7 months to go....

Finally! A blog update. Yes, it has been a very long time and we apologize for the delay. We have been trying to get back into our routine since our string of visitors (Hunter, Meredith, Kara, Chris, and AJ) and then I (Kaitlyn) had to make an emergency trip home to say goodbye to my grandfather before he passed away :( On a different note, Alex participated in a half-marathon about a month a ago that took place in the northern department of Jinotega. Many volunteers and Nicaraguans participated. Alex finished as one of the faster volunteers in the race (3rd place amongst Peace Corps Volunteers!) Overall, it has been an emotional and chaotic few months but things finally seem to be settling down as we head towards our last hard months of service.
We are currently both working hard to get our school gardens and school tree nurseries up and running. The idea is to get everything planted now, so when the rainy season comes in about a month that the little plants will be strong enough to withstand the torrential downpours. A few of my gardens suffered over the week long vacation of Semana Santa , or Easter as we call it but we have replanted and hoping that my students will be cautious with the plants.
A few other projects include: helping the local sister-city project develop their Community Education Curriculum, Alex has been writing a guide for Environmental Leadership projects, giving out donated sneakers to my girls volleyball team, trying to start a world map project in the local library, International Book Donation for our poorest rural schools, writing a supplement for our Peace Corps Environmental Education Guide that helps teachers adapt the lessons to multi-grade classrooms (Alex and I work in only multi-grade schools so we are sort of the experts in this area), planning for a teacher workshop about Environmental Education in another town, working on our new government formatted 4-month reports, and getting ready for In-Service Training to take place next week in Selva Negra, Matagalpa.
These next few months we hope to accomplish the majority of these projects, along with getting all of our teachers on board to co-teach and eventually teach on their own using the new participatory methods that we have been demonstrating. In July we will be making a short trip home for vacation and when we return we will have our close of service conference in August and then we start wrapping up our service that will officially end in November! On the one hand, it has been a long road and on the other it is hard to believe that we are in the last quarter of our service! This means we have started to stress a little about post-Peace Corps life, especially with the economy, but we are also looking forward to moving on to the next stage of our lives. So with 7 months to go we are pushing through, working hard, and aiming towards that finish line! We will keep you posted as new projects develop and will try and post some more pictures soon! Adios!