After a little over two years in Nicaragua, I'm back home! For the first few days it felt like I was just home for vacation and was going back, but now it's sunk in. I'm living at home for the indefinite future. And unemployed.

Not much happened during the last few months in Nicaragua. I had to go to the Peace Corps office a lot for final medical appointments, exit interviews, etc. There wasn't much class going on because of Independence Day celebrations in September and then my town's patron saint celebrations plus the school's anniversary and a lot of rain (rain = no school) in October.

I couldn't find another volunteer to adopt Bambi so I had to give him to a teacher I worked with in a rural community school. It was really sad and stressful saying goodbye to everyone and getting rid of all of my stuff, but I managed and I hope to be back to visit every now and then.

The Nicaraguans taught me a lot about themselves, their food and culture, and I did my best to teach them about American culture and food. They are the most accommodating, welcoming and helpful people I have ever encountered. Life in Nicaragua isn't easy, but it isn't horrible either. There is always time to celebrate something, cancel school or, most importantly, spend time with family. Their popular saying, "hay mas tiempo que vida" (there is more time than life), sums it up pretty well.

With all of the free time I now have at home, I've started to work on my grad school applications. I'm applying to 11 different programs for international development. I'm hoping to finish them sometime soon, since I have nothing else to do and no excuse not to, and start looking for some form of temporary work until classes start next September.

So I guess this is the end of my blog. Thanks so much for keeping up with it over the last 2+ years!

I finally finished my world map! It took an entire month from start to finish and I was definitely starting to get sick of it, but I'm really glad I did it. Now I just have to hope that the kids at school don't destroy it...

A couple weeks ago some kids from down the street gave me a puppy named Bambi. I'm not entirely sure why they didn't want him, but either way, I now have a pet. I was set on giving him back or finding someone to adopt him when I leave but the more I think about it, the more I realize that no one would take care of him like I do. Dogs in Nicaragua aren't "man's best friend" or part of the family, they're watch dogs and live outside and eat whatever's left over from over meal, if there is anything. So I'm going to talk to another PCV next week who's taking her dog back with her to see what the process is like to take him back with me.

We're officially halfway through the school year and on semester vacation. The first half of the year went by pretty quickly and now I only have about four months left (not that I'm counting or anything). August should actually be the last "real" month of school. September is full of Independence Day celebrations and days off from school, October is when patron saint festivities are here (more missed school) and then the elections are the first week of November which are definitely going to affect class since the schools are used as polling centers. The fact that election day is on a Sunday certainly does not mean that classes will be unaffected and resume as normal that Monday. And the week(s) before will be used for setting everything up, naturally. So I basically have one more solid month of teaching left. I think I can handle that.

I had a really nice time at home for my sister's graduation. Luckily the graduation was an excuse for everyone to get together so I got to see the whole family. I also got a lot of "So, what are you going to do when you come back?" I think I've resigned myself to going to grad school to get a Master's in International Development. Peace Corps is great work experience but everyone still requires a Master's...so back to school I go.

After telling the mayor of my town that, no, I will not trade in my boyfriend for him, I'm very sorry, I received all the materials for my world map. Last weekend Ana's husband graciously volunteered 6 hours of his time and manual labor to cement over the brick wall at the school where I'm going to paint the map. In the next couple days we'll go back to add another layer of a finer cement mixture so the wall is smooth and ready to paint. My friend Julie, who's done 3 maps in her town, will be here next weekend to help me with the grid and to start drawing.

Rainy season is in full swing and has brought with it zillions of flies and mosquitoes. I haven't yet decided which of the two is worse.

On Wednesday my conversation group and I are going on a field trip to Granada so they can practice their English by interviewing tourists. They're really excited about it...should be fun. It's cool to see how much they've learned and improved since we started from zero a year and a half ago.

The rainy season is trying to start. It's not raining consistently everyday yet but we're getting there. In the meantime the humidity on the days it doesn't rain is unbearable.

Mango season is starting to slow down so my dozens of mangoes a week have been reduced to maybe six.

Last Monday on the way to a rural countryside school where I've been teaching English, the tire of the school's principal's motorcycle (my mode of transportation to get there...if Peace Corps knew I'd get kicked out) popped when we crossed the river. I walked the rest of the way to school to teach class and he was going to push the motorcycle back to fix it and come get me to take me home later. Important note: this is a very overweiht and inactive Nicaraguan man and wewere approximately 9 miles from my town. So I finished class and started walking figuring I'd run into him on his way to get me and save some time. Wrong. He never came back and I got all the way to my town (a little over 3 hours and 9 miles later) without even hearing anything from him. He should have sent someone to get me if he wasn't going to make it, or at least call to make sure I was ok. If I hadn't started walking I wuld have been waiting for him alone at the middle of nowhere schoo lall night. So, needless to say, I'm not going back there.

I'm in the process of getting the mayor's office to pay for the materials to paint a big world map at my school. I talked to a few people about it and wrote up a formal letter asking for the materials and explaining the importance of the map and today I actually got to talk to the mayor about it. It sounds like they're going to help which is good. I'll have my work cut out for me during the semester vacation in July. Peace Corps has a website for the world map project if you want to see what it's like: wwwtheworldmapproject.com

I'm going home on Monday for 15 days for my sister's graduation! I'm really looking forward to seeing evryone and getting a little break from Nicaragua.

Mangoes are officially in season and I can't go two days without being given at least a dozen mangoes. I haven't completely OD-ed on them yet, but I'm getting there. Hopefully by the time I'm completely over them it'll be the end of the season.

It's been really hot here because the rainy season should be starting soon...though some people say it's because there's going to be a huge earthquake on May 21st when the world is supposedly ending.

We've been missing so much school lately for various Sandino actos, etc. Tomorrow is the 32nd anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution, so there obviously won't be any class.

I'm really looking forward to going home in less than a month!

Mangoes are officially in season and I can't go two days without being given at least a dozen mangoes. I haven't completely OD-ed on them yet, but I'm getting there. Hopefully by the time I'm completely over them it'll be the end of the season.

It's been really hot here because the rainy season should be starting soon...though some people say it's because there's going to be a huge earthquake on May 21st when the world is supposedly ending.

We've been missing so much school lately for various Sandino actos, etc. Tomorrow is the 32nd anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution, so there obviously won't be any class.

I'm really looking forward to going home in less than a month!

I just got back from the Corn Islands on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua with my friends Julie and Jocelyn. Up until the day before it didn’t seem real that we were actually going to go. We had to get permission from Peace Corps to go on vacation (even though we didn’t miss any school because there is no school during Holy Week) and we had to get permission from the U.S. Embassy. Then we bought the plane tickets from Managua to Big Corn Island. And it still hadn’t sunk in. All of these plans were finalized about 2 weeks before our departure date. Oh, and we didn’t have a place to stay yet either. We tried emailing a few places the week before we left but we were warned that Semana Santa (Holy Week) was the busiest time on the islands and that everywhere was going to be booked. Show up without a reservation at your own risk…which is exactly what we did.

The flight from Managua to Big Corn Island is a little over an hour and we left early on Saturday morning. We were able to stay with on of Jocelyn’s friends in Managua who works for the Embassy on Friday night, and she even took us to the airport at the crack of dawn on Saturday. Once on Big Corn we took a taxi to the dock and got on a 30 minute boat to Little Corn. Within minutes of being on Big Corn I already ran into someone I knew from my town. Later in the week we’d run into at least 5 other people we knew either from our towns or Peace Corps. Small world!

We found a place to stay on Little Corn Island for the first night after only two tries and considered ourselves lucky. We got settled and set out to find a place for the rest of the week. After a long day of wandering and sort of getting lost…yes, on a one square mile island…we stumbled upon a really neat place that happened to have a cabin for three available for the rest of the week. We were psyched and relieved.

This place we found, called Ensueños, was being run by a guy from France and a guy (the chef) from Italy. The “hotel,” if you can call it that, consisted of just a couple cabins created out of coconut trees, bamboo, sea shells, and a little cement. There was no electricity, except for in one bigger cabin which was generated by solar panels, so we were generally in bed by 7pm, after it got dark. The water was hand cranked (by the guests) out of a well. And there were enough mosquitoes to kill an army of elephants, which we found out after the first night without mosquito nets (they were being washed). Even with the mosquito nets, sleep was a little difficult due to the swaying and creaking of the coconut tree that was built into our cabin. But the atmosphere there was so relaxing during the day that we tried to put up with the lack of uninterrupted sleep at night.

We woke up early and filled our days with swimming in the ocean, reading, napping and going into town. Our tight Peace Corps Volunteer budget resulted in a diet of coconut bread, beans and homemade ice cream sold in a bag. Every day we went into town to buy and eat the bread, beans and ice cream and get into range of cell phone service so we could keep in contact with the rest of the world. One day we changed up the routine and went snorkeling where we saw some nurse sharks, manta rays, lots of cool fish and a ton of coral. After 5 days on Little Corn we went back to Big Corn for 2 days before our flight back to Managua on Saturday, where we continued the coconut bread, beans and homemade ice cream diet…with a couple splurges on pizza and rare American candy bars from a nearby convenience store.

