More of my Life

Working on compost with my class in San Cayetano

Working on compost with my class in Jicaro 2

Looking for water

Yes, this was once a river bed and we have to dig down 15ft to reach water

My Youth Group after winning in Matagalpa

How you know you have been Nica-fied

1. You never, ever smile

2. You smile, but after the picture is taken and scream "muestrame!"

3. You use way too much gel

4. You take the picture yourself for facebook or some other public share

Believe it or not, I don’t have too much to report on for the last couple weeks. Since San Juan del Sur my life has pretty much settled back into it’s normal grind. Given, my daily grind is a little different than my life back at home, but you would be surprised how quickly it feels normal. I am usually up around 5am beating the sun and busy making breakfast or packing my bag. By 6am I am on the road and heading to my class. I don’t have the luxury of hoping into my car and turning on my favorite radio station; nope, I pound the pavement or in this case dirt and mostly rock. My walks vary from 30minutes to an hour and a half and it is quite the a way to wake up in the morning. Usually you would be the only one up at this hour, but here in Nicaragua the whole town is already bustling with kids going to classes, people heading out to the farms, and women bringing corn to the grinders to make tortillas. It is a busy time of the day and that means for the first 20minutes of my walk I am busy saying hi to every single person I come across. It is actually pretty exhausting, but I like this little part of the culture. Rather than walking with your head down looking at the cracks in the pavement people here say hi to one another even if it is just a quick adios. It makes you feel like you are more of a part of the community and I think we could learn something from that.

Alright, other than my walk to classes one change is that I am now teaching. But, wait, you might be thinking, “Jason, haven’t you been in classes for a month now, what have you been doing?” Well, that is true, but I was nothing more than a TA and was supposed to be observing. Now I have taken over the science classes and teach usually 90 minutes blocks in each class. It is a lot of fun and there is little pressure because any lesson I do is already more interactive than what the previous teacher was doing. I try to incorporate games, get the students talking, and if I need to do definitions give it to them in a puzzle to solve. The time flies by and another goal of my has been making school composts. I now have them in 3 of my four schools and I will try and include some pictures. The teachers are proud to see the work and the students are happy just to get out of the class. I kind of feel like a slave driver because the ground is so hard and I just stand there watching the kids pick away at the soil while I pretend to be doing something. Oh well, we now just have to wait 2 months for the compost to do it’s job and then we can plant our crops once the rainy season begins.

Finally, I have been going full steam with my youth group. I have a soccer team of about 16-18 kids ranging in ages from 11-14. It has been a lot of fun and a much larger commitment than I was anticipating. We practice about 3x a week and have games on the weekend. This last weekend I solicited the flatbed truck from the mayor’s office to take us to Matagalpa. It is about an hour and a half trip and something I could never pull off back in the States. I mean I had two soccer teams or 30 kids in the back of a flat bed truck traveling 40km on a bumpy dirt road, can you say lawsuit. Good thing laws here are more of general guidelines and that no one seems to mind. We got the to field and it was more of a dust bowl. It was in some poor neighborhood of Matagalpa that made San Dionisio look like a thriving city and most of the houses were either made of zinc siding or plastic tarps. I was not too enthused to be there, but the kids didn’t seem to mind. Luckily, we won 4-2 and both teams were very respectful to one another. I got to play the part as referee and no one had any serious complaints of my job. As for this weekend, the team is coming here to San Dionisio to play as well as two other teams. I managed to organize a little tournament between four teams and it should be a lot of fun. The only problem is that I won’t be here to see it. I organized the whole event but I am leaving it in the hands of my counterpart. I have to go to Managua to pick up Stella at the airport.

I am excited that Stella is coming to visit me here at my site. She will be the second person to see my town, meet my friends, and see my host family. My whole town already knows about it and I think they are counting down the days more than I am. It should be interesting to see what she thinks about my life here. Already my host family is busy thinking about what they can cook for dinner and when they told me the menu it was no different than what they eat every night. I don’t know why they were getting all worked up about it if they are just going to do the same thing. It is really cute and funny at the same time, they have such a limited resource or knowledge of different foods so all the menus revolved around rice, beans, or tortillas. Not too many different combinations there. Also, they were amazed by the idea that Stella is a vegetarian. What do you mean she doesn’t eat meat? Does she eat chicken or pork? Wait, no animals at all, then what does she eat? It was this type of circled conversation for a while when I finally told them that she just doesn’t like how the animals are treated and just eats salads every night. I was careful to say that it is not because she can’t eat meat, but that she won’t eat meat. That is my little jab to all vegetarians out there. As a homeosapien you are capable of eating meat yet you chose to become a vegetarian thus limiting your diet. I can’t stand it when vegetarians say that they can’t eat meat; yes you can! Just a little pet peeve of mine.