Life in Training

Giving a charla at the Casa Materna

All the trainees who went to Esteli and the pregnant ladies

 Baby!!!

 My second bday party. =)

 We celebrated for the four of us who have birthdays in February.

Puppy! She was so small when she was a month old. I only needed one hand to hold her.

...two weeks later

She's still really tiny

awwww

Funny incidents in Nicaragua

• I learned how to wash clothes the first week I got here. After we rinsed one of my underwear, my host mom told me to hang it up, but I noticed that there was still soap. I knew that soap in Spanish is "jabon", but I wasn´t thinking and just said, "todavia hay sopa!" which means "there´s still soup!" So my host family made fun of me the rest of the day about having soup in my underwear.
• In class one day, Sarah asked our facilitator what "underwear" is in Spanish. The facilitator thought she was asking what the word for "diaper" is, which she told us is "pañales." After that, we all though pañales means diapers. So as I was telling the story about the soup in my underwear, I said, "Estaba lavando mis pañales" ("I was washing my diapers"). The facilitator cracked up and asked, "You wear diapers?" I still though "pañales" meant "diapers", so I replied, "Of course I wear diapers."

Other interesting stuff about Nicaragua:

• Time is only a rough estimate in Nicaragua. I f someone tells you it takes 10 minutes to walk somewhere, give yourself 30 minutes. This becomes a problem for me when I need to pee and someone tells me it only takes 20 minutes to get to the next bathroom (which will usually be cleaner). I figure I can wait 20 minutes, and I´m about to die by the time we reach the bathroom 1 hour later.
• There are so many bananas here. Well they´re not all bananas, but they´re all part of the banana family. There are the regular bananas, mini-bananas called manzanos, and plantains. We eat these raw, we eat them cooked, we eat them boiled, we eat them fried. We eat them for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack. I love bananas and potassium is good, but bananas are slowly creeping into my list of least favorite foods.
• Everything here is fried. Last night for dinner at the hotel we had fried chicken, fried rice, fried plantains, and refried beans. 
• Catcalling sometimes comes from the least expected directions. A large proportion of them come from 12 or 14-year-old boys, and once, and 11-year-old girl also blew us a kiss and said "mi amor" (my love). As we were discussing this at one of the training sessions, one girl said, "With all this fried rice and beans that I eat, I´m putting on more weight everyday, but the Nicaraguan men still think I´m sexy."
• And more on machismo: Some parents are proud when their son gets a girl pregnant when he´s 15. It proves he´s a man. And he´s even more of a man if he gets 5 girls pregnant.
• One day, Lindsey saw someone walking their chickens. One of them was on a leash, which makes sense if we think that he´s afraid his chicken will run away. But this is a country where dogs usually don´t have leashes, and the other chicken that was walking with them wasn´t on a leash. So I don´t know what that chicken did to deserve such punishment.
• In Nicaragua, when you sneeze once, people say "salud" (health). The second time, they say "dinero" (money). The third time, it´s "amor" (love). The fourth time varies. Some people say "tiempo para disfrutar" (time to enjoy), "sexo" (sex), "gripe" (cold), "enfermedad" (illness), and there are probably more. I don´t sneeze a lot, so I´ve only gotten "salud". Lindsey sneezes a lot, so everyday, she gets "salud", "dinero", and "amor".

Training

So, here in our training town, we mostly give talks (charlas) to patients at the health center, or to women's groups, on health topics such as diarrea, hygene, STD, etc. Here are some pictures of us giving charlas to our women's group. They are devouted evangelicals, so at our first meeting, there was a loud, intense group prayer for us. 

Here's us talking, asking them what topics they might want to talk about at future meetings.

Here's the four of us at our second charla. We love to wake up early on Sunday mornings, the only day we have off, to hold a meeting. We're dedicated PCTs.

We gave a charla on hygene, basically telling them they must wash their hands with soap and clean their kitchens.

We also made crepes for them so they could sample a popular American food. Yes we chose crepes to represent America.

Here are some of their kids. The one in his diapers is the most adorable thing.

They like to play with bicycle tires.

I came home one Saturday to find that my family killed our pig!!

And they fried the skin to make chicharron. Chicharron just tastes like chips, but they didn't fry this pig all the way so there was still some mushy stuff in the middle. It was kind of nasty.