It was a really great trip and I’m glad we went. I came back to a room full of dirt and dust and went right to work cleaning. Everything is now clean and my clothes are washed and hanging up to dry. I’m going to relax and enjoy the last day of vacation before it’s back to work on Monday.

The Month of March has almost completely come and gone already and I'm finally sitting down to write a blog entry. Oops.

My boyfriend was here from March 6-12th. This was his fourth visit...he'll be fluent in Spanish any day now! We decided to bare the 6 hour trip up to the northern part of Nicaragua to see the Somoto Canyon. The canyon was beautiful and the tour the guide/local gave us was really fun. We hiked parts of the canyon and swam the parts that couldn't be hiked. We took a pit stop in Esteli on the way back to my town to see what all the rage was about there. There wasn't much to do besides wander around, eat, spend 10 minutes in a Sandinista museum and about 3 hours looking for a non-existent Italian restaurant in my guidebook. Then we went to Granada where we spent another day wandering and eating.

Then I went back to work for less than a week before I went back to the airport, but this time to pick up my younger sister. We went to the Mombacho Volcano and did the longer of the two trails around the craters, which I'd never done before. After, we waited way too long for a bus to Granada to get lunch, at about 4pm. We proceeded to miss the last bus from Granada to my town and had to take a long, roundabout way back, exhausting our patience with the buses. The next day we went to the favorite Laguna de Apoyo where we stayed the night for free thanks to my grandparents. We relaxed and ate guacamole and other yummy food we brought to cook. Then we went to the Masaya Volcano and passed through the market on the way back to my town. We spent the next couple days just hanging around in my house/town, going to the nearby river, going to some of my classes and cooking. We got corn kernels in the market and had them ground at the town mill. My sister turned it into corn bread which, due to a probably gluten-contaminated mill, she couldn't even eat! So I had to bare down and eat it all by myself...what a drag. We also managed to lose my pet turtle by letting him out of his bowl to walk around in the yard. Whenever I did that before he would always bury himself in my compost pile. When we couldn't find him after about 20 minutes we completely undug all of the compost without any luck. Apparently he's an land turtle as opposed to a water turtle and is probably happier underground. We had a really fun time and it was nice to see her and show her around Nicaragua.

Now I'm finally back to work. People haven't forgotten about me which is good. I was a little worried about missing so much school, but I have until November to make up for those two weeks and it's not everyday that my boyfriend and sister can come visit, so I think they'll forgive me.

So I spoke too soon. Lola only lasted for a week. She was way too little and clearly needed to be with her mom still. I feel a little better because the other two that fell out of the nest with her died on their owners, too, so it wasn't just me. I'm currently refusing any new pets that people are trying to give me.

School has finally started up again. I'm in full swing with mornings and afternoons at the high school and my community classes at night. I'll also be going to a high school in the countryside on Wednesday afternoons and a nearby elementary school on Thursday and Friday mornings. Then I have my sixth grade classes on Thursday and Friday afternoons and on Friday nights this year I'll be teaching adults who are in sixth grade. So I've been busy which is good. The time is flying by.

I'm looking forward to my boyfriend's and sister's visits coming up in March!

My life just got a little more exciting. In addition to the turtle, fish and snails, I now have a baby squirrel to take care of. Her name is Lola, or Lolita, and she was given to me as a birthday present by one of my friends. She an her two sisters had fallen out of their nest. Fortunately, squirrels are not uncommon pets in Nicaragua unlike in the U.S. where it's dangerous and illegal. She is about three weeks old and hasn't even opened her eyes yet. I'm feeding her baby formula out of a syringe which she grabs with her two little hands. Once she's bigger she will eat fruit and nuts and hopefully not my clothes.

My efforts to catch up my lower level community class with the other group are going slowly. We spent two weeks reviewing the material we had learned before I went home in December and they finally took, and did rather poorly on, the test we didn't have time to do before the break. Now we just have two new topics to cover but it's been thwared so far by no one showing up to class and now by the patron saint fesivities in town. I'll get the two groups combined and the new one started eventually...

Arturo, my deaf former bodybuilding champion friend from the gym, has been bringing me a loaf of fresh bread every night ever since I saw him with one and asked where he got it because it looked good. He showed me where and proceeded to bring it to me for the past three nights. The bread drop off is obviously not just a drop off. He sits down and we talk for a while...well, more like he talks for a while. He is deaf and mute and it's somehow really hard to get a word in during a conversation. He's really nice so I usually just let him blab but last night he didn't leave until 11pm! When he was leaving I told him he was going to make me fat with all the bread. He agreed and said he'd just come on Thursdays.

I got back safely and fairly easily to Nicaragua. I was dreading the 4 buses I had to take from the airport to my house with two big duffel bags but everyone was really helpful. Two of the four bus drivers drove me further than the last stop once everyone had gotten off to take me closer to where I needed to be, the last of which was in my town- the bus driver dropped me off at the gate to my house!

When I got home I unloaded all of my bags for the very eager neighborhood kids. The mother of two of the kids who my neighbor takes care of sent me a big package of toys to bring back for them. I felt a little bit like Santa unloading everything. After that I spent a solid two hours cleaning my place. It was covered in dirt and dust (December, January and February are really windy months here) since the houses here are not airtight and sealed up like they are in the US. The next day I spent 6 hours making the rounds and visiting all my friends and my host family...it's impossible to stop by for a quick hello. I had to sit down, and eat or drink something and catch up on all the local news with everyone.

On Tuesday I left again to go to a Peace Corps workshop at a resort on a beach, where I am currently. It's really nice here and I've been enjoying the beach in the mornings when I go for runs but the day is filled with lots of talks and activities. Our Nicaraguan counterparts were here for part of it (only Ana came, though Scarlett said she was going to) and seemed to really enjoy it. I'll get back to my site tomorrow.

Monday I am going to start up with my lower level community class. I'm going to teach them the few topics that they need in order to catch up with the more advanced class so we can combine them into one conversation group. With the two nights/week I'll now have free during the year, I'm going to start up another group from the beginning again because I've been receiving a lot of requests for a new course.

School doesn't officially start until February 15th. This year is an electoral year (elections in November) so we have been told to expect more affectations to our classes than last year...should be interesting based on how much school was missed last year.

The last month of school was pretty uneventful, as expected. Classes ended about two weeks earlier than they were supposed to. The teachers turned their grades in on a Friday and the kids were still supposed to show up to school the following Monday. With nothing to do but clean the classrooms and the grounds and fool around things were pretty chaotic so the last week of school ended up being just a day. The teachers got sick of the kids showing up with nothing to do so they gave up pretending there was still school and told everyone to just go home.

A bunch of my Peace Corps friends and I got together for Thanksgiving dinner. It was a gigantic feast with all the usual Thanksgiving food (mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, etc.) except we had chicken instead of turkey. The next day I went to my favorite Laguna de Apoyo with my friends Julie and Jocelyn and later that afternoon we went to a bodybuilding competition near my town where some friends from my gym were competing.

The first week of December I worked at an Intensive English Summer Camp for 80 high school students hosted by the U.S. Embassy with some Nicaraguan teachers and 4 other PCVs. We went to the Embassy to plan everything out the day before. It was really unorganized and overwhelming and we were all really stressed out about it. For the first couple days we were doing a lot of improvising and making lots of changes as we went but we got things down pretty quickly and it all started running much smoother. The mornings were English classes with the Nicaraguan teachers teaching and the PCVs helping out. The afternoons were culture classes with the PCVs. We each picked a holiday to teach them about and the another miscellaneous culture topic. I taught the kids about Thanksgiving and we made Pilgrim and Indian hats with construction paper which they continued to wear for the rest of the week. Jocelyn talked about Christmas and had them make paper snowflakes and wreaths. Julie talked about the 4th of July and taught them the national anthem. Jess and Liz taught them about Martin Luther King day and had them make their own "I have a dream" mini-speeches. The week was full of typical camp games and movies and the last night we had a talent show. We also went on a field trip to a national TV station and newspaper company. The kids were great and so much fun to work with. It really showed us PCVs that there actually are Nicaraguan students who care and are interested and motivated, which was really refreshing because the majority of our high school students are nothing like that.

I came home on the 20th. I got in at around 1am and left the next morning at 7am to visit my grandparents. They're doing really well and it was really nice to see them. I got back home on Christmas Eve and spent a white Christmas (it snowed!) with my family. The day after Christmas we had to put my dog, Goober, to sleep. He was 12 1/2 years old and was pretty sick. It was horrible but was probably best for him. Now we're in Colorado skiing for a week. I'll be home for a few days before I go back to Nicaragua on the 7th.

I officially moved out and I love it. I should have done it a while ago. My mom gave me a ride on her way to town last Friday with all of my stuff and that was that. On Saturday I went with some gym friends to a nearby town to bring back a stove that they´re lending me. Then I went to Jinotepe and bought a mini fridge and a bunch of organizing shelves, pots, pans, broom, mop, etc. By the end of the day Saturday, with the help from some community class students who live across the street, I was all settled and moved in. I´ve been cooking and eating tons of vegetables which I definitely missed. I´ve also been doing laundry and cleaning daily which I didn´t do with my host family in an effort to not impose on their space and use their stuff. I bought a hammock the other day, too, and spent almost all day yesterday in it reading. Life is good!

