Ready to start my service!

Wow...things have been hectic lately! We are fastly approaching the very last week of our training and, in less then a week, I will be taking the oath of a Peace Corps volunteer!

This last week, we had a our final youth group meeting where we gave a charla on AIDS and threw a small thank you party for the kids with gaseosa (pop), galletas (cookies) and musica. They loved it! Later in the week, all the youth groups presented their projects and received certificates for all their hard work. In addition, we had our last language interview. It is amazing how much Spanish I have learned but there is still a lot of room for improvement. However, I feel confident in being able to find my way around and get my ideas across. We also gave our last enviromental class in our training towns. My lesson was over biotic and abiotic things in an ecosystem. I will really miss working with the class and their teacher.


Me teaching a charla with a fifth grade class. We played a game categorizing things that are abiotic and biotic to test their understanding of the lesson. Here they are waiting to see which team won!

The visit to my site in Matagalpa went very well! I am in the mountains and it is absolutely goregeous! It is still very hot durning the day but the nights cool off substantially. I will be returning there for good on November 23rd. It is a fairly small town of 3,000 people. I will be working in three rural schools outside my town in smaller communities. One of my schools is about 6km away without transportation. Most likely I will be loaning a horse to use for traveling as the hills and rocky road make bicycling near impossible...unless your Nicaraguan!

To answer peoples´question about the electricity, there is no electricity during the day in many towns because the company turns it off. It is their way of conserving as it is not possible to have continuous electricity all day for everyone with the electricity shortage. There is a huge problem with water in my community after Hurricane Mitch destroyed a waterfall, a well and a ton of trees along the river. I will be working with many organizations to create tree nurseries and gardens in the school yards. The trees from the nursery will be used to reforest areas along the river and the gardens will provide additional food for breakfast in the schools. With the huge water shortage during the summer months, I will be bathing and washing my clothes in the river as running water only comes about every 14 to 20 days. This water problem is a potential secondary project for my service as my town has plans to reroute the water from a nearby waterfall. However, there are many obstacles and challenges in this project that will need to be sorted out beforehand. ¨Vamos haber¨...well will see.

Life has been so different here that sometimes it is sureal. It is a rollercoaster. Some days better than others but that is life no matter where you are living. I have meet so many amazing and motivated people, as well as, experienced so many things for the first time...drinking pop and juice out of plastic bags, seeing my first volcano, living with a host family, teaching a class...in spanish nevertheless, leading a youth group, trying many different foods, learning how to make soy products from soy beans, riding in a bus standing up, taking bucket baths, creating a tree nursery, talking to the mayor, and really, just living out of the US for 11 weeks.


People in our group walking up a path by Volcan Masaya.


Cooking the soy over an wood stove....in a very large pan!

I am really going to miss my host family. They have been so great to me and I truly feel like part of the family. Tomorrow, I am going to make them an American breakfast of french toast and bacon. Yes, you can buy things like that here in the grocery stores, they are just a little expensive.


My mom cooking rice in the dark during a power outage...I let her borrow my head lamp as she was cooking the beans outside over the wood stove. They thought it was hilarious!


My sister, Vilma, and her son, Kevin (6 years old).


My host family´s house from the back. The door on the left leads to my room.


My back yard. We wash our dishes and clothes in the ¨levendero¨ (stone thing on the left). The concrete room on the left is where we take bucket baths. We dry all of our clothes on the clothes lines. The thing with the black door in the back is the ¨letrina¨(outhouse).

So hopefully these pictures give you a visual of my life. Sometimes I feel it is so hard to explain things or even know where to begin. As soon as I get a chance, I will take some pictures of my new site so you can see how absolutely gorgeous it really is! Miss you all!

Adios