Fingernails and Frijoles

Nothing too exciting to report now, except that I have two packages waiting for me at the post office, one of which may contain a USB cable, which means I will soon be posting more photos. I am excited to share with you a piece that I like to call "Nails in Nicaragua" which showcases all of the awesome manicures and pedicures I have been given by my very talented host sister. Not sure if I have already mentioned it here but this week I am sporting dolphins on my fingers and a very valentine-y motif on the toes. I am feeling good these days. As I mentioned in the last blog entry the stress about site placement has subsided for the most part. I am no longer super concerned about where I go. I would be lying, though, if I said I was not at all nervous about being on my own. This last week I have been investigating about how to live here. I know that probably sounds weird considering that I have been here for almost seven weeks but really I have not been taking care of myself at all. I have my wonderful host family, who cooks all my meals, washes my clothes, collects water when we have none in the pipes, (which is 75% of the time), buys the groceries and pays all the bills. I have no idea how to make gallo pinto or tortillas or anything else that is, in my opinion, necessary to live here. I know a lot of people don{t think it is necessary to learn these things because you can buy cooked frijoles on the street but I kind of like the idea of doing as the Nicaraguans do and spending a Sunday cooking beans that I will eat all week. Routine and domesticity are very important to me, (much to the horror of my 23 year old self I am sure.) And I want to have a nice home life. Maybe I will feel differently later when I am super busy with all of my awesome community projects, but for now I am going to try to learn all I can about how the house runs. This Sunday my "Mom" (sorry Mom) is going to teach me how to cook frijoles and how to maintain them throughout the week. I am pretty excited. There is so much that goes into the process. It really gives me a whole perspective on things like convenience. This is probably extremely boring to anyone reading this but for some reason I find it really interesting. I guess because I have never really thought about these things. Like for example, you can{t cook the beans on the gas stove because it uses too much gas so you have to cook them outside on the outside stove or on a campfire. And that is just one part of the process. Who knew that making lunch could be so complicated? Well, that{s all for now. I will cease boring you all with tales of bean boiling.

¿Hombre de Piano?

So yesterday I was sitting in my livingroom studying and I heard one of my neighbors blasting "Piano Man" in Spanish. It was awesome. Some other notable songs in Spanish "Total Eclipse of The Heart," "Careless Whisper," and Beyonce's "Irreplacable." Today I was having lunch and I heard the classic Swayzee hit "She's Like The Wind." I know I've said it before and I am sure I will say it again but I love Nicaraguans' taste in music. I am also currently loving the Super Mario Brothers/Tetris tournaments that are taking place in my house. My little sister plays so much that I have dubbed her Super Maria. It is pretty crazy playing those old games the Mario music really brings up all kinds of memories. It is amazing how much of a part of my childhood that game was. Its funny too, I never imagined that Super Mario brothers would be a part of my daily life as a Peace Corps Trainee.
Speaking of training, it is moving right along. The last few sessions have actually been really helpful and focused on working with counterpart (my biggest fear) and lesson planning. The lesson planning stuff is always fun because you get to hear new ideas for lesson plans and activities. I am not really worried about that stuff because I am pretty creative when it comes to planning lessons and making up games but it is always good to learn more. The counterpart thing is what I thinkI am most worried about. I know I am a good teacher on my own, but group work and sharing responsibility has never been my strong point, although I think I have improved alot. With my partner in the youth group it has been great. I think we really compliment each other and I like working with her. But the whole working with someone I don't know who may have totally different ideas about teaching than I do is a little daunting. But que sera sera I guess. That is my new phiolosphy on things here. I was really stressed out about the whole site assignment thing for a few days but now I realize that it is a waste of my precious energy to even speculate about it. I believe that everything will work out how it is meant to work out and that I will love my site no matter what. But ask me again in two weeks.

Well, I haven't posted anything for a while because I was out of my training town for a few days last week vistiting another TEFL volunteer in his site. It was nice to have a break from training, but I was definitely happy to get back "home". The town I went to was very rural and about a nine hour journey by bus. It was four hours from the city of Matagalpa and that portion of the trip was hellatious (Is that a real word or just something my dad says?) It was super bumpy and I could actually feel my internal organs being jostled around. Not fun. On the up side, I can now say with certainty that I do not want to live out in the campo. Fortunately there are a few people who really want to live out in the boonies, so I am hoping that it will all work out. I had not really given much thought to where I want to be. I have been afraid to really research because I don't want to get my heart set on anything and then be disappointed, but after seeing this place I realized that it is going to be important for me to express my needs. For example, I need to live somewhere that I can purchase fruits and vegetables. I am starting to think I would prefer a city but I don't know. There are drawbacks to living in the city I think in terms of the job. Bigger schools mean bigger classes. Also it may be harder to connect to the community in a big city. I don't know. I just know that I don't want to be in the middle of nowhere. I am trying not to think about it too much because it is really out of my hands in a lot of ways. We have a general info session coming up this next weekend and then we will get more site specific in the next couple weeks. From what I hear, we get to give our top choices and also the places we definitely would not want to go. I have only heard one case of a person being placed in one of her bottom three, so I think they really try to work with us. Other than that, there hasn't been anything too exciting going on. We got to go to a volcano today and see the trainees in small business for the first time in six weeks and that was pretty cool. I really want to go to a beach. The two swimsuits I brought still have the tags on them. It is sad. I am missing Portland right now. It's Rose Festival and as much as I complain about it, I still like to go down to the waterfront every year and eat elephant ears. A snow cone sounds really good right now too. Anybody? But seriously, Portland is definitely best in the summer. I never actually realized how much state pride I have until I got here. I love my city. I was thumbing through the latest issue of Newsweek that Peace Corps gives us and there was a big picture of Elliot Smith and an article about posthumous record releases. For a minute I was back home reading the Mercury.
But Nicaragua is pretty rad too.
Well, I would love to post some more pictures but I left my USB cable at the internet cafe and I don't know where to buy one here so I think one is in the mail. More pictures soon I promise!