Face Five!!

I´ve decided that my blog needs a point system, so 10 points if you get the Scrubs reference in the title. Keep track of your points and I´ll bring a hammock or something for whoever has the highest total when I come back to the States. I pulled out my Scrubs collection last week for the first time and I´m still reeling from the pure happiness it brings me.

In case you don´t get the reference, a Face Five is a Slap In The Face and I feel a little like that for a variety of reasons. The biggest one right now is that the woman who has been directing our program just resigned. This is difficult to swallow because we just started our service and I felt comfortable coming to her with any problems I might encounter, but now that´s up in the air. We do have other staff support from Peace Corps, but it´s not the same really.

Today I´m gonna start teaching!! This morning I coplanned with Teacher #1, he´s been teaching for 9 years and has notebooks filled with lesson plans so it wasn´t too hard to figure things out. I´ve already been thrust full-throttle into office politics, Nicaraguan-style here at my school. Nothing super negative, but there are natural alliances formed among the staff and teachers that are very politically driven at times. For example, the Ministry of Education (MINED) delegate for the area wants the teachers to sing/teach the students a hymn about President Ortega (or something like that, it´s not the national anthem I know that) and the director is supporting her on this despite many teachers being against it because they belong to different political parties. I´m trying to figure out the best way to navigate the social waters of the school, but for now I´m everyone´s friend because I don´t know anyone anyway.

Last week I meet a group of two Chileans, a Bolivian, and a German who are working in the area and with whom I will hopefully live for a couple months come September. Other than that, I still feel pretty disconnected from my site itself by living so far away so I´m hoping they can introduce me to some people, nonprofits, anyone really.

Peace Corps is trying really hard to cut costs right now and will soon be canceling their massive subscription to Newsweek, so my request to my general public today is for any of you news junkies to send me interesting articles about anything really. I used to read a ton of news in DC so now I need a new outlet. I know some of you still spend half of your days at work reading the Post, help me out here.