My dad´s trip went really well. He operated the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday that he was here and then gave some talks on that Thursday and Friday. I went into Managua to go to the conference. On Friday afternoon when it was over we came back to my town which was in the middle of the Patron Saint celebrations. My two best friends in Peace Corps were in town so we went to dinner with them on Friday night. On Saturday we went to the rodeo which was an interesting, as always, experience, and then Sunday morning my dad left. Dad had a good trip and says he wants to come back once or twice before I finish. He invited the two medical students he worked with this trip and the trip in January to spend a month at Maryland.

Leptospirosis, an illness caused by contact with dirty water (infected with animal urine), is rampant in Nicaragua because of all the rain and flooding. 17 people have died from it so far. The health centers have been handing out Doxycycline which is the prophylaxis. That said, I just got back from a baptism party. It was pouring and the gymnasium place they had rented out flooded with dirty leptospirosis water. I couldn´t stop thinking about the cut on my toe. The first thing I did when I got home was wash my feet.

I decided that it´s time to move out of my host family´s house and live on my own. I was afraid to tell them because they tend to hold grudges but they seemed to take it pretty well. In fact, within 12 hours my mom had already called Peace Corps and made sure they would send her a trainee in January when the next new group comes, so I guess she wasn´t too heartbroken. I´ve been looking around for a place and I think I´ve found somewhere. My boss is coming to supervise my classes and talk to everyone I work with so she´ll give me the O.K. or not if I can move in. I´m really excited be on my own and be able to cook and stuff.

There´s only a month left of school so I´m skeptical that the next few weeks will resemble any sort of productivity...

It´s been raining like crazy here and everywhere but my site is seriously flooding. The country is actually on a sort of state of emergency because of it...though I´m not really sure what the entails. Until yesterday it had rained here in my site nonstop for an entire week. The Lake Nicaragua is overflowing and flooding all the communities that live along its edges. Other lakes and rivers are flooding everywhere too and people are being evacuated and put in shelters. The news is 100% about the floods and shows people´s houses floating away, up to the roof with water and people tearing their houses apart to be able to reuse the materials somewhere else. I think we´ve received a record amount of rain this rainy season and the rivers and lakes have reached levels higher than those during Hurricane Mitch in 1999 which was really destructive...and there´s still another month (at least) of rainy season left.

Other than the rain not much else is happening. We haven´t had much class because of the rain. The kids who live in the campo and have to walk really far on muddy roads don´t come when it rains like this so classes don´t really happen. Things should pick up again as normal next week.

The current PC Trainees were supposed to go on their volunteer visits this weekend but they were cancelled because of the rain. I was looking forward to giving a PCT the inside scoop about Peace Corps! Training is rough and they need the encouragement. I´ll see them this weekend for a charla on Cultural Adaptation though.

My dad will be here in 10 days to do hip replacements and attend the national orthopaedic meeting in Managua. I can´t wait to see him! I can´t believe September is already over.

Sorry for not writing in a while...as usual. Everything has been going well here and not much new is going on to report. My one year anniversary in country has come and gone and next is the one year left in country (November). Time is flying.

My boyfriend came back to visit for a week which was a nice break. We went back to our favorite spot at the Laguna de Apoyo and went to San Juan del Sur to see the turtle tour like I did with my sister.

School has been about the same. We´ve been missing a lot of class in the high school because they´ve been preparing for this coming 14th and 15th which are the Independence Days of Central America and Nicaragua. The band only exists for this time of year and has been practicing for over a month. Band practice is in the afternoon so if a student who goes to school in the afternoon session wants to be in the band he/she misses a ton of class. The teachers ordered matching lime green polo shirts to wear for the big parade on the 14th where we´ll be walking through town (while the students march, literally, like an army) all day. On the sleeve it has our names, mine says Profe. Carla Pellegrini. It´s funny to think about sometimes how I´m a teacher here and would be nowhere near qualified to do it at home.

Rainy season is still going strong, but it´s not terrible. The worst is to come now that it´s hurricane season. It rains everyday in the afternoon, sometimes in the morning, too, which poses a problem for drying clothes, but mine have been drying pretty well in my room. Everyone here says clothes that dry indoors smell bad. Oh well.

Four new PC Environment Trainees got to town last weekend. I actually just met them all right now. They seem nice and are all overwhelmed and struggling with their Spanish, which is normal. I told them they just have to get through the 11 weeks of training and then it´s all downhill.

Yesterday I made pesto-filled tortellini that my sister had sent me via my boyfriend with a tomato and broccoli sauce. It was really nice to have some real italian food! My mom loved it, my sister was hesitant and my grandmother refuses to even try anything remotely out of the ordinary. I ate it yesterday for lunch and dinner and today for lunch, too.

The next few months before I come home for Christmas (I officially have my tickets! Dec. 20-Jan. 7) will be really busy. This week is all the Independence Day stuff. Then I have a mid-service medical evaluation, a PC Trainee coming to visit for a weekend, some charlas (sessions/talks) to give to the new trainees, my dad´s visit in October, the patron saint celebrations here in October and then it´ll be the end of the school year and Thanksgiving! Until next time...

My sister just left from her almost week-long visit on Saturday. It was really nice to see her and we had a lot of fun. She didn´t even complain about the cold showers! We went to Granada, Masaya, the Laguna de Apoyo and San Juan del Sur where we went on a nighttime tour to see sea turtles laying and hatching from eggs!

This week on Monday and Tuesday I went to a rural community school to co-teach with an English teacher/neighbor/brother-in-law of my afternoon counterpart at the high school. I´ve been helping him in the morning with his English (he´s a math teacher who got stuck teaching English) and he wanted to show me he classes, so I went. We went on his motorcycle which was a little frightening (and not allowed by Peace Corps, don´t tell!) but he went slowly so it was ok. The kids there are completely different than the kids at the high school here--they are respectful and actually interested in learning. It was remarkable and refreshing. On Wednesday we only had English class until 3pm and he was going to keep teaching (math) until 5 so I decided to take the bus (that passes only 3 times a day) home. There is a point in the road that dips down and turns into a river when it rains hard because that is where the water drains from all nearby towns. When the bus arrived to this point the river had risen and the road was impassable. We all had to get out of the bus (so it´d weigh less and not slide into the flooded street/super fast current) and wait for the water to go down. It took about an hour before it was low enough to cross. During the rainy season that is a normal occurrence there and quite a hassle for those traveling to those rural communities daily. I was asked if there were rivers like that in the US. I said yes, but not that crossed streets and that if it did cross a street a bridge probably would have been built.

School has been about the same, though I haven´t been much because of my sister´s visit and then the two days out in the countryside. The one day this week I was actually going to go there was no class because the kids went to the circus to raise money for a student who had been in a motorcycle accident and is really poor.

Yesterday my community class organized for a photographer to come take a group picture of us. Next week they have another text to finish off this part of the ¨course.¨ Hopefully they´ll all pass like last time.

I was selected as a judge/test corrector for the English part of a test that the kids in the municipality were taking to see who is the best student and go on to the department level of the test. The test was full of errors (made by local English teachers) and I had to go through by hand and correct all of the tests that we were about to give the students. A bunch of other ¨judges¨ there had a lot of corrections to make too for the other subjects on the test. I´m not sure why the tests weren´t reviewed before the same morning that they were going to be taken by the students. Because of all of that, and the usual Nicaraguan tardiness, the kids didn´t start taking the test until 2 hours after they were supposed to!

Not much else is new. I´m looking forward to seeing my boyfriend when he comes back to visit in 2 weeks.

My community class had a surprise welcome back party for me the first day back at class. They were so happy that I was back, which helped the transition back to work. It was so nice of them and just reminded me of how appreciative the Nicaraguans are. They made a ton of food and had decorated the room with balloons and everything. We played pin the tail on the donkey with a Nicaraguan twist (you have to dance while you´re looking for the donkey). My sister took pictures that I´ll have to get from her to post online.

School has been fine. This past Monday was the 31st anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution so there was no school. Everyone (all the Sandinistas, that is) goes to some plaza in Managua to hear the president talk (for 2 hours!) about how great the government is and that, oh by the way, he wants to be the president here forever even though it´s illegal. Anyway, in order to transport the masses to Managua this day, the government bought out 50% of the nation´s transportation to assist in the caravans. This left the rest of the country without transportation. Thanks, Daniel. We also didn´t have school on Tuesday because of it...because all government workers are required to attend this talk in Managua or else they´ll lose their jobs and they got back late on Monday night, so obviously they couldn´t go to work on Tuesday.

I went to the town circus last night. It was interesting to say the least. They had some clowns, a tight rope (loose cable) walker and some scandelously dressed overweight women dancers. The stands were constructed of 2x4s that were not nailed together and were bowed in the middle. I´ll put up some pictures soon.

My sister is coming to visit in a week which I´m really excited about. We´ll hike a few volcanoes and it´s turtle egg laying season so I think we´ll get to a turtle refugee too to see that.

