Reading Reviews, Volume 4

Aww yeah, up to 35 now. Except that's not good because I'm running out of books again and I just visited the Peace Corps office twice. #nerdsgonewild

35. Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide- Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wu Dunn
Horrible stories of female suffering, inspirational stories of perseverance despite all odds.
However, I am really not a fan of Wu Dunn/ Kristof's writing. Not totally sure I buy their opinions or their prescriptions to right the injustices described, although they present the positives and negatives of most things. Also, they're way too into the white man's/rich people's burden thing, which as a volunteer working in a foreign country I can't really get uppity about, but still. I also personally took offense at the way they kept describing the women they were profiling. For example, describing the founder of Women for Women International, Zainab Salbi: "Zainab Salbi is thin with olive skin and close-cropped black hair framing large, luminous eyes. She looks like central casting's idea of a free-spirited Middle Eastern princess..."  GAH. Would Salbi's life and work be less awesome if she weren't conventionally beautiful? If the founder of the organization was a man, would you describe him that way? Also, that next line is so rife with Orientalism I don't even want to deal with it. You're writing a book about women's rights and you don't bother to proofread it to make sure you're not being obnoxious? Yes, it's hardly up there with Female Genital Mutiliation, throwing acid on people, or depriving women of economic opportunity, BUT COME ON, SERIOUSLY? Clearly, Peace Corps service is accentuating my cynical, grumpy person qualities.

34. The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS- Elizabeth Pisani
Written by an epidemiologist who's worked on AIDS internationally for many years, this was an interesting read with some very strong ideas about how money can best be spent on AIDS, and a good explanation of why it often is not: politics, religion trumping science, squeamishness about dealing with drug dealers and prostitutes, duplication of effort, or attempts to not duplicate effort that create counterproductive competition, etc.

33. Eat, Pray, Love- Elizabeth Gilbert
I got this book from the Peace Corps library because I figured I should try and read something fun and light for a change. Shouldn't have bothered because it just made me grumpy. I would just like to point out how for all her talk of being spontaneous and living life, Gilbert was being PAID to go write about mucking about, eating delicious things and having a lot of sex, which is pretty much the least spontaneous thing I can think of. But maybe I' m just jealous because of my own lack of gelatto (hell, I can't even get a proper ice cream cone most of the time), spiritual fulfillment and romantic love. One thing I will give her credit for was acknowledging that Bali's history is far from the rosy, lackadaisical paradise that has been marketed to tourists. Grump Grump Grump.

32. Reservation Blues- Sherman Alexie
Magical realism meets rock and rock and Native Americans. Good stuff, enit?

31. The Year of Magical Thinking- Joan Didion
A beautiful, raw portrait of the irrationality of grief.

30. The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey- Salman Rushdie
This was one of the best books I've read about Nicaragua, because it manages to capture in rich, poetic language so many things about the culture of this country, both funny and profound, in a little over a 100 pages. Also, the revolutionary period in Nicaragua in the 1980s is pretty fascinating and I think he does justice to its bright and dark spots.  I also thought the author's perspective as someone who understands both the Global North and the Global South provided a really fascinating lens through which to view a country like Nicaragua.

29. Rayuela (Hopscotch)- Julio Cortazar
Re-read. This book is amazing as a literary creation; you can read the first two books sequentially (as I did this time), or you can read the entire thing in a hopscotching fashion.
I personally find it too esoteric and complicated to actually enjoy in my second language, but I suppose I get some bragging rights for having read it, and understanding most of it this go round.

28. Residencia en la Tierra- Pablo Neruda
Re-read. I've read this poetry collection a bunch of times, and it's always something I can come back to, to take shelter and solace in. If only we can free ourselves from the chains of linear time, we can find freedom in the eternity of nature.

27. Angela's Ashes- Frank McCourt
Frank McCourt is a great writer and did a great job creating a portrait of a really dire situation, but I just couldn't really get into this. I don't know if it was because I wanted a break from thinking about poverty (although I don't exactly think about poverty that much here, which could be a subject for another post entirely), but just can't rave about this the way a lot of people have.

26. The Gulag Archiepelago (Books I and II)- Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
Man, reading about people being tortured in Soviet prisons sure made for a fun spring break! Super fascinating stuff though, especially the way he introduced the reader to the language of the prison system. I wish I had the books and the stomach to read the entire saga but that might be too soul sucking.

25. Chasing the Flame: One Man's Fight to Save the World- Samantha Power
Mixed thoughts on this book, which profiles the life of humanitarian, long time UN employee, Sergio Viera deMello. I kind of have a problem with Samantha Power's tendency to fangirl about famous men in IR, but again that's probably a longer rant than I have time or space for. The book raised a lot of really fundamental questions about peace-keeping, but because it was so tied to the narrative of Viera deMello's Life, I didn't feel like it really explored them adequately. Then again, it was already a long book, and it wasn't intended to be a technical IR treatise or anything, so I should probably tone down expectations.

24. Norwegian Wood-Haruki Murakami
As normal as Murakami gets, but still unmistakably marked by his style. A really enjoyable read about the frailty of human relationships.

23. The Devil and the White City: Murder, Madness and the Fair that Changed America- Erik Larsen
Great historical fiction, looking at Chicago's World's Fair and a grisly mass murderer from the same era. It's really cool to think about the way America has developed in the last century, and the role that architecture had in shaping urban destinies and imaginations. Very meticulously researched. My one complaint is that there wasn't more of an attempt to weave subaltern histories into the account, but that's probably a fault of the historical record. As interesting as it was to hear the stories of the powerful men who planned the fair, I would have liked to hear more from the workers who toiled to bring it into reality, especially as that era was such a critical moment for labor rights.

Love You a Bunch a Bunch, Pop-Pop

"The skylark was born before all beings and before the earth itself. Its father died of illness when the earth did not yet exist. He remained unburied for five days until the skylark, ingenious of necessity, buried its father in its own head....."
Salman Rushdie, The Jaguar Smile

"We might, in that indeterminate period they call mourning, be in a submarine, silent on the ocean's bed, aware of the depth charges, now near and far, buffeting us with recollections."
Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

Word of the Day:
presentimiento- literally- pre-feeling= premonition, feeling

After a long struggle with cancer, my grandfather passed away on Tuesday. I immediately felt the weirdness of someone so strong, large and permanent- seeming being gone. I had known for months that this was going to happen, but I was taken aback at how fiercely I felt the news. I'm going home for my sister's graduation in a month, and I'd had this idea that I'd be able to see him again. The breaking of my illusion of control shattered me. As did the idea that one side of my childhood had really drawn to a close. You'd think that after over a cumulative year of living in Latin America I would have picked up on the "si Dios quiere" (Godwilling) mindset, but it turns out my East Coast type A personality is pretty ingrained. And hates thinking about death.

Immediately, I wanted to be with my family. I had a crazy urge to just show up and hop on the next plane home. The distance between us, which has been blunted over time, came sharply into relief. Even though everyone told me that I shouldn't, I felt guilty for not being there. My love of running off to experience life elsewhere has the unfortunate side effect of me being less available for my loved ones. I might be able to bequeath them good stories, but I'm not there to give out hugs or cook dinner after a long day spent at the hospital. I felt guilty for not being able to help my parents more with daily life, for not calling Pop-Pop more, for not knowing what to say, for fearing "How are you?".

The one thing I knew was that I couldn't stay in San Miguelito. I've always found that movement is healing and I knew I was going to lash out at people if I stayed. And I didn't want to be a self-pitying wreck here around people I knew, people with far more difficult daily dramas. So I circled back around in the boat to Granada, numbing myself with yet another overnight journey and tried to lose myself in the tangled stalls of the market. Feeling emptied, I went on to Managua, holed up in almost 1st world luxury for a bit (the hot showers helped a lot), and tried not to feel guilty for being self indulgent. Getting to skype with my family was worth it. We reminisced and joked and it was almost as if I were there, if only for a little while. Miracles of wi-fi. A bunch of my friends happened to be  there too, and they helped far more than they realized. It probably seems redundant to note, but most people in Peace Corps are extremely nice.

