My Site!

I found out where my site will be for the next two years, and I couldn’t be more excited! I am going to Ometepe, an island formed by two volcanoes in the middle of Lake Nicaragua! I had read all about it in my guide point and was looking forward to exploring it on my own, and now I have the incredible luck of getting to live there. But I was explicit about the fact that I really wanted a small community, and the Peace Corps did not let me down; I will be living in the village of Urbaite, population 500! I will be the first volunteer to live in this particular site, which means I have the responsibility/opportunity to develop my own secondary projects. I am happy about this because I know I will not be compared with previous volunteers. I will be working with a total of three counterparts, all women, at two different high schools: one in my village, and another 5 km away in Altagracia, a considerably larger city that sees a predictably large number of tourists. Two of the three teachers have worked with a Peace Corps volunteer previously, but still need support as they seek to improve their English proficiency and teaching abilities. I am secretly really grateful that all my counterparts are women, based on some stories I’ve heard. There is also a small university in my village, one that the former volunteer described as a “garage university” that I could work with if I so choose. I am probably going to look into this (unless classes are only on weekends!), especially since by all accounts the Nicaraguan counterpart there is amazing.

The Peace Corps gave each of us a packet of information about our site, including an extensive document written by a former volunteer with tons of information and advice. For example, prices will be high because it is a big tourist area, so one must be thrifty. There are two other current volunteers on the island in the city of Altagracia, in the areas of Small Business Development and Maternal and Child Health. The principals of the local high school identified opportunities for the volunteer (yours truly) to be involved in extra-curricular activities such as arts, crafts, music, and sports. Maybe I will finally be able to follow the shining example of my sister and start an ultimate team. My guitar skills aren’t developed enough to do anything meaningful with, but maybe singing. And I got some great arts and crafts ideas from the environment volunteers I’ve talked to. So we’ll see how everything shapes up. Though 500 is really small, I wonder if I will have trouble rustling up participants for all these great ideas I have.

I will be staying with a husband and wife in their 40’s, and a 13-year-old son. Apparently the mother didn’t want to charge me any rent at all, but the Peace Corps talked her into it. I like her already. I received a list of nearby Peace Corps volunteers, and I already know most of them because I met them during my practicum week in Rivas. We could actually see the volcanoes of Ometepe from Rivas during that week, so I won’t be so far away. And it is only a few hours from Diriamba, so hopefully I will be able to come back and visit periodically.

The former Peace Corps volunteer writes, “You have one of the best sites in all of Nicaragua! The people are amazing, it truly is a magical place. It was at one point in the running for one of the 7 natural wonders of the world and recently named a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve!” Her first words of advice to me are to get a bicycle ASAP, something I have been planning to do all along. Her second tip is to find things that will keep me in my site, such as having class on Friday (umm…no) or getting a pet. Of course I’d love to get a cat, but it depends on what my family thinks. And no, Mom, I won’t bring this one home. Well, maybe. I assume it will be very tempting to leave my small community to hang out in touristy places, so I will have to make an effort to stay in Urbaite and establish strong relationships with the people there. Whom I will probably all know by name within a month. I’ve also been warned that gossip will travel really fast. There is apparently a common saying: “Pueblo pequeno, infierno grande” (small town, big hell). Hmm. And she cautions me to never drink in my site, especially at parties or around students. Oh well, I haven’t missed it too much thus far. She gave me a list of great sites of interest, some of which attract tourists and some of which are only frequented by locals. Lots of beaches and spectacular hiking and biking opportunities. Have I mentioned how thrilled I am? This feels like cheating, I was supposed to be dedicating these two years to a very selfless purpose, not living in a tropical paradise. The only thing I need now to make this a dream come true is a washing machine…(Yesterday, after a week of rain that prevented me from doing laundry, our washing machine died and left me with a mountain of dirty laundry, a bucket of water, and some soap. Oy. Of course I am one of about 3 people in our group who even have a washing machine, so I shouldn’t be complaining.)

