My second class - April 17

On Wednesday, April 17th, I co-taught my second class. The Theme was Community Businesses and the Objective was to Identify the Characteristics of the Successful Businesses of the Community.

We had to co-plan the class with our counterpart. We had made plans to meet her at 9am at the school but by 945am she still had not shown up.  One of the other people at the school is relatives with her neighbor so he called his relative who went to her house and told her we were waiting. 20 minutes later she showed up. She said she had forgotten about our plans to meet, which is very likely since we made the plan over a week before. Regardless, we were able to plan with her and as a result, she was able to co-teach the Information section.

The PC has a format we are supposed to follow and we have been incorporating it into our lesson plans.
- Motivation
- Information
- Application / Practice

In the information section, she listed and described the 5 Factors to generate ideas
1. Local Resources
2. The things people like
3. Ways to improve the quality of life
4. Skills & Abilities
5. Interdepartmental Commerce

For the fun part (application/practice), we had then meet in small groups and each of them had 1 of the 5 Factors. Each group had to make a list of whatever part they were given. They had to highlight the things that were relevant to their region. To close the class we went over their lists and reinforced how an individual can use the 5 factors to improve their business or develop an idea.
Overall, the class objective was met and I think the students had fun!

I find out my permanent site on Thursday!

I find out my permanent site on Thursday!
We started Week 8 of training on Saturday and this Thursday we find out our permanent sites. Next week, I meet my counterpart during Counterpart Day (Monday) and then visit my future site for a few days. How exciting!!

PC Philosophy

PC Philosophy

Go in search of your People:
Love Them;
Learn from Them;
Plan with Them;
Serve Them;
Begin with what They have;
Build on what They know.

But of the best Leaders
When their task is
accomplished,
their work is done,
The People all remark:
“We have done this
Ourselves.”

Lao Tsu, China, 700 B.C.

My host mother's birthday!

Monday, April 22nd was my host mother's birthday. She celebrated by going into Managua for lunch with her sister-in-law and one of her daughters. One of her other daughters surprised her with a queque (cake)!

I live with an 18 month old and she decided to stick her hand in the cake before we lit a makeshift candle and sang their version of happy birthday. Each person received a piece of cake and a cup of Fanta orange soda. I felt honored to be able to share in her special day!

So Many Types of Mangoes

The other day one of my site mates brought mangoes from his backyard to class so we could try a different kind of mango. There are so many types. This one you soften by massaging the skin a bit then you take a small bite off the top and you squeeze the mango and it comes out the top like nectar juice. It was delicious and easy to eat. Hopefully he will bring them to class again before they are out of season.

My view walking home...

Typical Week

A few people have asked me what a typical week of training is like. Here is my best attempt at explaining a typical week here in Pio XII.

Typical Weekday- 
I wake up at 445am everyday with the roosters and try to fall back to sleep until my alarm goes off at 545am. 
I start waiting for the bathroom around 545 since I live with 9 people. Sometimes I get in at 6am and sometimes not until 715am. It depends how many people are waiting to shower and how long each person takes. I have to leave my house by 750 so sometimes I am cutting it very close. My breakfast usually consists of a piece of bread, which is not a slice but instead more like a roll. I also am served instant coffee with sugar. I love it! It reminds me of the taste of Nescafe. Delicious!
Three or four days a week we have Spanish language class from 8 until 12 and then again from 1 to 3. Six hours of Spanish language multiple times per week. I take classes with 3 other aspirantes that live in Pio XII with me. We go to one of the aspirantes house. For the first few weeks, it was at my house. Now we are in the center of town at another aspirantes house.
Usually we have a volunteer visitor once a week to go over something from the curriculum of the entrepreneurship class we are here to teach. We use some of our Spanish language class time to go over it.
We also co-plan and co-teach once a week. Our co-planning sessions last a little over an hour and my class lasts 45 minutes.
We have a youth group that we meet with once or twice a week for 2 hours each time. We have to plan for these meetings because each one has a particular theme. We give them charlas (talks) about different things such as self-esteem. We are working on making a new product that we will bring to a Peace Corps competition. We have picked out product and I will share the details after the competition (mid-May). 
We usually have two full days of charlas from the Peace Corps staff. They have been specific to our work here and also generic ones from DC. Some examples are: Roles of the Volunteer in Development, Youth as a Resource, Classroom Management and Malaria & Dengue. The majority of them are interesting but sometimes it is hard to sit through 6 or 7 hours of talks.
At 7pm my family watches El Man es Germán, a show out of Colombia. It is on every weekday and the younger members of my family (7 and 12 years old) LOVE the show. Everything stops when it is on, even Uno. I have played about 300 rounds of Uno during the past 6 months. The 7 year old I live with LOVES Uno! Typically, he cannot get enough unless his show is on. Usually we eat dinner during the show. Afterwards, two episodes of The Simpsons in Spanish are on and we usually watch that too. 