I got back safely and uneventfully to Nicaragua on Wednesday afternoon. I was honestly a little less than thrilled to leave everyone at home and come back but once I got here everything was fine and comfortable again. My family was so happy to see me and we sat around talking for a while when I got back home. The first cold shower was pretty chilly but I think I´ve quickly re-adapted to them again.

I started going to the gym here with my sister. She´s been saying since I got here that she was going to start exercising so I´m glad she finally came around. It´s so nice to be sore again. I was getting bored and sick of my P90x workouts with the resistance bands. The gym is, as my friend Julie accurately described it when she was here visiting this weekend, ¨raw.¨ There are two rooms with a bunch of free weights, bars and benches. There are three cardio machines (a treadmill, stairmaster and bike), none of which require electricity...figure that one out. The two brothers who run the gym are deaf/mute (along with their parents and another sibling) and are former Nicaraguan champion body builders. They´re really nice and have been helping my sister and I with our workouts a lot.

Other than that not much else is new. School starts up again this week. I´m starting my new schedule with just 7th grade in the morning with my counterpart, Scarlett, and 7th, 8th and 9th grade in the afternoon with my counterpart, Ana. I´m really looking forward to spending more time with Ana. Until next time!

Made it home safe and sound. When I told everyone in Nicaragua I was going home they all rushed to give me presents to take to my family--typical Nicaraguan sweets and crackers. It was really nice and made me realize even more how generous the Nicaraguans are. At the same time they were kind of saying goodbye like I wasn't going to come back which was a little disheartening, but I made sure they all knew it was just for 10 days. My sixth graders were actually angry that they were going to have two weeks of vacation because they said my class gets them out of their houses.

The Carlos Fonseca English extravaganza was a complete flop. The "acto" on Friday consisted of the kids doing their skits in the library for my counterparts and I (although I only went in the afternoon. My a.m. counterpart told me not to go). The kids in the morning did it mostly in Spanish because my counterpart didn't help them or, the three times I asked her, tell me who they were so I could help them. The two groups my afternoon counterpart and I had been working with did really well. The following Monday was supposed to be the big competition between all the schools in my town and my high school was the only one to show up. We combined the morning and afternoon groups into 2 acts (about 60 kids total) to go to the department capital to compete against schools from all over the department on Wednesday. I spent Monday afternoon translating and finding the rhythm to a Nicaraguan song I'd never heard before and Tuesday morning practicing with all of the groups. Wednesday we went to the department capital, Jinotepe, at 2pm when it was supposed to begin. We waited and waited and waited until about 4pm. Only one other school had shown up and they eventually found out that the event had been postponed for a bunch of bogus reasons. Supposedly they're going to reschedule but I don't believe it. What a waste.

Home has been really nice. I've already been here for a week and it's flown by. I was expecting it to be weird and overwhelming with the air conditioning, free wireless internet and readily-available hot water but it mostly just feels like a continuation of last summer before I left for Nicaragua. The hard part will be re-adjusting to the inescapable heat, cold showers and pay-by-the-hour Internet cafe, but it shouldn't be too bad. My grandparents and an aunt, uncle and cousin came down to visit from New England which was really nice. I've eaten lots of healthy, grilled (not fried!) food and have spent a lot of time with my family and friends.

So I´ve learned that the first few months (May and June) of rainy season are also fly season. Gross! Everyone and their brother has been sick. Mostly just with a cold, but I was lucky enough to get an amoeba and a parasite! I either drank a bad batch of water or the flies contaminated my food. I´m completely fine and recovered now. It really only lasted one morning before the PC docs were able to diagnose it and get me on antibiotics to make everything stop. I feel pretty lucky actually that I made it over 9 months here without getting sick! That might be a Peace Corps Nicaragua record.

School has been on and off due to meetings and ¨actos¨ as usual. This Friday (tomorrow) there is an acto/competition about Carlos Fonseca, an important dead Sandinista. The kicker is that everything´s in ENGLISH! What does that mean? A) That I´ve spent several hours helping kids translate their skits and poems and writing out pages of phonetically-spelled English, not to be confused with Swahili!, and b) that no one is going to understand anything that the kids are saying except for me and my two counterparts. Haha. Should be interesting.

Not much else has been going on. Our kitten has been missing for the past 3 days, so I think it´s official that it´s lost/dead/stolen. We have bad luck with pets here.

My community classes just had another round of tests. Everyone in my more advanced class passed! And only two failed from the other, beginner class. A great improvement from the 50% passing rates on the last tests. Success!

Countdown to when I get home is at 11 days! I can´t wait to see everyone, go to Trader Joes and Target and eat good food!

Rainy season has officially begun. In fact, it hasn´t stopped downpouring with the exception of 5 minutes here and there for the past 2 days. It rained so hard yesterday that SCHOOL WAS CANCELED. That is not a joke. It rains here for 6 months out of the year, but yesterday it warranted canceling school. Hmm. And I´d thought I´d seen it all in terms of excuses to cancel class. Wrong. The best part is that no one thought to let me know before I trudged out in the rain to walk to school. I put on my hat, raincoat and shoved my bag underneath that coat so it wouldn´t get soaked. 10 minutes later I arrived at school, soaked through to my underwear, at the time when I usually have class to find the teachers sitting in the teachers´ lounge doing nothing and no students in sight. Apparently when it rains really hard the kids don´t show up (some claim their parents won´t allow them to leave the house) because a lot of them have to walk from somewhat far away towns and would arrive soaked. I´m not entirely sure what the solution to this is since it will be raining pretty consistently, or so I imagine, until November. We´ll see.

I haven´t decided yet if I prefer sweating all day long during the dry season or not being able to go anywhere without getting soaked during the wet season. My jeans and sneakers are still soaked through from yesterday morning and are showing no signs of drying in the near future. I haven´t figured out what´s going to happen with the laundry situation either. I can hang my clothes up in my room to dry but only after they´ve dried partially outside so I don´t flood the floors, which won´t happen if it never stops raining. But now it´s really damp and moist inside too with all the rain so it´ll take several days for it all to dry in my room. I´m sure I´ll figure something out in the next few days since the rain is sure to keep up and my pile of dirty clothes is stacking up.

In other news:

-Some family from Managua brought us a kitten to kill the mice (He´s already killed one). His name is ¨Chele¨ which is what they call people with light skin (he´s white and orange).

-I saw someone with a t-shirt from Joe´s Crab Shack the other day. It didn´t say where the restaurant was located, so I just assumed it was Maryland.

-My grandmother and I stole some limones dulces (sweet lemons--cross between an orange and a lemon) from the abandoned yard across the street. My mom told us we were going to get diarrhea from them because they were stolen.

-I´ve implemented assigned seats, a warning system and started giving out stickers to kids with good behavior in my 6th grade class. Results have been incredible and have made the class so much more enjoyable!

-A neighbor and family member left for Costa Rica to work with her husband and left her 3 year old son with us. The 14 year old son pretty much lives on his own and (due to the lack of parents and guidance) is doing poorly in school and has been getting into drugs. Apparently she´s not coming back until December! And I´m not sure if that´s just to visit for Christmas only to return to Costa Rica or if it´s to stay and actually raise her own children...hopefully the latter though I sort of doubt it.

-My mom has converted to gringa guacamole. She´s made it a few times now with my recipe instead of hers!

-I´m officially coming home during our mid-semester vacation. June 28-July 7. I can´t wait!!

Well, I spoke too soon. Monday was a half day of school because of some meeting that the teachers absolutely needed to hold. Tuesday was a normal, complete day of class (though I guess it´s more normal to miss class than have it). Wednesday was the Mayor´s birthday, and since all of the teachers are really Sandinista like the mayor, they had to celebrate for him at school...another half day of class. Today is the 31st anniversary of my town´s ¨liberation,¨ a.k.a. when the Sandinista´s took over, so there´s no school. And tomorrow, since the kids probably wouldn´t show up since it´s Friday and they didn´t go to school on Thursday, there´s supposedly a meeting, and no school. What a joke.

In other news, some relatives of my host family who live in Managua brough us a kitten. We named it Chele, which is what they call people with white/light skin because he´s white and orange.

Matiguas was a blast! I left a very unproductive (as usual) TEPCE early on Friday and got to Matiguas around 3pm. We woke up at 5am the next morning to go to Jocelyn´s family´s farm where we milked cows, rode horses and herded cows! We ate lots of delicious chocolate cake that they make at a bakery nearby her house and went out dancing Saturday night. Sunday we went to a swimming hole called ¨Agua Fria¨ (Cold Water) and amazingly survived the bumpy trip driven by a crazy German guy in his ancient, falling apart car, who works with Jocelyn´s family. Monday morning I bought cuajada (a type of cheese) to bring back to my family. It was a really fun trip and nice to see Jocelyn and Julie. I was still really happy to get back to my family, my mom´s food and my bed (and mosquito net!).

Monday night I resumed my normal work schedule with my community class and Tuesday we finally started up with classes again in the high school, though we´ve already missed some English classes for meetings and doctor´s appointments. I don´t think we´ve ever had a complete week of class without interruption.

Other than that, not much else is new. My mom killed a gigantic spider for my last night that I found in my room. Since it´s been starting to rain all of the animals are coming out of the walls or wherever it was that they were living peacefully without bothering us. I recently found a gigantic colony of ants (huge ones, and some with wings) living in the top of the tank to my toilet, which is now cleaned out and securely sealed shut.