I know not everyone in our group is as pleased as I am with their site assignments, so I’m trying not to gush about it too extensively. But it’s hard. Fortunately for me, my two closest friends are also super excited with their sites. Caroline is going to the legendary city of Bluefields on the Atlantic Coast. The whole Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua is divided into two regions, The North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN) and the South Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAS). They were very unconnected with Hispanic Nicaragua during the colonial era, and were actually settled and populated by the British. The regions are the motherlands of the indigenous groups in Nicaragua, and also received a lot of African immigrants. The history is a sad one, as the Nicaraguan government decided around the year 1900 to march in and assert its authority. The prosperity they had experienced during the British era disappeared when the British ceded the territory and moved out. The people of the RAAS and RAAN had virtually nothing in common with Hispanic Nicaragua; neither language, customs, food, culture, nor appearance. The indigenous people felt no allegiance to the Nicaraguan government and rebelled, resulting in the deaths and dislocation of thousands upon thousands of people*. Even today the physical connection to Bluefields, in the RAAS, is tenuous: Caroline will have to take a bus, then switch to a boat ride down a very lengthy stretch of river to arrive. The only other options to arrive are my plane (ha, like Peace Corps will fund THAT one), or on winding dirt roads. Apparently the roads are in the process of being paved, so Caroline may be here to see the completion of that project. We are all excited to visit Caroline and experience the rich culture of the Caribbean coast. Caroline has felt weird being in a place without black people, since she is from Alabama, so I think it will be reassuring for her to be in a more diverse place. Also she has a masters in linguistics/dialectology, and Bluefields is the place to be for those areas of interest.

Alba could not be farther away. She is way up in the northern mountainous province of Madriz, not too far from the Honduran border. Her location is the one I always envisioned for myself, but as you can tell I am not complaining about my site. I am excited to pack up my tent and visit her for some outdoor adventures. It’s sad that we will all be so far apart, but the potential for vacations is prime. And there are some volunteers located on my island or a short boat ride away. I also know that 3 of the environment volunteers from my group will be placed in my province of Rivas, so I am excited to find out who they will be (they get their assignments this afternoon). The next step is counterpart day, which I believe is Monday, when all our counterparts come to meet us.  We then travel together to our sites, where we will stay for one week. The best part of this arrangement, from my perspective, is the opportunity to move all my luggage in two trips instead of one. Especially since I now have a guitar to cart around. So look for photos next week!

*Wow, you may be saying to yourself, how does Laura know so much about the history of Nicaragua? I recently finished an absolutely fantastic books called “Blood of Brothers” by Stephen Kinzer, the NYT correspondent in Nicaragua during the 70’s and 80’s, meaning he was here for the overthrow of the Somoza regime, the struggles of the victorious Sandinista party, and the bloody contra war funded by the US. It’s heartbreaking, but one of the best-written books I’ve ever read, and a must for anyone interested in Nicaragua.

Practicum Week

I can’t believe training is already halfway over. I only have three weeks left in Diriamba! My ultimate destination is still a mystery, one which will be revealed to me on Wednesday of next week. Not that we’re counting down the days or anything. We had our “programming interviews” with the Peace Corps TEFL staff earlier this week, when we told them what kind of site we wanted. My number one priority was a small site. Diriamba is a little too big for my liking, I prefer a smaller community where I can integrate and get to know everyone. Though I do admit the anonymity can be kind of nice, since I don’t have the social obligation to stop and chat with everyone I see. I told them I had all my camping stuff with me and was looking forward to being outdoors and in the mountains. I know this might eliminate my opportunity to work in a university, which I think would be awesome, but my priority is the small site. Though I know that all of my fellow trainees who are currently staying in the miniscule training town of La Paz asked for medium-to-large sites. “We don’t even have an ice cream shop”, was part of their explanation. Or a restaurant. Or a bank. Anyways, we’ll see what happens at the Moment of Truth next Wednesday. Stay tuned.

