fun news

I know this is long overdue but it’s been a busy couple of weeks.  Last Friday I found out where I’ll be living for the next 2 years – Teustepe, Boaco!  (I’ll explain more in a bit..)  On Saturday, I went to La Boquita, a beach in Carazo, with the others in my training town.  It took about 1 hour to get there and it was absolutely beautiful.  There were horses and hammocks and other foreigners.  Pictures below…

While waiting for the bus to go back to Carazo, I saw the most shocking/disgusting thing so far here in Nicaragua.  We heard terrible squealing sounds in the distance for about 10 minutes so of course we knew a pig was being slaughtered.  What we weren’t prepared for was the small car that drove down from the campo to the main road with the dead (huge) pig in the bag, taking up the entire floor and going #2 at the same time.  And yes, he was already dead.  Pobrecito cerdo (translation: poor pig).

Saturday night I went to a quince anos for the cousin of a guy who lives in Santa Teresa.  Talk about Nica hospitality—we just met the guy that day at the beach and he immediately called up his cousin so see it was okay if we came to the party.  It was a great time with tons of loud music and delicious food.

Sunday was the Hipica in Santa Teresa so another eventful day.  Each town in Nicaragua has an Hipica once a year.  It’s when hundreds of people come to ride/watch horses and of course, listen to live music all day long.  Below is a picture of the queen of the Hipica.

At night, I went to a fiesta with my host sister and cousins at a club in town.  The Nica goup, Fusion 4, played for 5 hours which meant a ton of dancing and realling sore thighs the next day.

Ok, now to the exciting info… Tuesday my entire Nica 54 group, Environmental and TEFL, left for Managua and stayed there for the night at a hotel close to the Peace Corps office.  I went to the mall and ate a delicious turkey sandwich from Quiznos then saw a movie in a really nice theater.  That quick snap back to “American life” was a little bit of a shock.  At 6:30 Wednesday morning, I headed to one of the bus stops in Managua via taxi to take the 1 ½ hour bus ride to Teustepe for a 6 day site visit, soon to be my new home!!

My new host family is wonderful and welcomed me that night with a pinata even though they thought I wouldn’t be there until the next day.  

I can’t wait to live with them for 6 weeks.  (I’ll officially be moving in on November 23)  My host mom, Rosibel, is 64 and my host dad, Umberto, is 72 and they have 6 kids, ages 21-42  One daughter, Soreida, has a 6 year old boy who is adorable and loves telling my scary stories and playing soccer.  One son, Norman, also has a boy, Hector, who will be 1 yr old on Thanksgiving.  Norman asked me my religion and after saying Catholic, he said, “Oh, so you like the fiestas.”  Apprently Catholics are much more fun than Evangelicals, the other promiment religion in Nicaragua.  I knew I was confirmed for a reason.  Soreida, her son, Norman, his wife and their son all live in a house a half block from my host mom and also own a pulperia.  The 30 year old daugher, Noehlia, works at the pulperia and is a great conversationalist which means it will  be a great place to go to in my free afternoons.  The 21 year old, Danuyzca, will graduate this year with a degree in business administration.  The 42 year old daughter, Fatima, is a teacher at the high school and there other son lives next door and works at the health center in town.  It’s super fun having so many people around all the time because they are constantly talking and listening to music at full volume. 

To top it off, Teustepe is gorgeous.  Below is a pic from my tiny bedroom’s window.

Their backyard has coconut, banana, mango, lemon, and orange trees, and avocado trees were recently planted.  There are 5 parrots, 3 turtles, a rabbit, 6 or 7 chickens, a dog (Jerry), and a goat.  There’s also a frog, “Principe”, who isn’t exactly a pet but presents himself nicely in the house and zaps all the mosquitoes.  There’s an amazing hammock underneath one of the coconut trees which I layed in for 1 hour writing this post.

In Teustepe, there’s a beautiful park with a basketball court, an AC-ed internet café (!), four or five restaurants, and a baseball stadium.  

I already met with the mayor, the delegate of the Ministry of Education, my counterparts, and a ton of teachers.  One school I’ll be working in is one block from my host family’s house and it has about 300 students with 11 teachers.  There’s another basketball court at the school.  I’ll be working with 2 teachers there, one of whom I already met.  The other two schools are in 2 of the 60 communities surrounding Teustepe.  One is in El Crucero, about 2 km from town, called Hermandad Finladia.  There are 3 teachers and I’ll be working in one class of 3^rd and 4^th graders, and another of 5^th and 6^th graders.  To get to the school using the shortest route, I have to cross a river but because it’s the end of rainy season, the river is too high so I took a taxi (50 cents) to visit it.  The other school is in Aguas Calientes and is about a 5 km walk from Teustepe and a little trickier to get to.  I walked there with the sub-director and it took about 40 minutes from El Crucero.  We crossed 3 rivers which meant I was knee deep in water a few times to get to school.  Thank God for Chacos.  If the oxen in Oregon Trail can forge the river, so can I.  The great part is that the teachers and students are fantastic!  There are only 2 classes, one of 1^st-3^rd graders, and the other of 4^th-6^th graders, with about 20 kids in each.  I’ll only be going there one time per week so that 10 km walk won’t be too brutal.