Saturday I have a meeting with the other nearby PCVs in Masachapa, a beach town in the department of Managua. ´Til next time!

So I already had a pretty good grasp on the fact that education here is much less important than it is at home, but this last week eliminated any lingering doubts. There is a national baseball tournament in town and the ONLY possible places the mayor could find for the 100+ players to sleep were the high school and elementary school. So there are a bunch of old, fat men/baseball players living in the schools, which means we can´t possibly have class. At first they were only supposed to be here until Tuesday, so no class Monday and Tuesday. Then Tuesday night rolled around and they still hadn´t left. No class Wednesday. Friday is TEPCE, the monthly meeting with all the teachers from the area to evaluate the last month and plan the next month, so no class Friday. That left today, Thursday, as the only day for class. But who is going to show up for just one day of class? No one! Not even the teachers because they know the kids won´t come. Technically there was class today and even knowing that the kids wouldn´t show, the teachers were supposed to show up. When I got there this morning, the vice-principal and the janitor lady were the only ones there. I signed my name in the attendance book and turned around and left. What´s more is that Saturday is ¨Day of the Worker¨ and because it falls on the weekend this year, no class Monday either! It´s comical and sad at the same time. The kids miss class here more than they receive class, and it´s accepted as the norm and has been for who knows how many years. At least I´ve still been able to have my community classes at night...in the same elementary school that is occupied by baseball players.

The other night I made gringa-style guacamole for my family. Here they make it with just avocadoes, onions and hard-boiled eggs. I took out the eggs, added cilantro, tomatoes, lime juice and chile. And they liked it (though they added a bunch of salt to theirs)! Well my mom and sister did. My grandmother is afraid to try anything new and refused.

Tomorrow after TEPCE I´m heading up to Matiguas, Matagalpa to visit my friend Jocelyn!

Happy Earth Day everyone! Two posts in two weeks!! Woo hoo!

Today, to celebrate earth day, the kids got out of school early (what else is new?) so they could go around town picking up all the trash that wouldn´t have been there if they hadn´t thrown it on the ground in the first place. And I was greeted by a pile of burning trash (the more plastic bags, the merrier!) when I got to the elementary school this afternoon for my 6th grade class. Ha.

I only went to school in the mornings once this whole week because my counterpart´s daughter is sick. The only reason I went the one time is because I didn´t know she wasn´t going to be there and was guilt-tripped into teaching alone. I explained to the principal that if I teach alone (which is against the Peace Corps and Ministry of Education rules) I´m not capacitating my counterpart which is the goal of the project. She said she didn´t see a problem with it, but if I was uncapable of handling the kids alone (not the issue) then I could leave and she´d have them copy random sentences on the board that they wouldn´t understand. So I stayed and taught alone, but after that day I was sure to call my counterpart before going to school to see if she was going or not.

I´m not entirely clear what´s going on with Danny Ortega and the Sandinista government here, but I´m pretty sure he did something unconstitutional again, which provoked a bunch of riots in Managua in the past few days. Everything here in my town is fine and I have no reason to go to Managua, don´t worry! My host sister´s boyfriend was over last night after we got back from my community English class and was saying apparently some pro-Sandinista things. My sister just sat there nodding her head and playing along (My family is very, very anti-Sandinista). When the boyfriend left, my mom let my sister have it. She said (with a wide array of Spanish curse words) that the boyfriend can´t ever talk about politics again in her house, that he should have known better and that my sister´s an idiot for not putting him in his place. The yelling went on for a good 10-20 minutes. I knew my mom was super anti-FSLN but I´d never seen her so outwardly-passionate and intolerant about it before! Today she explained to me that the Sandinistas kick people out of their houses so they can give (for free) those same houses to Sandinista supporters who then turn around and sell them for profit, or stay there to live. One way in which they literally ¨buy¨ the people and the elections. I´m not sure how accurate that is, but based on the politics I´ve seen, it wouldn´t surprise me too much if it were true.

I think that´s it for now! Off to my community class...

Sorry for the delay! I know it´s been almost two full months since I´ve written. I´m going to try and recap them as succinctly as possible:

-My pet chicken is officially MIA/dead. Poor Lucy.

-I bought a ¨new¨ but of questionable quality bike for $70. Within 4 days it had a flat tire that I had to get repaired. It´s currently making all sorts of squeaking noises which makes it quite embarrassing to ride. Getting it checked out is on my current to-do list.

-I ended up giving my morning 6th grade class a quiz because I was so frustrated that they weren´t learning anything or paying attention. Bad idea. About half showed up for the quiz and the next day only 4 of 20 came. In the meantime, my boss came to visit and talk with my counterparts and see how everything´s going. She suggested a more relaxed, fun approach to the 6th grade classes which doesn´t include homework or quizzes. The new outlook on life has made the class much more enjoyable but I haven´t been able to re-start the morning class despite several pleading attempts. They don´t believe me that it´s fun now! Good news is the afternoon class is upwards of 30 VERY enthusiastic kids who sprint into the classroom when they see me coming.

-The principal at the high school gives my morning (not so great) counterpart the last period on Thursdays free so we can plan. Drastic improvement in planning! Didn´t get to test it out too much this week though because classes were cancelled all the time. Once because there hadn´t been water at the school for 2 days and the bathrooms smelled bad. The justifications for canceling class never cease to amaze me.

-We had a week-long Spanish workshop with Peace Corps. Sitting through class for 8 hours a day for 4 days was painful but I learned a lot and filled in some major gaps in my ability to communicate everything I want to say.

-An uncle across the street gave me a really ugly hat that says ¨I love Jesus.¨ He then asked, about 2 weeks later, why he still hadn´t seen me wear it. Busted. I wore it to school and from school the next day and made a point to show him.

-Tyler came back to visit again for Holy Week/Easter break (Semana Santa). He brought dog treats for his favorite street dog, Samsung, which my family won´t stop talking about. We went back to our favorite crater lake, the Laguna of Apoyo, and went to the Isla de Ometepe (the big island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua). We stayed at a coffee farm and hiked up one of the volcanoes on the island. It took 7.5 long, muddy hours roundtrip.

-My grandmother sat me down the other day and very seriously asked if she could ask me a question. I, nervously because she´s never serious like that, said sure. She proceeded to ask if I knew how to climb trees because there were a few ripe avocadoes in the tree out back. I said sure, not actually knowing how to climb trees, as long as there were branches and it wasn´t a coconut tree. There were plenty of branches, but they were flimsy! I had never been so high up in such a wobbly tree before. It´s a miracle I didn´t kill it, or myself! The guacamole they made with the avocadoes was worth it though.

-My two community classes took the final test for that ¨level¨ last week. I had about a 50% passing rate between the two of them. We started up again this week with the next level for those who passed and the same level for those who didn´t pass and a handful of newcomers. Everyone told me that no one who failed would come back because they´d be embarrassed but 20 of the 28 have come back so far! Now I need to figure out how to make it interesting for them but not move too quickly for the new people...

I think that´s about it for now! I´ll try to write more frequently from now on! We have semester break in the beginning of July so I´m looking forward to coming home to see everyone over the 4th.

I made it through the first week of all my community classes. The youth and adult classes are gigantic (50-60 people in each class) and, surprisingly, the adult class is more difficult to manage than the youth class. The youth pay more attention and don´t talk as much with each other while I´m talking, and for this reason they are already ahead of the adult class, after only 2 days. Still, both classes are way too big and would be so much more productive with smaller numbers. Last night I had a few adults sitting outside the classroom because there wasn´t anymore room inside. The delegate from the Ministry of Education (my main Nica boss) came by to check it out. I think he was a little shocked by the overflowing classroom. Unfortunately, I don´t have any extra time in my schedule to break them up into smaller groups.

The sixth grade classes have been a little more challenging, though I was able to consolidate two groups into one so I have two sections instead of three now. The kids don´t seem to absorb much or anything of what I´m teaching them, despite the fact that children are supposed to be able to learn foreign languages easier.

Sunday was the anniversary of Sandino´s death. Sandino is like Nicaragua´s George Washington, except he led the revolution and started the Sandinista movement. At school yesterday, Monday, to honor this date, there was an ¨acto¨ at school. I felt like I was in East Germany getting ready to go off to war. They played military songs that condemned the gringos/yankees and were chanting things about patriotism, solidarity and, of course, ¨Viva Sandino!¨ Some kids dressed up in military fatigues and the majority of the 600+ students had an FSLN (Sandinista) or Nicaraguan flag. The best part is that they made me sit in front of everyone with the honored guests-- the mayor and the delegate from the Ministry of Education--so I had to feign enjoyment.

I started to think that things with my iffy counterpart were going better until the other day. She came up with excuses for not planning three times in a row. Then she showed me her plan book where she had copied (alone), word for word, from a manual made by Peace Corps that we use for ideas (not entire plans). I asked her nicely if we could do it together next time. We´ll see how that goes.

