Nick's Visit and Selva Negra Adventure!!!!

After two weeks of worrying that I would not be able to make it to Managua to pick up my friend Nick for his visit here in Nicaragua (there was a roadblock because of a political protest, which happily went into negotiations and stopped two days before his visit started), I headed down last Saturday to Managua to pick him up at the airport. I took an express bus from Matagalpa, got to the airport, met Nick without a problem, then hopped back on an express bus at the airport. But it was full, so we had to stand, all two hours back to Matagalpa. The really fun part was when we were only about 45 minutes into the journey when our bus got a flat tire! So we stopped for an additional 45 minutes so the driver and a few other guys could change the tire (which looked surprisingly easy on such a large vehicle!) and finally got to Matagalpa later than planned. Go figure!

This week I am trying to give him the Peace Corps in a week experience, so far he has been to the gym with me, the NGO where I work, and tomorrow he will participate in a class planning session and a small business advising session. Today, we headed up to Selva Negra which is a coffee plantation/eco-lodge outside of the city. It was a great time and much cooler than the city these days. We packed a lunch, went hiking, got attacked by the most vicious geese in Nicaragua (well not really attacked but they surrounded us and were eyeing the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches we had packed so they looked fierce), and took the most amazing senior pictures ever. So with no further ado....

Gotta love it!

Keep making good choices! Love you all!!

Creativity Classes are fun!

The most important component of any business is a GREAT idea.

At least that is what we have been working on conveying to my students throughout this week's classes.We have been working on creativity and how you can use it to create a new product out of an old one, or by adding or taking something away you can turn a not so special something into a million Cordoba idea!

My counterpart was out sick but since we had the class planned, I was there, and the students were prepared with their materials, I gave the class anyway. So to explain, the students were told to bring plastic bottles, straws, paper, scissors, tape, glue, whatever they could find, and were told to great a new product or item out of the materials. They had a great time working in their groups and using their imaginations to come up with something new. I was truly impressed with some of the groups. Here are some pictures from the day!

Planning phase

These guys came up with 5 products!

These girls even brought a glue gun!

Team work! Gotta love it!

My students working hard

A puppet!

We had a puppet, a sailboat, a piggy bank, a pencil holder, a cup, and a flower vase with flowers!

I hope to get some more pictures of a different class next week! Stay tuned and make good choices!

Not so anonymous in Matagalpa

When I was given the booklet that described my site placement back in July, it stated that Matagalpa is a great city for someone who does not mind being anonymous in their site (given the large size of the city!) Well I am here to tell you that it is not the case. Here is why...

I walked into the gym on Tuesday morning and got on the stairmaster (yes I know a stairmaster in the peace corps, come on we all need our little luxuries haha), and one of my trainers came over to say hello.  Here is how the conversation went"
Trainer: hey I saw you at a bar on Saturday night.
Me: really, I didn't see you, why didn't you say hello?
Trainer: Well you were far away, and I didn't want to bother you
Me: oh thats ok then
Trainer: but you were with a friend, and she was drinking a beer
Me: I thought you said you were far away, but you could see our drinks? Next time just come say hello...

He laughed, said ok and walked away... then the other trainer came up to me...
Trainer 2: Hey I saw you dancing on Sunday night!
Me: What? How? I was at a birthday party at a friend's house, were you there? why didn't you say hello?
Trainer 2: I came to buy something at her store (she has a store in her house), but you were dancing and I didn't want to interrupt.
Me: well I hope you don't judge my dance ability by my moves there...
Trainer 2: No of course not
And he walked away laughing....

So fast forward to today, I was in a minivan originally made for 12 and stuffed full with 30 people... I was standing of course, holding on for dear life, and as we got closer to my stop I was able to snag a seat. Well the minivan was full of teenage girls going home from school, and one of them turns around and says really loudly, "Oh my gosh, this lady has BEAUTIFUL eyes!" So everyone in the minivan turns around to look at my eyes. I could only sit there and smile...

So needless to say, I am not as annonymous as I thought I might be, but that's ok because I like being able to walk around a big city and bump into people I know, or don't know but will soon get to know. It's one of the things I really love about Nicaragua. I will really miss it when I leave.