I’m sure you can tell (if you’re still reading at this point.. sorry the post is incredibly long), that I’m so, so happy with my site placement.  The volunteer before me sold me all her things so I won’t have to go bed and stove searching.  She said there’s a strong interest in sports so I’m hoping to do a lot with that.  There’s also a small library in town and the librarian already has reading/writing/craft sessions every Tuesday and Thursday.

Here’s my new address:

Meghan Wischusen

Apartado Postal 23, Boaco

Boaco, Nicaragua

Central America

The post office is in the city of Boaco which is know as the city of two floors and is only 30 minutes away.  I visited on Monday with my host sister and nephw.  I’ve gotta say, it’s a real close competition between Italy and Boaco when it comes to beauty.  The streets are just like San Fran… very, very steep.  There are 5 other Environmental volunteers in the region of Boaco as well as two TEFLers and a couple Small Business.  So, if I need an English break, I’m only a bus ride away!

What I’m basically trying to say with all this rambling is that I’m living in a perfect location for visitors come February  J  I’m 1 ½ hours from Managua and about 2 from Masaya, Leon, and Granada.  Start booking your tickets!!  I can’t talk off from school but the beauty of being a teacher is holidays and weekends.

Can you even believe it’s already been 2 ½ months??

cell phone

Quick post but I got a cell phone.  If calling/texting from the US, 011-505-8836-3765.

It's pretty expensive to call and text but I wanted to pass along the info :)

Busy Busy

It’s been a very fulfilling week and a half!  This past Friday, we found out our potential sites for the next two years so everyone is now thinking about where they’d like to go.  We were given one page of very vague, and I mean vague, information about each site.  For example, basically all sites have water “most of the time” and electricity “almost always”… hmm.  Anyway, we don’t get to actually choose where we want to go but we do have a say in the region and types of things we are looking for that would work best with our strengths.  I’m hoping to get to go somewhere with sports fields!  The five regions I could go to are Leon, Chinandega, Matagalpa, Boaco, and Rivas in case you’re bored one day at work and feel like doing a little research.  If you do get that desperate for something do to, please pass the info along.

On Saturday, we went to Volcan Masaya with everyone in Nica 54.  It was a gorgeous day so we were able to take a lot of pictures.  Supposedly, at night, you can see the lava glowing at the bottom of the crater but all we saw was a ton of sulfur… still a pretty cool.

Sunday was another busy day.  We gardened in the morning and finally have our cucumber bed set up and seeds planted and we also planted the squash seeds.  The tomatoes are growing in their seed bed which is super exciting and was a “wow” moment for us who never thought we’d be able to grow anything.  In about a week, we’ll have to transplant the tomato and pepper plants into the ground so that will be a whole other task to take on.  We had help from a friend of my host family who is studying agriculture at university right now.  He came over last week to stop in and say hi and little did he know, he’d get ambushed to help us keep our garden alive.  I’ve perfected the question “Can you please help us?” and use it very frequently.  We are having a little trouble getting students to work and are hoping for more participation next weekend.  Sunday afternoon was another youth group meeting and we’ve started on our project.. finally!!  We sewed rice/coffee/bean bags together using thick string and a nail and hammered holes in hundreds of soda/beer bottle caps.  This weekend, we’re going to begin sewing the caps on the bags to write our message.

Tuesday really made my week because I taught my first class in 6^th grade.  Okay, so it’s extremely difficult teaching in a language that you don’t really know, but I think I pulled it off.  I taught an hour lesson on simple machines and the kids were pretty into it.  I also realized that as a gringa, I have a huge leg up on Nica teachers because the students absolutely love when we’re in the classroom.  I didn’t have time to finish my lesson but I’m going to pick up where I left off next week.

More thrilling news… Greg, Sara, and I made rice krispie treats for Natalie because it was her birthday on Tuesday.  My host family was fascinated by the complicated procedure of melting the marshmallows and mixing in Coco Krispies.  My host mom teaches me how to make gallo pinto and carne asada and I bring a little bit of the American culture to her.  It’s a win-win.

