Birthday Fun and Weekly Update

Monday was my 23rd birthday, making it the second birthday I’ve spent in Latin America! The day started off in one of the rural multigrade schools where the kids sang me a variety of birthday songs and all greeted me with a hug and kiss. After a couple of hours of class, the teachers decided to make enchiladas with the students, which was exciting for me because I got to learn how they are made and enjoy their deliciousness. The school has a small concrete area separate from the classrooms where we cooked everything on a wood-burning stove. To make the enchiladas, first the tortilla is made with a combination of corn flour, water, and spices, flattened and shaped into a circle, then fried. The tortilla is then topped with refried beans and a cabbage and tomato salad = extremely tasty. The enchiladas were accompanied by fresh tajadas, or fried plantains, grown right on the school’s property – doesn’t get any fresher than that! I even got the added bonus of bringing home the plantain peels for the compost I’m making in my yard…very exciting stuff! After an exciting morning, I came home and relaxed/cleaned up a bit and went to my friend Griselda’s comedor, or small restaurant, for special birthday tacos with soy meat. I guess you could call it a romantic meal since I ate by candlelight, thanks to losing the electricity for a few hours (doesn’t happen too often but it’s not that uncommon). Luckily, it came back in time for me to go out with another friend of mine, Norvin, and celebrate with some local beverages ;). Overall, it was a fun day! I also celebrated the weekend before in the neighboring city of Matagalpa with some fellow Peace Corps volunteers at a laid-back bar with a hippie vibe. Matagalpa is fairly touristy/has lots of Europeans living there, so places like these and cafes with locally-grown coffee are plentiful.

Work-wise things have been going well. I am starting to plan with the teachers and give my own environmental classes this week and next. I’m not TOO nervous, since I already have a little bit of experience from training, and my trusty environmental teaching guide with pre-planned activities. Some of the challenges will be to figure out a secure place to put the tree nursery and garden at the school without interference from farm animals, robbers (some of the trees we’ll be planting are endangered and therefore incredibly valuable), and children playing. I’ve been in the process of getting materials to enclose my yard so random cows and horses don’t enter my yard (no joke), although the free manure they’ve provided me will make a great addition to my compost! I’m going to use tree branches, barbed wire, and plastic sacks (all locally available) and hopefully that will be sufficient! We’ll see…

Other activities that have been going on: On Sunday, I was cordially invited to participate in a parade for the beginning of the soccer league in town, so all of the teams (by neighborhood), plus the people involved in the soccer federation, the mayor, and other important people got to march (I felt pretty important, too :) ). My role is going to be working with the women’s soccer teams that I am working with the soccer federation to form (4 teams organized by neighborhood). We are lucky enough to already have a “select” women’s team in my town, since women’s sports aren’t really prevalent in Nicaragua, but hopefully now we will be able to have an actual women’s league, like the men’s, within town. Uniforms are apparently the big gimmick for getting players motivated to play, but we’ve been unsuccessful so far trying to get a local NGO from Spain to donate them. So we are searching for plan B…whatever that may be.

This week I will be having my first meeting with the high school ecological youth group I’ve helped organize. The school director wants me to have a discussion about not throwing garbage on the ground, since this is a huge problem here, and to propose some ideas about future projects with the kids (similar to what I’ll be doing in the elementary schools). Also, English classes continue, two nights a week. It seems that in the two weeks that I’ve had the classes, word has spread like wildfire and random people are coming up to me on the street asking me if they can join the class. Unfortunately, I am starting to turn people down because the class has reached about 20 people and if it gets any larger, I won’t be able to give each individual enough attention and people aren’t going to get as much out of it. But I’m enjoying the classes and am really glad that my students are motivated to study and continue with the class.

Overall, things have been picking up and going well. I am starting to really appreciate the little bit of free time I have to myself in the house, and have decorated it and made it a cozy little space I can call home (will post pictures as soon as I have everything hanging up). Although I’ve been busy with meetings and classes, I am enjoying being busy a whole lot more than the absolute boredom I experienced in my first two months. I am happy that things are starting to form, slowly but surely, and am excited to see what comes of it in these upcoming months.