After Pop-Pop passed, it was as if everything that was tied up with his life came loose and tumbled into my head. There was a specific geography to these recollections. As the saying goes, the past is another country, a sunny landscape not yet marred by Hurricane Sandy. My memories of Pop-Pop are entwined with a child's love of being at the beach. Going around different places in Spring Lake/the northern end of the Jersey shore, the North End pavilion at the board walk, the waves, the salt water pool, learning to body surf, watching the draw bridge with the boats going out to sea, going to Saint Catherine's, going to the park in Spring Lake. Eating fish and waffle fries at Klein's. Eating shrimp cocktail with horseradish sauce, Aunt Debbie's salmon with dill, grapes, cheddar cheese, salami on ritz crackers in the family room, which he built and meticulously wired with speakers over the years. Playing bocce in the backyard. My cousins and I jamming ourselves onto the swing bench. Looking at his drawings, going through his carpentry shop. Playing in my father's old bedroom, still decorated with 1970s plaid blankets. Goofy sing alongs with the aunts and cousins. Remembering the play house he constructed for my sisters and I, which we named "Ginger and Pickles" out of an old electrical box and which was subsequently reincarnated as a home, general store and restaurant.

Pop-Pop and I drew such different conclusions from the world we were presented with, but I think we were both people who are deeply curious about the world in front of us. I remember studying the books he had about the history of the New Jersey shore, and reading his "Discovery" magazines when I went over to his house. I think in many ways he encouraged my nerdy love of reading and armchair adventures, which over time have catapulted me into even more dramatic, real life adventures.

This flock of images has taken up a stubborn residency in my head, and it's going to take time to process everything, without making a hagiography, but to think a bit about what Pop-Pop's life has meant for us, and what his absence means. It will take time to reconcile that these parts of my childhood were in the past but that they didn't need to stop influencing my present semi-autonomous, wandering, stumbling into adulthood.

All this has reminded me though of how many wonderful communities I am a part of, how infinite is the care we can show each other, how connected family can be even across big distances. There are upsides to everything.

An interesting talk

I found this really interesting. I think she gets a little bit off point with the stuff about group think, but as an educator, this is important to think about.

A Few Good Quotes

In the cathedrals of New York and Rome
There is a feeling 
that you should just go home
and spend a lifetime, finding out just where that is.
Jump Little Children, "Cathedrals"

What, I wonder, is the message of Nicaraguan cathedrals?

We returned to our separate lives, two migrants making our way in the West stuffed with money, power and things, this North that taught us to see from its privileged point of view. But maybe we were the lucky ones; we knew that other perspectives existed. We had seen the view from elsewhere.
Salman Rushdie, The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Adventure (1987)

I think this is the best articulation I've seen in a while for why I do what I do.


I am sailing, I am sailing,
Home again cross the sea.
I am sailing, stormy waters,
To be near you, to be free.

I am flying, I am flying,
Like a bird cross the sky.
I am flying, passing high clouds,
To be with you, to be free.

I hate Rod Stewart, but I love teaching this song, and it popped into my head on my second boat ride in less than a week.

Teaching Anecdotes, Week 11: "You Should Go to the Hell"

Word of the Day:
el entierro- burial

I actually taught school this week. Well, the majority of the classes!

Class cancellation of the week: In San Miguelito, a teacher's grandfather died (He was at least 90), and since he was an elder in the community, the first two classes were cancelled so that the students and teachers could go to the funeral mass and then the burial. We didn't actually fit inside the church, so we all hung out nearby. Before they went up to the cemetery, which is a very beautiful place overlooking Lake Nicaragua, the funeral procession circled around the town, which I found very symbolic, as if saying goodbye to everything before moving on.
Runner Up: My teacher had to get a tooth pulled and was super drugged up, so we didn't have class.

Best "original student thought expressed in English": I came into class to find that my 10th graders had written "You should go to the hell" in giant letters on the board. This statement is rather indicative of their attitude towards English class. But the fact that they correctly used the modal "should" was awesome and shows that they are learning. I spent the entire class laughing and grinning proudly.

Runner Up: We played "2 Truths and a Lie" with 7th graders to practice verb "have."
One of my students wrote this:
I have two babies. (False)
I have three lambs. (True)
I have one love. (True)
I gave him a high five because I thought it was awesome and had a great poetic ring to it. Also, he correctly remembered the y to ies plural spelling rule. Boss.

Best Student Sass: I was talking about the future "will" with my 11th graders and as an example I used "I will get married in 5 years." This is not even remotely a plan of mine, but it popped into my head. One of my students who knows a lot of English and likes to be a wise guy yelled out "You're gonna be really old then, teacher!" By that estimation, I will probably be ancient by the time I actually settle down, if that ever happens.

Props: I brought my groceries for the week to 8th grade to teach them about food. This was a lot of fun. In addition to doing my favorite mini dialogue (below) and singing a song (also below) we did a critical thinking/shopping activity where I gave the kids a list of food pictures and prices and they had to try and buy as much as they could with C$120 (about $5 US).

A: This is a squash.
B: A what?
A: A squash.
B: O, a squash.

Endless amounts of fun...

Youth Group: Kids actually came to youth group this week! On Monday, we learned the phrase "What _____(insert noun) do you like?" and learned vocab about colors, music and sports. We did a lot of Total Physical Response (TPR), a teaching technique where you use physical movement to teach new vocab. The kids liked class a lot and that simple phrase really drastically expands their possibilities for basic conversation, which is super cool.
On Friday, there was no school and a rainstorm, so no one came to class. This was unfortunate, because I had delayed a trip to Managua. Instead of taking the bus, I decided to take the 12 hour ferry ride so that I could give class. Rookie mistake. But the boat ride was lots of fun. I caught up with my sister and my parents on the phone, stargazed, hung out with my neighbor and her friend, and watched "I am Legend." The ferry operator really seems to have a thing for zombie movies. The only thing that sucked was that we got attacked by a giant swarm of horrible little insects called chayules during the night.

Teachers and Other People Who Know a Lot of English Class: This week, I didn't really feel like planning a structured lesson per say, so I adapted a card game to practice conversation skills, talking about the past and vocabulary. To play an odd card, players had to answer questions, such as "Describe your favorite teacher when you were a child" or "Describe your favorite memory of hanging out with a good friend." To play an even card, players had to ask a follow up question about another player's story. To play a face card, the player had to initiate a game of categories. It was a fun time and I learned a bunch of things about everybody.

Nerdy Song of the Week (To the Tune of Frere Jacques): I am Hungry
I am hungry, I am hungry
Please bring me, please bring me
Rice and beans and chicken
Rice and beans and chicken
Thanks a lot, thanks a lot.

Coloring

Coloring Time with Emily: Tools of the Trade

So cute

The aftermath

On Sunday, I was having a great morning, sitting on my porch drinking a cup of coffee and reading Rayuela. I had just come back from church and I had no plans to do much of anything for the rest of the day. Like clockwork, my 5 year old neighbor wandered over. "Emily, can we color today?" I told him to come back later in the afternoon, but he got into the house and ran into my room. It was a mess, and I was trying to keep him from touching everything.

 We looked at some maps and National Geographics that I had lying around and it was awesome to see his reaction to the pictures. Since he's the kind of kid who loves to touch everything, I decided that it would be easier to keep him occupied with coloring supplies. He also got into my glue and scissors and recycling collection. His sister found out he was coloring with me and came over too. They stayed for over 2 hours, cutting and drawing and writing. It was a super tiring hanging out with them, but it was admittedly kind of fun. Especially because I got to return them to the parents later on.  

Today, when I arrived home from school, my neighbor was on the porch, watching my host-brother play a game. He lept up: "Emily!!!!!!!!!" Then he grabbed my water cooler and my heavy bag of school supplies and tried to carry them to my room even though they were bigger than he was. And then he made a beeline for the coloring supplies. 

Play

One of the things I really enjoy here is watching young children in the street playing. In country where only about 10% of people (or something like that) have access to internet, there's still plenty of time for unplugged, face to face, non- screen play. Of course, almost everyone has a television in their home, and I'm willing to bet kids are starting to spend an increasing amount of time in front of the TV. But in a small community like San Miguel, it's impossible to walk through the streets in the late afternoons, when it finally gets cooler, and not see kids scurrying about.

On the one level, it's terrifying to think about the global and national inequalities that are being perpetuated and deepened by uneven access to technology, particularly computers. On the other hand, though, it's so wonderful to watch kids being creative and resourceful and together, making toys and inventing games as they gallivant through the streets, in a way that seems reminiscent of my grandparent's stories of how life used to be. Toys don't come out of boxes, they come from what's around. Old cans become animals dragged along on strings. Sticks become horses or swords. The metal grill of our front porch becomes a jungle gym for the five year- olds who climb on it and attempt flips. Plastic bottles become soccer balls. Electrical poles become "base" for races and tag. Nothing has to have a set purpose, you-will-play-with-this-toy-this way, we must buy more toys for Little Johnny: it's profoundly radical and anti-capitalistic, although I'm positive that no-one intends it that way.

