Training has officially begun!
I´m in my training town – Masatepe, Masaya, Nicaragua – finally! My host family is great… they treat me like one of their own kids. My brother is always helping me out with new vocabulary and teaching me the cultural ins+outs. My sister took me out to Laguna Apoya the other day and we hung out just the 2 of us chatting away. Funny story about that. I thought she was saying “Laguna a Pollo” (roughly The Lagoon chicken style). Let´s just say she laughed quite a bit. My mom also laughed when I asked her if the Pulperia sold pulpo (octopus) because a panaderia sells pan (bread) and a carniceria sells carne (meat) so why wouldn´t a pulperia sell pulpo. haha. No a pulperia is like a mini-mart. I´d never heard of the word before… but I´m glad that my family is having a good time laughing with me. I´ll never forget these two things now.
Training is… well.. tiring + it´s only begun. I have to be at our meeting place at 8am daily for 4 hours of Spanish class – straight Spanish the whole time. We do a little bit of everything – grammar, conversations, presentations, games, vocabulary, etc. It´s tiring. Then we go home for almuerzo (lunch) which is always rice + something without fault. Lots of carbs. Today I ate rice, potatoes, a platano (similar to a banana but tastes kind of like a baked potato), and for dessert cake. geeze. But I walk enough each day that I know I burn it off! Anyway, we get 1 hour for lunch even though it feels like 15 min and then we have to return to Spanish class for another 2 hours. This is the Spanish in action time. We went and met the police, the mayor, the teachers with whom we´ll be working, + the woman who is going to help us organize our youth group. We´ve also just ventured around town trying to get to know our surrounding + where everything is. Masatepe is a semi-large city so it´ll take a while for sure.
Then I go home + my family asks me all out my day + I speak even more Spanish! My whole family gathered around the other day when I took out my pictures of friends and family (I needed them for an activity in Spanish class). They wanted to know everything about everyone. Who they are, how I know them, what they do, + what we+´re doing in each of the pictures. Of course this led to an American tradition chat since one picture wasme and my friends decorating Easter eggs, another of me with the bridal party at Kari´s wedding, to name a few. And then it was so cute… the next night my host mom comes out to me in the living room as I´m designing a dinamico (activity) for my Spanish class the next day, with 2 large photo albums. She wanted to show me her pictures. So, of course I couldn´t say no and we spent about an hour talking about her family and the pictures she had in there. I felt like we bonded a little.
Needless to say, I speak A LOT of Spanish everyday. I´m even begining to think in Spanish when I´m by myself and I wouldn´t be surprised if I start dreaming in Spanish too. By the end of the day I´m exhausted… I go to bed around 10pm everyday to start up again.
I love it though, so far! I have no complaints. I can´t wait to start with our teacher counterparts teaching English + start up our youth group.
As for internet, well, I have to go to an internet cafe to get it. So my posts might be sporadic. I´ll try as often as I can though. It´s hard sometimes because the rainstorms (when I say rainstorm I mean torential downpour – the craziest rain I´ve ever seen in my life) knock out the internet + make it nearly impossible to get to a cafe even if I wanted to. I was drenched up to my waist the other day when I got stuck outside in one + I had an umbella! They´re not kidding about the rainy season here! wow…
That´s it for now… nos vemos! nos vidrimos as they like to say in Nicaragua.