In other news, I think my pet chicken ran away, was stolen or was eaten by a bigger animal. I haven´t seen her in over 3 days. Her single, working mother (me!) didn´t have enough time to pay attention to her. Oh well...at least I won´t have to deal with convincing people not to eat her.

Holy cow. In the past 24 hours I went from just 17 hours of classes at the high school to 17 hours at the high school plus 15 hours of English classes in the community (1 group of adults, 1 group of kids, 3 groups of 6th graders). I got the mayor to pay for an announcement (a guy in a truck drives through town with a microphone) for my community English class. 115 people came! I divided them into 2 groups of about 55 each, which is a lot, but I´m pretty sure the numbers will dwindle as the class continues. Then, this morning, the principal of my high school and the principal of the elementary/middle school asked if I could teach the sixth graders so they come to high school with a basic knowledge of English. I think it´s all feasible. I should be able to use more or less the same plan for the majority of my classes outside of the high school which will save some time. I´m only here for 2 years so I guess they might as well take advantage!

Everything at the high school has settled down now and is going much more smoothly. The schedules are finally set and I have been CO-planning and CO-teaching, instead of flying solo, with both counterparts. Yay!

So school has started...sort of. Tuesday, the supposed first day of class, was only what they call here an ¨acto¨ or a form of presentation. It consisted of a prayer (church and state are NOT separate here), 2 piñatas/dance contest, music and a reminder of all the rules that will soon be ignored and not enforced. The second day of school actually started classes, but this week and next are supposed to just be ¨diagnostic testing,¨ or seeing what the students do and don´t remember from last year.

I am going to be teaching first and second year (7th and 8th grade) kids in the high school. When I arrived at school the second day for the morning classes, my counterpart was in a different class and asked me to make up the plan for our next class together. The whole point of the PC TEFL project is to CO-plan and CO-teach so it´s sustainable (when I leave the English teachers can keep doing what we were doing when I was here), so there´s one rule broken (didn´t co-plan). Then, once class started, my counterpart left me in the class alone with 60 kids for about half an hour. Second, and more important, rule broken (didn´t co-teach). Classes in the afternoon with my other counterpart were a little better.

Some of my classes are composed of mostly kids who are repeating a grade. There is even one kid in first year who is in first year for the fourth time! The worst part is that when we ask them what they remember from English class last year, we get blank stares. It´s been a struggle just to get them to spell the numbers from 1-10. So there is lots of room for improvement, from the students to my counterparts. Hopefully once everything at is settled down and organized (they are still fiddling with the schedule) it will be better...

My dad was here in Nicaragua last week. I got to see him and watch some of his surgeries in Managua on Tuesday and Wednesday. Between him and his friend they did 20 knee surgeries in 3 1/2 days! On Friday I brought him back here to my town to meet my family and see where I live. Saturday we went to the Masaya Volcano, Laguna de Apoyo and the market in Masaya. It was really nice to see him and to have him see my new home!

Last weekend four new PC trainees in the health group arrived to my town for their 3 months of training. They all seem really nice so far. I´ve been running with one of them in the mornings.

Hopefully next time I write I´ll be able to report some positive news from the school front.

Lots has happened since I wrote last, sorry!

Tyler was here for 11 days visiting. It was great to see him and to show him around what will be my home for the next 2 years. He brought me a ton of stuff, including a lot my sister Cristina sent along (thank you, Cristina!), the ingredients for hummus that I was missing and enough peanut butter to last 2 years. We went up two active volcanoes, swam in the Laguna de Apoyo (200m deep crater lake that used to be a volcano), visited my friend Julie in Leon and went to the beach, and went to Granada and Masaya. If you have facebook, you can see the pictures he took.

Everything at school started, finally, this past Monday. It´s just registration and teacher meetings, but at least it´s something to do! The first day of school is February 2nd.

A volunteer that lived with my family during his 3 months of training, Luciano, came back to visit. He helped me catch a lonely, lost baby chicken that had been wandering around the house for a few days. It´s now my pet/daughter and is named Lucy in honor of Luciano, her godfather. Ha! It´s been a blast. She eats rice out of my hand. We recently just untied her so she can wander around the yard and the town all day, but she´s learned where her home is and comes back every night to sleep.

My host grandmother´s brother died the other day. He had been sick with cancer for a while so it´s good that he´s not suffering anymore, but the viewing, funeral and burial were really sad. Viewings here are 24+ hour events. The whole town is invited, even the drunks, and sits in and outside the house in plastic chairs for as long as they want, until the funeral mass starts the next day. I went with my host mom and sister at 8am and came back to the house at 2am, but my mom stayed until 5am! Now that he´s been buried, they have 9 days of praying sessions at his house, which my grandmother will go to.

It´s actually been pretty chilly here at night. I had to shut the window to my bedroom for the first time ever...and I´ve slept with socks a couple of times!

My dad gets to Managua with a friend to do/explain some knee surgeries on Sunday. I hope to visit him in the city while he´s there, before he comes to my town for the weekend!

I made it through my first Christmas away from my family alive and well, though a little nostalgic and jealous that they got 2 feet of snow in Maryland and now they´re all skiing!

For the 9 days before Christmas, there was mass at 6am, which I thought was unnecessarily early until I learned that it used to be at 4am. I only managed to get out of bed to go twice. My host mom brought noise makers and maracas and had no shame about making as much noise as possible, along with some neighborhood kids. Apparently these masses used to be more fun but since it got pushed back to 6am a lot of people chose not to attend in protest.

My two best friends here, Julie and Jocelyn, who were here with me during training, came back to visit for Christmas so we could all be together. We made hummus, ate a whole pack of oreos dunked in peanut butter and got pizza. We stayed up until midnight on Christmas eve because that´s what they do here. Christmas morning was a little anti-climactic, as Christmas always is. We didn´t go to 9am mass like we were going to because my host mom and sister slept in late. Everyone opened their presents and then we just sat around the house doing not much of anything all day. I got to talk to just about everyone in my family which was really nice. We went dancing at the local disco that night with my cousins - together we comprised about 45% of the people who were there.

In other news, I saw a scorpion on the sidewalk the other day, the big green bird my host mom just bought somehow disappeared, and I just got a haircut for 50 cents.

Tyler, my boyfriend (for those who don´t know), is coming tomorrow!

I finally hunkered down and bought the absolute minimum ingredients to make hummus, Nica style. 2 cans of garbanzo beans, a lemon and almost a whole head of garlic. No sesame tahini or olive oil, and I used the blender. And it worked! Even better is that Nicaraguans have a weird aversion to garlic, so I don´t have to worry about anyone eating any of it.

So last Monday was the Purísima. Several families set up altars of the Virgin Mary in their homes. A ¨professional¨ altar-making guy actually came to our house to help out. He set up a big screen of mountain scenery behind the Virgin Mary statue and put a ton of flowers that were cut down from nearby trees around it. For the past week my family had been collecting food, candy, plastic cups and bowls, little towel, toys, trinkets, keychains, combs, earrings and whatever else they could think of to hand out to the masses of people that would come. At 7pm we officially opened the doors. Groups of 2-10 people came in one at a time, stood in front of the altar, and sang sections of songs dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Before anyone could sing, however, someone had to yell, ¨Quien causa tanta allegría?¨ (Who causes so much happiness) and everyone would respond ¨La concepción de María¨ (The Conception of Mary). After they sang what minimal segment of the song they deemed deserving of their ¨brindi¨ (treat), my host sister or mom would hand each person a little gift, which was picked appropriately and meticulously based on age and gender. For a good majority of the night there was a massive mob of people waiting outside for their turn to come in and sing. Unlike trick-or-treating, everyone partakes in the Purísima- parents, babies, small children, teens, old people, town drunks, non-Catholics who don´t know the songs. For a lot of people, the prospect of free food for their families is worth waiting in lines with their small children until midnight. I put up some pictures and a video on facebook if you want a better idea of the whole ordeal.

Tuesday was the actual Immaculate Conception. We went to a 2-hour mass in the morning and then packed up and went to the nearby river. The river is conveniently located behind a family´s house, and they take the liberty of charging an admission fee. They have essentially claimed ownership of the river, which I didn´t know was possible. It was really beautiful- situated in the middle of dense jungle. But then all the noisy kids came, and the drunks, ruining the peace.

My host mom bought a large green bird from a man walking through the streets carrying a shoebox of them. We already had 2 little green birds, but the anomoly of this one being able to talk (supposedly, it hasn´t said a word yet) was a selling point. The 2 birds got kicked out of their cage to accommodate the new one; they now roam around the kitchen floor trying not to get stepped on.

My host sister and I put up the fake Christmas tree the other day. Complete with lights and tons of decorations. Wasn´t quite the same as a real tree with Christmas music playing in the background, but it will suffice.

I´ve been walking a few days a week with my host mom. She´s showed me a bunch of new paths and windy roads that pass through neighboring villages. Yesterday we stopped at a sugar cane mill. We walked right up and poked around, watching the workers make candy/a block of pure sugar with it. My mom walked right up to a big vat of the processed sugar, stuck her finger in, dug out a big glob, handed it to me, and then repeated for herself. No one thought anything of it. We also passed by a house that sells milk and I carried back a Coca Cola liter of warm milk, fresh from the udder.

