Almost a month in Nicaragua...

Hello all, I am still new to the blog thing, but I have heard that you are suposed to treat it like a journal. So instead of a mess email this time I am going to finally post an entry from Nicaragua, and also eventually change the picture.

As everyone might expect Nicaragua is very very different from the states, but then of course at the most random times you find similarities. I did not realise before but the Peace Corps process at least for training is very rigid, we have day be day and week by week schedules for our entire 11 weeks of training. Right now I am not actually a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) I am just a Peace Corps Trainee (PCT) PC is full of acronyms, or more commonly referred to as an aspirante. For training my group the TEFL group are separated into different towns in the dept. of Carazo, I am in a little town called Santa Teresa. There are 3 other aspirantes in my town, 2 girls and one guy. A town that has no internet access, and the only international phone costs one american dollar per minute to use!! Luckly there is a bigger town, Jinotepe, pretty close that has internet access.

My spanish is fine, although I have been frustrated because I thought I would prgress at a much faster rate, but I can get my point across, I do use a lot of hand and body motions as well! I really like the family that I live with, my host mom, and her two daughters, my host dad is only there on weekends, he works in Managua in the capital city during the week. The daughters are 15 and 8. They also have a housekeeper who I love, anytime I try to talk with her she justs starts laughing, I think she likes me, but also I think she is laughing at my crazy spanish and body language. They also have an older woman who comes twice a week, to wash clothes, which is good and bad, when I get to my sight, I might have no idea on how to wash my ropa de cama, by hand!! Of course they do not wash your underwear, which was interesting...the first time the lady did, but then proceeded to try and bribe me, saying I had to buy her a caramelo...it was quite amusing...the second I did myself, but felt just about ten years old when my host mom had to show me how to do it, although they were very colorful, when hanging up to dry.

The first week or so I was here it was quite hot, I don´t think I ever saw the thermometer in my room drop below 85 degrees, that first week I would wake up in the middle of the night, saying to myself that it was impossible it was actually this hot in my room. It is better now though it finally has started to rain, I guess it was late this year, there are only 2 seasons here, winter and summer, we are now in winter here. But wow, I am from Seattle, and I thought I new rain, no no no, it actually rains here soooo hard, and loud too. All the ceiling material is tin...you can imagine how loud that it, sometimes you can´t even here the TV it is so loud. One night lying in bed, I actually felt some drops. The other thing, is the bugs, oooo I don´t like them, but most, other than mosquitos "hace nada" do nothing, have to keep telling myself that especially when after our town was fumigated and all the cockroaches came out, one crawled over my foot and died, ugg! The food is different, but so far I haven´t had any real problems, although I do eat rice and beans at least twice a day. Hmm other things, people here drive crazy!, any time they are going pass people on the street, or in other cars, they honk. whether it be a town, or a bigger city, nowhere in Nicaragua is quiet at night. The Catholics, like to shoot off very loud fireworks in the middle of the night in my town, whenever there is a special saint day, and there have been 2 so far, that I have never heard of in the states.

I learn something new every day, which I love, but I didn´t realize at the same time very tiring, people here go to bed early and get up early, I regularly (sp?) go to bed at nine, and get up before seven, sometimes I can´t belive how much I have done before nine! I do miss the people and the comforts of home a lot, so I just take things day by day. It is nice to know that I have a great support system in the states, and that also there is a great network of current PCV´s in Nicaragua, and also a great support staff.

I hope everyone is doing great wherever you might be at the moment, and would love to hear comments!

Katie:)