Sisle- Jinotega- Matagalpa

I think I am starting to feel settled into my site and the surrounding area. These last couple weeks I have been in the cities more than I expected to be. A couple times was for health reasons and others for internet and meeting up with friends. This weekend I went to Matagalpa which is a great big city where a lot of volunteers tend to meet up. It has a great big grocery store and a nice café with wireless internet. It takes me a bout 3 hours to get there when all is send and done and with being sick this week and feeling rather homesick I didn’t realize how much I needed a mental health day! Drinking a fancy coffee and eating a salad was soo rewarding. Also seeing volunteers who seem like family now even though we have only known each other for 4 months felt so good! I stored up some hugs, horror stories and got podcasts and episodes of tv shows!

My week was productive, if you are wondering some of my daily activities on site I will try to give you a basic break down. I usually spend the morning cleaning, doing my laundering, ironing, taking a bucket bath and eating breakfast. I spend more time here on personal hygiene and overall cleanliness then I ever did in the states! Part of this is because I was in the company of many a fleas! Who like it more when you are dirty! A great way to get rid of them is bath in the morning and before you go to bed, change your clothes everyday and iron all your clothes before you wear them.

During the day I go visit people’s houses and meet with some kind of group or project. Half of it or more is usually socializing and chatting the other is finding out all the projects there are in my town. Really most of the time the work part of the day doesn’t feel like work cause I just ask a lot of questions and have so many nice people explaining things to me, asking questions, as we hike through the different communities! I tend to meet a new person about every week and I try to always make follow up appointments. I am by no means bored but feel like I am just getting to know everything and try to figure out what the needs and wants are. I also do a lot of assigned project readings from peace corps and my own personal reading at night. One thing I want to do more of is studying in Spanish…but by the time the day is over my brain is fried from all the talking and stumbling through my day…

Some highlights from these past weeks were…

Decorating or baking cake with my women’s  group who opened a mill with the first volunteers and now have started working on a bakery operation.

Making tamales from scratch after the first young corn harvests ( the women are preparing them as the men are hauling them in from the fields) we husk the corn, take of the shells with a knife and then mill it by hand…it takes all day!

Teachinga girl my age (who is becoming a great friend) how to knit and her teaching me how the crochet here and making circular table designs

Horseback riding up to a view point, hiking all over the place, and watching all the farm animals do their silly farm animal things

Planning a super extravagant birthday party with a 5 year old here who celebrates his on the 23^rd of October, we are making a piñata, a cake from scratch, and ice cream

Seeing and laughing with volunteers, eating chocolate getting phone calls and packages from home.

Humbling/learning Experiences…

One of the women from the mill lending me a clean shirt after I was soaked from walking up to her house in the pouring rain…just to find out the meeting I was coming to was cancelled…( that happens a lot here)

Talking to an incredibly intelligent producer about his struggles in the business aspects as he will takeout a loan to try out a new technology or crop type and then the weather and the market (which is totally unpredictable here, because there is no organization about who is producing what and in which quantities…which means if everybody grows onion and you thought of the same thing…you will make no money, but if you decided on lettuce you could be in the gold, it is a complete gamble)

A family walking  an hour with two plastic chairs to bring to my house so I would have some furniture.

People seeking me out from all sides of town just to ask for English classes

People recognizing I am probably homesick and sympathizing and trying to comfort me.

I am homesick this week and I miss all of you! I hope this blog wasn’t to random it is hard to catch people up on two weeks of activity!

today I hope to get myself a gas stove and next time hopefully I will have stories of cooking on my own in Nicaragua!

