The weekend

The weekend is finally here and Holly is staying with me for a couple of days. She gets along really well with my family and I think that with both of us there it´s a lot easier to communicate. I´ve been kind of sick for a few days but I´m pretty sure I´m on the upswing. Yesterday my temperature was 38.5 degrees celcius but I have no idea what that is in Farenheit. I felt pretty bad but today my fever is gone and the PC medical office is taking really good care of me. It´s nice to finally have health care.

A couple of other trainees are visiting from surrounding pueblitos and I think we might get to eat some pizza :). Some nasty American food is just what I need right now to speed a full recovery. Seriously. I´m not sure exactly what made me sick, but I have my suspicions. I´ve been drinking purified water but sometimes my host mom gives me refrescos with ice that might not be purified. I went with my host brother to buy some cheese from someone´s house, but just through the grate at the front door. He slipped her 50 cords and she went into another room and came back with a bag of queso. I´m not usually one to point fingers but eating that cheese could have made me sick. I think eventually my stomach will get used to new foods and beverages but this first week has been kind of tough. On the other hand, Holly hasn´t had any problems adjusting to the food. She really seems to like Nicaraguan cuisine and it makes me a little jealous.

Once again I´m running out of time at the cyber so I should go.

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Correction

I said that my room isn´t really that loud. That´s a lie. It´s pretty loud sometimes. There´s a mechanic that works right across the street from my room and I think sometimes at like 4 in the morning someone comes and knocks on his giant metal door but he has to get out of bed and go open the door so the person knocks for like 3 minutes. That definitely wakes me up.

One of the most popular forms of advertising here is for a guy with HUGE speakers mounted on the roof of his car to drive around blaring some message (churches use it a lot and apparently they announce funerals that way, too). I do feel sort of lucky, though, because I don´t have any roosters in close proximity and my neighbors might be too old to have a strong affinity for the apparently very popular reggaeton. It will be interesting to see how much I´ve gotten accustomed to in a year or two. Va pue. My time is almost up. Nos vemos.

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My new family

We finally left the hotel in Managua and made it to our host sites. I´m in a pretty big city and so far the only thing that´s been difficult has been the language. My family is really cool and my host niece is really cool and helps me learn a little bit faster. So far I´ve only had one class (I start for real tomorrow) so not too much can be expected. My teacher is great and I think (I hope) I´ll be ok within a couple of weeks.

My bedroom is right up against the street, but it´s really not that loud. Besides, I´ve been so exhausted straining to communicate that I´ve been exhausted. One thing that surprises me a little bit is that American pop culture is everywhere. The TV channels are about 50% English and there are just little signs all over the place. I really like it here... Holly is about 20 minutes away by bus (so I´ve heard) but we haven´t seen each other yet. She´s farther out in the countryside and her town is a lot smaller so it will be really cool that we get both perspectives. I just talked to her on the phone and it sounds like her family is really great, too.

All right... I only have 6 minutes left at the cyber. Hasta luego.

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We made it :)

I just wanted to make a quick post to let everyone know that we made it to Nicaragua and we are spending a few more days of orientation before we head to our host families this weekend. I´m definitely feeling tons of emotions all at once... excitement, anxiety, enthusiasm, and a whole lot more that I can´t even identify, but I think mostly we´re just happy to be here.

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Packing/Staging in DC

It feels like it took forever to get our house emptied and to get our stuff packed but it finally happened and we're in DC without forgetting too many important things.

We spent a while getting all of our stuff together and packed up. Here's what all of Holly's stuff looked like:

And all of that became this:

My junk looked like this:

We left Springfield at 7:30 this morning and made it to DC in two pieces. So far staging has been really great--everyone in our group is nice and normal all of things that one would hope. The Nicaraguan ambassador to the US came to answer a few questions and he was really awesome and informative. We actually leave for Managua on Wednesday morning, and we hope we'll have another good update then.

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