Huertos, chivalos, and usted

Week two of training is complete and I can say that we successfully planted a garden (huerto) at our school with eleven 6th graders and two mothers. This is no small feat considering the space we had to work with and a few challenges along the way. But the first visible accomplishment has been checked off our list and now we learn from this experience to take on to our site.

Everything we are doing in training is a miniproject of what we will be doing at our sites. Instead of working with four volunteers and a Peace Corps staff member to build a garden, we will facilitate everything with our own classes once in our town. Instead of conducting a group survey about environmental issues, we will individually use surveys to get to know the needs of our town. And instead of language classes and integration assignments, we will be forced to hit the streets in our future home and get to know people on our own. That thought is a bit daunting right now, but as training is intense and worthwhile I think we will be as best prepared for our individual experiences as possible.

Chivalos is a slang term for kids here. Ive heard it a lot in the past few days as Im trying to pick up on more slang terms every day. There are lots! I thought Chilean Spanish was hard, but I realize that though the vocabulary there was radically different, it was relatively small. Here there are many things that are different from what I have learned so it will take some time in order to pick up on everything. Im already better at using "usted" which is a formal way to say you. Its taken some time, but Im finally becoming accustomed to referring to people as usted. I am definitely excited to see where my Spanish will be in two years after I have spent so much time here.

Its hard to believe that two weeks ago I arrived at my host family. We just completed two weeks of training which feels like the time flew by. Already I feel as though Ive been here for a while, and yet I dont know where this week went! This will only continue as this week we are co-planning with our teachers and then teaching the following week. Scary! I observed classes this week and found that the teacher Im working with is very engaging to her students, but the methods of all Nica teachers is to dictate from a textbook while the students copy paragraphs of information. We have manuals of hundreds of pages of ideas so here goes nothing in terms of learning some different teaching methods. I have a few on the top of my head, but we will see what else I learn about.

Each day is hot, long, and exhausting, but overall things are going very well. We have heard that Peace Corps Nicaragua is one of the best countries to be in, but Im actually starting to believe that the staff here make that true. The Peace Corps really is one big family. Here comes week three!

Note: I apologize for a lack of punctuation as Im still trying to figure out the Nicaraguan keyboard. :)