So what else happened this week? As mentioned I went to a birthday party on Sunday night for one of the vice principals of one of my schools. We had a great time dancing and playing games. I will be sure to post some pictures of the fun below.  Classes are going well, we are working on creativity in business this week, so I will be sure to post some pictures from this week's classes, one class tomorrow will be using trash to create an innovative product. Another class this week had to take an everyday product and change it to be an even better product. It's no surprise that the class's favorite was the desk that you could fly in. It's common in Nicaraguan classrooms that there are more students than desks and the desks are normally not well taken care of. So this group's solution was transportation, desk, and toy in one. Take your desk with you everywhere! It was a hit. And I loved how crazy and fun it was.
I also was able to recreate one of my favorite salads from the US (with some canned mandarin oranges my mom brought me in January-although we do have fresh ones here in abundance!) I will also put a picture of that for your enjoyment!

Well that's it for my update today. Life is great and I hope all of you are doing as well as I am. Peace Corps was a REALLY GOOD DECISION for me, hope you are making good ones for yourselves. Love and miss you all! Enjoy the pictures!

Helena helping me get ready for the party... she's brushing my hair with a toy hair brush

Best Salad EVER

I just got done singing happy birthday to her (I got "has to sing a song" in the game)

Nicaragua hot potato with a broom and spinning around (Go Profe Sandra!)

Me with Jocylen (the daughter of one of my coworkers)

The finished product of the stuff-as-many-balloons-in-the-clown-suit-as-you-can game!

My Friend Sandra with her cake and presents!

March is going to be a crazy month and it hasn't even started yet!!!!!

So for some reason this week, writing a blog entry is really difficult for me. It has a lot to do with how tired I am, how I feel that my time is no longer my own, and just the fact that there is so much that I have done in the past week or two weeks that I don't even know where to begin.

Like I said last time, the school year is in full effect. And with that comes weekly planning sessions with each of my counterpart teachers, re-doing class schedules over and over again, and my bi-yearly site visit by one of my bosses. But first, I attended a two-day training workshop here in Matagalpa given by a local chapter of "Junior Achievement." In fact it was an interesting workshop, but was a 6 week course condensed into 2 days, and in my opinion could have been better tailored to the needs of the teachers. But it was a start and thats what's most important right? It pretty much ate up my weekend, and Sunday's gym workout left me as a heap of a sweaty mess on the floor, so I don't feel like I really had much of a weekend. (But this is not my complaining, I love my work and am thankful that I get to be doing what I get to do, I only mention this because it is quite a change from just one month ago, when my time was MY time.)

Monday was my site visit, and it was great to get to spend time with my boss and go visit all of my counterparts and local bosses. I got a lot of great feedback, some areas where I can improve, and had a chance to really connect with my Peace Corps boss. I was glad to finally get to show her who I really am, and not the totally freaked out and messed up trainee that I was in training. I know we are both happy to see the real me again! Ha ha.

Classes have been going ok. It's hard to get students who have never met you excited about a class they have no experience with. But the good thing is one of my schools I worked with the students last year, so we are flying through the first classes, and having fun. It was nice too to see that the students and fellow teachers had noticed that I had lost some more weight too! One student even asked me why I was "more sexy" than last year. I quickly put the kabash on that talk, as I am his teacher, but secretly I thought it was VERY funny. As for the rest of my classes, since they have never met me before, I think they think I am just a strange gringa. I will work very hard to change that opinion!

Well that's it for the moment, I am sure you don't want details of how my planning sessions went... So keep making good choices and I love and miss you all!

Back to school, Back to school, to prove to dad I'm not a fool...

The school year has officially begun, and I am already running around like a chicken with my head cut off. (Speaking of Chicken’s below I’ll add the picture of a chicken that a man had on his lap on the bus the other day!) I am so glad to be back at my schools and I am excited to see the students are glad to be back as well. It has been an interesting few weeks, lots of highs and a few lows. I am glad to be back at school, but I have been helping with class scheduling, and it has been quite a challenge in all of my schools. One major reason is that the largest high school in Matagalpa is under renovation and so they only accepted about 400 new incoming freshmen and left the other 1600 that would normally be accepted (or some other ridiculous number) to the other much smaller high schools. None of my schools are exempt. So we have been trying to figure out who can give classes and where considering most of my schools have a finite number of classrooms and apparently more classes than rooms. Teachers lounges and libraries have been re-appropriated and yet, there are still some classes that are left without classrooms. Yet another reason I give thanks to the good Lord and my parents for providing me with the education have been lucky enough to receive.

