Acero Vegetal

These beautiful vases made of bamboo are the work of a group of students from the Insitituto Nacional de Palacaguina. They have worked so incredible hard on forming their own small business and actually making it profitable. They won both the local and regional competitions and this past Thursday I had the honor of taking them to Managua to compete in the national competition.


The first hour of the day was a product fair and each of the 11 groups that were competing (all regional champions) had a table to display and sell their product. The girl in the front is Mary and then in the back, from left to right, is Carlos, Junieth, me, Wendy, Helen, and Nidia Karolina. We had a lot of fun driving through Managua on the way to the competition, especially since two of the kids had never been to the city before.


Here they are showing their vases to Robert Callahan, US Ambasador to Nicaragua. It was adorable seeing how nervous and excited they were to talk to him and I was very impressed with how professional they remained.

After selling several vases, we moved in to the auditorium and the presentations began. Each group had 7 minutes to present their business plan using a power point presentation and then the judges could ask them questions for 3 more minutes. My girls did an excellent job and I was too nervous to take pictures of anything until after we ate and they gave out the prizes.

We sat together, nervously hoping for the best but prepared to take away only the amazing experience, when they announced third place...


And they won! Here they are on stage accepting the plaque and prize money for finishing in third place. That is third place out of all 600 plus small businesses created among students throughout the country through the class La Empresa Creativa.


Francis Evelia, the teacher I co-teach the class with, and I were just as excited as the students. Francis has worked with this class for four years now and this was her first time taking a team to the national competition and I was so excited for her. In addition to being my counterpart, she is also my closest friend in town and I was proud to be sharing this honor with her.


We took many more pictures on the long bus ride home and the kids laughed and pretended to interview themselves and it was just a good time all around.


The next night we met at Karolina's house to take more pictures with the plaque. This is such an amazing group of students and I feel like I have learned just as much from them as they may have learned from me.

Independence Day

September 14th and 15th (yeah I know, I'm a little bit behind on updating but at least I'm doing it now) are giant national holidays to celebrate the Battle of San Jacinto and Central American Independence Day. This involves lots of parades, drums, firecrackers, and no school for a whole week. But it's a lot of fun.

Rosa Estella

About three weeks ago, a new baby arrived in my Nicaraguan home. This little girl is named Rosa Estella and, although she cries frequently and I can always hear it from my room since Nicaraguan walls tend not to meet the ceilings, I truly adore her.

I'm definitely not a baby person. Even though I have lots of cousins and always enjoyed holding them, I don't think I ever really had much experience with very little babies. And at first everyone was asking my why I didn't want to chinear (hold) the baby. But now, whenever I'm home and I hear crying, I wander in. It's amazing that she has gotten to know me and as soon as I pick her up, she stops crying.

Her story is long and complicated and already involves being abandoned by her mother, but I know that she has a nice home now. It's so odd to think that she will be walking around by the time I leave.

My New Best Friend

I would like to take a moment to introduce everyone to my new best friend in Nicaragua.

This is Cristian. He is 3 years old and I spend the majority of my free time with him nowadays. Mostly he wanders around my room, asks me what every single item is used for, looks at my pictures, plays with my ipod and computer, and is all around adorable. He now knows the names of my brothers, my dog, and my friends who are featured frequently in pictures (although he does get confused sometimes and as a default refers to all of my friends as Jenny, even my site mate, who is called Lilia).

Whenever I find myself out of town for a day or two, I look forward to coming home because I know, as soon as I open the squeaky gate to my patio, Cristian will come running forward, calling my name and asking me where I was. He may be one of the main reasons I have lost some of my initial desire to find a house to rent. I am pretty comfortable with my host family and know I would miss his constant companionship.

Whenever we have nothing to do, I quiz him on colors or numbers. Counting still frustrates him a lot, but he sure knows his colors. I want to teach him the alphabet, but think I have to wait a little longer. His attention wanders as soon as I get to obviously teachy. I wish that I had good children's books to read him and coloring books with big thick crayons to create works of art. Unfortunately, these things are hard to come by in small town Nicaragua. And when you do find them, they are rather expensive.

