2013 is already a quarter way over! I’m
not counting or anything. Well, actually
I count everything. I count up: I've been in country 337 days and a Peace Corps Volunteer for 255 and I count down:
60 days until Lucy Joy is born, 86 days until I get to meet her, 109 days until I've been in site for a year, 470 until I finish my service. That’s normal behavior right? ...I Don’t
think so, but I keep doing it so it must benefit me somehow. But then I stop and realize I have 16 months left and I think I should stop counting for a while...
I have officially reached the part of my
service where we are supposed to experience a mid-service crisis. Characteristically, this happens between
months 11 and 15. I’m right smack dab at
the Beginning of this time frame. So it’s
time to just take it day by day, reflect on the good, find the positives, and
power through it. It's time to really
appreciate the little moments, like a breezy bus ride to school listening to my
iPod while staring out the window at the volcanoes along the highway, or how a walk through
town takes twice as long as it should because I stop and chat with so many
neighbors along the way and exchange greetings with even more, hearing “Hola Profe” or “Adios Hannah!” or "Hello Teacher" and, when all else fails, I have to remind myself that the work I am doing here and the things I am experiencing are more exciting and rewarding than a 9 am to 5 pm job in a cubicle with a/c and a 401k. Vale la pena, It's worth it.
This is Kenya. She is nine years old and lives next door to me. She is an incredibly smart and curious little girl who I love spending time with... most of the time. When she comes over to the house to buy things at my mom's store, she loves to talk to me through my bedroom window... at all hours. This week I had a 5:30am visit. Kenya: "Hi Hannah!" Me: "Hi Kenya, I'm sleeping"...Kenya: "Your window is open" Me: "Yes Kenya, I sleep with it open because it gets hot and I like the breeze but, Kenya I'm sleeping" Kenya: "...What are you doing?" Me: "Kenya, I'm sleeping right now, it's early, I want to sleep" Kenya: "Oh you're sleeping? ...Are you tired?" Me: "Yes Kenya, I am sleepy, please let's chat later I really want to sleep" Kenya: "Why are you tired?...Do you have to go teach soon?" Me: "Yes Kenya, I only get to sleep a little bit longer, please let me sleep, ok? Bye Kenya." Haha.
I wanted to start this school year off strong by having a teacher training before the new year started in mid February So the week before school started, I got the approval and support of La Paz Centro's Ministry of Education to have an entrepreneurship teacher training. They made it mandatory for all the teachers to attend and provided me with a projector and I brought snacks and 5 hours worth of teaching material.
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| All set with my materials and refrigerio (snacks) |
7:45 am: I show up at the school pumped and ready to go for an 8 am session start time. The classroom we are using is empty of desks and chairs so the principal and I go hunt down some unused desks, dust them off, and carry them into the classroom along with a teacher's desk. Ok, perfect. 8:15 am: the technical director from MinEd shows up with projector. Awesome. 8:30 am: Two teachers have arrived... I silently chuckle to myself thinking, "wonderful, I'm going to give a five hour session to two people..." But low and behold, all eight of La Paz Centro's entrepreneur teachers show up by 8:45 and we are able to get started. Already, the day was a success just getting them all to show up!
My most experienced counterpart co-taught the session with me. Using the teachers as my students, I modeled for them what an interactive classroom should look like by using dynamic activities to keep them interested and engaged, activities that they then took and used in their classrooms. We went over lesson planning and the first semester of the curriculum. I printed out best practices guides, workbook guides, and materials for them to incorporate into the classroom. They were all excited for the material I provided because they don't have access to many resources. I was happy for the positive feedback from the teachers and the ministry of education about the success of the training, and to see my teachers implementing the techniques I taught in the following weeks of class! It was nice to start the school year off with a good success! Also an awesome way to celebrate my 200th day of service which fell on my teacher training day, remember how I mentioned counting everything...
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Apart from teaching in my 6 schools this year, I am also teaching a class at the NGO youth center in Nagarote called Norwalk, named after Norwalk, Connecticut the city who has supported Nagarote for over ten years through different development outlets and recently built a beautiful youth center. I have a group of ten students attending my weekly class where we discuss topics pertaining to life skills development and business and entrepreneurial skills.