Ants in My Pants

All week I have been feeling like I was hitting the ground running like I could really get things going if I just did everything right…people had been asking me when I was going to start giving English classes and how all their kids want them, and I thought… hey, I speak English how hard can that be!? So I planned a class and told everyone what time and where, it was very informal and I had planned a fun class with games we had played in my Spanish classes. So yesterday rolls around and I start asking people if they are coming…everyone tells me they can’t they are busy, or they don’t want to go because they don’t like someone else in the class or they just realized they had to do something…I don’t know why I got so frustrated considering that we have been told that this happens a lot and that is why you have to talk about people’s work schedules, and hold meeting to coordinate and organize people before you start trying to implement projects… even if it is just and English class. I felt like I had already failed without even having been here long enough but it was a really great lesson in taking your time, and like my grandparents always say “measure twice, cut once”. I am pretty busy here considering I just arrived, going to visit the four communities that I will work in “Ojala” (God willing) or attending meetings of cooperatives or other organizations who are working here. That is the other really pressured feeling is there is a really big presence in these communities or other NGO’s who are doing lots of projects similar to what I would hope to do. Which is great because I have organized groups and more resources than a lot of other agriculture volunteers, but it means the people expect projects and they expect them promptly and are always asking me what projects I bring and where I am going to start, and at first I was vague but this week I finally started explaining some of the projects we could do together in the communities, I got particularly excited about a bio digestor project. Bio Digestors use the methane of cow dung to power gas stoves and their waste is great organic compost! Pretty cool…and they thought so to and were ready to jump right now board. So even though I know I have to get to know people, the area, the language, and most importantly organize based on what they want it is really really hard not to feel like I did when I was a kid, and new that I had to grow up to be a grown up, but really just wanted to skip all of the hard/awkward bits and just get there already! Basically, as usual I have ants in my pants…and today I literally had ants in my pants…

Wants we finally encountered the little bugger who had been crawling around in my pants all day (and I thought I was going to go crazy because I kept feeling something but then I could never shake it out of my pant leg) my host mother here, said oh it I ”un hormiga brava” which literally translates into a brave ant. But they use the word “bravo” to describe aggressive dogs and insects that bite! Anyway we laughed because she was with me all day and I kept telling her “something is in my pants” and we would stop and shake out my pants and roll them up (once doing this in the middle of the street) but we could never find it, I felt like an overly paranoid foreigner) Turns, out not so much! J

Having insects on your clothes is not knew information for me, I always check closely when I take my clothes down. I live much more closely with the birds and the bees here…well and the cockroaches, flies, mosquitos, and the brave ants.

For the most part it is really not disruptive the cockroaches crawl out as fast as they crawl in and since they don’t bite they bother me even less than the tiny ants! It can even be nice sometimes…This morning I woke up to all these little birds singing along my roof edges (see the houses are open here, so the roof is lifted off of the walls) and the little birds can just fly across my room (and hopefully eat the other bugs!), it was a really nice way to wake up and only slightly irritating when I realized they had pooped on my drying laundry that I had spent two hours scrubbing on a rock the day before… but this is the price you pay for organic pest control!

Volunteer!!!

Hi All!

So I am officially a volunteer and have already gotten to my site and started settling in. This week is a stark contrast to last week. Last week was crazy busy, we were always busy, and always dressed up. It is common to have a fancy swearing in ceremony for the volunteers but what is not common is to have THE PRESS! Our swearing in ceremony had a big hype around it because Peace Corps is celebrating 50 years of service, so there was all this media coverage during the ceremony and they were doing interviews and filming. When we finished our swearing in ceremony we got to go to the Director of Peace Corps house here and eat lunch, afterwords we were invited to a press conference with the President of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega. Each of the 43 PCVs was interviewed by the President to learn about the states they are from, where they will serve, their previous experience, and their proposed project work. The three hour meeting was televised by numerous channels, radio stations, and in the press. My picture ended up being in the newspaper! Here is a link to it, I know it is only the back of me but it is still rather exciting (especially considering they had 3.5 hrs of footage to choose from)

http://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/nacionales/109277_ortega-recibe-a-miembros-del-cuerpo-de-paz-de-eu

My conversation with the President went something like this: He said my name and then made a referance to Alice and Wonderland, because in Spanish it is "Alicia in the land of wonder" anyway he told me I kind of looked like Alicia in the wonderland and everyone including myself laughed ( me mostly out of nerves) and then he asked me where I was from and where I would be working. They were pretty basic questions, which I had prepared for ahead of time, but I still have NEVER been so nervous in my life, I was shaking so hard and was so relieved when it was over! The whole thing was a whirl wind of excitement, and after the press release we had been going strong since about 7am, so we were running on Nica cake and coffee and I didn't really come down from it all until now that I am on site. Those days in Managua were really nice though,  we got to hang out all together for a couple days and use hot showers and swim in a pool. As much as I was enjoying it I felt all this gratitude for something I hadn’t even done yet! 