Funny incidents in Nicaragua

So some of my embarrassing moments in Nicaragua:

A few Saturdays back, I was learning to wash clothes with my host mom, and we just finished rinsing my underwear. She told me she was done rinsing them, so I could hang them up, but there was still a little bit of soap left in them. Now, I knew that the word for soap in Spanish is "jabon", but I wasn´t thinking and I just said, "pero todavia hay sopa!" which literally means "there's still soup in my underwear!" Everyone laughed about that for a few days.

Then another day, one of my friends, Sarah, asked our facilitator what the word for underwear is in Spanish. She misunderstood and thought Sarah was asking for the word for diapers, which is "pañales". So for a while, we thought that pañales meant underwear. Then I told my story about the sopa in my underwear, and I said, "So I was washing my pañales..." The facilitator bursts out laughing and asks me, "Llevas pañales?" ("you wear diapers?"). And I was like, "Yes, of course." Then for the rest of the day everyone made fun of me for having soup in my diapers.

Well my Spanish is slowly improving. What we're doing now basically is giving talks (charlas) to patients at the health center and meeting every week with a women's group. We've been busy.

That's us at our first meeting with the women's group

The four of us at the second meeting. It was lovely how we had to meet with them on Sunday, the only day we have off.

We gave a charla about hygene...

...and we made them crepes so they could sample American food. Yea we chose crepes to represent America. They were supposed to make us a Nicaraguan dish, but a lot of promises made in this country are just suggestions.

Some of their boys. My favorite is that one who's in his diapers.

O yea, and I was out one Saturday, and I come back to find that they killed our pig!!

Pictures with host family

A picture of the bus that dropped me off. I think it´s funny how those crazy Gringas are peering out the window.

The big moment when I stepped off the bus and walked over to their house. They needed to capture it.

Chanel shaking my hand. =)

Ahhh she turned her head away.

The two dogs fighting for a shot in front of the camera. Chanel´s really self centered and never lets me pet Pimienta.

They told me to take a picture hugging that plant.

Here are my host parents...

... and my host brother. Funny how he´s so tall while his parents are really short.

Pictures from my host family´s camera

My host family took a picture of the bus that dropped me off. Those crazy Gringas were peering out the window to see what each person´s family was like.

In Dolores

This morning, a bus dropped us off one by one in front of our host families houses. I arrived at around 10:30. My host family is really sweet. My host father is retired, and my host mother does not work. They sell avocados and plantains, so there are a lot of those lying around the house. Their son, Christian, just finished college. Cristina and Guillermo have a lot of pets--3 dogs, 2 parrots, and a pig. The pig is eventually going to be eaten. They also have a garden, with a lot of plants and trees. That is where the avocados and plantains come from. I think they enjoy having volunteers stay with them because it livens up the house. Guillermo has relatives living in New York, Dallas, San Diego, and Los Angeles. They occasionally mail them money and clothes from America.

Our lunch was delicious. Nicaraguans really know how to cook rice. We also had fried chicken, tomatoes, boiled plantains, and avocado. It was delicious. I really like this family because unlike most Nicaraguan families, they do not cook with too much oil or drink coca cola. They drink a lot of water and exercise every morning. Tomorrow, I am going to go for a walk with them at 5:30 a.m. My schedule here as been fantastic. I go to bed at 9 because I am so exhausted, and I wake at at 5:30-6. Anyway, so I just wanted to say that all is going very well. Spanish class this afternoon was boring but everything else has been wonderful.

O yea, it is a Peace Corps regulation that we get our own rooms with a lock. And I get my own bathroom.

Assignments

Today we got assigned our host families for the training period. Mine lives in Dolores. The wife is 50, and the husband is 75. They have a 19-year-old son in college. I´m super excited because one of the volunteers who greeted us told me that he stayed with them during his training. The woman really adores girls and thinks we are all her long-lost daughters. I also live a few blocks away from another volunteer´s host family. I adore her too so this is going to be fun. There are a total of four volunteers in our town. We´ll be going to class together for 6 hours a day, and then we´ll get to hang out with our families. =)

Health and Safety Training

Today, we started out with a delicious breakfast. There was fresh papaya and white pineapples. Then, during class/session/whatever we learned that we aren´t allowed to ride on top of buses, ride in the back of a pickup truck, or ride a donkey cart on the streets. Boo. I really liked the picture of the donkey.