Maybe it sounds cliqued, but I think the lack of toys bought from stores is good in some ways. Sure, it will be cool if everyone's parents had lots of money and could buy them toys and books (more importantly) but it's not as if their absence is noted. The kids improvise their own playthings. And it's precisely this spirit of innovation that could be revolutionary, if we can find a way to create educational programs to keep this flame lit.

"The Internet is Where the People Are": Thoughts on the Internet and PCV* Life

*Peace Corps Volunteer

I chanced across a really interesting article today, "I'm Still Here: Back Online After a Year without the Internet" on my facebook newsfeed no less, that made me reflect on how my own relationship with the internet has changed during Peace Corps. It's the story of a man who gave up the internet for a year, in the hope of making himself whole again, but then found himself feeling isolated from the people he loved. A lot of things in the article resonated with me, particularly the feeling of isolation from loved ones that arises when I don't have access to it.

I have moments where I fantasize about how "pure" the Peace Corps experience might have been like in the 1960s, where people just marched off, saying "Bye, I'll talk to you two years from now." Thanks to the internet, and phone calls, I feel like I'm living three completely irreconcilable lives simultaneously: the life I have with people in San Miguelito, the life I have with other friends who are volunteers, and the family and friendships I left dangling back home. It's disorienting sometimes, and complicated. Over time, though, I've come to appreciate how beautiful my tangled up life is and how much the internet enables me to know what's going on back home.

When I first got to Nicaragua, I was terrified of the internet. I couldn't deal with seeing my friends on facebook, seeing emails about fascinating talks back at college, checking the news and feeling disconnected from everything that was important to me. I wanted to hide from the virtual reminders of home, thinking it would make me feel better, cleanse me, make me more present to my new reality. I wanted to pretend that I could become a Nicaraguan version of me and erase my identity back home.

Over time though, as I've become more settled in here, I've built my peace with the internet, realizing it would be insane to try and live without it. I smile, instead of wanting to cry when I see pictures of people having fun back home (unless there's good food or beer involved) and I cherish the moments when I can get a good enough connection to Skype with my parents or friends. I read articles to keep me mentally sharp. Once in a blue moon, I can even get youtube videos to load. The internet is a beautiful place, inhabited by people I love, and it's easy enough to get to.

At the same time, less frequent access has generally made me feel less stressed out, twitchy, overstimulated. Like the author of the article, I've found that I can really concentrate much better now and that my memory is sharper. I can read, 200, 300 pages in a sitting if it's a good book, just like I used to when I was little, in the age of dial-up. And I write a lot more too, journaling, planning, writing letters sometimes, a homage to the experiences of volunteers of past decades.

As a wise hipster once counseled me when I was trying to decide what kind of tomato sauce to buy: "Life's all about balance."

School Anecdotes Week 10: Have You Ever Seen the Rain?

*I've had this song stuck in my head all week, you definitely hear it sometimes here. Appropriate for the start of rainy season, no?

Words of the Day- Basketball Edition
tirar- shoot
perder un tiro- miss a shot
el tablero- backboard

In the last two weeks, I have taught 50% of the classes I am regularly scheduled to teach. If we exclude my Saturday classes, which aren't cancelled as regularly, I've only taught a third of my weekday classes. Frustrating beyond belief. I'm trying not to let the under-whelmingness of this week get to me, but it's hard.

On Monday, I taught my only weekday classes in San Miguel, a class on -Wh questions to 8th grade and a continuation of a class about family members to 7th grade. For lunch, I ate lengua con salsa, cow tongue with sauce, because my host mom made it for me after I mentioned I had never eaten it. I wasn't expecting to like it, but it was ok actually, really tender. Then I did my laundry.

In the afternoon, I taught a lively class to the English club, about informal phrases in English. I accidentally used a vulgar phrase to explain the phrase "I'm doing great". My host brother had taught it to me, and I thought it was just very informal street language, but I didn't realize that it would be perceived as vulgar, especially by 8th graders, although I definitely should have. So now the kids think that the phrase "I'm great" is hilarious, and they bust up laughing every time they say it. Then the kids started asking me about curse words in English. When I told them not to say bad words in class, they pointed out that I already had. I did however take the time to explain the difference between "beach" and "bitch" because we had just had a class on pronunciation...the difference between the /i/ and /I/ sounds in English are really hard for English language learners who have Spanish as a first language. Then one of the boys in my class asked me what the phrase "Give me your number" means, because he had heard someone use it to call out to me in the street while I was chatting with him. Dangerous language, who knows what trouble these kids will get into now that they know the phrases "How's it going?" "Take it easy" and "Give me your number."

On Tuesday, school was cancelled for a pre-Labor Day march. I finished Part I of Julio Cortazar's Rayuela (book reviews forthcoming),fell into the giant, beautiful abyss that is the internet and helped my sitemate Christina move. We figured this would be easy, because there are lots of taxis that pass by her house, and we assumed we could flag one down. Nope. After over an hour of waiting and after calling several taxi drivers, Chris (this is what the Nicas call her, pronounced KRees) finally got a former student to stop for her, but we couldn't fit all her stuff. We ended up having to make three trips carrying heavy boxes and bags in the hot sun. Everyone stared at us, as we literally dripped with sweat.  None of the men gawking at us tried to help. I guess machismo doesn't equally chivalry. But whatever, we did it ourselves, so clearly we didn't need help. Welcome to the gun show, San Miguelito.

On Wednesday, I didn't do much because we had off from school for  International Worker's Day (the International version of Labor Day), and town was dead. I shot hoops and swopped English vocabulary with my counterpart Jonathan, cleaned my room super throughly after I found an infestation of weird little paper eating bugs (DON'T YOU DARE GO NEAR MY SCHOOL MATERIALS!!!!), and watched soap operas and 12 Corazones, which was terrible for my brain, but probably not so bad for the Spanish. In the evening, I tried to do real things and made a calendar/syllabus for the 8th grade class. I also made a list of various projects I would like to do, and it ran onto 2 pages. This was just for English related projects. Ay Diosito lindo.

Supposedly, rainy season always starts every year on May 1st. It did not rain.

On Thursday, it became unbearably hot and horrible little bugs called chayules came up on a southern wind, invading personal space- mouths, eyes, ears. EW. I planned with the Saturday teachers in the morning and had my "English Class for Teachers and Other People Who Speak A Lot of English" except only 2 people showed up. It's sort of frustrating when stuff like that happens, but I need to get better at dealing with disappointment.

On Friday, I went to Las Palomas to help my counterpart with materials for a TESOL Certificate workshop he was going to go to in Costa Rica. In the afternoon, I had my English Club class, but only 3 kids showed up, which was disappointing. I drowned my frustrations about all of this by venting to Christina over batidos and eating lots of cheesy bread.

Rainy season began at promptly 8 pm. A beautiful, steady downpour washed the ambient heat out of the sky, punctuated by violet and white streaks of lightning that lit up the sky. Thunder roared rhythmically. Violent, yet oddly peaceful and wonderful.

On Saturday, I finally had school again (why is Saturday school never cancelled?) which was pretty fun with the grades that like English, and pretty awful with the kids who are less into it. One of my eighth grade classes is obsessed with the song I taught them last week (which happens to be from the TV show Barney, blast from the past!!) "I like to eat apples and bananas." So they all go around singing the song all the time, which helps them master "like to  + infinitive". Good times. The other thing that made my day was that one of my students who hasn't been interested in class pretty much all semester came to school well rested and was excited about participating. In a week like this, it really is the little things that keep you going... 

Mountain Pics from Juigalpa

The view from the mirador in Juigalpa

A silhouette of national hero Sandino

Another view

Otra Ocasion

"On another occasion"....

People here sometimes use this phrase to decline politely, ie to decline buying something from a traveling vendor on a bus, or to not give a beggar money. I think it's pretty applicable to everything. There wasn't class today, but en otra ocasion...

Words of the Day:
el mirador-scenic look out
El Dia de la Tierra- Earth Day
la sierra- mountains
el abigeato- cattle rustling

This week was a bit of an absurdity. At some of the institutos, we managed to lose nearly an entire week of classes without school actually being closed. Luckily, I've started some side projects which are a nice way to break up my week, because these are not necessarily contingent on school being open. It's also really nice to plan things on my own. Co-planning is awesome, but it can be really time consuming. Also, the side projects, in addition to school, have helped me become more integrated in the community. I pretty much can't go anywhere in greater San Miguelito without running into a student/one of my student's parents or someone calling "Hi, teacher." It's always reassuring when the kids actually use the correct forms of the greetings, contingent on the time of day, which occasionally happens.

