Después de un gustazo, un trancazo

Queridos amigos,

What's up guys! I'm getting pretty close to completing 4 months in site, 7 months in Nicaragua. It feels weird I've been here that long - the time has flown by! I'm exactly where I want to be, and although the Peace Corps rollercoaster has me projected to hit a low part about 6 months in (which has been true to a certain extent), I'm happy with my site, family, job and everything. Life's good, friends.

December and January were jam-packed with activities, most of which I shared with you on the last post, but I have to admit I left some stuff out for the sake of time.

For example, Selva Negra! This is a hotel in the mountains of the department of Matagalpa, just outside of the capital city, Matagalpa. (Refresher that the department capitals are usually the same name as their department).

We were there for an in-service training, IST, in January, and it was the first and only time during our service that our entire Nica 62 TEFL group got together with the TEFL volunteers from Nica 60 who have been here for over a year. It was a great opportunity to reflect on our experience together, as well as get suggestions and pick the brains of the volunteers who have been here for a while.

The three-day trip included charlas (lessons), team-building exercises, games, bonfires, s'mores, and a hike around the property. 

The hotel doubles as a coffee farm, and one of the employees was happy to give us a tour. An interesting fact we learned from the tour was that all of the coffee and food they serve at the hotel comes directly from the farm, making it completely sustainable. They have cows, pigs, goats and chickens, and a boat-load of coffee. Delicious coffee, might I add. It was a welcomed change from the instant coffee that dominates our regular diet.

The best/funniest part of the trip was the weather. I think the high was a whopping 62 degrees Fahrenheit. COLD! I know most of you (the Ohioans at least) are braving one of the coldest winters in a long time, and 62 degrees would feel like summer. I'm usually in the same boat, but honestly coming from Chinandega, the hottest city in all of Nicaragua where you're lucky if it drops below 90 degrees, my body was not prepared. I wore long sleeves and jeans the entire time haha. 

The week before we started school in February, my counterpart, Henry, and his family took me to Granada, one of the oldest and most popular cities in the country. It is an extremely popular tourist destination. I saw gringos everywhere. I ate a huge, american breakfast with scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and sausage at a restaurant owned by a guy from Colorado with NFL memorabilia hanging on the walls, while watching Fox News in English. It was a nice little taste of home (literally). 

We walked to the coast of lake Nicaragua, visited a historical museum with indigenous artifacts and an entire exhibit dedicated to the construction of the cathedral, and took a horse and buggy tour of the city! It was fun to play tourist for a change. 

A couple of teachers from the Fundación Uno course here in Chinandega, Raul and Jenny, organized a three-week English course for 20 primary school students in the area. They asked me if I was interested in helping, and I co-taught four classes with them. 

Nicaraguan public school students don't receive formal English classes until they reach high school, which is 7th grade here. To me it's a shame, because you aren't able to take advantage of the energy and enthusiasm kids have for learning another language when they're in elementary school. By the time they reach high school, they're "too cool for school" in a way, and either don't want to learn English, or feel embarrassed to practice speaking it because of how different the pronunciation is. 

There is a pretty interesting parallel for me between Nicaragua and the US. I remember taking Spanish for the first time in 7th grade, and being taught how to roll our "R's" and speak with the spicy Spanish accent.  We all sounded goofy trying to pronounce words in Spanish, and many of my classmates didn't even try, instead butchering the pronunciation with an American accent: Gracias = Grassy-is. However, I always loved Spanish, and wanted to pronounce the words correctly. But for a 12 year-old in 7th grade, it was not cool to look like the teacher's pet and correctly speak with a Spanish accent. I would get teased for trying. 

The SAME thing goes on here in Nicaragua. The "cool" students don't care about speaking English, and they make fun of the other students who try. Thus, it kills their confidence and they end up saying "screw it, it's too hard." Which, to give them credit, it is hard. There are only five different vowel sounds in Spanish. There are over 20 different vowel sounds in American English. Words like "black," "olive," "ugly," and "eye" all use vowel sounds that don't exist in Spanish.

So why the digression? Because I believe it is vital to reach the students in the primary schools and begin teaching them English before they develop the "pena" (directly translated to "shame," but it's more like "embarrassment"), or become "too cool" to learn the language when they get to high school. 

The class was geared towards 6th grade students, all of which were about to start freshman year of high school at the instituto I teach at, called INMAOG. The course was very successful, and the students learned introductory material such as the alphabet, colors, numbers, greetings, and basic sentence structure. 

We had a graduation ceremony on the last day of class, and afterward I talked to the representative from the Ministry of Education (pictured above) about possibly continuing the course during the school year. She agreed and has been working on getting the next wave of students signed up. We will teach the class for two hours once a week, every Wednesday for 10 weeks. After the course finishes, we plan on evaluating how it went before deciding to continue or not. I'm really excited; the course starts next Wednesday. 

In the meantime I've been teaching 16 hours a week at INMAOG with my three awesome counterparts,  keeping up with Fundación Uno, and organizing a couple community classes. It's good that I'm keeping myself busy, but I have to make sure I don't overwhelm myself. Everyone and their mom wants to learn English here, and it's tough to have to keep telling people I'm too busy to give them private English lessons (you would not believe how many people ask me that on a regular basis).

With my counterpart, McDonald. 

I've been getting settled into my routine, and I think after about another month of the same schedule, I'll have a better handle on things. It was tough at first, coming off of a two-month vacation and going straight into teaching full time. A common Nicaraguan saying in Spanish is: "Después de un gustazo, un trancazo" which means after you've had your fun, it's time to get back to work. That's never been more appropriate than right now. Back to work!

Love and miss you guys,

Z