Site visit In SISLE

Hi All!
I got back from my site visit in Sisle (pronounced sissily) on Friday!

 It is a beauitful town, we drove through all these mountains and lush green rolling hills. It is up against a lake and they grow mostly coffee and then the usual beans and corn. Unfortunately my camera has still not been fixed so I did not take any pictures so you are just going to have to take my word for it!

There are a lot of ongoing projects that I will be following up on. There are 3 exisiting community banks, two of which are women´s cooperatives that have both started mills for corn and coffee. There is also a coffee cooperative and a basic grains cooperative. There will definetly not be a lack of things to do! I was also asked about a thousand times to give English classes and I figure even though it is unrelated to Agriculture it is the least I can do to try and pump up my town about me,
This is in consideration of the previous volunteer who the whole town worships and adores.  here is why...She was amazing! She started 2 community banks, got one of the womens groups funding to expand thier mill into a processing plant, built like 25 improved ovens, spoke fluent Spanish, built her own house, and her brother is a catholic priest who gave guest sermons in the local church...did I mention the whole community except for two families is Catholic?
How I am going to follow her act I do not know but I am going with " I am funny and entertaining with my bad Spanish and lack of knowledge about all of the Catholic saints"
It is really lucky for me I have been through my first communion and that I have some knowledge of all of it, because the family I stayed with for my site visit (who I really like!) prays 3 times a day! The couple is an old couple of 85 and 73 years old and they have a HUGE Family! I think they had about 6-8 kids and then they all had kids and then the kids all had kids! THere have been deaths, divorces, affairs and such so it is rather hard to keep track, but everyone I met told me their relation to the family and was incredibly patient with my horrible Spanish which is even harder for people in the country to understand because they speak really really differently. I also tended to invite myself over to a lot of family business organizations like the coffe cooperative meetings and community banks which they didn´t seem to mind. One of the more interesting experiences I had was going to a coffee cooperative meeting which was icnredibly organized and informative. The only down side was it started an hour and half late (which unfortunately is the norm here...and I would like everyone to keep this in mind when I get back and am always late! ) They informed about pesticide and insecticide use which tends to be really over used here, and the other unfortunate thing besides the over use is many of the products that are banned in the USA because they are dangerous are then brought and sold here. There is also very little use of protective gear because it is to hot and it is expensive to buy. The great thing was after all of the training on correct use of pesticide and organic alternatives they showed the documentry FOOD INC (which was in Spanish) we watched almost the entire thing and it was incredible to see a Nicaraguan reaction, I was also really ashamed watching it, but also greatful that they could see some of the mistakes American agiruclture has made. It was an interesting realization for me as well that I am always so careful about what I eat here for fear of infection, but really there are many many dangers in the states as well and the benefit here is that I know where my food comes from. I literally see the field it grows in the cow or chicken it is produced from. It was an awesome full circle moment for me on Site visit and I would really appretiate everyone at home watching it!

That being said I am proud to say I did not get sick at all on site visit! Which after my technical training week of being sick as a dog, on crutches in the mud, sleeping on mats with 10 other volunteers, was my BIGGEST fear! I would say about 80 percent of my communication was body language and holding my stomach with a pained facing and pointing at food and water that I couldn´t drink. They have this great expression here when you can´t eat a food "me hace daño" It litterally means it hurts me..but it can change- like one day coffee can hurt me and the next day I can handel it! IT has been the key to my eating success here! That is the wonderful thing about being a follow up volunteer is that everyone in the community already knows that gringos have week stomachs, so you can follow on the previous volunteers diarreah trails! :) Sorry if that was vulgar, we have gotten very comfortable talking about these things over the past 3 months! I really didnt have anything to worry about because the food on site was great! The family I stayed with for my visit was really great about boiling the water and casually asking me what my favourite food was and then serving it to me like they already had it the whole time. It was really funny cause some little girl (a grandchild of some sort) would ask me what I like to eat in the states and then the next meal it would magaically appear on my plate! :) I cannot say enough how incredibly generous everyone in this family was to me!
Unfortunately, I will not be living with them because the room is not big enough and doesnt meet peace corps standards, just down the street from them the previous volunteer build a little mother in law unit next top another house and I will be living there, which I think will be nice for my own sanity and independence. Also the other family I feel really close with is just down the street and my new family has two teenage daughter and one young son who I think I will get along with really well!
The other kind of comforting thing I just found out today is that my friend Vanessa will be really close to me in the neighbouring town! So I feel like as usual I have been put exactly where I was meant to be!
Right now I have one more week to finish up with our youth group, which has it´s competition on Friday and try to focus enough to study for my final Spanish interview which is on Wednesday of this week. I just hope I can get through everything gracefully and I can improve my Spanish and technical skills enough to be of real use to my site when I arrive.
I was told by a fellow reader that my blogs are both enjoyable and a tad long ( so for all the mothers out there who have more than a million things to do i will not blabber on about how much I miss all of you and love you!)
Sorry for the lack of pictures on this one! Hasta pronto!
XOXO
Alicia