Now, I don’t really know how to describe what point I am at now, all I can say it is very confusing and even though I am really used to being uprooted this feels so much different because I have high expectations for the work I am going to do, as does my community, the Peace Corps and now with this media coverage it feels like the whole world! So I got to my site Sunday night, and Monday I went into town to buy a bed with my “host father”. I have a cute little house that is right next to another one and I feel safe for the most part but I am always careful to lock my doors at night and be inside by dark. I visited with some of the people I met last time, and went to a women’s baking group meeting. Today I came into town again to do some more errands and get to know some of the volunteers who will be living in the same department. Right now I am still just getting my feet on the ground, but I have somehow gotten signed up to give English classes starting next week as well as teaching how to knit and decorate cakes. Neither of which I feel competent enough to teach but “fake it until you make it!?” ...plus it is a way to get to know more people!

Next week we also have our regional 50^th Anniversary party which I will go to as well, so I do have some things that are happening and I am just trying to get organized, getting to know people, getting to know my way around, and trying to feel competent in the language!

I am planning on adding pictures when I get my camera, and let you guys know a bit more about the details, but this is just a fuzzy outline of what life has been like the last couple of weeks. Much love to all!

Alicia

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

Time Passing Quickly

My brother Nelson always says this phrase to me in English… “Time passing quickly” now it is all I can think of every time I think about writing this blog! There were days (especially while I had my cast on) that everything seemed to be moving soooo slowly, like the Spanish class would never end that day, like I had my cast on for ages…or we would never find out our sites…and now my cast is off, we have started a new cycle of Spanish classes and today I found out my site!

SISLE in Jinotega is my site. It is actually two towns, near each other. I will be the only volunteer between the two, and it is one of the bigger sites available for volunteers. My site packet says there is a lot of walking between sites (yay!) and a lot of different groups to work with. I will go on Thursday to visit my site for a week (kind of like a test run before I swear in).

 It would be an understatement to say that I am nervous…not that I do not like the sound of the site, because I do, but it is all so overwhelming. Right now I am feeling happy about the location, which is in the north, which has cooler temperatures (temperatures falling as low as the 60’s in the winter nights) and grows coffee and Cacoa. I am also looking forward to the established groups that exist.  For example there is a women’s group who has started to mill and sell coffee, and there are established community banks in both the towns, as well as an agriculture cooperative. What I am feeling uncertain about is my ability to be of use here…I feel completely insufficient for this town, especially since the site packet says "this is a well developed sites with high expectations for their volunteer" I am sure Peace Corps has their reasons for thinking I can handle it, but I don't know them right now!  I do feel like I will get the hang of it after a few months…and hopefully with 6 thousand people in my ‘community’ my Spanish will sky rocket! The other thing I am feeling a little “Trieste” (Sad) about is leaving my WONDERFUL family who I will now be really far away from, and leaving my whole training town and my training group. Our group could not be much more spread out across the country and even though Nicaragua is more like the state of New York and it seems closer, in reality travel takes much much longer, and we don’t have the income to travel or the time off to visit eachother often. I am really going to miss, what I have come to know as my support system here, both the Nica side and the Aggie side. BUT if anyone knows the silver linning of moving I would like to think it is me! And even though it is always hard to say goodbye, it is always a new door to more friends, more love and more support, so I just have to hope for more loving Nica family members and closer relationships with volunteers in my area!

