Updates

Words of the day:
vago/a- short for vagabundo/a aka wanderer
pataperro/a- same thing

Howdy y'all, been a while, eh?  Things have been not the greatest of late, so I've been a little bit harragana (lazyyy) about posting. Been a little sick and stuff, a little bit vaga (work related mostly) and just generally a little bit of a mess. Could be worse.

Anecdotes from the last month or so:

• Salad and vegetables are necessary, but very evil.

• I had an extremely failed attempt to help the Ministry of Education edit a textbook. After eating something that was not friends with my stomach, I projectile vomited on their lawn. I was wearing a dress so naturally I got catcalled. Classy on everyone's part.

•  In a rural community called Las Palomas, my soccer team played the muddiest game I've ever participated in. We lost to them even though a lot of them weren't wearing shoes at all. Then, the next week they also beat us on our home turf. At least we tied to Never Oporta last week. Victories ahead. I also went to a soccer practice that was mostly attended by 7 year old boys.

• We had another reasonably successful English training in San Miguelito on the Pre-During-Post framework for teaching Listening Activities and a shorter training on using rubrics.

•  Started attending exercise class with a bunch of awesome middle- aged women. It's sort of like going to a club 2 years ago in terms of the music selection. Except when we dance Palo de Mayo.

• Learned what almond trees look like.  I don't think they are the same as what I know as an almond. More intrigued by this question than I should be.

• My sitemate put on an Entrepreneurship Competition as part of the Small Business program through Peace Corps. Students create a business as part of a year long class on entrepreneurship. The winners of the San Miguelito competition were a bunch of my students in Las Palomas. Their company was called "Inconditional Love"  and they made a candy to help women during their period. I also went to their competition in San Carlos which was pretty cool, where "Inconditional Love" took 3rd. The winners were cow themed, como no, a biogas for cooking made from cow manure and a "all natural" mineral supplement for cattle.

• We expertly celebrated Halloween with two volunteers from San Carlos and two nica friends.We cooked "brains" with a "blood" sauce and carved a watermelon and a squash. Then we went star gazing at the dock and threw our carvings into Lake Nicaragua. Heathens. Nicaraguans generally conflate Halloween with devil worship so there were a lot of interesting conversations that week.

• My host sister had a baby. He's very cute, except he now is living in the room next to me. I think it's time to move.

•  I went to a English Conference in Nueva Guinea, a cowboy/jungle/ English loving paradise of about 100,000 people in the middle of nowhere. It was a lot of fun. I did a presentation on cognates which involved origami, como no, and modifying common classroom instructions to make them more user friendly for beginners. I also accidentally made a "that's what she said" joke and an even more awkward joke about imperalism. Coffee made me do it. It was a great time, hanging out and being weird with other PC pals. I also ended up giving someone else's presentation on teaching speaking using critical thinking because he had to go back to Managua due to an emergency. That was interesting. After the conference was over, we hung out Las Verbenas, a really cool place outside of town which has a pool and relaxing jungle huts. The pool has an amusingly phallic shape.

• I finally went to Chinandega to teach at a really cool training Peace Corps is doing with an organization called Fundacion Uno. Back to back weekends were a little brutal, but not the worst. English teachers receive 8 hour trainings on Sundays to improve their English, all expenses paid. They are awesome and really motivated which is amazing and a nice change from teaching teenagers. As a result, got to hang out in Leon, which is a beautiful and wonderful city and catch up with a lot of people, which was fabulous. Also had a nice afternoon at the beach in Las Penitas with TEFLeros Chelsea and Jamey. Also,we ate all the things, including Leon style repochetas which are essentially giant hunks of cheese and pizza and quesillo. O the dairy.

• I've tried to express the past tense of "swell" as "swolled" rather than "swelled" on several occasions now. Peace Corps English.

•  I've read too many books.  

And that's about all.