We were allowed to venture out of our training towns last week for Practicum Week. I think I’ve lamented before that, despite the impressive organization of Peace Corps Nicaragua, they never tell us anything. So my impression of practicum week was that we were going to be paired with a current Peace Corps TEFL volunteer, whom we would follow around for a week to become acquainted with what our lives would be like. And maybe teach a class or two, for the experience. I was oh-so-wrong. The 14 of us were divided into 3 groups, each sent to a different city in Nicaragua. I was most jealous of Alba’s group, which went to the mountainous region of Jinotega, the only part of the country that is cool. I leant her my flannel shirt, which apparently everyone thought was awesome. Naturally. Caroline’s group went to Leon, which is the cultural darling of the country, but absurdly hot. The volunteers there bring changes of clothes to class with them because they sweat so much they have to change halfway through the day. Yuck. Being a cultural center means there are a lot of foreigners wandering around and that prices are generally higher, but there is also a ton of things to see and do, and lots of opportunities to work with NGO’s. I went to Rivas, a city in the southernmost part of the country. The department of Rivas consists of the narrow strip of land (16 km average width) between the ocean and the massive Lake Nicaragua, and is extremely hot and humid. It serves as a base camp for some phenomenal beaches, which despite persistent pleading we were not allowed to visit. I was disappointed because the other sites sounded cooler, but I enjoyed my week nonetheless. It was fun because the groups were mixed up, so I got to spend time with people other than my Diriamba buddies. I benefitted enormously from the wealth of experience in my group. First there was Brooke, an extrovert from Memphis who has a fantastic southern accent and 5 years of experience teaching Spanish in some tough Memphis neighborhoods. I impressed her with all my Southern expertise that I have picked up from being around Caroline and Alba (example: Georgia is included in the category “Deep South”, but Atlanta is not. And I’ve heard some almost unbelievable tales about Greek life in Tuscaloosa). I’ve picked her brain about classroom management in those types of situations, since it may be a position I find myself in in the suture, and she has been more than willing to share all her tricks and strategies. Then there was Katie, who is an interesting case because she has already served with the Peace Corps in Nicaragua for 2 years as an Environmental Education volunteer, and has decided to extend one year but switch to TEFL; thus she is going through training with us. She has a wealth of knowledge about everything related to Nicaragua and the Peace Corps, and has been a tremendous resource for us newbies. And I was again with Brian, who is interesting to watch because he has a completely different learning style than me; he is what we in the biz call a kinesthetic learner, who needs to do and feel things to internalize them and can’t sit still for long periods of time. So I learned a lot by seeing how he incorporated breaks and movement into his lessons.

The Peace Corps volunteer who was hosting us was Erin, who has been working in Rivas for almost a year now. She did a lot of work for us, making the hostel reservation, typing up a detailed list of suggestions on where to eat, etc, and finding us counterparts to work with. So contrary to my preconceived notion that we were merely going to shadow Erin all week, she actually took the week off from teaching and gave us all her teaching hours. There weren’t enough hours to go around, however, so she had also found a few English teachers at a nearby school who were willing to work with us for the week. Our mandate was to co-plan and co-teach 3 classes, solo teach 1 class, and observe at least two other trainees. My counterpart was named Maria Auxiliadora; she sounded really badass when Erin described her to us, since she rides a motorcycle and can play guitar by ear, but she turned out to be very soft-spoken. She worked in a school in Veracruz, which is an indigenous community about 10 minutes outside of the city by shared taxi. We co-taught and planned two classes: an 8^th-grade class on clothes shopping, and an 11^th-grade class on comparing technology. The 8^th-grade class was a bit of a disaster from my perspective; due to a variety of factors, our 40-minute block (which is so short that lessons feel rushed to begin with) ended up being only 25, then we had a difference of opinion over what parts of the lesson to cut, then the students were totally unresponsive to my activity. Oh, well. My 11^th-grade class went much better. It felt like cheating, since there were only 11 students and they did everything I asked, once they got over their initial embarrassment. I fear I will not be so lucky with class size in my site. However, after those first two classes, the cancellation gods caught up with me; Thursday was the village anniversary, so of course school was cancelled and I missed my last two classes. This is too bad, since I had a really exciting class on telling the time planned for the 7^th-graders. I’m sure I’ll get to use it sometime in the next two years.

It was really nice spending time with Erin and grilling her on every aspect of her life. She’s had a bunch of rough patches but has overcome them. For example, she had to switch host families when her first one tried to take advantage of her by doubling her rent. And I’m not going to go into detail, but she’s had some problems with one of her counterpart teachers and is looking to switch. He also took us to her Community English class and had them interview us. We also had the opportunity to meet practically ever Peace Corps volunteer, in all sectors, in the department of Rivas; they all came to join us for a spaghetti dinner on our last night, then took us out for a beer (there were promises of karaoke that never came to be, alas). I had a great conversation with an environment volunteer about some camps she has organized, and cool recycled arts and crafts projects that she’s done. I talked to a small business development volunteer, since I had no idea what they did, and found out that they work in high schools teaching classes about topics such as resume-writing, interviewing, opportunities beyond high school, etc. These classes are apparently part of the Ministry of Education’s curriculum, which I think is so awesome.

