Over one week through!

I´ve survived the first week in my site! Woohoo! Slowly I´m meeting people - family and friends of my host mom, and teachers with whom I´ll be working. Last night one of the teachers who the previous volunteer introduced me to invited me to dinner. She cooked some lovely vegan food for me (spaghetti and tomato sauce, a local potato-like veggie, rice, banana ¨pancakes¨, tomatoes, and coffee) and I was very appreciative. Literally going there for dinner made my day, because she´s a really friendly and open person. Her family is very poor but the fact that she invited me over for dinner and made a special effort to cook me vegan food meant a lot to me. The previous volunteer has spent a lot of time with her so she understands the purpose of Peace Corps in sharing experiences and different cultural traditions. I plan on visiting her often. She´s also helping me find a house - I like her neighborhood because it´s close to lots of neighbors and has a nice view of the mountains, AND its within my budget. The living standards are definitely pretty low but it´s all part of the Peace Corps experience. I think it´ll help me to live more simply and appreciate the company of others.

Yesterday I also went for a nice walk/hike through a farm with my host mom´s son and his kids. The views from my site are pretty gorgeous, and slowly I´m getting the chance to see more and more. My family was visiting a farm today to buy and slaughter a pig. I was invited but I gladly declined. There´s certain things I just won´t do, no matter how Nica I try to be, haha!

I feel like my Spanish is getting better. These first couple of months are a good time for me to practice speaking, listening, and studying new vocab in my downtime. Learning Spanish fluently was one of my goals before coming here, so I´m really going to put in the effort to make that happen. I´ve also found a spot to practice making a compost and am working with the mayor´s office to form a youth group and start a tree nursery. These are some of the projects I will be doing before school starts in February. In the meantime I also plan on visiting different teachers daily to get to know them and possibly start planning for next year.

Overall, since yesterday things have been better. Just meeting one nice person who wants to be my friend has helped me enormously. I think over time these relationships will ultimately help pull me through service.