Viva Nicaragua!

Journal Entry - Nico

Friday, May 29th

Today was a very active day. First, we got together in Doña Edita’s house and divided the team in two groups. One group went to spend time at a mini party that the elders of San Ramón had in “La Casa del Niño” or The Children’s house. The other group, which I was a part of, went to help with the English class in Eric’s house. I think this class is mainly for students between 16 to 25 years-old. I was amazed by a few of the students who were able to speak English so well. Wendy, a student who had gone to visit Vermont with Beth and other Nicaraguan students in January and February, and I held a 15 to 20 minute conversation and I was very surprised by her English skills. She is very shy so I had never seen her English knowledge and comprehension. After the class we got on the bus to go Matagalpa. On our way there I talked to Beth about Wendy and how good it would be if she could be sponsored by an organization to send her to study in the United States. Beth told me that she was already working on that because she also knew that she appeared to be very interested in learning English. I was very happy to hear that because I believe she really deserves that opportunity. Wendy lives only with her grandmother, her mom works in Costa Rica and, like many kids here, she does not mention her dad at any time. I hope she gets that opportunity in the future. 

Anyways, when we got in Matagalpa, we had lunch in Don Chaco’s Café. I had a steak with Jalapeño sauce and a water shake of orange, pineapple, and celery. It might sound disgusting because of the celery, but believe, it was awesome. After lunch, the team had time to go shopping and buy some gifts for our host mothers for mother’s day. After I got a present to my host mother, I went to buy my bust ticket from Managua to Panama. Now I am all set to go to my beloved homeland in just a week. After the shopping hour, we went to La Chispa Library to keep working in the Library ID project and organize the books and board games there. I stayed on the second floor with Morgan, Maria and Ben and worked on some puzzles that had some missing pieces. We also worked organizing the board games according to the age and we did the same with the books. 

Around 4:30 p.m. we headed back to San Ramón. I spent some time in the Internet and had dinner with my family as well. At 7:00 Elvis and his friend Eleazar showed the team how to make seed jewelry. After the jewelry workshop, I went back to my house and went to bed. We are leaving the town of San Ramon in two days and I feel that there is much more to do here. I think the trip has been great. I am very sure everybody on the team has learned something. It is incredible to see how local people have very little but they are still happy. They do not complain, they just keep working harder to improve their living standards. The environment we lived with the host families is very warm and everybody is very friendly. I am just glad I was able to come to this trip and learn about this culture.

Journal Entry - Ben

Today, May 28th, turned out to be a pretty long day for me, but a fun day nonetheless.  I should start by mentioning that it was Dawn´s birthday, and we were all very happy to help her celebrate.  After another big breakfast this morning that my family made for me, the group met at 8am to return to La Chispa library.  There we would be continuing work on our several projects that we had started since first arriving.  Some of us made more ID cards for the kids, some worked upstairs sorting out the puzzles and games, and I found myself working with Mario, Matt, and Eric, to develop a cirriculum for an English class.  When I was in my middle school English class studying proper sentence structure using past tense verbs, I never would have thought that at 18 years old I would be thinking of effective methods of teaching that same material to Spanish speaking students just a couple years younger than me.l 
Formulating and finalizing the cirriculum with our small group took us right to 3:30 in the afternoon when, instead of returning to San Ramon with the team, the four of us took a taxi into the heart of Matagalpa.  Mario, Matt, and I would be accompanying Eric to the weekly English class he teaches at the University, UNAN.  Every English class we have been to so far has been full of students who are all eager to learn, and this class was no different.  It was an amazing experience working with students my age who have worked so hard to get to the level of English speaking they are currently at.  They truly appreciated us taking the time to speak with them in class and nothing makes me feel better than helping someone else.  Class ended at 5:15 but we didn´t leave until 6:00 after talking about how different our ways of life are and exchanging email addresses.
The four of us arrived back in San Ramon at around 6:40 and already, people were headed over to Dawn´s house for her birthday party.  Dawn´s homestay mother threw her a great party and showed all of the guests the same hospitality we have all come to know so well.  So, after workin gup a sweat on the dance floor, I headed to bed very tired. 

Journal Entry - Breandan

Today, May 27th, was a nice slow day in San Ramon.  In the morning, Mario, Matt, Mercedes and I went to El Instituto, which is the local high school, to help with the English classes.  We went to the first, second, and third year English classes.  They were working on learning numbers up to 75.  The teacher decided we would play bingo with the children.  We all drew out our own bingo cards and cut out little pieces of paper for chips.  The professor had us four take turns calling out the numbers and then, if we had enough time for another game, the professor picked one of the students to call out the numbers.  The kids had a lot of fun.  In the afternoon, Ben and I attended Maykeli´s Spanish class, she is in her fifth year of secondary school which is the equivilant of a senior in high school in the USA.  It was interesting to watch the class dynamic.  There were about 40 students for one teacher.  We finished the day with a group meeting and dinner prepared by Dona Nelly.  We had nacatamales, a traditional Nicaraguan dish.  It is made with corn meal, potatoes, rice, tomatoes, onions, chicken, and a few other ingredients.  It was really good.  We were allowed to invite one member of our host family and most of us invited our mothers.  It was a really fun night.