I went to a rosary praying session (they have become increasingly frequent since the Immaculate Conception) with my sister yesterday and they gave everyone a plastic cup of candy. Included in mine were two gold coin candies, which I assumed were chocolate. I got back and took out my secret stash of peanut butter to dunk the chocolate in. When I unwrapped it, to my surprise, it was pink! Gum. Talk about disappointing.

Tomorrow I´m going to the beach with the teachers from the school for their end of the year party...even though I didn´t teach this past year, they invited me anyway.

As of a week ago Monday I am officially a PCV instead of a PCT. We finished training and swore-in on November 23rd. The next two days was the All Volunteer Conference, where all 170+ PCVs in Nicaragua got together to talk about the meeting´s theme, food security, and to share ideas about projects, good recipes, etc. I learned that making hummus in a blender instead of a cuisinart, and without any sesame tahini, is possible. Hopefully I´ll try it out soon. Despite chowing down on two containers of hummus I found in a Managua grocery store, I am still having withdrawal.

A couple weeks ago I met with two people from Wisconsin who have been working on a Sister City Project with some nearby communities. They have built schools and latrines and are currently focused on getting materials and snacks to the primary school kids and training the teachers. They want me to help with the teacher training. It should be really interesting. The communities are really poor and isolated. The teachers in the school live in my town and commute there for the week--travel between here and there is limited and complicated. The teachers arrive on Monday afternoon, teach on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and leave on Friday morning, leaving the kids with 3 of 5 days of class...if they´re lucky.

The U.S. ambassador in Nicaragua talked to us on one of our last days of training. He was surprisingly frank about U.S.-Nicaraguan relations (they´re not the greatest). It was fascinating to hear his side of the story and compare it to what I hear from the people I live with or see on the news. The upcoming presidential elections in 2011 will be interesting to say the least.

My last day at home before becoming a PCV my host mom decided to help me make one of my favorite concoctions-chicken, broccoli and pasta-though I was mostly just doing what she told me to do. I´m pretty sure she doesn´t think I can cook. It was entertaining. First, we used chao mein noodles. The chicken was boiled and then shredded (I left it in too big of chunks, my host mom shredded it again after I finished). She cooked the broccoli (with celery) until it was mushy. Then she proceeded to re-cook/fry the chicken with mustard, 1000 island dressing and (I think) chicken sausage. It didn´t taste too terrible, and everyone actually liked it, but it was a far cry from anything I´d had in mind. Nonetheless, they were convinced it was Italian food...but also kept calling it ¨chao mein.¨ The next night all of us PCTs were in Managua and went to a real Italian restaurant for dinner. I got pasta with broccoli and tomato sauce...and the USAID guy who was there with us paid for everything!

I saw an old woman wearing a shirt that said ¨Everyone loves a drunk girl¨ the other day. I´m not sure where they find shirts like that, but they´re everywhere. I like to assume that no one really knows what they mean.

Monday is the Purisima, or Immaculate Conception. From what I´ve gathered, it´s like Halloween, but you have to sing for your candy, it´s not just for kids, and it´s religious. We´ll see...

This coming week is our last week of training. We have a bunch of charlas and events in Managua to finalize the ¨bridge to service¨ and finish up the technical stuff. Swearing in is a week from this coming Monday.

Last week was my ¨site visit.¨ Everyone went to their future sites for 4 days to meet everyone and get a feel for everything. I stayed here, of course. It was nice to not have Spanish class or technical training sessions, but weird having so much free time. It rained pretty much nonstop the whole time thanks to Hurricane Ida. The Carribbean Coast of Nicaragua was hit really hard; luckily we just got rain here. I went walking every morning with my host mom. She showed me a few paths through the campo that I hadn´t seen before. One was particularly beautiful...very quiet and peaceful and it winds through fields of sugar cane, plantains, beans and corn. I co-taught once more with my counterpart, Ana. Class went well until we asked the kids to close their notebooks, at which point they immediately forgot everything we had been talking about for the past hour. Welcome to the world of teaching! I met my other counterpart, Scarleth, during my ¨visit,¨ too. She is very nice and low key and seems excited that I´ll be staying here.

I finally unpacked and rearranged my room since it will be my room for some time now. I found an etch-a-sketch and some glow-in-the-dark stars that I gave my sister. They were a hit.

This past Monday we went to the U.S. Embassy in Managua. It´s pretty removed from the busy city and was really quiet and calm. There were automatic flushing toilets and you could put the toilet paper in the toilet (instead of in the trashcan next to it) which were new concepts. Everything was also excessively air-conditioned...I had goosebumps for the first time in a few months. We learned about the extensive list of scholarship programs that the embassy offers. I hope to get some kids from my town to the United States to study or visit with one of them.

Yesterday we had the big presentation with everyone´s youth groups from our TEFL group and the group of environment volunteers. Almost all of the TEFL groups made videos of a Michael Jackson song for their final project. The environment groups made some interesting stuff with recycled materials--piñatas with food wrappers and newspapers and bracelets with coke bottle tops.

This afternoon I´m going to Managua with my host mom and sister for an uncle´s birthday party. It sounds like it´s going to be a lot of fun. We´re staying over at their house to avoid leaving Managua at night. On the way back I´m going to meet Julie and Jocelyn to go to the beach! Next time I write I will officially be a PCV!

I found out on Wednesday that I´ll be staying here in my training town in Carazo for my two years. It was one of my top 3 choices so I´m really happy. Everything here fits me well...it´s a small, safe little pueblo, my family is great and I love my counterpart (still have to meet the other one I´ll be working with). I was a little bummed to not get to see a new place in Nicaragua and start fresh somewhere else, but everything here is great so I think it´s best I stay anyway rather than risk going somewhere new that´s not as good. I think my family is happy to have me stay. It also saves me the hassle of moving all of my stuff to a new place by myself on an over-crowded Nicaraguan bus. I´m pretty close to Managua here which will also make visits easier! :)

A couple days ago a fumigation truck drove through town. I had no idea what was going on since I only understood ¨fuming truck¨ and ¨hide¨ when my abuelita was talking to me. Before I knew it she was running into the kitchen calling me to follow her and a truck passed by spraying chemicals all over the place. There were kids and animals in the street and a girl standing in front of my house waiting to buy something from my family´s convenience store...they were all blasted with the chemicals. The windows are always open so naturally it came inside the house, too...I think that´s actually the point so it will kill cockroaches, or whatever else it´s supposed to kill, though it seemed a bit questionable at the time. The fumes/chemicals hovered in the air for at least 15 minutes. And I saw a cockroach in my room last night...

There was a horse show here last weekend. Basically everyone dresses up as cowboys and there are hundreds of horses walking through the streets which you can mount at your own will. There are also ¨professionals,¨ or at least people who knew what they were doing, on the horses, making them dance! Even the horses in this country can dance. It was pretty amusing, and so were the cowboy outfits. Afterwards there was a big party and I went with my entire family. We danced for about 4 hours without stopping. I think I´m slowly learning, though it´s going to take a good majority of my two years here to get up to par with the Nica dancing standards.

I didn´t get to teach when I was supposed to again. There was a teacher workshop going on during my class, surprise! There seems to always be something going on from 4:20-5pm on Monday afternoons.

It´s been raining every day here for a while so I accumulated a mountain of dirty clothes. Today, finally, there was some sun so I took a risk and washed most of it. I´m not sure what happens if it keeps raining and you can never wash your clothes. Today is the first day of summer here, though, so we shouldn´t be seeing much more rain until May.

Tomorrow is Day of the Dead. My aunt, uncle and cousins from Managua came here last night with a basket full of beautiful, gigantic hydrangeas to put on the graves of family members in the cemetary here.

Sorry it´s been a while since I´ve written. Everything has been going well and I am quickly approaching the end of my 11 weeks of training. This Wednesday we find out our site assignments!

The volcano two weekends ago was awesome. We had an incredibly boring charla about diversity and then Peace Corps drove us to the top, but other than that it was great. There was a lot of hiking around and exploring to do at the top. Pictures are on facebook, on the link I posted before this post.

Two Mondays ago when I was walking to the school to co-teach I saw a mass exodus of students walking away from the school. When I arrived, my counterpart told me that they had all left to go to mass...during my class. Go figure. Luckily, I was able to teach this past Monday and it went really well. Hopefully I´ll teach again this coming Monday also...but you never know what could happen! I discovered an air-conditioned, Internet-equipped computer lab at my school which was a bit of a shock. I felt like I was on another planet with all the air conditioning and technology around.

Last Wednesday and Thursday, and basically the entire weekend, were the ¨fiestas patronales¨ in my town. It´s basically a huge celebration of the patron saint for whom the town is named. The people were constantly setting off ¨bombas¨ which are basically bombs, minus the destruction. They´re so loud, and they start going off at 4am. I also paraded through the streets for hours (it took 2 hours to walk 6 blocks) with the procession. The people were carrying the really heavy wooden table holding the patron saint idol adorned with flowers through town for 9 hours, singing and dancing and playing music the whole time. There were also fair-like rides parked in front of the park (actually, they´re still there). Think zipper, but in a third world country. And I went on it! There was a bit too much wiggle room so my head kept hitting the ceiling when we´d flip, but it was pretty fun nevertheless.

