graduations, lots of food, and matagalpa

These past couple of weeks have been pretty busy. Contrary to my most recent posts, where the highlights of my days were the half-hour walks to the internet cafe and doing laundry (yes, really), I have made some more friends here and been invited to a number of events. First, I went to a couple of graduation ceremonies and parties, one in which I was introduced and got to sit (awkwardly) up in front with the other teachers. The graduations here take place in the churches (separation of church and state?) so that´s something quite different than you´d see in the states. Àlso, they do graduations for preschool, 6th grade, and high school. Everyone is accompanied by a family member/friend as they enter into the church and their name is read 3 times throughout the ceremony (when they walk in, get their diploma, and leave), making it painfully longer than it needs to be. But it was definitely a new and interesting cultural experience. I have also been visiting with many of the teachers with whom I´ll be working, and have been invited to lunch and dinner with some of them on several occasions. I feel like I´m practically never eating at home, which makes a nice change to the usual rice, beans, and tortilla. I´ve been actively looking for a house so that I can move out as soon as my 6-week minimum host family living requirement is up, and have found a couple of options - just waiting to speak with the owners and hopefully I´ll be set! Lastly, I went to Matagalpa this weekend with the women´s soccer team to watch their departmental championship game (which they won...by a lot). Let´s just say the competition really isn´t there, which is unfortunate because I see the team having a huge potential to grow and improve. They don´t practice regularly and with jobs and other responsibilities they barely play. But I wanted to go to the game to introduce myself to the players and possibly work with them as a trainer in the future. Starting up a women´s soccer team was one of my goals before I came here, and although a team already exists, I would still love to have the chance to work with them. Other than that, just taking each day at a time and trying to continually work on forming a youth group and getting a tree nursery started. The concept of keeping to a schedule doesn´t really exist here so it´s been hard to get much accomplished working hand-in-hand with the mayor´s office. Keep the letters, emails, and phone calls coming - all are always much appreciated! Thanks for reading.