On Monday, it was Earth Day. In San Miguelito, they held a plant and animal fair to celebrate. It was supposed to start after the first two periods of class, but after a cow was brought into the schoolyard, teaching pretty much ground to a halt. My counterpart and I gave a class, but we were literally the only ones who were teaching. I'm not sure that the feria had a very good environmental message, since mostly the students sold drinks out of styrofoam cups, and cows are the least environmentally friendly animals pretty much ever. I didn't have my act together this year, but maybe next year I'll try to promote some more environmentally friendly stuff. Over all, San Miguel is a fairly environmentally conscious municipio, though. There's recycling and an environmental NGO. It could definitely be a lot worse.

El Tule did not have an earth day fair, so my counterpart Jonathan and I had a regular day of class. We had our 10th graders create cartoons about a legend we had just read in class and we taught the 11th grade about the future tense. The students really liked class, compared to their usual reaction, which is to make grumpy faces at us and sigh a lot.  I suspect this was because we used audio visual resources, had them create timelines, and because it was relatable to things they are thinking about as it gets closer to graduation.

On Monday afternoon, we had our 2nd meeting of the 7th and 8th grade English club/class. A few more students showed up. We brainstormed topics for the class, played "I'm going on a picnic" (for more diagnostic of people's level) and learned the song "Green Grass Grows all Around" because it seemed appropriate for Earth Day. One of the students taught me the version in Spanish, which was cool. Totally gonna teach it to the chavalos on the block.

On Tuesday, there was a Musa Dariana competition, which I've previously described, so we only taught one period of class in San Miguelito. In the afternoon, in El Tule, Jonathan and I had a great bunch of classes. We taught 7th grade verb to be, using, you guessed it, "Very Good Friend" and then we taught 9th grade the command form using safety/warning signs and by playing "Pin the tail on the Donkey," which was a huge hit. Especially because I messed with the kids by changing the size of the donkey on the chalkboard after the students were blind-folded, to the amusement of all involved. There are a ton of donkeys in El Tule, so this vocabulary word is pretty essential for describing daily life there.

On Wednesday, my co-teacher wasn't going to school, so I decided to go to Juigalpa, Chontales to go to the grocery store and get my cash money cash money for the month. Juigalpa is two and a half hours from San Miguelito, which is kind of a haul, but could be worse. It's a biggish city (by Nicaraguan standards) of 50,000ish, but it's the antithesis of touristy. Chontales is cowboy country, and it's right at the foot of the Sierra Amerisque, so there's lots of rough looking mountains around, and rougher looking cowboy characters, as well as some noveau riche rancher types. Especially at this dusty time of year, it's hot and dry, almost vaguely deserty. It was a long ride, but going to the grocery store was pretty worth it, for the slightly better selection and especially after I realized how much pulperias mark up the prices.

After filling up my backpack with an eggplant (OMG!!!!!!!!!!), coffee, milk, pasta, tomato paste and various other provisions, I climbed around the various hills of Juigalpa. I had heard of a restaurant that had a fabulous view of the mountains, and I wanted to check it out. I didn't want to admit to anyone that I didn't know where I was going, so I just kept walking around and going up the hill, because that seemed a logical way to get to the mirador. I eventually got to this dirt road and after asking at a hotel which was not the restaurant I was looking for, I found it, and it was pretty spectacular and well worth the embarrassing amounts of sweating involved. This is how un-touristy Juigalpa is: the road to one of the main touristic attractions isn't even paved. Who knows where that restaurant actually is. After that, I hung out in Juigalpa's central park which was very lovely, a good old Spanish town with a plaza in the center of town kind of deal. I ate ice cream for lunch, because I usually can't find good ice cream at site. I'm totally a real grown up. HA.

Unfortunately, I miscalculated the bus schedule, and ended up waiting over an hour and a half in a bus stop by the dirty, dusty highway for the next bus to come. This, however, gave me insight into a fascinating economic niche that a Juigalpa beggar has found for himself. In a country where no bus schedules are formally posted anyway, he basically serves as a bus schedule. In exchange for a few coins, he tells you when the next bus to your destination will arrive. This seemed to be surprisingly lucrative. I watched him change out coins for bills, and he had made approximately $4 by only 2 in the afternoon. Considering that teachers make about $6 a day here, that's no small feat. This was all fascinating, but of course he began to hit on me (ah the allure of the sweaty, dirty gringa with a backpack full of milk), so it was nice when the bus arrived, even though I had to travel back home on foot on a bus that was packed like a cattle car.

I planned on Thursday morning with the teachers I work with on Saturday, but I didn't teach in the afternoon because of some sort of sports day. On Thursday evening, we had our inaugural meeting of our "English teachers and other people who know lots of English" club. Our topic was: "Tag Questions are fun, aren't they?" Tag questions, those mini questions we use at the ends of sentences to verify information (the meeting was last night, wasn't it?), make dumb comments (sure is hot, isn't it) or be snarky (he's a smart one, isn't he?) are a pain in the ass if you don't have the privilege of being a native English speaker, but everyone seemed to be pretty clear on how to form them and when to employ them by the end of class, which was awesome. We had 2 gringas, 1 German and 5 Nicaraguans show up, including 3 of my counterpart teachers. It was really nice to actually teach an advanced conversation class, which I hadn't really done since high school, when, to be brutally honest, I had literally no idea what I was doing, methodologically speaking or otherwise. Teaching more advanced speakers is fun, because you have to test your own knowledge of grammar and you get the opportunity to reflect on cultural and situational nuances much more than you do with beginners.

We started off by playing 2 Truths and a Lie. Then I introduced the tag question structure, which most people were familiar with, but needed extra practice, especially for some of the trickier rules. We used the 2 Truths and a Lie sentences to practice forming tag questions. Then, we played "Human Bingo," but with the variation that people had to use tag questions to complete their grid. Lastly, we finished using some vaguely silly situation cards, which helped to contextualize some situations in which the grammar might be used, for example:

-Your cousin is visiting from the United States and you want to cook her sopa de pescado. She has many allergies though, and you want to make sure she will not be allergic to the fish. What do you ask her?

-You're in the doctor's office and the doctor is checking some results from a blood test. He's frowning and talking to himself. Because of his behavior  you are worried that you have a serious illness. What do you say to the doctor?

-You are gossiping with your friend about another friend named Nick. He broke up with his girlfriend last month. Ask her if Nick is still single.

-You and your cousin are sitting on your front porch on a hot afternoon. You're sweating a lot. You want to make a comment about the heat. What do you say? 

On Friday, we had TEPCE, which is a teacher's planning meeting. We were supposed to evaluate our work for the last month and plan for the next one. I hung out with two counterparts, Rafael and Jonathan, which was a good time, despite the fact that the reflection questions we had to answer were really tedious. We swapped names for different food containers, different types of local industries, like tanneries and rice processing plants, the difference between "a lot" and "too much" and discussed whether it's appropriate to say "I'm really hot" to express physical discomfort in English. I decided that it's appropriate in certain contexts, if coupled with a time expression, for example, "I'm really hot right now." NOT read in a sexy tone of voice... I love my counterparts, they're good people.

In the afternoon, I had English class for the chavalos. I didn't really want to plan much of a class, so I thought we would have a mini-lesson on learning styles and pronunciation, to help them identify how they learn information best, which is an important thing when you're learning a second language. However, I couldn't find a learning styles test online that was culturally appropriate, age appropriate, (11 year olds in Central America don't go out to cocktail parties to drink wine or go to museums) OR in Spanish, so I ended up having to translate one, which was a lot of work, and defeated the purpose of me not planning a lot for class. O well. I also introduced the students to a color coded phonetics chart, because the kids kept telling me they are really worried about their pronunciation. The beauty of teaching the phonetics of vowel sounds this way is that it is fun and accessible, and you can teach it by making continuous associations with colors over time.

On Saturday, we actually had class. I taught a bunch of eighth graders the "I like to eat apples and bananas" song from Barney as a warm up for class, and accidentally told the class that we were singing the song to make us "horny" for class. NOPE. Not what I meant so much. The kids actually liked our lessons this week though, which was fun. We were talking about likes and dislikes which is a great topic because it triples their ability to have a conversation, and it's relevant to them.