One Month In

I’ve been incredibly busy, but time seems to be passing slowly. I feel settled in and like I’ve been here forever, and it hasn’t even been a month! Our three weeks of intensive Spanish class have come to an end. And not that I didn’t enjoy the class, the teacher, or spending time with my classmates, but I’m relieved. Just having to be somewhere from 8-12 and then 1-3 every day was exhausting, as 1 hour for lunch is barely enough time to squeeze in a nap. And plus we usually had to meet afterwards to either run our youth group or plan for it. And it also isn’t to say that the Peace Corps is giving us free time now as a reward for our improved Spanish skills. We had to make detailed schedules of how we would spend our time during this week, and any open chunk has been designated as “self-study”, a term I understand to include studying our grammar books, reading the newspaper, reading Peace Corps homework assignments, writing my blog, and practicing the guitar. I also shamelessly include an entire hour for “lunch”, followed by a 30-minute siesta every day. We have some wiggle room, too; our Spanish teacher told us that a weekly “jam session” to write a song in Spanish could qualify as self-study. I’m also planning to meet twice a week with my friends Caroline and Alba to discuss news stories and compare respective angles from the pro-government “El Nuevo Diario” and the opposition’s “La Prensa”. I’m so glad we’re doing this, because it forces me to find time to read the newspaper and inform myself. One of my favorite stories from today’s paper was about Justin Beiber vomiting during a concert. His comment: “Drinking milk was a bad idea”. (side bar: I had another slightly-comical Beiber moment when I asked my two host sisters, ages 11 and 14, about which famous Americans they knew, either actors or singers. They were silent for a few moments, so I prompted them by asking if they knew Justin Beiber. They both looked at me scornfully and informed me that Justin Beiber was, in fact, Canadian.) One striking contrast between news stories here and elsewhere is that there are many more graphic images. I don’t know if it’s because crime scenes aren’t cordoned off very well, or just different cultural norms, but I routinely see bloodied and mangled bodies on the nightly news. 

Last week was my first week co-planning and co-teaching in the local high school, Instituto La Salle. I think I mentioned in my previous entry that Caroline and I are going to be co-teaching with an English teacher named Claudia. Caroline is working with 11^th grade (the senior class in the Nica education system) and I will be working with 10^th grade. My first class was uneventful, mostly due to the fact that Claudia’s activity took up most of the time so I didn’t do very much. The second day of teaching was a train wreck of such improbably mishaps that it is comical in retrospect. I had prepared several “papelografos” for the class, which are large pieces of flipchart paper. Students don’t have textbooks, so we use these to write readings or questions for the students to copy, so the teachers don’t waste class time copying them onto the board. As I gathered my things to leave for class, I realized our puppy had entered my room and partially chewed up my papelografos. Fortunately she’d only gotten the top part, but there was no time to fix it, so I cut off the damaged area, grabbed some extra paper, and ran out the door. I managed to fix part of it when I arrived at the school, but I had no idea what the other page said so I couldn’t re-write it. So I was waiting, 3 minutes before class was to start, and still hadn’t seen Claudia, my co-teacher. I called her cell phone, and she was still at home. Oy. It’s usually all but impossible for classes to start on time, since there is a single bell to indicate the end of one class and the beginning of another, with no time allotted for teachers to wrap up lessons or move to their next classroom. But I’d thought the first class of the day would be a little more punctual. This proved to be a misconception, as the minutes passed and students were still streaming though the doorways. So we finally got class started, and halfway through the 90-minute block (I hadn’t even finished my homework vocabulary review) we were informed that there was an “acto” that all the students had to attend. Apparently these happen once a week, at a random time, and each class takes it in turn to present something. I saw dancing, singing, rapping, and the principal making some sort of announcement. No student in the back half of the crowd was paying attention. So class resumed halfway through my second scheduled 90-minute block, leaving us with half the amount of time anticipated. 5 minutes in, a teacher walked by and announced that Claudia had a mandatory meeting to attend immediately. Oh, and did I mention that my 4 fellow volunteers and my Spanish teacher were observing this class? Why they observe during the first week is beyond me. So Claudia abandons me to finish teaching the class, which I begin to do in a very flustered manner. And then I realize she has taken all the whiteboard markers and eraser with her. One student donated a marker and another a crumpled ball of paper to erase, until one of my friends rescued me by offering an eraser she had in her backpack, thank goodness. And well, somehow the class ended and I survived, and I have nowhere to go but up, right? The good news is that the students are generally well-behaved and quiet, though I am unsure about the comprehension level. I was shocked when, during my 10A class, Claudia opened with a lecture about paying attention and asked all students who were failing to raise their hands. 75% did so. What? That’s so many! Yet when I checked their homework this week, they had all written substantive paragraphs and drawn pictures as I had asked, some with color. Claudia had told me they rarely did their homework and were too lazy to study, but they did at least this one time; we’ll see if the pattern continues. 

On a side note, I was not the only one with epic blunders on the first day; we were all observing Caroline’s first class, and she managed to write all over the board in permanent marker, a fact she realized with horror when she tried to erase it. We all learned a useful trick that day: if you write over permanent marker with whiteboard marker, you can then erase them both. Something about the acid in the whiteboard marker ink. Yay chemistry!

Claudia is definitely the best of the 3 counterparts at our school. She worked previously for two years with a Peace Corps volunteer named Maria, and regularly tries to incorporate review games into her lesson. I came into our planning session yesterday with the idea of acting out scenarios related to helping the environment, and Claudia showed me the lesson plan that she had already started to write with the exact same idea. Great minds, I guess. I rarely see Claudia make a grammar mistake, though her pronunciation is heavily-accented. Again I wonder how much the students understand when I talk.

As for this week…well, we had been warned that only about 70% of classes actually happen, due to unforeseen interruptions. For this reason, the Peace Corps pushed us to start as early as possible. I initially scoffed at this as unnecessary; we have to teach 8-10 classes, but we have 8 weeks at 3 classes a week. What’s the hurry? Well sure enough, I got a call last night from Claudia saying both my block classes were cancelled because she is the head teacher of 11^th grade, and needs to spend the morning meeting with the other 11^th grade teachers and preparing for parent meetings. Since block classes count as 2 periods, of my scheduled 10 class periods I was supposed to teach last week and this week, I’ve only taught 4. That’s 40%. Wow. 

We’ve also been continuing to work with our Youth Group twice a week. We have a guide from the Peace Corps that tells us what type of activities we should be doing with them every week, but there’s still a lot of freedom for us within that framework, and we usually have one meeting each week where we can do whatever we want. Last week we did stations such as tongue-twisters, telephone, mad libs, and teaching them to sing “This Little Light of Mine”, which is apparently a very southern song, according to our two resident Alabamans. This week we have to give a 20-minute talk, and we’ve chosen to give it on why to learn English. We’ve set it up so they do most of the work, thinking about how English is relevant to their lives and why they should learn it. We hope that if they see the connection and relevance, they will become more interested; but maybe that’s unrealistic.

We’ve been attending Peace Corps workshops every Friday from 8-5 and Saturday from 8-12, and starting this week we’ll have a half-day on Wednesday afternoons, as well. Though spending an entire day indoors listening to presentations is not exactly my idea of a good time, especially on a Saturday, the information presented has been incredibly helpful and motivating, and the presentation format usually includes and interactive component which makes it more enjoyable and meaningful for us. Plus it’s the only time all 14 of us TEFL volunteers (“Tefleros”) are together, and there are always amusing stories. My favorite from two weeks ago was about how 3 volunteers went to a baby shower and had to play this game involving feeding each other baby food while blindfolded. The baby shower tradition has been imported recently from the US, a fact evident in its Spanish translation of “baby shower”, with vowels pronounced Spanish-ly. Another fellow volunteer, an atheist, announced one morning that her host mother and sister had put their hands on her shoulder and prayed for her first class for five minutes, because she looked nervous. Another volunteer laments that Nicaraguans are unfamiliar with the particular part of a pig that produces bacon. Etc.

Anyways, one of our talks from two weeks ago revolved around security, and was really eye-opening for me. First they went over protocol for blogs, personal web pages, etc, and I realized how many rules I had already broken. For starters, a disclaimer that my views are not in any way affiliated with the Peace Corps needs to be prominently displayed. Second, we are never to mention the exact town we live in (my second blog post is entitled “Diriamba”. And there is a picture of my home. Oops). Then we moved to cultural differences in interpreting the actions and words of others. Nicaragua is a very high-context and indirect society, meaning that words and actions carry different meanings that those within the society understand. This is a stark contrast to the US, which is probably the most low-context and direct society in the world, where we say exactly what we think, mean exactly what we say, and treat everyone as a social equal. But anyways, some of the cultural interpretations were shocking. Our first activity was, in gender-separated groups, to write a list of a) what our gender does to indicate we want to have sex; and b) how we know someone of the opposite gender wants to have sex. I’ll spare the details, because the most interesting were the ones that the Nicaraguan representative groups came up with. For example, asking someone if he/she is married or has kids means you’re interested. What? My heart sank, as I reflected on several conversations I had already had with various neighbors about their living situations. Oops. Prolonged eye contact means you’re interested. I remember one incident where I stared at a guy for a while, trying to determine if he was also a foreigner, until he noticed and got excited. Oops again, now I just ignore everyone. Getting into a car with someone means you’re interested. So I guess I’ll be walking a lot. Yup, still got a lot to learn.

