Junine you better leave me comments that make me raff out roud.
The city of Granada itself is nice and seems rather laid back. Ive learned to navigate from the house to the grocery store and internet cafe at least already. I went to the Cathedral in the center of town today for Easter Mass. Despite not understanding hardly a word from the priest I could follow along with the mass pretty well as it is the same all over the world. Two noticeable differences though that might speak to the overall idea that Granada and Nicaragua are a little more laid back than the states: the greeting one another with ¨peace be with you¨ part seemed to last about 3 times as long as usual because everyone made sure to shake everybodys hand in the surrounding quarter mile and seemed quite happy to do so. Next, instead of processing in a regimented orderly fashion to receive Communion, everybody walked in an ad hoc mad dash to the altar. All in all, it was an interesting experience.
Tomorrow the schools are still closed due to the Easter holiday but the new volunteers have our orientation. Im sure tomorrow will be just as interesting as this weekend. Hasta luego
Two main languages are spoken here: Spanish and car horn honking. The latter is used to express anything and everything by car drivers, though the reasons for doing so remain unclear to this writer. As for the former, being immersed in a Spanish speaking environment has already helped me improve my speaking skills and will undoubtedly continue to do so.
Yesterday, all of the new volunteers (there are about 7) went with our taxista Felipe and saw all 6 of the schools that La Esperanza serves in rural Granada. I have been placed in La Epifania, a primary school serving kindergarten through 5th grade. Its a short walk followed by a 10 minute bus ride away and was quite the adventure for my first day. More on that in the next post! Ciao!
Already I feel like I have a ton of stuff to write about, but for now I'll mention just a few universal truths for living in Nicaragua that I've picked up already.1. Everything is ridiculously cheap.2. All the food is ridiculously delicious.3. Absolutely nothing starts on time.
As for 1 and 2, they are closely related, as one can get a filling and tasty dinner here for consistently less than 2 dollars (which perhaps enhances the taste).And for number 3, we call that Nica time, meaning, for example, our one o clock bus from Rivas to Granada today arrived at the bus station at 1:10 or so and left at 1:45. Its not a bad thing, just something to get used to.
Much more in the days and weeks to come. Thanks for reading everybody!
peace
Then, our ayudante, a college student named Vanessa who pays for her education by working with our program, walks us over a few blocks to her house where her mother cooks all the volunteers a delicious lunch. As always, the staples are rice and beans, the cabbage based concoction that they call salad and then a surprise, potatoes or eggs, that changes from day to day.
At one o´clock, the volunteers split up and either go into the houses in the community and read and play with the kids or do deportes, or sports. I do sports every afternoon, spefically basketball Monday and Wednesday and baseball Tuesday and Thursday. The kids are too crazed on Friday morning to be expected to do anything in the afternoon, so we don´t do anything then and our week work ends at noon on Friday. We have a baseball game today against Juan Diego, another one of the schools we work with, and La Epifania Tiburones (Sharks) are set to crush the other guys. Or at least complete a few innings.
I guess that´s it for the logistics and I´ll save my impressions of the educational system and my experience so far for another post.
From what I have heard, those families with even a small amount of wealth will do whatever they can to send their kids to a private school. Those who cannot go to puclic school where only 30% of Nicaraguan students complete elementary school. Our program works in 6 public schools in a rural area making some families´ situations even worse. But that is why we are there. When we arrive each morning and ask our respective teachers who we can work with for the next half hour or so all the kids in class scream and beg to work with the gringo ¨Profe¨s. The kids want to learn, they are just hindered by their school and its administrators. For example, on Tuesday, school ended at 10 a.m. because teachers came from a number of surrouding school to, drumroll please, plan mother´s day festivities! It was april 13th, mother´s day is may 13th and they cancelled school for half the day to plan what the kids might do that day a month in advance. Not to take away from mother´s day but that seems a bit excessive.
Anyway, the kids are awesome for the most part. A few bad additudes here and there, but that happens everywhere. More later about the futbol league that we are trying to start!Peace!
Staying in Granda this weekend, although we might go hike the nearby Volcano tomorrow. I´ll let you know
On Friday morning we took a bus to Rivas, quick taxi to the port at San Jorge and then about an hour long ferry ride to Moyogalpa, the port town on the island of Ometepe. There is not much to see in the town itself so we took a bus to Playa Santo Domingo, the best beach on the island. The bus ride itself might merit its own post given the lack of paved road, the excess of people on board and the torrential downpour outside that combined to make me question what shape we´d arrive at our hostel in. Alas, we did arrive safely albeit soaking wet. We stayed the next two nights there in the Buena Vista hostel. During the days we went to the beach and a really cool water hole called Ojo de Agua. NExt we took a ¨taxi¨, that is a local guy with a pick up that could fit all 9 of us in the cab or in the back, for 3 dollars across the island to Merida. There we found a hostel that offered kayaking and buffets for dinner and breakfast. We took them up on all three services.
After breakfast the next morning, we embarked on the 6 hours or so of travel back to Granada, perhaps begrudgingly so. In Ometepe, the atmosphere was calm and slow, a stark contrast to the hectic pace here in Granada. I loved the beachy and relaxed setting there; it was closer to what I had imagined Nicaragua to be like before I arrived here. Despite that, being back in Granada is nice and a 3 day week at school is nothing to complain about. As an interesting aside, tomorrow marks the half way point in my stay. Time sure has flown.