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| Studying Creativity by trying to create 4 triangles out of 6 Q-tips |
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Listing the qualities and character traits that we have
and the ones we are working to obtain |
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| Norwalk Field trip! |
The committee from Connecticut came for their yearly visit to the Norwalk-Nagarote project in March. My Peace Corps site mate Cindy and I spent the weekend with this great group of individuals acting as tour guides and translators, they in return fed us delicious food and paid our way to Volcan Masaya! After a long weekend of translating and answering almost nonstop questions about Nagarote, my service as a PCV and Nicaragua in general, I was voiceless and happily worn out by Sunday night. Having a captive audience wanting to know more about the place I call home and the work that I do here was the best treat a PCV could ask for! :-)
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| The Norwalk Delegation in front of Volcano Masaya |
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| Learning about the Norwalk finca, or farm |
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| Saudi and her pet bird |
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| Rows of Papaya trees on the Norwalk farm |
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| Taking the delegation out for Quesillo! |
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| The Nicaraguan staff at Norwalk singing for the delegation |
I came home from teaching one early afternoon to two hens tied together by their feet in the kitchen. They were yelping and trying to flap around (difficult when tied together I learned). I was awkwardly trying to fill up my water bottle from the 5 gallon jug that sits up on that ledge as they were flocking into my leg. Interesting experience.
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| 11am two hens in the kitchen |
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| 6pm dinner: Gallina Rellena, a Nicaraguan dish made using Hens :-) |
Eating 'fresh' food here is a normal and usually awesome experience. It's so different than running to the supermarket to buy whatever cut of meat we want for dinner. I've now eaten fresh chicken, hen, cow, and pig. I say usually awesome experience because the buckets of raw cow meat all over the house on Saturday mornings still kind of freak me out. But, we get to eat fresh off the farm cow! In December a big scary looking man came over to my house to slaughter and essentially dismember one of our pigs in my backyard... on the same table I use to wash my laundry... After making squealy noises as I curiously watched and took pictures of him working, he asked me, "what, have you never seen a pig be slaughter before?" and I respond: "No! Never!" Pig Slaughterer: "Where do you get your meat in your country?" Me: "I go to a big supermarket and buy it!" Pig Slaughterer shakes his head and keeps cutting. I'll save you all the bloody pictures of that experience. RIP Mr. Pig.
On March 6th
the new group of Peace Corps trainees came to Nicaragua! Nica61 is composed of 16 community health
trainees and 16 small business development trainees. Henry and I, small business Nica59 volunteers
and two health volunteers from Nica55 and Nica57, were chosen as the greeters for the new group. It was a big honor to be selected to represent the small business sector. We made corny signs to welcome them to
country at the airport and then stayed with them through their first 4 days in country.
During orientation, our role as greeters were to support the training staff in helping with the event and to offer a volunteers perspective during training sessions. We shared hotel rooms with the trainees, attended all their training sessions to offer our personal experiences and advice, and hung out with them after sessions to answer any and all of their questions about life as a Peace Corps Volunteer. This experience
brought back so many vivid memories of my first few days in Nicaragua. I remember so clearly walking off the plane
and being greeted with big smiles and signs by my greeters and the Peace Corps Nicaragua staff. I remember them loading us all up in the big PC bus and meeting Don Douglas for the first time. I remember that first drive through Managua where they pointed out what we were driving past on the way to the hotel. I remember picking my greeter Michaela’s brain with a thousand different personal questions.
Those first few days, well actually the first
few months, of Peace Corps service is so unknown and honestly quiet scary. I remember saying to Michaela during my orientation, "I can't wait to be in your shoes in a year!" Now, here I was standing in the same place greeting the new group like she did for us in May of 2012. Now I was the person giving the advice as the ‘seasoned’ volunteer! It was hard to believe enough time has passed for me to be the expert on all things Peace Corps Nicaragua! I can say I was extremely happy to be in Michaela's shoes this time around and not back in the shoes of a scared and naive trainee. Going through that process once is
enough! Nica61 is now almost half way through their pre-service training and will be sworn in on May 24th as official Peace Corps Volunteers.
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Health and Business Sectors ready to welcome Nica61 at the airport!
Carol, the lovely lady in blue, is our country director |
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| The new kids! |
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| I roomed with these three lovely ladies during orientation |
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| Nica 61 and greeters. This is the cleanest they will probably ever be here. :P |
Classes are going well
so far. I have almost 300 students so to
start the year off I created some homemade dry erase name cards and took
pictures of every student so I could remember all of their names! Classes are chugging along wonderfully, my teachers are making great progress and we are
right on track in the curriculum. Success.