This brings me to tonight! It is 11:30 pm here, and tomorrow I will have one of the busiest days I have had yet. I will start at 5:30am washing my clothes, then go to my neighbours house at 7am for a lesson on African Red Worms. Then Spanish class at 8am to noon. A quick lunch break and back to class until 3pm when we will go to another Charla, this time about meeting and working with our community counterparts. Then I will go to an American Diner here to eat a salad for the first time (this is really just for fun) Then we have a meeting with the leaders of  our youth group who were elected tonight to attend the the market competition we have been preparing together. (our product for the market competion is an acne soap). In order to compete in the competition at the end of the month, they have to complete and evaluate a market study, prepare the soap, make a flattering package and a suitable label to accompany it. They also have to try and sell the product and explain the possible gross income of the potential soap business. All of this is before I give an English lesson to one of my neighbours and then pack and clean my room, because I leave Thursday morning to visit my new site. And I have been reminded many times I HAVE to clean my room because another volunteer (who has been here a year) will be visiting while I am away at my site visit, to take an ‘update’ intensive language course ( I too, will do this in one year if I make it there)

Some of you are probably wondering why I am bothering to explain all of this….well

 1. So you know what my life is like here and 2. So you understand why I haven’t updated my blog in over 3 weeks/ checked me email. :)

I am not just a slacker correspondent and also the cast made it rather hard to get to the internet café! So I do have a lot to update you on but rather little time to explain it all. Here are the highlights and lowlights of the past 3 weeks…

Mix of high and low light….

1. For tech week we went to the border of Hondurus with a wonderful group of 6 aggies and another 5 agirucltural volunteers who have been here a year. We learned how to build improved stoves and ovens which decrease wood use (yay for the trees), and decrease smoke inhalation (yay for the lungs), We also made a biodigester which basically converts cow dung into gas and compost (yay for cows, gardens, your gas money, and the trees!)

The low light…

1. Getting super sick on my technical week, using an outhouse in the mud on crutches….sleeping on mats in a room with ten other people….

The high light

2. I got better! Everyone took such good care of me, I really bonded with people, and Peace Corps seemed to be impressed I made it through the other end of tech week!

Other low lights…

3. Not being able to fix my brand new i-pod which got water damage and therefore not having any of my books, or music or a camera
4. The stresses of training and learning a new language
5. Finding out I will have to leave my new family and friends
6. Realizing I have gained weight already…2 months in…and how it has turned into a running joke in my family that I will not be able to fit into the dress I brought for my swearing in ceremony when I become a volunteer…and how much joy they take in fattening me up and then grabbing my love handels (or as they call them here your ‘tire’) :) The thing is though, is that here being fat is consider beautiful so they really do mean it in a nice way!

Highlights

2. There is a tradition that for our last night of Tech week we all meet up in Esteli and the aggie volunteers who have been here for a year take us "trainees" out for a night on the town! I went dancing with all of the Agriculture volunteers …in a cast and crutches!
3. Getting my cast off last Monday and being able to walk without crutches this Monday
4. Getting tons of mail!!! A package from my mom full of goodies, pictures and letters from aunts and uncles, letters from friends and family! I really cannot say how much it means to get that stuff here, it is such a heart warmer/ long term smile provider.
5. Learning how to make tortillas with my sisters and then eating them warm with local honey (which they thought was the craziest thing anyone has ever done with tortillas and refused to try it)
6. Watching the youth give their presentations to apply to go to the competition, and seeing that we really are providing a learning experience in leadership and organization
7. Seeing my friend Vanessa who I have not seen in 3 years and then finding out I will be only an hour away from her on site!
8. Being introduced to AMAZING locally made chocolate!....And then spending half my weekly wage on that choclate
9. Seeing our “Huerto” (field) after 3 weeks of not being able to see it because I couldn’t  walk through all the mud on my crutches. What started out as a dry dirt field is now a green lush field of medium sized corn stalks, and big bushels of squash , 700 tomato plants and 3 rows of beans. We also harvested our first squash which I ate for breakfast this morning!

I hope this paints somewhat of a picture! And if I manage to add the pictures from my sisters camera you will see a couple pictures of the house and family activities!

So much love to all of you and I really do appretiate all the mail and emails and even though I can’t always reply in the same manner I hope you all know what it means to me! More later!

Alicia

This is a picture of an improved oven we made on tech week!

 My training week group, and me trying to hide my cast!

 A volcano we visited the week before, I climbed part of it with my cast, but it wasn't to satisfying..beautiful

Pictures!

Muletas y Llesos

Hi All!