After school got out, I went wandering to visit some other PCVs in nearby parts of Rio San Juan/the RAAS (Southern Atlantic Autonomous Region). First, I went to celebrate the fiestas patronales in El Amendro (The Almond Tree) with a bunch of other PCVs from Rio San Juan. Even though it is probably only like 30 minutes away by private car, it took me over 2 and 1/2 hours (including a bunch of walking because I'm an idiot) to get there due to terribly timed connections. It's always cool to visit other people's sites though and we had a lot of fun eating scrumptious frito (fried chicken and plantain strips) and dancing (by which I mean attempting to dance with any grace whatsoever) to cumbia while surrounded by cowboys on a baseball field in the moonlight. We might be few, and isolated, but everybody in Rio San Juan is super cool and a lot of fun.

Early on Sunday, I went over to Nueva Guinea to visit some TEFLeras from my training group. Nueva Guinea is really big (Nicaraguan standards so we're talking 100,000 people, max), but there's not very much to do. It's as if a bunch of evangelical Christians had built a cowboy agricultural paradise in the middle of the jungle. It does have a super market though, which is pretty exciting. I only got to see my friend Natalie for a little bit because she had to return to her site in central Nicaragua, but Isabel and I hung out for a little while and wandered the town.  I made it back to San Miguelito early in the afternoon to discover that ants had eaten holes in the milk that I bought on Wednesday, and that it had gone bad in the interim. So I cleaned up that giant mess, and went to church. And so it began.

Structural Violence and Orange Trucks

Word of the Day:
las naranjeras- orange orchards

On Saturday evening, 6 orange pickers from Rio San Juan (day laborers) are killed when the truck (a modified cattle car) they are riding to return from work crashes and overturns, the fault of a drunk driver traveling at an excessive velocity. Those killed are students, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers. They are entangled in all the usual webs of human belonging, and their sudden departure leaves these webs in tattered. 6 children without a mother. Parents without a son. A 10th grade student who went to pick oranges for a day to get money for the school's sports day, and doesn't return because that is the cruelty of random chance, someone else's bad decision making colliding with vehicles.

Their deaths seem to be more than a tragedy, somehow a violation of human rights, but what name by which to call this injustice? There is no code that precisely pins down what caused this. Most simply, they are poor and they would not have died in this way had they been rich. It is the handless violence that makes people work as day laborers for low wages in the hot sun, that denies them the right to travel safely, that denies them control over their destination, literally and figuratively.

Their deaths strike me as somehow different and more unjust than a regular accident because they are caused by something more sinister and deeper and without readily available remedy, in the same way that the thousands of children who die of gun violence in America differ from school shootings, in its quotidianness, and the daily indignities proceeding. And yet it is so wrong to try and tally up pain,  because everyone suffers and grieves and to pretend otherwise is to perpetuate another injustice to victims, to reduce them to statistics, rhetoric, media frenzy, instead of real lives. As does the word victims. How easily language fails us.

Really, I'm left with no response more sophisticated or articulate than to say "this is not fair." It becomes easier to see why people here pepper their speech with expressions like "Si Dios quiere", if God wills it. Because what else can be done but wait?

A few recent pics

 Christina and I hanging out on the muelle with some kids- lots of fun!

A beautiful sunset... you can't see the volcanoes though :(

The gifted fish all fried up...with a nice little tomato and onion sauce as accompaniment.

Teaching Anecdotes, Week 8

Words of the Day:
el batido- smoothie
el murcielago- bat
el capullo- cocoon
la oruga- caterpillar

This week was a weird week, because I only really taught half the classes I usually do for various reasons.  I did plenty of other things though, so I'm full of stories as per usual...

Meeting with the most entertaining interruptions thus far in Nicaragua: On Tuesday, I went with my counterpart teacher Xiomara to represent the TEFL program in a regional meeting between the Ministry of Education and Peace Corps in San Carlos. Things started off badly after Xiomara lost her cell phone when we went to get batidos. We went back to the batido place to look for her phone, and tracked down the taxi we had been riding in: this is how small of a city San Carlos is. No sign of the phone though.

The meeting might sound really important, and it was to a point, but it actually only involved 10ish people, and was held in a cramped office. Our presentation went really well, even though I was super nervous because I had to make it in Spanish. Some interesting points were made in the meeting. I definitely can't do everything they want me to do, like provide more support to further out communities (I don't own a horse, have an infinite transportation budget, or any free time), but I can absolutely improve my communication with them, which was one of the concerns that was raised. As the meeting went on, things got a little bit nutty: a bat emerged from the ceiling while the Small Business Volunteer from San Carlos, Matt, was presenting, several people kept answering their cell phones at once, and a four year-old child of one of the participants began running around and interrupting her Mom while she was talking.

Site Visit: My boss, Greg, came to visit to see how things are going, trouble shoot some problems, celebrate successes and chat everybody up. He met with all my teachers and 2 of 4 principals, so I think that was a pretty good percentage. It was great to have a chance to talk, vent and reflect on what's going well, which is most things. As an RPCV (returned Peace Corps Volunteer) from El Salvador, Greg totally gets what can be frustrating about service, and generally has good advice. From his visit, I realized how great my counterparts are: how dedicated and how talented. I feel more invigorated in my work from having someone to bounce ideas off of and I'm hoping to get the ball rolling on three more projects this month: English "Office Hours"  to help students who don't have the opportunity to have class with me to ask questions, get homework help or practice, (which really is just going to be an excuse for me to hang out on the dock to watch sunsets), an English night for profes to practice with each other and a community class for 8th graders (more details below).

Shortest class so far: Greg came to observe class in Las Palomas...for like 20 minutes. We arrived a little late to school, at 12:40, to have the principal inform us that the teachers would need to leave to attend a parents' meeting at 1. Our class was a little bit discombobulated for a lot of reasons in addition to that, but the kids got to interview Greg, which was plenty comical, and he got to see our World Map/What is she doing activity?, and had some great suggestions for how to improve the activity. He was shocked by how well the students behaved. Then, as we were waiting to talk to the principal, Christian, one of the 8th grade students, came over to us and asked "May I leave?" I thought he meant school, but he just wanted to get water. Then he came back by, and said "Thank you very much." Greg asked me if I had paid him off, which I had not, although I should probably do that retroactively. No, son bromas(Jk)... But maybe I'll gift him a platano or a mango.

English Club organized in one hour or less: During class, one of the chavalos in 8th grade in San Miguel asked me if I would consider giving an English class for speaking practice. I told him that I would consider it, but that he needed to find at least 10 friends first who were interested, figuring this would take him at least til the end of the week. I was helping a student with her English work while recess was starting, when he came up to me and told me that he had a list of kids ready. Then, on Thursday night, the day before class was going to start, he and his friend ran into me in the street and told me that he couldn't attend the first meeting, but that they already had prepared a list of topics, a letter thanking me for doing the class for them, and a contract of how they will treat me and how they expect to be treated. God, I love the kids here who are excited about learning, they make my job easy and enjoyable.

On Friday we had our first meeting. We had a good number of kids show up: 7. More expected next week, but I'm fine with a small class. We played a game called Chatty Penguin, that I learned during training, in which you have to hold a coin between your knees and walk a certain distance while telling facts about yourself. The kids tried to do it in English, which was a good diagnostic. Then, we set some rules for class and set a time. We spent the last hour and half doing reader's theatre (google it if you're not familiar, my internet is too slow to get a link) with the story "The Hungry Hungry Caterpillar," which was simultaneously a little bit hard for them and a bit juvenile, but I think they liked it, and it reviewed some vocab that as eight graders, they should know, like days of the week and numbers. We're going to keep working on it next class.

Something that could be really cool: Natalie, a health volunteer in San Carlos is working on a class to help health care providers improve health care quality by tapping into their interest in English, so that she can teach a class combining English and a curriculum about quality improvement for health care. I set her up with Peace Corps' Nicaragua's TEFL manual for some ideas, and we considered some topics/activities for the class. I hope it works out, because it would be really cool, especially since, according to Natalie, the need for better quality in health care isn't always recognized by caregivers or patients, since the system is free. It's nice to be in a country where we have such a high density of volunteers, for the social aspect as well as to have other perspectives from different sectors to inform your own work.

Who doesn't love vegetables?: Brought some "realia" to class to a lesson that was mainly about fruits and vegetables. The kids thought it was hilarious and paid attention.

