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2 months without a post… oops!  I’ll try to stick to just explaining the exciting things that have happened.

First, thank you SO much to everyone who donated school supplies and backpacks, especially those at Bloomingdale School and the Scotch Plains Brownie Troop.  During my one week, wonderful vacation at home in July, I was able to meet some of the Brownies and see the incredible effort everyone has been putting forth to help out my students.  My parents’ basement is chock-full with supplies so now we’re trying to figure out how to get all of it to Teustepe.  I was able to carry two suitcases back to Nicaragua, one full of 30 backpacks and the other with pencils, crayons, and markers.  Can’t wait to give them to the kids!  (There’s still probably about 450 pounds of supplies waiting to get transported.)

I’m currently taking advantage of the excellent Amigos de las Americas volunteers to create another world map on the outside wall of the school in El Crucero.  These four high school students/graduates have been living in Nicaragua for the past month, working with the youth in their community to create media projects.  In their spare time, they’ve been helping me draw and paint what is soon to be an amazing, huge world map. 

After months of practice, the high school softball team I’m am the assistant coach for finally had its first game.  What better way to start the season than at Nationals?  We were instructed to meet at the high school at 7:00 AM on Wednesday morning to arrive in Managua at 9:00.  I should have known that 7:00 Nica time really meant 8:30, which was when we hit the road.  Representing the department of Boaco, we played our first game that afternoon against the department of Carazo and won 17-4!  All of the softball teams stayed at IND (Instituto Nacional de Deportes) in dorm style rooms.  We had the bad luck of getting placed in the building without running water.  Solution?  Wake up at 3:00 AM when it was pitch black outside to bathe ourselves by filling and dumping bottles of water over our bodies from washbasins in the open air.  I first nixed the idea of getting up at 3 in the morning but after some raised eyebrows from the girls, I, too, stripped down in the dark to get clean before the construction workers started their day next door.  Talk about adapting to the situation…  Unfortunately on day two, we lost 2 consecutive games versus the departments of Chinandega and Rivas and were sent home.  Season record: 1-2.

Next week, my regular schedule will start up again which I’m looking forward to (although I wouldn’t have minded to have the lovely company and delicious food in NJ for a few more days).  I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the school gardens are still green and growing.  My women’s group just bought a sewing machine with the money we earned from selling our earrings and our next project is making shoulder bags and purses from fabric scraps and chip bags.  My next feat is to learn how to use a sewing machine with a foot pedal.  It’s not as easy as it looks.

Tomorrow is the party that my Nica friends organized to celebrate my 24^th birthday!

With the rain comes...

Scary flying ants.  I apologize for not updating in a long time but I was preoccupied killing the hundreds of flying ants that decided to invade my room after the first rain fall.  Okay, I guess I'm exaggerating a little bit by saying that I didn't have time to write.  The part about there being hundreds of flying ants is not an exaggeration.  After one hour of using about half a roll of toilet paper, large amounts of Baygon (the equivalent of Raid), and a few sturdy flip flops, I killed almost all of the buggers.  A dozen or so made a classy reappearance a couple weeks later but I think the situation is now under control.

Jillian!!  Jill came to visit the second week in May and it was so much fun.  She posted a lot of pictures if you want to take a look.  I took her to school with me on Wednesday and Thursday.  She helped paint the school map in Las Limas and got to play some baseball at recess.  She also got to speak a little Spanish during my lessons in El Crucero.  On the weekend, we took a trip to Granada where we went kayaking and zip-lining.  We stopped in Masaya on the way home to look at the crafts... I bought a mini hammock!  We couldn't have asked for better weather except for some rain on the bus ride home on Saturday which was, hands down, the most crowded bus I've been on so far in Nicaragua.  Sorry, Jill.  On Sunday, we experienced the "Hipico" which is also celebrated the Sunday before a town's patron saint's day (Teustepe's is May 22).  This basically entails lots of cowboys showing off their horses, mariachi bands, and fiestas.  Overall, a fantastic visit!!

         

                                                                          

     

More water (sometimes).  So now that the rainy season is just starting up, we've been getting more water during the day.  Hooray, showers!  (Unfortunately, Jillian didn't really experience this too much when she was here.)

School gardens and tree nurseries :)   All of you green thumbs out there know it's a little difficult to plant just about anything without access to water.  Now that it's been raining for at least 30 minutes about every other day, we've been able to transplant trees at the schools and have started the school gardens.  We're already seeing lots of green.  Each environmental Peace Corps volunteer received fencing, tools, and seeds from USAID so I decided to use these resources to work with the kids and parents of Las Limas.  The wonderful parents worked hard the other day to cut down huge posts and put a fence around a 12 x 12 meter space at the school where we'll be planting peppers, tomotoes, cucumber, and squash.  I really didn't think we'd be able to achieve a garden at this school because there is no water access and a ton of pigs, but I think the kids will soon with adding lots of veggies to their diet!

Bipolar weather.  It's great that things are starting to turn green again but the incredible heat in the morning that brings on the rain in the afternoon has made me realize just how much I am able to sweat.  Not pretty.

A sad farewell to the bridge.  You definitely are familiar with the log bridge I'd been crossing to take the short route to 3 of my schools.  My heart palpitations had finally stopped after about 2 months of getting used to crossing the bridge and my balance could now be compared to that of a pro gymnast.  I'm very, very sad to say that the river is growing and the wading is returning.  Take a look at the beautiful pictures below....