Last week was Valentine’s day and Matagalpa was able to celebrate something extra as well. It was the 150^th anniversary of Matagalpa being established as a city. So instead of dates and other valentine’s day fun, most people head out to the main streets and dance the night away near one of the FIVE live music stages that different businesses or the mayor’s office sponsored. My favorite stage was the one with the 80s music and Carlos Santana covers. Unfortunately, because I was afraid of having anything stolen, I didn’t take my camera, and hence have no pictures to show you of the event. But you will just have to trust me that it was a great time, and relatively sober one as well! (I would have thought there would have been massive amounts of drinking, but was pleased to see it was much of a family event as anything else!)

Ok so although the weather in Matagalpa has been fairly cool still, I know that the HOT HOT HOT part of the year is coming up and rather quickly, so I thought it might be smart to ask people for some HOT weather recipes (pasta salads, regular salads, slaws, bean salads, etc.) I am looking for things that are not Mayonaise based (more due to the heat than me not liking the stuff). I am anticipating that when the real hot weather hits, I’m not going to want to spend much time in the kitchen, so please feel free to either post a recipe as a response to the blog, or email me (since most of you know me personally!)

Well that’s it for me! Keep on making good choices, I apparently need to make better ones, my bank account took a hit this month with too many fancy coffee outings! I know that I will do better next month though, schools back in session and I just won’t have the time! Love you all!

Adding creedence to the whole "chicken" bus theory.

Be careful what you wish for!

What a week! I did say that I felt like I should be doing more didn’t I? Well I guess I should say I should have been more careful for what I wish for because boy am I busy this week! With less than one week before classes start, I am running around getting school schedules straightened out, working with 4 small businesses, have been working to form two new community based savings and loan banks, and still had time to take two of my best students to a Peace Corps Youth camp, that unfortunately I was not able to participate in, and watch the Super Bowl in Esteli with some friends. 

Let’s start with last week, I went to a community outside of the city because an environment volunteer wanted some help starting a community bank at her school. This group had done a bank with a previous volunteer, so my role was to help them define their new rules, how much they were all going to agree on saving every month, and help them elect their leaders. It was nice to get to work cross-sectorally and help a fellow volunteer with a business-related project. On my way back from the community, I decided to run by one of my schools to say hello and see how things were coming. It was good to see all of the teachers and to see how happy they were that I was back. Warm fuzzy feelings all around, I say. Last week, I also put together a teacher training plan for the school year and will be meeting with MINED to discuss possibilities this week. I will keep my fingers crossed that I will be able to work with more teachers during the monthly planning and evaluation meetings. 

Sunday, I headed to Esteli to watch the Super Bowl with some friends and RPCVs (returned Peace Corps Volunteers). We had a great time, there were chicken wings, French fries, I made ranch dip and veggies, chips, guacamole, the whole traditional Super Bowl spread. Although this was not my first Super Bowl outside of the US, I was still a little sad to see that ESPN Latin America did not air the awesome super bowl commercials. Oh well, I guess that’s what Youtube is for right? Yesterday, I headed to another small community in the department of Matagalpa to prepare and give another community bank talk with a different environmental volunteer. (Interestingly, she has the type of house I thought I would be living in here in Nicaragua – Mango tree, lime tree, latrine, etc.) Today was our talk, and it appears that out of the 20 people who were at the informational meeting, 15 of them would like to participate! I rule it as a success in my book! This afternoon, I worked with one of the small business owners that I am consulting with to improve/change/or start their business. We had a great meeting and I look forward to working more with him.

The rest of this week will be spent getting ready for the school year, and starting to plan with my counterpart teachers. Good thing I am taking my multi-vitamin! Let the school year begin! Enjoy the pictures and keep making good choices!

First Community Bank Meeting - A Success

Participants deciding their bank rules

On my tech exchange in front of a PC World Map

Students on their way to the Youth Leadership Camp

Me with my two superstar students on their way to the camp!

And they're off!

Zahidu helping me dehydrate bananas and watermelon!

Super Bowl party in Esteli

Repelling off the water tower during the super bowl

With my friends Stephanie and Kenan at the SB party

The living room at my second tech exchange!

The Kitchen

Bathroom and Shower

My fellow volunteer and her temporary residence

The second bank meeting

Participants in the second community bank

Answering some tough but great questions!