Cross your fingers: I feel like we've finally made some headway with some of the more difficult students in my Saturday classes. Maybe this is wishful thinking, but I really want positive reinforcement strategies to pay off. Honestly, this might be a better legacy for me to leave at the school, because having English once a week for an hour if were lucky is not really going to help anyone learn much language. But I would love to influence the way teachers' approach classroom management. 

All of my eight graders in 8B did their homework. This was shocking to me because usually only a third of the class does it if we're lucky. They might have copied the answers from one or two students, but at least they made the effort to do that, which they usually do not. I made them give themselves a round of applause for actually doing their work.

I feel like maybe we've turned a corner with 7B too. This is the most difficult class I teach, because the students are older (some have kids), have jobs and real responsibilities, and yet are just starting school, so they feel like we are babying them or get frustrated easily with the material. Many of them have probably been told for their entire childhoods and adolescent years that they are necio, problem kids. Others students are from way out in the campo, and are terrifying of speaking in English. To top things off, we teach this class in a preschool classroom, because there is no space in the rest of the primary school where the other sections receive classes. The students crowd up to tiny desks or tables, in tiny chairs and the board is really worn out and difficult to write on. They are currently finishing a new high school building, and we can't wait to get over there. It's gonna be amazing in comparison. Today, though, one of the students who's usually super necio actually participated in a game. I praised the bejezus out of him, holding his behavior today up as an example for the rest of the class. Maybe it will continue to pay off. I savory these little victories, even if they are coincidences.

Taxi driver interaction of the week: I spend a lot of time with the taxi drivers on a weekly basis getting to and from work. On Monday, one of my favorite taxi drivers, who drives a tiny neon yellow car, randomly announced to our jammed car "Did you know that in her country they their kids out of the house when they turn 18?" This undoubtedly is one of the "facts" many people here find most surprising about my life. I tried to clarify by explaining that not everyone does this, and that I WANTED to leave, but I did end up having to admit that I left home at 18. Most of my attempts to avoid making generalizations about American culture are about this successful.

I speall rill good I swer: I've been noticing lately that I've been struggling really hard to spell homonyms (words that sound the same, but have a different spelling). It makes no sense to me why this would be the first thing in my English to deteriorate, but maybe there's an answer in linguistics or brain science. Aaaaaaaaa saber. (Who knows)

Friday Night Fish Fry

el sabalo- giant fish, found in Lake Nicaragua or the Rio San Juan.
las gallas- gills
las escamas- scales
la aleta- fin
el muelle- dock, wharf
el guapote-the good kind of fish round here

Just after I blogged about being gifted things, I got gifted something especially awesome.
My sitemate Christina and I were sitting at the muelle in town, hanging out, after teaching a group of 8th graders some English. A boat came in from one of the islands, and some very drunk sports' fishermen disembarked. One of them stumbled towards shore, carrying the largest fish I have ever seen. It was a biblically proportioned sabalo. Absolutely gigantic, supposedly weighing 130 pounds. Epic.

We had just met an American engineer, who's half Nicaraguan and half German, who visits San Miguel every few months, the night before. When he got off the boat and saw us, he offered us some fish from the rest of their catch. We tried to protest, because we didn't know how to gut and prepare fish, but he insisted. So we wound up with two fish. Since we were pretty clueless about what to do, we decided to enlist my host mom's help in preparing them. It was really interesting, and she was a good teacher. She helped us cut the fish, flavor it with salt, lemon, and garlic and fry it in lots of oil. We made a tomato and onion salad- the traditional accompaniment around here and a side of gifted plantains and ya- delicious, and completed unexpected Friday night fish fry.

Gringa vs. Comal: Cooking Tales

Words of the Day

regalar- to gift
bochornoso/a- embarrasing OR stifling hot "un calor bochornoso"
el comal- clay surface for tortilla making
triturar- mash up, mush up, or the verb for squeezing jocote seeds out of the cooked fruit with your hands
aprovechar- take advantage of
desbaratar- fall apart, aka what happens to all of my tortilla attempts

I've finally started cooking for myself! More than anything else, this has made me feel finally settled in and infinitely happier here. My host mom is a really good cook, and I didn't want to offend her, but I really wanted more variety, spice, and less oil, rice, sugar and salt in my diet. And I wanted to swap out the meat for some veggies. I finally worked up the courage to ask her if I could cook and she was surprisingly fine with it. It really makes my days fabulous: cooking up things from home (very improvised variations) while jamming out with some salsa tunes on my iPod has improved my quality of life tremendously. It really is true that the fastest way to the heart is through the stomach.

So far, kitchen projects have included trying to perfect my tortilla making, which is a bit more of an art form, although not impossible. With two plastic sheets and a plate to squish, you can make uniform tortillas really easily without doing it by hand the old school way, but tortillas can fall apart on the comal if the water to flour ratio isn't just right.

Other things I've made: Squash and Platano Stew (life-changing recipe from the Nicaraguan Peace Corps volunteer "magazine"), a recipe my mom makes called Squash with Egg and Cheese (exactly what it sounds like), pasta with mango and tomato sauce (gotta go with local options), Mexican Guacamole (not quite in season yet, but once starts, I will probably eat guac daily), and  repochetas, which are fried tortillas with bean dip, tomato, cheese and cabbage salad on top. Also known as the best things EVER.

There are lots of other benefits to cooking for myself. It's a great way to build relationships in the community, since finding ingredients can be a bit of a treasure hunt, and as such I have the excuse to talk to many people and practice Spanish, which has become a problem of late, since I spend so much time teaching in English. It's also a way to make conversation with my host family, because they're interested in what I'm making. They're also always interested in what it's called, which is entertaining, because very few of the things I cook have real names. I also get gifted random food sometimes, because people are so generous.  Sometimes, it's a really nice thing, like when a friend invited the gringas over to cook cusnaca, a jocote, cinnamon and milk desert and gifted me almibar (a sweet and sour jam sort of thing with seasonal fruits). Or when my counterpart gave me sweetbread. Or when the fruit lady who thinks an extra mango in my bolsa of purchases. Other times, it's convenient gifting to avoid waste: mangos, overripe platains, and possibly soon, avocados. So it's good that I'm cooking to be able to aprovechar everyone's generosity.

Funny Names Nicaraguans Call Each Other

Boy, that last post was kind of a downer, wasn't it? Here's some lighter stuff. Now that I'm picking up more jerga, slang, I've been realizing that people call each other pretty goofy names and it seemed time to catalog them. I would love to know the etymologies on some of these....

poofi- My host siblings call each other this sometimes (but I've heard other people use it too). Its quite possibly the goofiest thing I've heard in Nicanol.
prix- Y entonces, prix?= (roughly) What's up, dude?
cunado- this means brother in law but can be used to mean friend/"man", too
la jaña- this is a slightly despective or at least very informal word for girlfriend, or "chick"
el broder- friend. "Mi broder"  Etymology on this one is less mysterious.
pippi- generic term for a child.
el/la maje-I think this term is Costa Rican, which is why it is far more common in Rio San Juan (which borders Costa Rica) than in other parts of Nicaragua. It basically means "dude."
Si, hombre!- Literally: Yes, man. Used to add emphasis to something you're saying. There are many situations when this phrase seems comical to me: when women use it with other women, and when people direct it to small children.

Tristeza

Word of the Day

vela- wake (but I'll explain how it's a little bit different)
chisme- gossip

"todo ha sufrido el lento vacio de sus manos, /y su respiracion ha gastado las cosas."
"everything has suffered the slow emptiness of his hands/ and his breathing has wasted things away." Pablo Neruda, Residencia en la Tierra (Residence on Earth)

Death has swooped in too close lately. It's cliqued, but its been a reminder that death is an inevitable part of life, one which I often decline to think about until it sneaks in and takes what it wants, remorselessly.