If I spelled the title correctly it means crutches and casts…yes I already hurt myself.. I was playing soccer on Sunday with my Soccer team and we were loosing by 3 points and then I rolled my ankle over the tiny ball (they play with this tiny soccer ball that is more like a handball here, because the court is so small) and ended up getting a tour of two different hospitals in Nicaragua. But what I really want to share is the cultural experience of it all…I actually think I learned more in that day (in regards to new Spanish vocabulary and Nicaraguan attitudes) then I have in the rest of the 4 weeks.

It was really to bad the day ended like that because that morning I remember thinking I can’t wait to put all of this in my blog! What an amazing experience being on a soccer team is here! I woke up at 6am and had to be on the field at 7am. This was the opening of the season and a very big deal! Ofcourse in Nicaragua me being on time meant no one else was there…The coach strolled up around 7:15 in his Soccer Jersey and baggy track pants, walked me through the basic rules and handed me a ten page rule book in Spanish (wishful thinking on his part) around 8:30 all the teams were gathered.

In my town (which is pretty small, but there are smaller ones) They have 3 women’s teams, 4 men’s teams, and 3 kids teams. It is incredibly funny some of the names they come up with…(most of them being famous football teams “Madrid”, “Barcelona”, “Chelsea” and “Warriors” then the little guys being “mini warriors” and ect. I have pictures of the event but we all lined up in our teams and walked through the town in a kind of march. They were all decked out and had a DJ and microphones, we had a political speaker and prayer, it was a huge day of pride for the town, soccer is huge here! It is one of the only positive things youth have to do around here. From our youth group I have learned it is one of the youth’s biggest joys, and an incredible way to keep them out of trouble because it gives them something to strive for and be proud of. The team I am(was) on, is the defending champion so we got to play first. I actually really didn’t do that bad all things considered, and we only had 5 girls so I got to play A LOT. I was having an amazing time…and then I fell…it was pretty bad, I knew it when it happened and they were telling me so as well. There were about 100 people all around me, even though the game continued. An interesting thing about rural sports games in Nicaragua is people get hurt all the time, and no one stops for one second. I literally fell to the floor, rolled off the field and waved another one of my team mates in. They didn’t stop the game and they never do. It is so unlike the states where there is a time out called and the cameras all zoom in on the hurt person. There is also no medic on sight. My coach (who I think is 18 years old) was the one who kept saying I needed to go to the hospital and there were about 4 other guys yelling things I didn’t understand, when a motorcycle appeared…( this was my ride for the hospital) Thank Goodness Motorcycles are prohibited for peace corps volunteers and my friend Sarah was there keeping me totally calm, while calling peace corps medical, and at the same time explaining in Spanish that I couldn’t go to the hospital on a flipping motorcycle with a hurt ankle…AND repeatedly asking for ice (which no one wanted to give me because here they think that going from hot to cold is bad and that putting ice on an injury is dangerous…they also say you can’t shower after you exercise or eat) it has been a somewhat interesting experience showering based on all these little wives tales, between those in my busy schedule it can be rather difficult to find the time!

Anyway I went to the first hospital in the town bus…I remember everything so clearly, Here I am getting into this bus (with passengers in it b.t.w) and all of my town is watching me as I am holding back tears and sweating like a mad woman. Ice in one hand and my dirty shoe in the other, I waved goodbye to, literally, my whole town. My coach and Sarah came with me to the hospital (not before we dropped off the rest of the passengers on the bus). The hospital was an adventure in itself and thank goodness for my coach because we wouldn’t have been able to steer ourselves around without him. We got the x-ray and saw the doctor in record time. As they are trying to explain to me that my ankle is dislocated and they will have to “re-arrange it” (is the direct translation) and I am balling like a trawling and saying “Yo tengo meido (I have fear)! And I can not be tranquilla (Calm)” I think this “scen”e convinced them I needed drugs ( well that and Sarah hinting at it over and over again) They were about to give me an injection of what I understood as a rather heavy sedative, when Sarah’s phone rang. As I am pulling down my pants for the tranquilizer needle the Peace Corps doctor says “don’t let them inject you with anything, it is against Peace Corps policy!” “ wow that was close!” Anyway they decide that I have to go to the main hospital in the big city, which I do with the help of my coach who came the whole way, spent hours waiting around for me and ended up missing his own soccer game...He was so sweet and even though we had trouble communicating he calmed me down so much and I will forever be grateful!

