A Very Peace Corps Week

I say I had a very Peace Corps week because it was literally a rollercoaster of emotions and frustrations that I think is particular to Peace Corps work not only in Nicaragua but probably all over the world. Saturday I came back from the summer camp tired and drained of all energy, and also sad after such a fun week. Sunday I woke up still sad, but picked myself up and prepared for what I knew would be a good amount of work to do my second teacher workshop on Thursday the 28th.

Monday rolled around and my first point of order was to secure the manuals I needed. In all the madness of the past week I had forgotten one key step: check with the embassy to make sure they could bring down the manuals & do their program presentation that they require if you receive manuals from them. Cool. No problem. Except that when I finally was put in touch with the right lady I found out that any day would work except for Thursday.

That hurt. I briefly entertained the idea of Wednesday (because Friday was already out of the question) but realized that it would be nearly impossible. So then I thought of moving it to next week, but school would be in session & it’s hard to get teachers out of class. Then I called my boss at Peace Corps and she was able to scrounge up some manuals for me. Score. After all that I had a 3pm appointment to finalize details with the head honcho lady of education, except she had already left when I arrived which forced me to call her which I hate doing because I never understand people well on the phone. With a little difficulty I got things straightened out & the rollercoaster stopped for the day.

Tuesday was a good day, I went to Managua & called to invite all the teachers, talked to my contacts in the other two municipalities to make sure their teachers knew, made copies of the handouts, and was back in San Rafael in time for a meeting with some health folks who are thiiiiiis close to turning in the funding application we’ve been working on for way too long. Again I’ll say it: good day.

Wednesday was going fine until I went by my landlord’s place where she lives with her cousin, Linda. Some of my readers have met these two and thankfully they’ve always been in a good mood, but this day Linda was all worked up over something from the moment I arrived and to keep this short, she started yelling about something to do with my house which I didn’t appreciate since she’s not even the landlord and I ended up leaving because I was already stressed out as it was and she wouldn’t calm down. My landlord did call later and we got things kinda straightened out, but that was it for Wednesday. Bad day.

So Thursday arrived, and I was hoping the pattern would hold: Monday was bad, Tuesday was good, Wednesday was bad so Thursday = good?? Well, my day started when I was woken up before 5am to a marching band and the welcome ceremony for a brigade of Cuban doctors who were in town. It’s been awhile since I’ve been woken up so early by a marching band, but it does happen.

In describing the workshop to a friend back home, I gave it a B. I had good turnout, I expected a maximum of 25 teachers and I had 19 from all three municipalities I’d been working with. I give it a B because some of the subject material (writing unit plans, creating evaluation techniques and writing associated rubrics) was kinda tough for my audience to grasp in the short time we had. Although the evaluations were all positive, I know some of them walked out of there going “whaaaaaa??”

My counterpart, Axel, lead a couple games including hot potato (which here is called “cabbage”):



My more or less sitemate, Joe, helping one of the groups during his presentation on lesson planning:


Now I intend to take a couple days to truly rest before classes start anew on Tuesday. And have I mentioned that I have less than 6 months left?? Absolutely ridiculous if you ask me.