 

Things are continuing to go very well.  I received a training last week with a community member and other volunteers and counterparts on how to build  biodigestors and improved ovens... so cool.  I think we are going to build a demonstration oven at a local NGO who works with youth in the communities.  I'm still involved with softball and the games should begin on June 3.  My cousin, Danny, gave us t-shirts from his high school and the girls and me are really excited to be outfitted in Saint Anthony's gear for the game.  Thanks, Dan!

Gringas in Teustepe

April has been a great month so far mainly because it started off with Jeanine and Alison here.  They experienced my life in 1 1/2 days which I think was a little overkill but very necessary to get the whole Teustepenian feel.  It was incredible for them to be able to bring three full suitcases of school supplies to my schools (although it may not have seemed that way as we were walking for hours in the 100 degrees).  Thank you so so much to everyone who donated!!  They partook in making organic fertilizer for one school's garden, showed off their dancing skills with fifth graders, played baseball with a bat carved by a third grader, co-taught my English classes, drank a Toña, and took a few swings at my homemade piñata.  It was an extremely exhausting day and a half in my town, but it was wonderful to have them live my life with me here.

The days spent at the beach were very relaxing, filled with an abundance of watermelon, french fries, picture taking, pool swimming, and massages.  After driving through some unidentified smells with a cabbie from my town, we arrived at Montelimar, a beach resort outside of Managua, which was just what I needed after 7 months of cold showers.  Come back!!

The week after the visit was a pretty busy one.  On Tuesday, I gave a presentation to the delegates of 8 towns in the region of Boaco about my job as an environmental education volunteer.  Wednesday, I went to the city with a professor to buy all the materials to bring electricity to her one room school house.  (Thanks Al, for the awesome donation!  The light is already installed!)  Thursday was a fun-filled day of selling the earrings, bracelets, and flower vases I've been making with my women's group.  Although we didn't sell as much as expected, it was great to get the word out of what we've been doing for the past three months using recycled materials.

On Saturday, I helped another volunteer build an improved oven in her town.  I hope to get the funds to build one in my town in May.

This past week I was in Matagalpa, a region north of Boaco, for a three day training with other PC volunteers... the first two days were spent with our Nicaraguan counterparts.  It was at a beautiful nature reserve in the mountains called Selva Negra.  I then stayed in the city of Matagalpa for two nights where I indulged in delicious Italian food, wine, and iced coffee.... two things definitely not available in Boaco.  From Matagalpa, I went about 2 hours north to the city of Esteli which is known for it's cigars and cowboy boots.  

There are no classes this week because of Easter, but today I went to one of my schools to continue on the world map.  It's really coming along!!  From Thursday-Saturday, I'll be going to the Laguna de Apoyo in Masaya to swim and kayak with two other volunteers.  Other exciting news... I'll be coming home for a week in July!

amenities

Back in December while I was still living with my host family, I woke up a little after 5:00 one morning, really having to use the bathroom.  I couldn't hold it so I quickly slipped on my flip flops, grabbed my roll of toilet paper, and walked outside to the latrine.  All the while, I had the intention of jumping back in bed and falling back to sleep after peeing.  Well, instead of falling back to sleep after peeing, I ended up falling down the stairs of the latrine, ripping my pajama pants and gushing blood from both legs.  Within 6 seconds, my host mom (who was hanging up laundry) came scrambling over, squeezing my hands to make sure they weren't broken... obviously they weren't but the squeeze could have been the cause of a broken hand.  Within 5 minutes, the whole house was woken up to "Meghan fell!".  Within 10 minutes, all 10 member of the family had come into my room to see how I was doing as I cleaned out the cuts.  Notice that I didn't say, within minutes, I was back asleep.

So why tell this story?  My feeling towards that latrine got exponentially worse after this experience (piggy-backed onto the huge spider I already told you about) but ironically enough, I miss it.  Now that I'm in my new house, which I love, I wish we also had a latrine.  The regular bathroom is great, don't get me wrong.  But, when there isn't water for an entire day, it's a pain in the neck to "bucket flush" or even impossible when I haven't stored enough water.  So do I prefer the latrine over the toilet?  I'm going to take the leap and say, maybe.

This past week I went back to my training town to have 4 days of spanish class.  It was great staying with my old host family especially since now my language ability actually let me have decent conversations with them.  I forgot how uncomfortably hard my bed was, though, and think I have some bruises on my hip bones.  Most importantly, I learned how to correctly form a "would you rather" question which had been a huge concern of mine for months.  

I was going to spend the following weekend in Matagalpa but decided to return to site because I have a lot of planning to do for the upcoming week.  I stopped by the school on Friday to speak with the sixth grade teacher and she informed me I'd be introducing the reproductive system to the class of 35 students.  Funny how the week I return it just so happens that they're beginning this unit that will undoubtedly be extremely awkward as I try to pronounce, and teach, all the female body parts in spanish.  

I'm counting the days til my 7 month mark in Nicaragua because it's when I get to see family!!!  Hopefully the current water situation gets better by the time they come.  There's water from about 9:00 pm to 6:00 am which clearly is not the ideal time to do, well, anything requiring an abundance of water.. wash clothes, dishes, or bathe.