So here is my request from you all back at home. Send me things for Cristian! Anything a little boy would like in the states, he would like here. If you can find some cute children's books in Spanish, send those my way! Simple coloring books with numbers and colors. Little cars. In the picture above he has a Dora the Explorer bubble whistle that Sandy and Liz sent me and I don't think I've ever seen a child more exciting than when I showed it to him. Theresa sent me an awesome Harry Potter musical Halloween card, and he walked around with it all day, opening it for every new person to show them how it plays music. He killed the card by the end of the day and I didn't even care because it was adorable seeing how fascinated he was.

The other night we had a bit of a scare. Cristian and Sergio, his 7 year old brother, were playing in the street and somehow the top of a glass Coke bottle hit Cristian in the head. The next door neighbor carried a screaming Critian in to our patio and I thought I might throw up from all the blood covering this little boys face. He cried and cried and we cleaned the cut and walked him to the health center and he very bravely got 3 stitches, only crying once more when they gave him the shot of pain killer. He now thinkgs he looks cool with his giant bandaid on his forehead and if you ask him about what happened, he only talks about getting a shot.



Whenever I have a bad day, I know I can come home and sit down with Cristian and automatically feel a little bit better.

Maria Reina

I think I have officially fallen in love with Palacagüina. I know it’s only three weeks in and I’m sure problems will arise and our relationship will be far from perfect, but I have no doubts about being commited to this beautiful and sleepy mountain village for the next two years. This past Saturday was our fiestas patronales and the town transformed into a joyous and bustling party town.



Friday was a product fair in the park. Every class of 4th and 5th year students was responsible for a different typical Nicaraguan food. In addition to all of that, there were local coffee cooperatives, artisans, and performers. Everything in town was closed that day other than the fair (including the school, which I can rant about but am trying to be positive and not worry myself about classes being canceled at least two Fridays every month). It was an amazing feeling walking through the booths and hearing all the students call out to me to try their food. I also feel very well versed in most food now. I tried Pozol, Atol, Runpopo, Muntuca, Chicha, and by midday I thought I might burst.

I was amused by the booth that featured chickens and pigs. Walking down the street any typical day in town you come across chickens and pigs and other animals yet many people stopped to take pictures of the pigs in the pen. Including me.


This is Maria, my best friend in town, with Cristian, the most adorable little three year old I have ever met. I spend the day walking around the fair with them as Cristian begged to touch and try everything.

I definitely came to this town at the right time.

I constanlty tell myself that I will start writing out the details of my life to keep this blog interesting but it doesn´t seem to happen. I think that part of my process of keeping sane in training was to spend time typing up emails to my family and friends on my laptop in my room. So maybe it´s a good thing that I almost don´t have time for that anymore. I feel like there is always something I should be doing, even if it´s just sitting in the room, observing the craziness of my new family and friends interacting. Which is what I always feel like I´m doing. Just observing. And while I´m completely happy to just be observing for now, I wonder if there will come a time when I am a more active participant in my own life. That definitely sounded more dramatic than I intended but what I mean is that even though I have found friends and am always busy, I´m not really doing anything other than following around these friends and listening to them talk. And sure, I join in on the conversations if I have something to add or if I am asked a question, but most of the time I´m just desperately trying to keep up and understand most of what they are talking about. I´m really happy doing that. It makes me feel involved and like I am finding my place here. But I just wonder when I will find my place and what it will be. It´s unsettling when I think about it so I guess it´s lucky that I don´t really think about it much.

Karla

The person I spent the most time with during my first three months in Nicaragua was my 10 year old host sister Karla. She is one of the funniest people I have ever met and a giant drama queen. She always thought she knew the answer to everything and loved to explain to me everything about Nicaragua. We have a relationship very much like real sisters; I love her to death and sometimes can´t stand being in the same room as her.

Here is a video I took of her one of the last days of training. We were making a cake with left over batter from our youth group. After an hour of refusing to be filmed she decided that she did have something to say. This video captures her personality perfectly: she is cute and enthusiatic and then starts complaining and fake crying. For those who can´t understand her, she is talking about how we are making a cake. When I say her name, she has just started talking about how I am mean because I have nothing to decorate the cake with and it´s so horrible that just has to start crying.

Now that I´ve been away from her for almost 3 weeks, I miss her a lot more than I thought I would.