My Town and Daily Life

San Juan, Nicaragua
May 16-July 31st 2009

The main street in my town!!

I am living with my host family now! They are a well to do family and very nice. I have a nice room with a queen size bed!! YAY I have my mosquito net up. ( i will post pictures on my blog soon) The town is small and you can walk the entire thing in like 20 minutes! I shower using buckets! So i splash the water over me, and then dip my hair in another one!! We flush the toilet with buckets of water, and we don't put toilet paper in the toilet. I have cable tv with lots of channels that play movies and shows in english, with spanish subtitiles!! The internet cafe is right next to my house!!

Most days this week have been as follows:

Wake up at 7am get ready
Eat fruit, or eggs with beans and toast at 7:30 (we are having pancakes on Saturday!)
Spanish class is from 8-12
Lunch at 12, Rice, chicken, beans...
Applied Spanish from 1-3 (walk around and talk with people)
Shower by bucket
Work with group on homework, readings or prep for next class
Go for a walk to neighboring towns

Next week we will start a youth group and begin giving lessons (in spanish.. ahhh) on business and start our project with them. (creating a product or service to compete in the product fair!)

The days are long but its good because we are kept busy and then time goes by faster. I think my Spanish is improving, but I feel like such a child. I get frustrated trying to get my point across!

GUESS WHAT!!! I already got sick! they think it was food poisoning!! I had massive diarrhea and i was vomiting! I had to give a stool sample and that was amusing because the laboratory place didn't have a bathroom. So we were going door to door asking if I could use their bathroom. So i had to collect a sample of diarrhea in the most unsanitary conditions!! It was hilarious!!! I now get to check food poising off the list of possible illnesses!! I expect to go through them all! It only makes me stronger!!! At least I had the Peace Corps backing me!! They drove me around and talked to everyone and got my medicine and then called me like 20 times to make sure I was getting better!!

Until next time....

Retreat in Managua

Peace Corps Retreat in Managua

May 13-16 2009

Retreat area with a few buildings and surrounded by a barbed wire fence!

I am glad to say that I have finally made it, and I'm now a Peace Corps trainee! I still have a long way to go before I can become an official volunteer, but at least I have made it to Nicaragua.
Staging on Tuesday (in DC) went well and it was fun meeting a lot of great people. The early flight to Managua on Wednesday went by flawlessly! We arrived in Managua and were greeted by Peace Corps staff! They loaded up our luggage and bussed us to our Retreat site, just outside the City.

For the rest of Wednesday and all of thrusday we spent the day going over rules, regulations, formalities and what to expect at the training sites. We had to do our language interviews and lets just say mine was funny! I was using a lot of German words mixed in with broken Spanish! It doesn't matter, what is important, is being placed in the right groups according to your language skills so that you can learn more efficiently!

On Friday we went over more information and took a tour of Managua. Then on Saturday we were taken to our designated training sites and met our host families. We will be living with our host families and be in small groups of 4 people per town (the towns are close by so we can all meet up). We will then meet up each week with other business volunteers and do a group training. Training will last for 11 weeks.


More to come about how my time has been in my new city!!