One Twenty-Seventh of the Way Through!

As of Saturday I've been in Nicaragua for one month! I'm both amazed that it's already been a month and yet feel like it's been much longer. Now that my volunteer visit is over, I think the rest of training really will go quickly. In two weeks I'll get my site assignment (!!!) and then spend a week there getting to know people before returning for 2 more weeks of training and then we spend a few days in Managua before swearing in and being sent off on our own. Wowza!!

Anyhoo, I spent Sunday through Wednesday in a medium-sized city in the department (aka State) of Granada with a TEFL volunteer who's been here now for a little over a year. We ran around the countryside a little bit, visiting Masaya and the nearby Laguna de Apoyo with a group of trainees/volunteers on Sunday and then ran some errands and checked out Granada on Monday afternoon because classes were having exams that afternoon or were just canceled.

But mostly we talked a lot about life as a volunteer and what she's been doing this past year. It was really helpful to get an unedited and unsupervised perspective on everything and meeting up with the other volunteers meant I got more than one perspective on a few things. But no two volunteers have the same experience so I am now even more anxiously awaiting the second interview about site assignments and trying to decide what my preferences are for what kind of place I'd like to live and work in for the next two years. Some photos:

Here's Kristel and her dog Tye. It's hard to tell in this picture, but Tye's a tripod dog! He was rescued off the streets of Granada by an American vet and rehabilitated.

The Laguna:

and here are some shots of Granada:

We also had two work days last week with the youth group and have made some amazing progress, almost none of which is thanks to my machete-wielding skillz. Both times we brought a small contingent from El Rosario and were joined by some hard working guys from San Isidro (the barrio where the “park” is located) who came in with their machetes and cleared out more than twice what our group could accomplish. In our defense, I think they gave us the dull machetes so we wouldn't hurt ourselves because those suckers hardly did a thing! Anyway, it was good bonding time and also excellent exercise.

Our environment (medio ambiente) discussion with the youth group:

Here are some work shots:

And some not working shots: