Week One

We have made it through our first week of training! Our days are jam packed with lots to do. On Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesday (AM only), and Thursdays we have language classes all day. They are really interesting, not at all like a typical Spanish class. We meet our teachers at a fellow PCT (Peace Corp Trainee) house and we have class, usually on a porch. Most of the Spanish is practical and applicable to trying to live in Nicaragua. We have learned how to ask for directions, how to navigate the transportation system, and how to buy things, (always count your change!) We have also been bombarded with vocabulary! After classes we have homework and we need to go home and talk with our families.

Wednesday afternoons, Fridays, and some Saturdays we meet up with the other Environmental Education volunteers (about 18 of us) for technical sessions in classroom management, health issues, environmental issues, etc. It is really great to see the other trainees, (especially each other). Our group is really awesome. Everyone is really nice and we all seem to get along really well. It is a pretty young group, we range from about 21 to 30 years old. There is one other married couple in our group and an older married couple in the Agriculture group which is currently north of Managua, so we don´t get to see them until we swear in as volunteers on November 16th.

Friday our group traveled to a local college to listen to a really interesting speaker about the natural resources in Nicaragua. It really is a beautiful country but it has a lot of problems with trash, deforestation, and poverty. The talk really made our job here seem daunting. It is going to be a long, ongoing process. Saturday, we visited this really interesting self sustaining farm in the campo. There we learned how to plant our viveros (tree nurseries), which we are expected to do with our youth groups next week.

Part of our training is working with youth. This week we start doing observations in local schools and gathering youth for a youth group. Obviously, these are considerably daunting tasks when you speak little Spanish. However, these activities are important steps to get us ready for our final sites. This week will be busy as we have interviews with our Associate Peace Corps Director, school observations, youth group meetings, and class. We are exhausted, but are still enjoying it!

My family (Kaitlyn) is very nice and very patient. I have a mom, a dad, a 10 year old brother, and a 2 year old sister who is SO cute. They are really kind people, but I wish I could talk to them more. I have exhausted my limited supply of Spanish, so there are many moments of awkward silence and weird looks. I suppose the language will come soon, but for me it is never fast enough! I have my own room and running water (for the most part). There is a major energy crisis here, so they shut off the power during the day from about 7am to 4pm. It isn´t so bad because we are usually in class during that time. Overall, it has been a positive experience, although it still hasn´t hit me that Nicaragua is my home for the next two years. Right now, my goal is to make it through training and learn Spanish!

My family (Alex) is also really great. They have hosted 8 other volunteers before, which is a lot for these host families. I live with my host mom, who is a grandmother that takes very good care of me, her 26 year old daughter, 24 year old daughter in law, and her 4 year old grandchild. They feed me very well, plenty of rice and beans of course, but also a lot of chicken, plantains, and of course amazing, fresh juice from fruit I´ve never heard of.

It was great to finally get to our training sites after all of the time spend in hotels. We´re finally experiencing another culture! Training was great to meet all the volunteers in our group, and it´s also sweet when we all get together for our larger classes. As I expected, PC volunteers tend to be very dynamic people. We´re all from different backgrounds, but we all have a good deal in common and so get along swimmingly. I truly seems like the people who serve are some of the most interesting people from our country.

As Kaitlyn said, the work is exhausting when your spending your days trying to decipher and speak another language. By our last language class on Thursday my brain was totally saturated with Spanish vocabulary. At the same time the projects and assignments pile up as your having to spend all your energy trying to learn Spanish. On Tuesday we´re supposed to have a youth group meeting about planting trees, in Spanish of course...

The goal of integrating into the community was made a little easier for me this week however, since a teenage neighbor of mine invited me to play soccer. It was a lot of fun and I got to meet basically all of the young guys in the town. Now they want me to practice everyday, get a player´s ID, and play in their games...yet another activity I´m going to have to somehow find time for. Definitely awesome though! The guys in my town are really chill.

In the future, I´m going to create a list of all the funny things about Nicaragua that makes one realize that they´re not in the States anymore. However, I´ll give one small anecdote for ya´ll. While in language class on Thursday on one of our group member´s porches, our professora´s lesson was interrupted by the squeals of a piglet. She noted that, ¨Oh no, chanchito es muerto.¨ The three girls in my group were a bit distressed as the pig´s squeals slowly subsided over the next five minutes.

On that note, until next time!