What I've Been Doing

Okay, so I’ve already written about my family, my companeros, and my town. Now on to what we’re doing here. The first three weeks of training are dedicated almost exclusively to language classes…or so we thought, based on the calendar we were given. Class takes place in one of our homes, so last week we were at Maiya’s home, where we would set our rocking chairs up in a semi-circle facing Maritza and her white board in the living room. Our only disruption was school children coming to the door and asking for ice cream, which Maiya’s host mother makes and sells. So we come into class on Monday morning and settle down into our rocking chairs with our notebooks, ready for a relaxing day of Spanish. This was not to be. I can’t remember if I’ve complained about this yet, but as much as I am impressed by how incredible organized the Peace Corps Nicaragua operation is, they fail to tell us volunteers anything about what we’re going to be doing. So Maritza announces that we will be going to Colegio La Salle to meet the English teachers and figure out a time to get together and co-plan lessons. So off we went and met the three English teachers who work the morning shift at the school: Milton, Luis, and Claudia. Since there are more of us than them, we had to double up according to geographical convenience; as such, Caroline and I will be working with Claudia, who lives just around the corner from us. We had talked to a volunteer who had done his training in Diriamba, and he said Claudia was the best. We had the opportunity to observe her class a few days later. I was surprised that the students actually paid attention. They weren’t continually talking like my Chinese students, or listening to music and staring off into space like the high school students I worked with in Chile. The classroom had just a whiteboard and markers; I expected this, but I still sighed a little when I thought back to my power point days in Hangzhou. Claudia conducted almost the entire class, which was reviewing comparatives and superlatives, in Spanish, and the students were able to regurgitate the rules, with some assistance from their notebooks. Claudia was handing out monopoly-esque money to students who participated, and she explained afterwards that they were required to earn a certain amount over the course of the semester. I’m not sure how I feel about this approach; it has the obvious effect of creating participation, but I think it would make the goal of making the students self-motivated almost impossible. My big criticism of the class was that there was a ton of wasted time while the teacher wrote sentences on the board, or while a handful of students wrote their answers and the rest had nothing to do. We also got to observe one of Milton’s classes. Milton has been teaching English both in the school and at a private institute for many years now, and is clearly very proud of his English abilities. He talked a lot, and I’m sure the students understood only a fraction of what he said, thus causing them to lose interest. Our intelligence sources tell us that he won’t listen to any suggestions for improvement, so good luck to Bryan and Maiya in that regard.

The Nicaraguan school schedule is a little different from elsewhere. Classes start at 7:00 and end at noon, then there is another rotation in the afternoon that goes roughly from 12:00-5:00. I think a lot of the schools also have a night session, which is good for those who have to work during the day. The only break is a 20-minute recess in the morning, though the students don’t actually go to their classrooms until at least 10 minutes after that, a practice that will not slide in my classroom. I’m still brainstorming punishments for tardiness; ideas include extending the class to make up for lost time when possible, or making students sing/dance/recite something in English. I’m open to suggestions. Anyways, Claudia studies in the evenings, so Caroline and I will be meeting with her on Saturday afternoons to co-plan our classes. Though the Peace Corps wants us to plan individually with her as much as possible, so we’ll see how that works out.

The same day of our surprise visit to the school, we had another surprise visit to another school, Colegio Emanuel Bautista, where we will be doing our Youth Group. We have a huge advantage in this venture as compared to other groups. Usually volunteers need to somehow recruit students to participate in the youth group, by going door to door, making invitations, etc. In contrast, we simply talked to the headmaster, who poked his head into two classes and told the students they would be participating in our youth group, that it was mandatory, and that they would be taking attendance. Done. Thank goodness, because I was not looking forward to the recruiting process. We’ve only done one meeting so far, and it was short because the students had to study for exams the next day. Basically we introduced ourselves, made name tags, and played a name game called “Fruit Basket” that Alba knew from her days working as a counselor at Spanish Camp. I believe that the plan is to divide up into two, possibly three groups in the future, as there will probably be 40-50 kids if they all show up. Our plan for next week is to have the kids complete Community Maps that we will begin working on this weekend. This is a strategy advocated by the Peace Corps’ PACA strategy that helps communities identify what is important to them, where they spend the most time, what their resources are, and how they can use their resources to improve their lives. Our project won’t be nearly so insightful I’m sure, but it will make both us and the kids think about what’s important to them in the community. Hopefully. Beginning the week after this one, I think we will also be doing a Youth Group on Monday with kids that the principal rounds up. That’s all I know, stay tuned. Though we do have a booklet that gives us a rough idea of what we should be doing in Youth Group each week, such as teaching English, doing a fun activity, or presenting a talk on some subject of interest. Though the guide doesn’t cover two classes each week, so we’ll have to improvise.