I´ve gone to a couple of parties with my sister and cousins on the weekends. One of my cousins is trying to teach me how to dance. Every Nicaraguan can dance REALLY well. It´s actually embarrassing to dance with them because I´m so horrible. Trying to learn, but it´s going to take a while.

This past Saturday I went back to Catarina, but this time down to the water, with my friends Julie and Jocelyn, and our Nica friend Carelia. It was beautiful (pictures on facebook)! It´s a giant crater filled with the bluest, cleanest, clearest water I´ve ever seen. We swam from 9am until 4pm with about an hour break to eat lunch.

I ironed my jeans for the first (and probably not the last) time in my life. I swore I´d never do it, but there´s really no other way to soften up your clothes once you take them off the clothes line. I suppose I should buy some fabric softener.

In other news, Daniel Ortega is well on his way to changing the constitution so he can run for re-election in 2011. Think Honduras. Nothing crazy has happened yet, luckily. We´ll see. But don´t worry, if anything were to ever happen, Peace Corps definitely has everything under control!

I think there is a tarantula lurking in my bedroom. I only got a quick glimpse of it the other day and haven´t seen it since. My mosquito net is my best friend.

It´s much easier to post pictures on facebook, so here they are!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2225381&id=1613510&l=41f82fe19e

I co-taught my first class a week ago this past Monday. It was pouring rain so we practically had to yell to hear anything. Then it got really dark so we had to wait around while a student ran around trying to find a lightbulb to plug in so they could see the board. It was interesting to say the least.

Our youth group is still going strong. They decided to change the song for our project to ¨Billie Jean¨ after looking at the words to ¨Thriller.¨ Last week we gave a charla on self-esteem which went over really well. I think the kids really enjoyed it- they don´t get to talk about stuff like that very often, or ever. Tomorrow at our meeting we´re going to make a small fire outside the library (which is completely normal and acceptable here) to roast marshmallows and make s´mores. Should be fun.

There was a cockroach INSIDE my mosquito net the other night. I hadn´t been tucking it under my mattress because of the way it was configured around my bed, but it´s definitely tucked in now. Luckily my family fumigates the room with cockroach killer so it fell out of my bed and onto the floor, providing the perfect opportunity to kill it, while I was pacing around the room trying to figure out what to do. Aside from it brushing against my arm, everything was ok!

Saturday I went on a mini-pilgrimmage with my host mom and several other town members touting the Virgin Mary and accompanied by a band, a car with loud speakers and faux fireworks. We walked for at least an hour down a never-ending dirt road, eventually arriving at the Virgin Mary´s resting spot. Apparently a lot of people were staying there overnight for a mass the next morning, but my host mom and I walked (and later hitchhiked) back to town.

These past few days I was on my Volunteer Visit in Rivas. The point is to stay with a volunteer to get a feel for their lives and sites. We went to the beach when I got there on Sunday. It was beautiful and very relaxing. We were busy the past few days with her community English classes and her classes at the school. We had to haul water from a well one day because there wasn´t any to shower with and we´d just come back from the gym (yes, there was a gym!). There also wasn´t any gas to cook with so our meals were interesting. Fun trip though! Learned a lot and had fun. Back in my training town now. We´re all climbing the Masaya Volcano on Saturday!

So I finally have time to sit down and update my blog. I´d been planning to go to the Cyber (Internet Cafe) for a while to do this but our medical and technical sessions kept running late and it would be 6pm and time to get home for dinner before I knew it. A lot has happened since last time I wrote (I have my journal in front of me so I´ll remember it all). First, I ate pizza. It had ham on it which was not ideal, but it was pizza. It was also with the priest of the Catholic Church, which apparently is normal. My mom and two of her friends were there, too. My family took me to a beautiful place called Mirador de Catarina. It is a tourist trap of the Masaya area overlooking a perfectly blue lake which is overshadowed by the Masaya Volcano. You have to take a horse down a steep and windy path through the jungle to get to the water...one day I hope to do it. And hike up the (active) volcano! I have pictures but this computer isn´t recognizing my camera so I´ll have to try again on a different one another time. I ate a lot of what is considered ¨street food¨ that day (fruit drinks/frescos in a blastic bag made with unpurified water and food in a plastic bag). If I were going to get sick here, it would have been after that food, but I was fine!

I have also started co-planning with my Nicaraguan counterpart. She is great--very interested in working together and learning from each other which will make the process run smoothly. We were supposed to teach together for the first time last Monday but she forgot until that day that she had a doctor´s appointment in Managua that afternoon...typical. We´ll teach together for the first time next Monday.

I´ve only had 2 cockroach experiences so far. I consider myself lucky considering my friend, Julie, has had 6 in the past 3 days! My host mom killed the first one and the other one disappeared before I could get to it. It´s very comforting sleeping under a mosquito net!

I´m slowly becomming a professional clothes washer. It´s true, we wash clothes here against a rigged stone slab. The clothes lines in our patio (backyard) connect all of my family´s fruit trees and provide the ants with a perfect means of transportation. There are usually ants all over my dry, clean clothes when I take them off the line. Things could be worse!

My training group and I started our youth group at the school. We had a big turnout of 17 people at the first meeting, which dwindled down to 12 at the second meeting. They decided that they want our big project to be singing ¨Thriller¨ by Michael Jackson in English and learning the dance. Should be fun. We´re going to try to film it at the end of our 8 weeks with the group and put it up on YouTube. There´s a huge Michael Jackson following down here.

So I´ve been busy and it feels like time is flying by. I can´t believe October is next week already. I have Spanish class from 8-12 and 1-3 most every day. Co-teaching will start to be every Monday afternoon. Youth group meetings will be an hour on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Co-planning is once a week for at least an hour. And then we have tons of medical and technical info sessions (charlas)...usually Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. I´ve been managing to run about 5 days a week which has been great. The food is still really good. I´ve been eating lots of rice, beans, tortillas, eggs (I´ve retrained myself to like them), cheese and plantains. The only downside is that they use a ton of salt and a lot of things are fried. I usually watch a telenovela with my family from 7-8 every night and am in bed by 9. I generally wake up a couple times to roosters during the night (they do NOT just crow at dawn) before getting up at 6am to run. I still feel really safe here and am having a great time!

Today is the first day in almost a week I´ve actually had time to get to the Internet Cafe...we´ve been really busy. Monday and Tuesday the other volunteers and I, and our language teacher/facilitator, went to the local school to meet the director, the English teacher and observe some English classes. We ended up actually teaching in the classes which was a bit of a surprise, but really fun. It´s amazing how little English the teachers know and how much help is needed. We´ve had about 6 hours of Spanish class per day, intermixed with trips to nearby towns and Managua for PC business (vaccines, medical info sessions, etc.). The other volunteers in my town and I have been meeting at 6:15am to go for a run in the mornings...definitely makes the cold shower more enjoyable.

On Thursday and Friday we went to NicaTESOL which is an annual conference for English teachers in Nicaragua. We went to a bunch of sessions on topics, one of which was about activities that require little to no materials. Yesterday when we arrived back to our training town from Managua it was raining like I´ve never seen rain before. I ran about 5 blocks from the bus stop to my house in about 6 inches of dirty water. My host mom then told me that there´s an earlier bus stop that is much closer to the house. Next time!

I´m still eating lots of rice and beans and fresh fruit, and an increasing amount of eggs and chicken. I love being forced to speak and practice my Spanish and am looking forward to 10 more weeks of improvement in my language skills. Hopefully I´ll be able to upload some pictures soon!

Arrived safely to my training town, about 30km south of Managua. My host family is very nice and patient with me. I'm their 8th volunteer, so they definitely know what they're doing. I have a mom, grandma and sister who is 17 years old. My town is small, but the infrastructure is better than I was expecting. There is running water most all the time except for after 6pm. We have electricity, a tv, radio, house phone and car (though some of those are luxuries specific to my host family). I also have my own bedroom and bathroom. Peace Corps is definitely taking care of us. Everything is very well planned our and organized. There are three other volunteers in my town who are all great and really fun. I have to get back home for lunch. Lots of rice and beans and fresh fruit, I love it!

I'm safely in Nicaragua and borrowing a friend's computer so I don't have long. We left the hotel in D.C. this morning at 2am, arrived at the airport at 2:30am and sat around until 4am when it opened and they would check us in. Flight to Miami was uneventful, but the flight from Miami to Managua was delayed by about 4 hours because of rain in Miami. Finally got here around 4pm local time...all of our bags are in Haiti. Should be here tomorrow. Luckily I packed everything I need for a few days in my carry-on. Everyone is really, really nice and fun and I'm having a good time so far...though I do miss everyone at home. Talk soon...

I finally finished my 40 hours of Rosetta Stone! And to celebrate, I'm going to start packing.

Leaving for staging in D.C. tomorrow. Then off to Nicaragua on Wednesday morning! More to come next time I find a computer...

Welcome to my new blog.

I will do my best over the next 2+ years to keep everyone updated on my adventures with the Peace Corps in Nicaragua. If nothing else, I hope it will help me keep in touch with everyone while I'm away.

More to come as my departure date nears. 33 days...