This past Thursday to Sunday was a big celebration in my community to celebrate Santa Teresa.  A big event were los toros which I went to with some member of most host family and it was pretty interesting.  There were about 30 men inside a "stadium" that was constructed for this weekend, some with red flags, while one man rode the bull.  It basically was mayhem while people climbed up the side of the stadium fence to get out of the way or ran for their lives.  We watched 5 or 6 bull rides and only two guys fell off.  Three men died last year so thank goodness I didn’t have to witness that... no blood at all.  A Nica singer came to the town to have a mini concert at the club which was completely packed with people.  The “bombas” (firecrackers that could easily pass for gun shots) went off on Thursday and Friday starting at 4:00 AM along with the marching bands that think it’s acceptable to begin playing at 4:00 AM as well.  But, there was also a really great show of actual fireworks on Thursday night.

Oh, the chivalry!

Last Saturday, we had our garden setup at La Escuela de Ruben Dario and had a fabulous turnout of about 40 fifth and sixth graders.  It was a little hectic for many reasons.  One, the other aspirantes and I don’t really have the Spanish skills to control a group of that size.  (Thankfully we had a current volunteer there to facilitate.)  Two, we didn’t know anyone’s names because we had only met the kids two days before.  Three, none of us have any gardening experience except for the 2 hour training we received three weeks ago and therefore had a difficult time passing along knowledge.  Let alone the fact that it wasn’t in English…  Four, we were in the midst of a hurricane. 

We got to the school at 8:00 AM and it poured on and off until 11:00 when we called it quits.  In those 3 hours, a few 11 year old boys totally kicked butt using machetes to tackle the 2 feet of grass we had to clear.  Nope, no John Deere here.  Another memorable aspect of that day was the 45 minute hike I went on with 15 Nica kids.  We were sent by the volunteer to fill large bags (sacos) with sand so we could later mix it with the soil.  Of course these kids knew where to look so off we went…. First, I was taken to a trail that was completely covered in about a foot of mud, probably half of it cow dung, and extremely downhill so I convinced the kids to find another spot.  Then, one student suggested we go to the place across the river.  I definitely nixed that decision as well after there was hesitation when I asked, “Will I be swimming?”.  Finally, “Yes, yes.  There’s another place” they said.  Perfect, I thought… I definitely just got out of getting completely covered in mud.  Well, no.  I was wrong.  Instead, they took me behind the school and up another path about 15 minutes away that was just as muddy, maybe more.  In the meantime, it started raining pretty hard but we were roughin’ it.  Girls’ flip flops were breaking and kids were falling all over the place.  As we walked, we started filling the sacos with the sand.  All was fun and dandy expect the sacos were VERY heavy so we heaved and pushed and used teamwork to hoist 30 pound bags on 10 year old boys’ backs who probably weighed double that.  I was carrying a pretty hefty bag on the way back to the school as we passed a group of boys playing soccer.  One boy, about 12 years old, stopped playing and ran right over to me and insisted on carrying my saco the 15 minutes back to school.  So, friends, chivalry is, in fact, not dead.

On a lighter note, we changed language facilitators this week and now my teacher is Rosibel and she’s fabulous.  I also am only in class with one of the other aspirantes so the two-on-one instruction is great.  I just know the next three weeks are going to bring miracles in my speaking ability.  There are some set backs here and there, like when I thought my family asked me about the oatmeal (“avena”) I eat in the morning but they actually were talking about going to a wake (“a vela”) that night.  Soo I told them, sure!  I’d love to have “a vela” in the morning.  I won’t mix up those words again.

On Wednesday, we gave our first of two life-skills presentations to our youth group.  We talked about healthy relationships and it went really well.  I need to give a shout out to 7^th and 8^th grade PEER for teaching me the icebreaker, Shuffle Your Buns.  We totally made a Spanish version and it was a huge hit.  Our group also finalized our idea for our recycled materials project and decided not to use wood to make our environmental awareness sign… for obvious reasons.  Instead we’re going to ask neighbors for old sacos and sew on bottle caps to write our message.  We’re also planning on braiding plastic bags to weave into the sacos for more décor.  Next meeting is Sunday so we’re hoping for some serious work.

Keep your fingers crossed that the next two storms coming don’t flood my house like the last one!  It literally was raining inside the house this past week.  A crack in the window send large amounts gushing in and there was, no kidding, pools of water coming underneath the front door.  The 8 buckets lined up in the living room did their best to catch the water coming in from the roof but weren’t that effective.  Tomorrow is Saturday and we’re supposed to get much more rain.  Hopefully it holds off until 3:00 because we’re working on our “garden” in the afternoon.  With any luck, the quotations around ‘garden’ will be gone by next post because it will actually be legitimate.