*Except there was almost no school.
Word of the Day:
camioneta- pick up truck
chinear- to sit someone on your lap. No, not a
lap dance.
I returned to San Miguelito from a week in Managua on Saturday. It was the
worst ride ever. Being that it was a holiday, not that many buses were running,
so our bus was already filled to the gills before it even left Managua, and
then proceeded to stop every hundred feet to pick up more people. The bearable
four and a half hour journey on the relatively "express" bus turned
into a scourching six. The young child standing in the aisle next to me was too
shy to let me chinear him, but he proceeded to scream intermittently about the
fact that he had to stand. It should not take six hours to travel 150 miles.
Just saying.
However, it was nice to be back. On Sunday, there was a giant parade for
the Fiestas Patrias, a two day celebration of Nicaraguan Independence and the
Nicaraguan victory in the Battle of San Jacinto, in which Nicaraguan fighters
defeated invading American filibusterers. I went to go watch the various
marching bands from the different institutos in the municipality. It was a nice
slice of culture and it was great to see my students perform. In the evening,
my host sister had a baby shower; she's expecting her first child, a baby boy.
I tried to help everyone set up, but was inevitably kind of useless. I inflated
some balloons for the giant baby bottles made out of balloons (cute idea!) and
served as official pizza advisor to my host mother, who was cooking pizza for
the first time. It turned out pretty darn well, as did the shower.
Since the teachers had to work over the weekend, Monday and Tuesday were
holidays for the teachers. More vacation wasn't something I particularly needed
or wanted, but hey, gotta take advantage when you can, eh?
On Monday, I cleaned my room with an extreme degree of throughness and
washed all my clothes. I had smelled mold, so I figured there must be something
that was molding a lot. Both to my relief and chagrin, nothing was molding like
crazy, but all the things were slightly covered in mildew. #rainyseason. I soon
exhausted myself before anything was really clean or organized. I took a lot of
breaks, but finally got things relatively together. In the afternoon, I went to
check on the garden at the Casa Materna to see how much work it needed. Lots,
it turned out. Upon returning home, I realized that it was my counterpart
Xiomara's birthday. I went to her house for a birthday dinner with some of her
friends and her very large family. It was really nice, although it made me a
bit nostalgic for family parties at home.
Tuesday was more of the same. I went to go buy vegetables and ended up
chatting with my sitemate's host mom for an hour or two. My sitemate is in
America for a wedding, and her host mom definitely misses her. In the
afternoon, when it finally stopped raining, I went to go weed in the garden in
the Casa Materna for a little while. I really like the people there, its a nice
break from my normal routine. I came home and actually studied Spanish, which I
had been meaning to do for several months now.
Wednesday was more productive in an American sense. I went to the Casa
Materna in the morning to stake some bean plants which were growing completely
out of control. To do so, I carried some
sticks through the entire town, which attracted a lot of confused stares from
people trying to figure out what in God's name the gringa was doing was a whole
bunch of lena. The absurdity was worth it though, because some of the giant
plants were starting to flower! In the afternoon, I went to talk with the
Ministry of Education Delegacion about some upcoming trainings, stopped by the
Mayor's office to chat about an English class, read some more of Roberto
Bolanos' epic masterpiece 2666 (I'm about 600 pages deep), and
worked on a workshop for next week and a project to help teachers with the
Saturday curriculum.
Thursday was a shockingly real day of work and it felt so good. I taught an
early morning 11th grade class with my counterpart Antonio in San Miguelito,
before going to Las Palomas to plan some classes and trainings with my
counterpart Rafael. We had a really fun class with 9th grade, teaching means of
transportation and focusing on speaking activities. By the end, students had
really mastered the phrase "How do you get from ________to _____?,"
which was encouraging. I planned more classes with my counterpart Xiomara in
the evening and cooked her dinner: my Nicaraguan adaptation of pasta with
sauce, accompanied by quesillo as a stand in for mozzarella. Glad quesillo is
expensive because otherwise it would be the only thing I would ever eat and I
would die very prematurely.
Today's pretty free of committments as well. Working on some more workshops
and planning this afternoon. Trying to keep busy, as always.
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