Hey all,

I'm finding that I'm getting nervous! I'm not sleeping well and I think it is linked to Nica. I have never taught successfully and I'm scared to be doing it for two year straight. I keep telling myself that they will train us but it is still daunting. I know that i will do well and that i have nothing to fear. Now if only my body will follow my mind. Oh well that is normal and it will be an amazing experience. I'm also apprehensive of my host family. Peace Corps just changed the rule that all incoming volunteers must live with a host family for the whole 2 years. I am nervous about how my family will like me and vise versa. I am also afraid that my village will judge me on my family and not on who i am. The first impression is that one that lasts after all. At least we are allowed to change our families if we want to. I know that it is for our own safety but I would rather live alone. I hope that i can still get a cat but that is something that i will have to work out with my family.

I would like to take this time to comment on the news that is around Peace Corps this past few months. Please remember that this is my personal opinion and does not reflect the ideology or opinion of Peace Corps or the US government. I feel that through my personal experience, Niger was one of the most safes places i have been. I felt as if i have a support network that i could work if something did happen. I felt like any concerns that i might have were met and i think others in my group felt the same.

Part of the culture of Niger is the lack of contact between men and women. So a simple brush of the arm could be a man coming on to you. Other cultures that might not be true. Each culture has there own way of dealing with things and what actions are considered right or wrong. This is one of the risks of going abroad whether it is to study, vacation, or Peace Corps. It is a risk that you are taking. A Peace Corps volunteer knows of these risks and accepts them as fact. Yet they also see the amazing aspect of such experience as well.

During our training we are given/explained to about situations and how to react in them. We had a skit about how to ward off unwanted attention and other incidences that could happen. They give you advice and plenty numbers to call if you need to. This is useful when you are at post but like the news said there were incidence with PC admin. However I found that I made some close friends with the PC admin and that I could go to that person if i needed. I keep this person in mind and call them if need be as well as the person you are suppose to call. this will gave me a person that I know I could trust to use if need be.

I feel that someone can be in just as much danger in an American city as they are in Peace Corps. There are incident all over the US and world it is one of the ugly parts of life. Yes Peace Corps could have handled some of the situations better than they did but every person/organization makes mistakes. There is no way that someone can predict the action of another. I am not justifying what happened or saying that Peace Corps was not in the wrong. All parts were at play here and everything has to be taken in to consideration and looked at from all sides.

Basically, I fell in love with my village in the short time I was there. I learned a lot about myself and them. I would not trade that experience and would recommend peace corps to anyone.