We also learned how to spot pickpockets, how to protect ourselves and our valuables, and treat common illnesses. We were distributed a diarrhea kit--a brown paper bag containing chemicals we should ingest if we get nauseous. We also got a mosquito net, medical kit, and 500 ibs worth of books. The medical kit contains OTC drugs, floss, sunscreen (which I already used up half), small bottle of bug spray, condoms, small bottle of chemicals to purify water during an emergency, and lots of other useful stuff. The books are all homework we´ll need to read during training. I feel like I´m still in school.

We also filled out and signed billions of forms. I totally just signed my soul away. One form asked how we would prefer to be called, and my friend suggested that I put down "Your majesty, the Empress.¨I think that hsould be my blog name from now on.

Anyway, everyone here is really friendly and awesome. It does not feel like we´ve only known each other for 4 days. If anyone watches or has heard about 20/20, realize that the media likes to exaggerate particular cases and leave out information to make their show more dramatic. If I sound random, then just ignore me.

Finally arrived in Nica-wa-wa!!!

Well, it was a pleasure to get almost no sleep last night, travel for an entire day, and eat frozen bagels for breakfast. And now we've finally crossed the agua to reach Managua Nicaragua!

Very warm weather here--we started sweating like PIGS the second we stepped out of the airport. Nicaragua is gorgeous though. All the palm trees, volcanoes, and the humid atmosphere reminds me of Hawaii. <33 We're staying at an amazing hotel. The rooms are small, and it's not as classy (or pricey) as Holiday Inn at DC, but it feels like we're living in a natural resort. I'm just disappointed that there aren't any baboons or exotic birds hanging out in the palm trees.

So I just wanted to let everyone know, that all 45 of us made it safely to Managua. Life is good. We eat, go to class, eat, learn Spanish, swim, eat, and sleep. We're scheduled to meed our host families on Monday. I hope they'll like me.

P.S. Sorry no pictures still. My stupid camera broke before I even got to use it. I'm hoping the other volunteers will be willing to share their photos with me.

First post!

Hey hey everyone! Welcome to my blog. My name is Sophia. I will be a Peace Corps volunteer in Nicaragua from January 12, 2011 to March 31st, 2013. I'll try my best to write entries as often as I can to let all my lovely friends and family know how I'm doing.

My trip began when I woke up yesterday, at 6 a.m. My parents drove me to the airport. Halfway there, as the car is skating over the ice, I get a warm, friendly call from AA that my flight got cancelled. So I arrived at the airport and booked a flight in the afternoon instead.

On the plane, I passed out and dreamed that I was eating pizza. The pizza made me really thirsty so I asked the flight attendant for a cup of water, and then fell back into my dream.

I arrived at orientation, late of course, but with no regrets. I recommend that all Peace Corps volunteers arrive late to staging orientation, because, well... The orientation was fun because we were told that we should post nice comments on our blogs, but the event was really optional. Some people were lucky and came even later than I did. Out of the 45 volunteers scheduled to leave Nicaragua, 44 showed up. There are only about 5 guys in our group, I guess because most of us are working in Maternal and Child Health Promotion. I believe we got assigned to our country based on the program we will be working for. The 45 leaving for Nicaragua today are all in Health Extension. There is a group of 41 leaving for Panama today, and most of them are going to be teaching.

So orientation pep talk ended at 7. I was STARVING because the pizza on the plane obviously had not filled me up. I went to dinner with a few other volunteers and decided I wanted this dinner to be as American as possible. I ended up getting burger and fries, since I already had pizza on the plane. I also drank a cocktail and realized that vodka is stronger than wine. The Peace Corps gave us a stipend of $120 to spend during staging, which is definitely more than enough to cover all our expenses. Plus all the cash I brought with me from home, I had never carried around so much in my wallet before, so it makes me feel insecure. I decided that the best solution would be to get rid of it. There is only one thing I can buy here without adding more weight to my already overweight luggage: FOOD. So life is good right now.

Anyway, after dinner, we headed back to the hotel and I got the best news I have heard all day--our flight for today was cancelled. The original plan was that we would all wake up at 1 a.m., get on the bus and leave by 2 a.m., and reach the airport at 3 a.m., before any eateries open. I was absolutely thrilled to hear that now we get to sleep in until 10 a.m. I know, we were all super excited to leave for Nicaragua, but a starving, sleep-deprived Sophia would not make a good first impression on the Nicaraguan people. I hope we will be able to leave today though. And it's almost 10, so we'll have to go down to the lobby and meet up to hear the game plan. Bye bye for now.