Weekends
For the first month, we had charlas on Saturdays also but recently we have been having the weekends free. We try to do something as a large group once per weekend. Two weekends ago 12 of the 15 of us went to a place nearby for karaoke. And this weekend, 9 of us went to the Laguna de Apoyo.
We usually have something we need to catch up on during the weekend too. One Saturday we co-planned with our high school teacher and this past Sunday we met with our youth group. There is only so much time so we have to fit in the required activities whenever we can.
Sunday nights my family and I typically watch a movie. I do not think copyright rules apply here. You can buy a bootleg DVD here for 25 cordobas, or $1, and most discs have at least 2 movies. I have watched a bunch of horror movies, The Impossible, Flight, and a few others. Sometimes they are dubbed in Spanish and sometimes they have Spanish captions. I am trying to learn more Spanish by watching the movies. There are also movies on most evenings on the few channels we get. The other day we watched How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. My host sisters loved the movie!


Overall, we are kept very busy. People go to bed pretty early here. The sun goes down around 620pm and by 9pm half the town is sleeping. My host family goes to bed later than most, around 1030 or 11pm. Luckily, I live with a bunch of night owls.

Rice and Beans

Usually for dinner and sometimes for breakfast, I am served gallo pinto, which is fried rice and beans.
For lunch the two are usually separated out. And in my house, I am fortunate enough to get a lot of scrambled and fried eggs. I took a picture of this lunch because not only is it pretty typical overall but it also included fried sweet plantains (maduros), which I do not get that often.  Some other typical additions instead of egg and/or maduros are avocado (currently in season), cabbage and tomato salad, lettuce and cucumber salad, or boiled banana.  

My first class - April 3 - La Creatividad

On April 3rd, I taught my first class. The theme was La Creatividad (Creativity). I taught the equivalent of 11th graders. They are a loud bunch and there are a lot of them, over 30.  Luckily in our school class sizes are relatively small. In some cities, classes are 70 students or more. We had co-planned with our counterpart, a teacher of OTV. She is currently teaching Medio Ambiente (Environment) so we just show up with our Emprededurismo class (Entrepreneurship) and teach. The teacher and her students are great sports about letting us practice. Classes in Nicaragua typically consist of definitions that the teachers dictate and the students write down verbatim. Classes are not very interactive and the course we are here to teach encourages active participation and group work. 

I started the class with What is Creativity? to encourage the students to think outside of the typical answers of arts and crafts.  I then continued into why it is important in business.  The lesson included an explanation of the Osborne Model, which is a way to improve ideas that already exist. We used the example of a microbus and then they used the example of a bicycle in small groups.

Overall, it was a success. I was very nervous about teaching in front of 30 students for 45 minutes in Spanish but they achieved the objective and I think had fun in the process. 

I had my site mate takes some pictures...

El Mirador de Nandasmo

For our last class, we took our LCF (language cultural facilitator) out to the Mirador de Nandasmo. Like the other Mirador, we had to pay to get in and it was really like we paid to enter a restaurant. The view was pretty and we practically had the place to ourselves. We sat on the second floor and there was a strong breeze and it was actually not that hot.
We practiced for our upcoming language interview with this Candy Land-like board game with questions the interviewer might ask us. We spoke about our college experiences, first boyfriends, things we like and do not like, and some other similar questions. It was an interesting way to learn a little more about each other.
The ride home was an adventure. It difficult to get to the Mirador. It is near nothing and at the end of the dirt road. We got the number of the guy who drove us on his mototaxi and we tried to call him but he was about 30 minutes away. So we decided to wait for this guy who said he just had to drop off someone close by and then he would return. He returned quickly and all five of us climbed into his tiny mototaxi.  On the way, he ran out of gas. We had to hail down another moto and ask for their reserve, which is a water bottle half filled with gas. Then a few feet later, he told us we had to get out of the moto because he does not have a license and their was a police checkpoint further down the road. We then got onto another moto who took us a roundabout route on a dirt path because he also did not have a license. Ultimately, he dropped us off at the elementary school in our town because he wanted to pick up more clients. In the end, it worked out but we all said to each other, Only in Nicaragua!