I do quite a bit of walking in a day and as I walk by there´s lots of english phrases shouted at me often by little children, hello, goodbye, whatisyourname (yes, all one word) and in a country where not many people speak english I´m amazed that the phrase ¨hey blondie¨ is remembered and used when I walk past.
Let´s see....another week down and more and more spanish is being absorbed into my head, I´m often finding myself waking up and talking to myself in Spanish, that´s a good sign right?! I´m feeling like I´ve done quite a bit of improving over the short 3 weeks that I´ve been in country, but I still catch myself utterly bewildered when my host sister gives me the benefit of the doubt and rambles on way too quickly in Spanish, like I´m a native speaker. But she´s good at noticing my confused look and stops herself, slows down and repeats words sometimes to many times to count.
Things are moving along quite well and we´re actually starting to get our hands dirty, literally. We had a gardening charla/training last week and I helped build a garden. Grandma - if you´ve figured out how to read my blog yet, I may actually return from this experience and want to help you weed your garden instead of considering it cruel, slave labor- we´ll see.
We´ll be building our own gardens at the elementary school this Saturday and I really hope that we have lots of little hands to help us, otherwise I´m going to have my work cut out for myself. I´m feeling more confident in our ability to gather children for our groups and projects have are super successful youth group meetings!
We had a meeting on Monday, which 11 students showed up to, way better than our first attempt and one that we were all proud of; but it gets even better. We had another meeting on Tuesday and.....drumroll please.....22 students showed up!!! Woo Hoo! And I´m kicking myself for not carrying my camera with me every minute of the day, luckily Hannah brought her camera and I´ll steal the photos to post because I´m super proud and want to show off our creative students. Our goal for the youth group is to create a product out of recycled materials, so has an introduction we had the students collect trash, which can be found all over the streets, and make something that could potentially be used in the bathroom. The students were so creative, I was amazed. They made toilet paper holders, toothbrush holders, flower pots, fly swatters....I promise I´ll post the photos. We also decided on our big recycled project which is......another drumroll......a playhouse for children made from plastic bottles and other materials. This is a super huge project, but the students seem really excited about it and so are all of the aspirantes (trainees/not yet volunteers). I´ve thrown my camera into my bag and am now going to carry it around all the time, so I promise to take lots of photos and post them occasionally to show progress.
Hm....that´s the really big news for me this week. Wait! I got my cell phone finally!! so if I haven´t texted you already and you´d like my number email or facebook me. I was super excited to actually talk to my mom this week, even though it was only for a few minutes.
And I have to get going because it´s almost 6pm and it´s truly like clock work here...sunrise 6am, sunset 6pm. Before I leave I´m going to give one last plea for mail...a postcard, letter, package, anything would be greatly appreciated. I´m the only one of the 4 trainees that haven´t received any mail yet, it´s gotten to the point that Emily a trainee promised to send me a letter. C´mon people!
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Monday, September 12, 2011
One week successfully completed....
My first week is complete and I´m still alive.
I´m living in a small pueblo, Niquinohomo, for the next three months during training. I really lucked out with my host family and living conditions. I live in a house surrounded by beautiful flowers and plants with amble amount of butterflies and hummingbirds buzzing around daily (for those of you familiar with the movie, Matilda, it´s remineiscent of Miss Honey´s cottage, but Nicaraguan style). I have running water, YAY no bucket showers!! and even though it´s cold water it´s actually quite refreshing, after the initial shock of shivers. And quite possibly the best part, I have a washing machine, YAY no handwashing clothes!!
My family consists of parents, two sisters, 15 and 8 years old and a grandmother. They all very nice and very understanding of my lack of understanding and my use of a circle of words that I use to describe something. Their house is a good 15 minute walk away from the city center where the other volunteers live and where Spanish classes are held everyday, so I get to walk about an hour everyday. I walk to class at 8AM, return home for lunch at 12PM, return to class at 1PM and return home at 5PM.
It´s been quite a long week. We have formal Spanish classes for about 6 hours everyday and then I return home for my continued Spanish immersion. It´s quite tiring for me to think so much about Spanish and the constant translating and searching for correct words and verb tenses. I´m pretty sure I´m developing a form of ADD because I often catch myself glazing over and simply nodding and replying ok, si and really I have no idea what they just said or even worse they´re looking at me expecting me to answer the question they just asked. I´m often done for the day by 9 pm at the very latest, sometimes earlier. Last week, I hit a wall on Thursday where I´d had enough Spanish for the week, and I´m hoping that doesn´t repeat itself weekly.