We also had a fantastic session about classroom management, which made me feel so empowered about being able to run an efficient classroom that is different from all the others in the school. I have so many ideas, and it’s frustrating to think that there is so little we can do during this training period. The fact that I’ve acknowledged that fact in itself represents a big step, for I spent the first week stressed out that I wasn’t accomplishing enough. Then I talked to a volunteer from last year who worked with Claudia, and he told me there was nothing we could really do except co-teach by the teacher’s guidelines as best we could; we’d have to wait until we get to our sites to start any real changes. So I’m much more relaxed about co-teaching now, and consequently more pleased with the results. Plus the dog hasn’t eaten any of my supplies yet this week, another plus. We had another great talk about how to make our own classroom supplies, since we surely won’t have any, nor the funds to buy them. A lot of classroom supplies come from recycled materials, which I of course fully support. We will be using a lot of papelografos, which can last longer if we tape the corners so the paper doesn’t rip when we hang them up. We can also cover select portions with clear tape, kind of like laminating, to make them like white boards. Old cereal boxes make good backings for visuals, and used potato chip bags can be used to decorate and make things shiny. I’ve already bought myself all the essentials for being a teacher: glue, scissors, two kinds of tape, permanent markers, whiteboard markers, whiteboard eraser, colored pencils, and a pencil sharpener. I’m ready.

Things continue to go well with my family. I get along really well with my two sisters, Andrea and Yelba, and we have an evening ritual of taking the dog out for a walk. Though I suspect they only want to do this because there are always adolescent boys hanging out. But we need to be back by 7pm, because that’s when my telenovela “El Clon” starts. I think I wrote about it in a previous post…get in touch with me if you want more details, the plot continues to change dramatically. I also go, when I can, to watch their dance class 3 times a week. At first I just went to support them, since they were beginners, but then I realized that their classmates were essentially professional dancers. Diriamba is known for its traditional dance called “El Gueguense”, which has been declared a Cultural World Heritage, and these are the people who perform it at international venues where one must pay great sums of money to see them; but I get to watch rehearsal for free! And last week, to my delight, I discovered that one of Dona Yaya’s sisters owns a beach house, so we went to visit for the day. After passing through some gorgeous rolling hills, we arrived and walked out to the almost-deserted sandy beach. I spent a good while boogey-boarding in the gloriously warm water (why can’t the ocean in Maine be that warm?), then went back to the house and played in a small fresh-water pool in the backyard with Yelba and Ana (age 3). We ate a great lunch, though it did involve  watching Yelba dramatically eat 6 fish eyes, then lament that there weren’t any more. Then I took a nap in a hammock. A good day, to be sure. 

We’re excited for next week, which will be Practicum Week. From what I understand, this means we will be shipped off to a different part of the country to shadow a volunteer for a week to understand what our lives and responsibilities will be like. We also have to plan a few classes, which will count toward our required total of 8-10. I already will have 6 by the end of this week, so I’m good. I’m excited to see a different part of the country and get a better feel for what the life of a teacher is like. Also, as Alba just reminded us, we will be informed of our site assignments in 3 weeks and 1 day. Not that we’re counting.

I’ve been continuing to run with Caroline (almost) every morning, and though I still feel like dying on a daily basis, my watch tells us that we’re improving. We run to the neighboring village of Dolores, which is probably about 3 km from us, then walk for a few minutes, then jog back. Well, I jog; Caroline runs. The first week or two I despaired of keeping pace with Caroline, but then I successfully stayed with her one day at a pace of 14:50. She picks up the pace a little every time, something I would never do if I were by myself, and today we arrived in a blazing 13:39. Was I gasping for air? Yes. But it’s still a great feeling of accomplishment. We heard a rumor that there is a half-marathon in a few months somewhere in Nicaragua, and we are hoping to run in it. Though I am not even going to try to keep up.

A fun fact about Nicaraguan television: we get NBC! So thus I found myself last Sunday, after a day of bucket bathing and hand-washing my clothes, curled up in my bed watching the live broadcast of the Patriots game, in English. One point for globalization!

That’s all for now, I guess. Keep in touch! J