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| Getting kids to participate in class (hard to do with 45 kids) |
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| Creativity project |
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Students watching a video about the
national small business competition |
In January I hiked my
4th volcano, Volcan Telica, one of Nicaragua’s most active volcanoes
which last erupted in 2011. After almost five hours hiking up, we were able to stare straight down into the mouth of the
crater, a 400 foot drop into lava. Don't trip. We stayed
on the volcano to eat dinner, watch the sunset, and peer down into the volcano in the dark to get a better view of Lava. We could see the lights from Leon, Chinandega and Nagarote! We then climbed back down the volcano in the dark. The path was small, steep and I gracefully fell more times then I can count... I say gracefully because I managed to reach solid ground with only a few scrapes. The hike up Telica was the most beautiful hike out of the 5 volcanoes I have
hiked thus far. We saw thermal vents spewing steam, crossed through corn fields and sat in crevices of giant trees. So awesome! I now have 5 volcanoes down and 7 volcanoes to go, and plenty of time to climb them all!
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| We reached the summit! |
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| Telica! |
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| LAVA! |
I ventured north recently to hike and swim through the Somoto
Canyon, located in the northern part of Nicaragua close to the Honduras boarder. The Canyon has stunning 100m cliffs with lots
of difficult obstacles to cross and swim through. Vale la Pena because the views were remarkable.
One of my dearest
friends and college roommate from my junior semester in the Republic of Panama
and my senior year at Florida State came to Nicaragua for 11 weeks to work with
a human rights NGO in Leon. It was awesome having her just down the road
from me during the past few months. We
took a weekend to go explore the mountains after she had recovered from a bout
of Dengue. Mayling, a mutual friend of
ours who also studied in Panama and lives locally met up with us to explore the
waterfall.
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| Checking out the old graveyard in Matagalpa |
Saying hi to Ben who was laid to rest in Matagalpa. He was a 27 year old American engineer who was working on a hydroelectric dam in rural northern Nicaragua to bring electricity to the community when he was killed in 1987 by the Contras, a rebel group funded by the U.S. government and CIA. It says "the light that's lit shines forever"
Chris came from
China to visit me during Semana Santa. After 11 months of being on opposite ends of
the earth, we had a wonderful time together exploring Leon and Granada. After reassuring him that it was ‘impossible’
to get hurt while volcano-boarding down Cerro Negro, the youngest and most
active volcano in Nicaragua, he of course had a ridiculous wipe out while going
65mph down the 1,600-foot volcanic slope. He walked away with a gnarly gash on his arm. The hard
part was trying to pick all the volcanic rock pieces out of his knuckles and clean the ash out of his raw skin. Glad he is a
trooper.
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The sign says "Don't Pass.
This zone is at risk for volcanic eruptions" |
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So naturally, we pose with the sign and
then continue to climb up the active volcano. |
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| Me going 30mph... |
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| Chris going 65mph. |
Volcano Boarding is ranked #4 on readers digest's "10 death defying travel destinations"
CNN has it ranked #2 on it's "Thrill seeker's bucket list"
Rebecca came to visit in April! We scurried up to the mountains to spend some time in the cool sleepy coffee town
of Matagalpa, my favorite city in Nicaragua.
Then we enjoyed a fancy night in a nice hotel in Managua where I
ran around like a kid in a candy store taking multiple hot showers and turning
the air conditioning down as far as it would go while snuggling my big sis under
the big down comforter. A-maz-ing.
Then after soaking in the a/c, we went up to the hot and sunny Nagarote where Rebecca got to meet my host family, a ton of my neighbors, eat quesillo, ride in her first bicycle taxi, and eat some Nicaraguan ice cream.
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| Nagarote's Mirador |
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| Eskimo! |
The next few months are going to be very hot with most days getting up to 100 degrees. I am going to be buying a lot of ice and drinking a lot of water as to try to survive April, May, June and July. The good thing about the hot months is that my favorite produce, avocados and mangoes, are in season and soon mamones will be back! I have some awesome projects that I will be working on along with teaching in the schools that should keep me nice and busy. For fun, I am planning on hiking some more volcanoes, Volcan Cosigunia and the El Hoyo and Las Pilas volcanic range, visiting Ocotal, a city in the north that I haven't been to yet, getting to the beach and I will probably be calling home at least once for a night in an a/c hotel in the city to escape the heat. I hope that the hot months will fly by fast and that the cooler air of fall comes soon! And above all else I will be spending a lot of time reminding myself that my service is vale la pena.
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| Bacon, coming to a backyard near you soon. |
Saying hi to Ben who was laid to rest in Matagalpa. He was a 27 year old American engineer who was working on a hydroelectric dam in rural northern Nicaragua to bring electricity to the community when he was killed in 1987 by the Contras, a rebel group funded by the U.S. government and CIA. It says "the light that's lit shines forever"