This week we´re actually getting started with our projects that we need to complete in training and unfortunately our first attempt at forming a youth group was an epic fail! We posted two posters in the library and videogame shop advertising our awesome request for teenagers to join us for an environmental, recycling project. Today we went to the library, hoping someone would show up and we were in no luck. We waited an hour and prepared more advertisements for our round two attempt for a meetig next week. We even bought cookies and Coke to try and allure them into joining the group. Hopefully we´ll have more success next week.
I feel like there´s so much that´s happened and much, much more that I could talk about, but I´ll keep it simple with a list of things I´m liking and not liking so much.
Me gusta....
1) Chocobananas and Eskimo (ice cream shop) the meeting place for me and the other volunteers to debrief and have English time
2) Watching iCarly in Spanish, I can actually understand what´s going on
3) The Starbucks instant coffee that Aunt Tracy sent with me before leaving (lifesavers, thank you1)
4) My host family
5) The weather - it´s actually quite enjoyable
6) All the pretty flowers and plants
7) and more.....
No me gusta....
1) Rain on zinc roofs (very, very loud)
2) The constant state of dampness in everything- clothes, paper
3) The giant spider I saw in my bedroom the other day (the size of my palm, no lie)
4) The mold I found growing on my shoes
5) The carb overload I´m suffering every meal, every day
6) It´s dark at 6PM every day
It´s not that I don´t like it, but I can foresee me not liking it after two years and that is....I have some combination of rice and beans for every meal, every day.
Overall, I´m having a good time and am anxious to get started with our projects and it´s not that I hate the things listed, more like things I have to learn to like.
I´m living in a small pueblo, Niquinohomo, for the next three months during training. I really lucked out with my host family and living conditions. I live in a house surrounded by beautiful flowers and plants with amble amount of butterflies and hummingbirds buzzing around daily (for those of you familiar with the movie, Matilda, it´s remineiscent of Miss Honey´s cottage, but Nicaraguan style). I have running water, YAY no bucket showers!! and even though it´s cold water it´s actually quite refreshing, after the initial shock of shivers. And quite possibly the best part, I have a washing machine, YAY no handwashing clothes!!
My family consists of parents, two sisters, 15 and 8 years old and a grandmother. They all very nice and very understanding of my lack of understanding and my use of a circle of words that I use to describe something. Their house is a good 15 minute walk away from the city center where the other volunteers live and where Spanish classes are held everyday, so I get to walk about an hour everyday. I walk to class at 8AM, return home for lunch at 12PM, return to class at 1PM and return home at 5PM.
It´s been quite a long week. We have formal Spanish classes for about 6 hours everyday and then I return home for my continued Spanish immersion. It´s quite tiring for me to think so much about Spanish and the constant translating and searching for correct words and verb tenses. I´m pretty sure I´m developing a form of ADD because I often catch myself glazing over and simply nodding and replying ok, si and really I have no idea what they just said or even worse they´re looking at me expecting me to answer the question they just asked. I´m often done for the day by 9 pm at the very latest, sometimes earlier. Last week, I hit a wall on Thursday where I´d had enough Spanish for the week, and I´m hoping that doesn´t repeat itself weekly.
This week we´re actually getting started with our projects that we need to complete in training and unfortunately our first attempt at forming a youth group was an epic fail! We posted two posters in the library and videogame shop advertising our awesome request for teenagers to join us for an environmental, recycling project. Today we went to the library, hoping someone would show up and we were in no luck. We waited an hour and prepared more advertisements for our round two attempt for a meetig next week. We even bought cookies and Coke to try and allure them into joining the group. Hopefully we´ll have more success next week.
I feel like there´s so much that´s happened and much, much more that I could talk about, but I´ll keep it simple with a list of things I´m liking and not liking so much.
Me gusta....
1) Chocobananas and Eskimo (ice cream shop) the meeting place for me and the other volunteers to debrief and have English time
2) Watching iCarly in Spanish, I can actually understand what´s going on
3) The Starbucks instant coffee that Aunt Tracy sent with me before leaving (lifesavers, thank you1)
4) My host family
5) The weather - it´s actually quite enjoyable
6) All the pretty flowers and plants
7) and more.....
No me gusta....
1) Rain on zinc roofs (very, very loud)
2) The constant state of dampness in everything- clothes, paper
3) The giant spider I saw in my bedroom the other day (the size of my palm, no lie)
4) The mold I found growing on my shoes
5) The carb overload I´m suffering every meal, every day
6) It´s dark at 6PM every day
It´s not that I don´t like it, but I can foresee me not liking it after two years and that is....I have some combination of rice and beans for every meal, every day.
Overall, I´m having a good time and am anxious to get started with our projects and it´s not that I hate the things listed, more like things I have to learn to like.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)