After all that drama I am told it is a second degree sprain and that the problem is my ligament. I now have a giant blue cast on my leg and use my crutches to hobble back and forth to the outhouse. All in all I am doing well and just want to continue with training and get the cast taken off. Although, it has definitely been an experience, and at times is incredibly irritating, but people visited me lots on Sunday and Monday night to see how I was doing, my family here will not let me help with a single thing and someone is constantly around telling me to sit down and put my foot up, and my youth group all loved it because they got to sign my cast (which was a different concept here, because they wrote on masking tape and signed the tap, then stuck the tape on the cast…I think they did not want to mess up the pretty blue cast, Nicaraguans tend to think like that).

Which brings me to my youth group! Which I have to talk about! They say your lows are low and your highs are high and I feel like it couldn’t be more true! I will admit I have my lows but tonight I had a high that I really want to share with all of you!

Just for a brief background. I am in training. We have training for 3 months, in which we must improve our Spanish to a passable standard, we must plant and care for a vegetable garden and successfully carry out making composts, fences, natural pesticides and such for the garden, we must try and integrate with our community and learn their customs, and we hold youth group meetings twice a week, where the ultimate end goal is to produce a product made from locally available materials that will be entered into a contest with all the other youth groups, in which each group has to present their market study for their product, and has to have sold and packaged their product successfully.

This has been the focus of our youth group and we have had some amazing youth group meetings where everyone participated and presented their ideas and successfully voted for a product. But tonight we had to give a motivation meeting (or “charla”) not related to the product, and we chose to speak about goals…This also happened to be the Charla that our agriculture coordinator decided to come to and we were all not only nervous but also just exhausted. (I am not sure I can clearly explain how busy we are, and how little free time we have, and I don’t really see the point in wasting the blog space!)

Anyway, the night started off as usual (crazy) and we had  problems before with their being to many people in the school grounds who weren’t supposed to be there and were causing damage to school property so we started a check list for entrance. Even though our meeting starts at 6pm no one gets there until 6:20pm and the gate isn’t even opened until 6:30pm. Then we have to stand outside and check people off and wait for the mass of people who always show up at like 6:45pm. We had two exercises, the first was to write your goals for one year and your goals for five years and some people did and shared theirs, but they all took it really seriously, which was encouraging. Then we played basically hot potato but hot cabbage and each layer of the cabbage had a different question about life goals and interests. Everyone go into it, people really answered and listened, one little guy (who is always really energetic and kind of a distraction) had to answer what he was good at, he thought for awhile and then said “break dancing” and proceeded to get into the middle of the circle and break dance. We had people say they wanted to be doctors and international aid workers, or architects. People talked about how they respected their parents and why. As usual, I couldn’t understand everything because it was in Spanish but it was still incredible! After we had them all draw a life map of what they have accomplished and what they hope to accomplish. They took it so seriously and really enjoyed it, some of them presented nervously and the others came up to me latter to show me and explain to me how they wanted to accomplish their goals.  When we finished we were pretty much exhausted but we had to talk to our boss who had been observing…I was pretty nervous…there was a big pause and some light conversation and then he said “guys, that was amazing…this is why we are here…this is one of the best charlas in a youth group I have seen!” It was incredible! We were on cloud nine! He explained how some of the kids had shown how much peace corps influenced them in their drawing, how many of them wanted to learn English or believed they could achieve bigger things. It was a really proud moment for me. I can’t begin to explain what an emotional roller coaster training has been, it is crazy busy, and stressful, we are working with so many different groups and situations and most of the time it is hard to know which way is up, but it is moments like these that make it all worth it and remind us how much joy is yet to come in our final site placement.

We have been told these next three weeks are the hardest and the most stressful, so keep sending me those positive thoughts and know that even if I don’t get a chance to write I am always thinking of all of you and sending you all love!

Lots of love!

Alicia

 p.s I don't have any pictures right now because my camera is out of commission (hopefully, only temporarily)