I'm living a little higher up on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs this week. I wasn't sure I would blog about the situation I was dealing with last week but I think that I should more for the good that has come out of it than the bad.
The quick version is that my 13-year old host sister broke into my locked room and took some things that were later returned after I brought it up with my host mom. Needless to say, I didn't feel comfortable staying there any longer so I spent a couple days in bureaucratic limbo with the Peace Corps before I was officially allowed to move in with three volunteers from Chile and Bolivia who live in town. I had to be approved to 1) be exempted from the rest of the 6- week family stay (I was just over halfway through) and 2) have my new place of residence ok'ed by the safety and security coordinator. Luckily that all came through by Friday, but it was a stressful couple of days when I was living out of my backpack hoping PC would approve everything so I could move all the rest of my things.
I take this as a case of a 13-year old with problems, not a factor of Nicaraguan culture or the fault of my host family or even Peace Corps for placing me there. My host mom, Martha, has continued to be incredibly wonderful by bringing me lunch and other random food and offering to lend me a bed and any other furniture I might need. I can easily say that now I'm much happier to be living within walking distance of school, with people my age, but I still have a good relationship with Martha and I'm meeting more locals here in town. I have a very unique living situation, but it will only last until December at the latest when my housemates are finished with their year-long service. However, there's a German volunteer coming next weekend who I hope will be cool and a potential housemate since he'll be here for a year.
Yesterday I attended my first TEPCE, I don't remember what it stands for, but every last Friday of the month all the teachers in the municipality get together by subject to plan lessons for the coming month. This gave me the opportunity to meet the English teachers from some of the surrounding communities that I have yet to visit. I received a very warm welcome from the five new teachers as well as the four I already knew and I have plans to visit two of the teachers at their schools next week.
Last week I was concentrating a lot on me and my situation so it was a change to go back to thinking about my work here. I'm only required to teach 15 classroom hours a week at the instituto so I'd like to start teaching community classes or pick up other projects. I've realized how unique this independence/open-endedness is to Peace Corps because my housemates pretty much work a regular 9 to 5 with NGOs, with work plans and the whole bit. My existence here is much more of my own making and since I haven't had an influx of people asking for English classes like many volunteers told us we would, I need to do some more legwork to find students and a facility. However, one of the teachers from the TEPCE asked if I would be willing to teach a weekend class in his community about 4 km away so that's at least a start.
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