Last week, the world lost a tremendously adventurous public servant, diplomat Anne Smedinghoff, the older sister of one of my good friends from college, Regina. While working for the State Department in Afghanistan, her convoy was attacked as they went to deliver books to a school. While I never really got to know Anne, I always heard fascinating stories of her diplomatic escapades through Regina. They had such a beautiful bond. My heart goes out to their family and all those entangled in the violence of this long suffering, incredibly resilient country. http://annesmedinghoff.com/

Today, I am heartsick for a city I love and the victims of a cowardly attack. I have the most beautiful memory of the Boston Marathon last year. My friends Molly, Eric and I went to go support two of our friends who were running, Regina and Saumya. It was a sweltering Patriot's Day, but gorgeous, everything coming into bloom, a perfect symphony of nature crescendoeing with tremendous human effort. We made signs, and when Saumya appeared, we decided to run with her for a little bit. We were wearing flip flops, and not wearing running shorts. The crowd was cheering and we worked it a little bit. It was so exhilarating that we kept going with Saumya...for the last five miles of the race. I ended up running barefoot. We triumphantly crossed, blistered, brimming with endorphins, smiling at the insanity that friendship can bring you to. I choose to carry this image of the race with me, and I will not let it be sullied by today's horror. In it are so many of the elements that make modern Boston such an amazing city: friends from all over the country brought together by love of knowledge, far more diverse than their physical appearances would let on, coming together to challenge themselves just for the hell of it.  I hope that we will have the courage as a nation not let fear of terrorism further deprive of our liberties, of our dynamism, of our beautiful diversity, of everything positive that cities like Boston themselves represent.

Death has also been stalking this little pueblo. It is also a cliqued observation, but it seems to me sometimes that Nicaraguans seem more comfortable with death. Not to say that they grieve any less deeply, but merely differently. A grandmother of a neighbor died recently, but because I am out of the chisme loop, I didn't realize what had happened until I saw a lot of chairs gathered outside their home. Even then, it took me a long time to catch on: I thought it was a party, until most host family started commenting about what was going on.  Their house buzzed with activity all night long, with friends and family gathered all night long, almost joyfully. I heard a lot of laughter, and from across the wall, it was hard to distinguish from a more joyous occasion. Several other elderly members of San Miguel died this week as well. All this talk of death led to reminiscences: of past velas, velas during the war years, of battles up in the hills, of the ghosts of executed prisoners, of mercy, solidarity and vengeance.

Maybe Nicaraguans are more comfortable with death because unfortunately it touches their lives so much more than in a developed, peaceful country. Women sometimes recall their miscarriages or infant deaths when they tally up their children or recall numbers of siblings. My host brother remembers going to the Health Center as a young child to see the bodies that were brought in during the war years. In some small Nicaraguan towns, "death trucks" for lack of a better term, circulate around with news of those who have died, in lieu of a written obituary. School shuts down if anyone prominent dies. It is never far from the public realm, always on the tip of the tongue, bittersweet and weighty.

Despite the sadness of all of these events, striking so close to communities I am part of, it was amazing to see the way that people came together to respond.  In my tangled jungle of friends from college, quite literally strewn across the globe, it was beautiful to see the role of social media in spreading news, organizing responses. In tight-knit San Miguelito, rapidly changing, but decidedly not fully in the digital age, this support is still very physical, with visits, food and waiting. Death forces us to huddle together, whether in plastic chairs outside someone's house or around our computers and iPads, mining our brains for a way to express the sorrow that we feel and a way to support those left behind. It revitalizes weakening links, even as it robs us of our beloved.

On the subject of all this, I was forwarded a link to a really excellent blog by a former Tufts student that is a fantastic resource for those struggling to support friends in time of need. 

Teaching Anecdotes: Week 7

Week 7. Or really 6.5. It's always reassuring when I realize how briefly I've actually been doing the teaching part of this job. It makes me feel more competent somehow. Especially in stressful, sweltering weeks like this one where just walking to catch the bus seems like a marathon. I drink about two gallons of water daily and I could still drink more. Only one month until rainy season, although it will still be hot then.

A surprising realization: I finally made an exact count of my students. There are 433 of them at 4 different schools. Plus all the teachers. Which explains why I'm having trouble with names.

Most fun: Using The Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" to practice listening and review the use of should for decision making. Introducing a bunch of 10th graders who mostly are from way out in the campo to early punk rock was a good time. Sadly, we ran out of time before we could extend a discussion of the song to talking about healthy and unhealthy romantic relationships, a previous topic. Seriously though, I bet there are plenty of other punk songs that are really good for teaching English to teens...good beat, catchy, loud, simple lyrics, rhyming...I'm going to investigate this further.

Doing math: We've been giving out math problems to several classes of students as a way to help them practice numbers. The kids seem to like it, surprisingly, and since Nicaraguan students statistically have about as much trouble with math as they do with English, extra practice seems like it kills two birds with one stone!

A global activity to practice the present progressive: This week, I adapted an activity that a Moroccan co-teacher taught me last year at the Welcome Project (the place where I was most recently a volunteer English teacher in the States). Our eighth grade class just finished a lesson on countries and nationalities, so I made a bunch of flashcards with people from different places around the world. Because the time of day is different in different parts of the world, the activities that people are doing in the same moment are very different, which is cool to think about. The students had to write a mini paragraph about each person, describing their country, nationality, and what the person was doing at their time of day.

This activity is better in a ESOL setting, especially a very diverse one, because you can have people think of the time of day in their country and imagine what family or friends back home might be doing at a given time of day. If you have students from Nepal, Turkey and Haiti, the activities are going to be quite different.

So excited for next week: One of my bosses is coming for a visit next week. I'm hoping he has time to observe at least part of my class because the 8th graders in Las Palomas (hands down my favorite class to teach) are going to "interview" him. For homework, I told them they needed to write a few questions that you would ask a visitor from a foreign country. Based on their knowledge of English, I'm expecting some great, slightly invasive questions..."How tall are you? How old are you? Are you married? What color eyes do you have?" It's gonna be a good time.

Worst although most comical arrival home from school this week: Today, I arrived home exhausted, dirty (dry season= billowing dust at all times) and smelly (dry season=profuse sweating at all times, even when not moving) from a bad night of sleep, followed by a 12 hour day of school/ planning session at one of my profe's houses to discover that my host family was out the house. While I dug in my bag for the keys, the neighborhood chavalos approached. "Emily, Emily can we play?? Let's play". I explained to them that I needed to change and eat some things first and that I needed a few minutes to myself. Not wanting to take no for an  answer, they tried to follow me into the house and I had to lock them out. While I was showering outdoors, they saw my feet and started yelling for me again, asking what I was doing. I yelled back that  I was trying to take a shower, before realizing that I was advertising my nakedness to everyone in the neighborhood. Classy. Then, I needed to return a phone call from my dad. Right as I dialed his number, the chavalos got into the house.  "Emily, Can we play?" Chavalos are like zombies: they will always find a way into your house and find a way to get what they want. Except they are cute and earnest.

Teaching Anecdotes, Week 6

Words of the Day

la cigarra- According to a bilingual poetry collection I've been reading, this means locust. I'm not sure if the bugs that are currently making creepy alien noises on the hillsides near town are actually locusts, but that's what people call them.

la gata- A woman with light colored eyes. Gato/a means cat. I'm Catwoman.

No por mucho madrugar amanece mas temprano.- You can get up as early as you want, but dawn's not coming any earlier...Everything has a time and place. This dicho literally applies to my latest attempts to do laundry...We now only have running water at night, and from 4-5:30 am. I can get up as early as I want to wash things...except there is no light until dawn at 5:30 am.

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Funniest: I tried to rap "Very Good Friend" to get my hard-to- impress "tough crowd" 7th grade Saturday class to laugh. The rapping was extremely unsuccessful, but I did get them to laugh, so mission accomplished?  I also sang "Very Very Very Good"at them. There are probably a lot of people around here who think I'm completely off my rocker, and increasingly, they are correct.

Awkwardest interaction with students: I was walking to the cyber cafe the other day when I ran into a pack of four 11th grade students. They are always together. Always. Their ringleader evidently thinks my constant sweating and heinous polo shirt wardrobe and GREEN EYES are the cat's meow and frequently tries to get me to help him with English so he can look at my GREEN EYES. Anyway, I had decided to ignore them, when I heard one of them say "Excuse me, could I trouble you for a moment?" in PERFECT ENGLISH. I was so taken aback that I made the mistake of turning around, and of course they then proceeded to bother me. I tried to talk to them about the English verb charts them were holding until I gave up and explained that dating them is entirely out of the question for innumerable reasons and that I expect to be treated like any other teacher. Except I had a hard time keeping a straight face because the situation was so absurd.

I (sort of) used a PACA tool! : PACA (participatory communitary analysis) tools are a set of very rudimentary development techniques that Peace Corps Volunteers learn during training, but use to varying degrees in practice. For projects such as TEFL or Business that work primarily in schools in very structured projects, the likelihood of using PACA tools regularly is rather slim. But  I sort of used the "daily activities schedule" tool with my Saturday class of 11th graders, hoping to spark a discussion about gender roles. After reviewing adverbs of frequency (words we use to describe how often we do things) and daily activity words, we divided the class into small groups of male and female students. Then, they had to make an activity schedule of what they thought the other gender does during the day.

One really interesting thing most of the groups expressed while they were working on this was "I don't know what men/women do." This seemed sort of a strange sentiment to me, since gender roles are fairly stratified here: shouldn't it be obvious what everyone is responsible for in a given day? Maybe it's because so many people have parents who work abroad in Costa Rica or the US or Spain, or simply, because these things aren't talked about.

An activity that got unexpectedly out of hand: We played Tic-Tac-Toe with 11th graders in Las Palomas to review past tense verbs. We wrote out a grid with present tense verbs, and they needed to change them to the past tense form. The students got REALLY competitive, and started yelling at each other. It took some doing to remind them that it was only a game to practice grammar.

New favorite didactic material: Personal pronoun dice. They are great to use for speaking activities to help kids practice pronouns other than "I". There's really no shortage of ways to use them. Also, they're just entertaining enough to keep kids on their toes.
Dice template: http://www.toolsforeducators.com/dice/

Semana Santa

Holy Week in Nicaragua

las rosquillas- baked rings of corn and cheese, "The Cheese Its of Nicaragua"
el almibar- a very sweet dessert made with honey and seasonal fruits, such as mango, coconut, jocote and such
el recado- a sugar and cheese mixture, put inside baked goods, like sweet bread and corn empanadas. Not to be confused with pescado, fish.
el garrobo- I've heard lots of debates over this one. Some claim it is used to describe male iguanas, while others maintain its only for darker iguanas. I don't really know if either of these is scientifically correct, but I do know that Lent is reptile season. For eating,that is.
el salto- waterfall
el Viacruz- The Way of the Cross

Holy Week, much like Fiestas Patronales celebrations, provides excellent juxtaposition of the sacred and the hot mess-y. It's one of the most important weeks in the Nicaraguan Catholic calendar, but its also high season for decadent beach parties, since pretty much everybody who can afford to goes to the beach, or some other water source. Since Peace Corps is turning me into a crowds-hating grump, I didn't really feel like getting involved in that whole scene, hence why I jumped on going on a trip down the Rio San Juan early in holy week, and then coming back home to relax.

After getting back from my trip, I spent a while being minimally productive. Then on Wednesday, I finally got around to doing my taxes, which was taxing (eh eh) but worth it because I'm pretty excited about my $178 tax return. That's pretty close to a month's salary here, so probably gonna go wild with that. Probably, I'll just buy a lot of veggies, since they're nearly twice the cost of produce everywhere else in Nicaragua. After I finally got the online IRS tax thingamajig to work, which was no easy task given my slower than molasses internet connection, I went outside to see how my host family's rosquilla making was going. It was quite the production. There were trays and trays and trays of rosquillas and a roaring fire in my family's wood burning oven. Incidentally, there was also an iguana carcass drying by the fire, which was rather jarring. I eventually tried my hand at making empanadas, sort of like corn dough turnovers with sugary cheesy recado inside. Everyone commented I was really good at it, which might have been a lie or was just a reflection of a process that wasn't too difficult.

On Thursday, we did not eat the iguana, because a neighborhood dog carried it off.
On Good Friday, I felt ill, my hypochrondical monthly "This time I really have dengue fever!" scare. As usual, I did not actually have dengue. I lay in bed all day and read two books, reviews forthcoming. I tried to read sitting up in a chair, but this proved too difficult, so I went back to laying in bed. Since I couldn't really even deal with sitting up, going to follow the Viacruz around town in the sun for 3 hours was out of the question. Probably just as well, because I probably would have fainted even in good condition because being in the sun for extended periods of time here usually spells disaster.

On Saturday, I went to the saltos in the nearbyish town of El Almendro with my host family to go swimming. I probably should have stayed home, because I soon developed a pounding headache. The saltos were very nice, but the water was freezing and there were ridiculous crowds of people everywhere, their noise compounded by speakers blaring music. I'm all for nature, but I don't particularly like sharing it with a lot of other people simultaneously. On top of everything, in Nicaragua's "live at your own risk" culture, there were plenty of kids jumping off of trees and the ledge overlooking the swimming hole and doing other dangerous things that had this former lifeguard in a tizzy. "OMG EVERYONE IS GOING TO GET HEAD, NECK OR BACK INJURIES AND THERE ISN'T A BACKBOARD IN SIGHT!!!!!!!!!" More cringe- worthy than the bullriding, almost.

On Sunday, I dressed up and went to mass with the family and then went back to bed because I was still sickish. But I got bett-eh!

All this vacation stuff was nice, but by the end, I really missed working. Typical workaholic American, I know, I know, but seriously. After two weeks of not doing school, my book pile is running dangerously low. I'm excited for things to start up again and I'm optimistic that will have a lot of school without interruptions. I mean that mostly sincerely.

The Patron

Words of the day:
las fiestas patronales- week long civic parties that are a mixture of the sacred and profane, celebrating a town's patron saint
el chinamo- temporary party shack, made of wood, palm and featuring loud music(s), and drinking
la montada de toros- bullriding, like a rodeo except less organized and more dangerous
las bombas- fireworks

The Fiestas to celebrate patron Saint Michael the Archangel began early in San Miguelito, on the Saturday before the actual festival with a dance on the cancha, the indoor basketball court. It was sort of like a weird, middle school dance with drinking.

On Sunday, there was a hipica, a parade of horses, that went throughout the town. There was a great mix of your regular work-a-day horses and giant, beautiful Spanish stallions. Anthropologists have commented that we often relegate past elements of daily life to our festivals. For the wealthy, professional Managuans who come to hipicas to dress up like cowboys and girls or in most parts of the states when we have horses in parades, there's an element of nostalgia at play. Yet for most people, in a place like San Miguel, horses are an incredibly important part of daily life and hipicos are a celebration of that.

On Monday, music and bombas began going off at early and late hours.

On Tuesday, school ended for the week after first period, because the students needed to clean their classrooms before break and they needed to have a teacher's meeting on Wednesday so that the Fiestas could be appropriately enjoyed on Thursday and Friday. In the afternoon, my host mom said something about how people were climbing trees to get prizes.
At night, my host family held a surprise party for my host mom in one of the chinamos on top of the hill. This started off somewhat poorly since Nicaraguans are not very timely when it comes to party arrivals and the surprise element was rather lackluster since only about a third of the invited guests had showed up when my host mom did. The night soon improved, however, and her friends got very rowdy, dancing with gusto in the chinamo until we made our way home at 12 am while they chanted "Viva las mujeres! Viva" (Long Live the Women!)

On Wednesday and Thursday, there were two parades featuring a small marching band and Catholics carrying statues of saints. One parade was for the patron saint, St. Michael Arcangel, and one was to celebrate a newly finished, and very cute park dedicated to Saint Joseph.

On Thursday, there was a running of the bulls in the street. I didn't actually partake in or view this, because I could hear that it was moving around rather quickly and it was far to hot to go chase it. Also, it's not entirely clear to me how having cows run wild in the streets is much different than a regular Thursday, since I would estimate that 95% percent of traffic jams in the Rio San Juan are caused by the movement of large domesticated animals. In the afternoon, I went to go watch a montada de toros featuring tweens riding calves with being chased by teen-aged boys who taunted the cows, and eventually it progressed to bigger bulls and riders. I cringed a lot and felt worried that people were going to get injured. There were 3 more days of bull riding after this. At night, my sitemate and I went to a chinamo. It was a weird time. We came home early.

On Friday, I decided to help my counterpart in Las Palomas with English. It was a good time because it was wholesome and not related to the Fiestas Patronales.

On Saturday, I missed a concert by Gustavo Leyton, "El Rey del Chinamo" to go kayaking down the Rio San Juan. I do not regret this decision.

To recreate a Nicaraguan 2013 Fiestas Patronales event in your home, play these songs on repeat as loudly as possible and drunk cheap beer or rum. If possible, turn on a strobe light and create other auditory distractions. If you feel overwhelmed, you're doing it right.

Gloria Estefan feat. Pitbull- Wepa 
Los Charros de Lumaco- Ando de Borrachera 
Los Caminantes- Maria Elena
Los Borgias- La gente esta borracha
Los Karkis-Machuca el Chile 
And inevitably, some Palo de Mayo from the Atlantic Coast makes an appearance.