Well, three weeks late is better than never at all.
I took off the day before New Year’s Eve, so as to get to the southern part of Nicaragua before transportation started shutting down on the 31st. Liz’s host family was kind enough to host me as well for a night, and after passing an agradable noche with them, we went to where we’d be ringing in the new year: La Laguna de Katerina, which is a lake in an old volcanic crater surrounded by mountains.
It was pretty beautiful. I was there with maybe 12 other volunteers, and a couple from California who happened to be passing through on vacation, along with a volunteer from another organization, and Shaimus, who escaped Canada to run the hostel on the Laguna that we stayed at. We spent the balance of New Year’s Eve and Day taking pictures, playing water volleyball, swimming in the laguna, playing cards (including one round of Apples to Apples in which we went through all the red cards in the deck), being treated to brick oven pizza and banana pancakes, and of course, lots of Toña. It was soundtracked by Girl Talk, and a mix Liz and I burned the night before that was well received, and pretty excellent if I do say so myself. The only part that wasn't so great was spending my one-year anniversary with Kim away from her, and only being to talk to her for a couple minutes before my saldo ran out. But we're looking forward to the end of year 2 already, when I'll be able to be home, and spend it with her.
The party spilled into Masaya and Alex’s new house on New Year’s Day night, but the next morning it was off to Managua for me, Donna, Liz, and Laura, to actually begin working. That day we met with teachers and volunteers involved with putting on the American Embassy-sponsored Summer Camp for Nica English Teachers, which was to consume our next week.
And it was glorious! I had never been to a summer camp before, even as a participant, let alone as a facilitator, so it was a very novel experience for me. It was wonderful to be with the three of my favorite TEFLers I mentioned before, as well as Dave, who roomed with me, and Henning, who was in the awkward position of being the lone German in an American-themed summer camp, but was easy going enough to take everything in stride. We spent the week working with 3 internationally certified teaching experts to put on classes and activities for 40 or so Nicaraguan English teachers. Some highlights:
- Conducting everyone in singing the Star Spangled Banner throughout the week. I was unanimously elected to do this by virtue of not showing up to the planning meeting on time. I kind of shocked myself by being able to pull it off, considering that I hadn’t really sung the song since choir in high school. But by the closing ceremony, 40 Nica teachers and 10 volunteer/teachers were able to get through it a cappella, and even hit most of the high notes.
- Being recorded singing said national anthem on one of the Nica teacher’s cel phones, and seeing my recording go viral as he sent it to other teachers at the camp so that they could practice during downtime.
- Wearing a paper pilgrim hat for the better part of a day.
- My group winning a digital camera scavenger hunt that included a picture of my chest as “something furry.”
- Learning how to play Desmoche (the official card game of Nicaragua) and Phase 10 (a math-filled card game from the U.S.).
- Playing Ultimate Frisbee (which turned into a kind of rugby-frisbee hybrid before the Nica teachers completely understood the rules, like that if the Frisbee hits the ground, the team that threw it can’t just pick it up again and keep going).
- Seeing Freedom Writers for the first time.
- Getting to know Donna, who I hadn’t hung out with much during training because of her being way out in Rosario, but had ample time to talk with that week, since we co-taught the same group of 12 or so Nica teachers every morning. I’m glad our first in-service training in March is going to be on the Island of Ometepe, where her site is.
- Rapping Jay-Z’s “December 4th” in the talent show at the end of the week with Liz playing the part of Jay’s mom, and then dancing to Soulja Boy with the rest of the Volunteers (and one excellent Nica teacher). There are probably videos somewhere, waiting to destroy my future political career (joke joke joke I hope I never have one of those).
- Getting to spend a whole week speaking English with my friends and 40 really cool and enthusiastic English teachers.
The highlights definitely more than made up for the awful mushy bland and repetitive food for vegetarians, and having to work five 14 hour days in a row, and not getting to use the internet for a whole week. It flashed by, and I was sad to be leaving at the end of the week.
I spent that Saturday visiting my old host family in Dolores, which was really nice, and then picking up where the New Years party left off in Meg’s new house in Diriamba. I felt really torn in lots of different directions while I was there, and like I didn’t have enough time to spend with everybody. I only saw my host family for a couple hours, and then the next morning had to get going to Granada to keep a lunch date with Liz and Donna at the expense of seeing my host family and all the other Dolores fams, or eating a wonderfully greasy breakfast with Alex and Claire and Meg. Then when I got to Granada (lugging, as always I seem to be, two overly heaving bags), I only had time to eat and then take off immediately without being able to talk very long with Liz and Donna, because I had to catch the bus to Managua, then immediately take a taxi (whose driver performed heroically, getting stopped by the cops for trying to dodge a construction route, and still flying through Managua quick enough to get me to my bus as it was pulling out of the bus station).
Being back in Jalapa for the past week-ish (after being drawn back to Ocotal for a meeting with government officials there with Laura and Liz Millet, the two volunteers in/near there, immediately after getting back) has been good. My family is as wonderful as I remember them being, and I’ve made an effort to spend more time with them than I had before I left. I’ve more or less finished weeding (though I’ve heard that’s never actually done) in my future garden; my next phase is going to be trucking in fertilizer from one of my host relatives’ farm in El Carbon, about 20 minutes outside of town, before planting in late February. Speaking of El Carbon, it’s where I’m about to start up a community English class! There’s an Aggie named Micah out there who told me that the people there had a lot of interest in learning English, and so, I’m going to attempt to bring some supply to that demand by going out there twice a week on my brand spanking new bike that I bought last week.
School’s starting up, slowly but surely, in town as well. We had our first meeting as a staff on Monday, the highlight of which was being selected to race another teacher to see how many balloons we could pop by sitting on them on two female teachers’ laps after running across the room to retrieve them one by one, and totally winning. The past couple days I’ve been going for a couple hours to watch students come in to register for classes, and mostly to keep my teachers company during the long boring hours they have to sit around. I’ve been busy during both times I went, though, talking one of my counterparts through a get-to-know-you activity we were supposed to do in December in one, and translating this Nepalese dude who wants to start an English-only school here in Jalapa’s 7-page résumé from English to Spanish, so that he can go meet with the Minister of Education, in the other.
Today, I’m prepping for my first class tomorrow, catching up on the coverage of the horribly botched Massachusetts Senate race, uploading long overdue pictures to facebook, emailing people who need to be emailed, matriculating students during the afternoon, and cooking again tonight (following up my wildly successful Indian dish last night with pasta tonight, that will happily feature Nicaragua’s answer to the zucchini, which I was lucky enough to find in a market the other day), and going to the post office to retrieve packages I’ve heard are waiting there for me. Thank you to the people who’ve sent them to me! And that pretty much brings us up to speed, I think.
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