So today we finally found out all of our sites!!! This is where we will be located for the next two years of our service. There has been much anticipation, anxiousness and excitement for this day! Now we know at least the department of Nicaragua, the name of the town, who we will be living with, the name of the schools we will be working with and the size of the community. We will meet our ¨contraparte,¨ or person that we will be working with who has a connection in the community and will be helping to facilitate our work. Then we will be visiting our site for one week to get to know our schools, the teachers and the town! Back to finish training, take the Peace Corps oath on November 16th and then officially we will be Peace Corps volunteers!!
So my site is located in the central part of Matagalpa....in the mountains!! It is exactly where I wanted to be! Here is a website that has a great description of the area and a website with an interactive map:
http://www.vianica.com/visit/matagalpa
http://www.vianica.com/explore.php
Basically, it is a gorgeous area! I will be the first environmental volunteer at my site which has about 3,000 people in the urban area and 18,000 in the rural areas. Yea if you think about it, it is still less than half the population of students at Michigan State University! Kinda crazy! There is one other volunteer there teaching English. I am also really happy to have three other fellow environmental volunteers 1-2 hours away!
It is a really calm town with water, internet and electricity (but not from 7am-3pm), and a larger grocery store about an hour away. I will be working with three schools (one of them is multigrade) with 163, 164, and 360 students each. The teachers need help incorporating environmental themes in their curriculum. Their major environmental problems include slash and burn farming, deforestation and erosion of the soil and contamination of the water and soils with indescriminate use of inorganic pesticides. My contraparte works for MINED (Ministry of Education) and I also will be working with an NGO.
So that is all I know for now!! I will write in a week hopefully with pics from my site after the visit!!
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3 comments:
Wow, that is so incredibly exciting!!!! The mountains! I bet your view will be a lot different than the one in Az :)
Something that I have been wondering about though... you mentioned a few times now that electricity between 7am-3pm is not available. Why?
omg, it looks gorgeous! i'm really excited for you!!
umm..and i second j.morrison's question. i was going to ask and she beat me to commenting haha
love ya :)
I'am not wondering about why the electrity is limited but was wondering if you would like a windup radio and light(no need for batteries). I'm happy you are glad to be there. It's the same-o same-o here. Good luck!
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