And have I complained yet about how much homework we have? We usually have an assignment for Spanish/Cultural Integration, such as asking our host mothers how to make Cheese Soup, or making a family tree to get to understand our host families better. Then we have to come up with 5 new vocabulary words every day, which I find challenging. And then the Peace Corps has a whole slew of technical readings about TEFL, and more readings about medical stuff, and an entire PDF book called “The History of Nicaragua”, which is the least important and the one I enjoy the most, naturally. I’d done almost all of them by the time our first group meeting rolled around on Thursday. The location of this meeting changes every week, but fortunately for us this first one was in our community, so we didn’t need to travel. It was good to see everyone and hear their stories and compare them to our own. Chelsea  is living in a home she claims is nicer than her own at home (and it sounds like it is, she has a flatscreen!) and completely doted on by her family. Alba had chickens that fly onto the roof of her room every morning at 4AM and start making a ruckus that even earplugs can’t block. Many only took bucket baths, or had a situation similar to mine where there was running water, but the water would come and go at unpredictable and usually inconvenient times. I had to thank Sarah (who served in the Peace Corps in Honduras for 6 months before being evacuated after a volunteer was shot) for explaining during orientation the proper technique for how to flush a toilet when no running water was available. Other Chelsea’s family fed their pet pig coca-cola (because they had some extra, and what else would they do with it?) late at night, which caused it to freak out and run around the kitchen like crazy. Tara had some unfortunate food experiences involving fish that had probably started to rot, while Sarah received comical portions from her host mother. I’ll insert a note here about my food situation, which is working out splendidly. Luisa, one of Dona Yaya’s daughters, is doing the cooking for me since she isn’t working during the day currently. The volunteer who stayed with them last year was a vegetarian, so they were totally prepared for me, soy meat at the ready. Everything I’ve eaten has been fantastic, if a little low on vegetables. There is one type of cheese in Nicaragua that is eaten daily and is a little saltier than I would choose, but I’ve already learned to love it. Fresh-squeezed juices called frescos are served with every meal, though I recently requested milk for breakfast since I assessed my diet to be deficient in calcium. I was sad to hear that the avocado system is wrapping up as we speak, but not before I was served Nicaraguan guacamole, which has the distinctive characteristic of being prepared with a hard-boiled egg mixed in. Delicious. I also have a 1-kg (that’s about 2 lbs…) bag of manjar from Chile that I have been enjoying with my plantains for breakfast. Lunch portions are always so huge that I can barely finish, but dinner is fairly light and I’m usually still full from lunch. A big cultural difference is that families will eat in groups of 1,2, or 3, but never all together at mealtimes. I still don’t really enjoy eating alone, especially because it makes me feel like a guest since Luisa always serves me. But someone will usually sit and chat with me while I eat, which is nice. I still haven’t kicked my instinct to look for a piece of chocolate after every meal, though I guess that will pass with time. But I digress.

Anyways, it was good to finally get an overview of what we will be doing in the Youth Group and in the classroom. I alternated between feeling excited to have the chance to have an impact, and feeling overwhelmed and completely incapable of meeting all the expectations set forth. It’s going to be a delicate balancing act between enacting change while not completely upsetting the students’ expectations and comfort zone. We were told that we should try not to speak Spanish at all in the classroom; this is one of the basic principles I learned when I got my TEFL certification, but I had always envisioned myself conducting the majority of the class in Spanish, probably because this is what I observed in Chile. But our trainer pointed out, correctly, that the main goal of speaking Spanish would be to create rapport, and that this would benefit the teacher way more than the student. Sigh. And offering translations also creates a sort of learned helplessness and apathy in the students that we of course do not want to foment. I also found out that we are expected to turn in a bunch of stuff at the end of training, including 3 journals (well, one is shared among our group) and 3 essays. Yikes. But I did learn a lot in one day, and I look forward to acquiring the knowledge I need to complete my service in these weekly meetings.

In other breaking news, I bought myself a guitar! I had heard that there is a lot of free time during the first few months (AFTER this super-intense training period) so I brought my trusty "Guitar for Dummies" book with me and decided this would be a great time to realize my dream of learning to play. I was planning to wait until I got to my real site so I wouldn't have to cart it around with me, but Alba has one with her, and when I passed "Musikworld" in the center of town right before a long weekend with nothing to do, the temptation became too great. I really like it, it has cute palm trees on it, and I'm sure I got it for a much better price than I would have in the US. I'm currently working on "Let it Be" and "La Bamba", and am hoping to find some easy Spanish folk songs. I also just discovered that the local library offers free guitar lessons every Monday. Unfortunately I missed today, but next week I'll be there! 

 This is my street! I live in the red house.

This is the iconic San Sebastian Basilica in Diriamba, with patriotic flags to celebrate Independence Day.

Keep in touch!