This week past week felt surprisingly slow.
Monday came and went with mild pressure about the impending charla we would be giving on Thursday. That Monday we also learned we had another charla to give the following Wednesday, this one on sexual reproductive health. When we would prepare, we did not know (still struggling with that reality now).
The one highlight of preparing for charla's is the preparation is always done at my house. There is a large space behind the house where half of us can sit in hammocks and the others in Adirondack chairs. We have a fair amount of privacy, other than the occasional interruptions from my niece and nephew saying "hola" and "adios" (if you have Facetimed me since I've been here you know exactly what I'm talking about). Beyond being able to do my work in my hammock, what makes my house great is my family always makes us giant tubs of the most delicious popcorn in the world. It definitely does not help our productivity because we usually cannot communicate, as we are stuffing our faces full of it, but it is possible it's good brain food (or not, who knows).
On Wednesday we had an amazing distraction from preparations and all the other craziness that comes with Peace Corps Training and learned more about the elusive practicum week. This is a week where in groups of 3 or 4 we head out to another part of the country and spend a week with a current Peace Corps Volunteer in our sector. They have all types of activities planned for us to introduce us to life as a volunteer and different opportunities to give charlas and watch from the pros. I'll be heading 7 hours north into the mountains with 3 other awesome women and a language teacher next Sunday (at 4 am). We are spending our first night sleeping in a tree house, cooking lots of meals together, giving three charlas, with some hikes, yoga, and gardening classes mixed in (also one-on-one language classes which I'm siked about). I'm very much looking forward to getting out and seeing more of this beautiful country!
Thursday was the big day for our first charla! That morning when we practiced I had no idea how it was going to go but it ended up being a great success! They placed us in an outdoor classroom and we had more than 50 students show up (and about 90% were engaged!). We talked about different life skills the students could adopt to mitigate risky behaviors many people their age are exposed to in Nicaragua (such as: teenage pregnancy, gender violence, unhealthy relationships, drugs/alcohol, expulsion from school, and sexually transmitted infections).
And in case you forgot, it was all in Spanish. The biggest success was when the only question the group of 11-13 year old's had for us was when we would be returning (was an easy response of "next week").
Sometime during the middle of the week I got some information regarding the Passover Seder my friend Andrew and I thought we had not been invited to the week before. Turns out it was just the following week! Looking for any excuse to travel and meet new people, we quickly jumped at the opportunity to head to a new city and stay over with some PCVs. After navigating the slow, sweaty, and cramped transportation system to Andrew's town we rolled through on a moto-taxi to Diriomo where we were greeted by our wonderful and gracious host- a 2nd year business volunteer. He showed us to his wonderful casita he shared with his host brother and we walked inside to a beautiful Seder table complete with assigned seats (our names were written on fresh jalepenos grown in the back yard). As we drank our hosts' homemade hibiscus wine and ate all the delicacies missing from the Seder Andrew and I had, we also had a moment to engage in some really interesting conversations with 6 different volunteers from all over and all at different parts of their service.
We drank hibiscus wine, played backgammon, drank more hibiscus wine, and had a bonfire; t'was a wonderful evening. I woke up early and enjoyed some hammock time before getting a tour of our hosts' impressive garden he had started two years before. I picked some fresh mint and spearmint for tea and ate matzah brie with syrup (which is apparently, but not surprisingly, quite a delicacy here).
After we headed out for a hike to the Laguna de Apoyo where we swam in some of the most beautiful and clear water; and we had the whole place to ourselves!
We barely made it back to the top of the crater before I had to rush to grab a bus for what turned out to be a 2 hour journey home (this trip taught me the true gem that is random/kind/elderly Nicaraguense women who were instrumental in helping me get to and from my destinations).
Today was low key. It was spent preparing for my charla on Wednesday (this time there are only two of us presenting, in Spanish mind you), cleaning my room, and just organizing life and what not. I got to catch an inning of a baseball game in town today which was a cool cultural event that consisted of tons of people rolling through, sitting on the dugout watching, sharing plates of food and some beers with some players, and a live band in the stands used during any silent moment.
Also got to enjoy some time with my niece and nephew chilling in the hammocks. Been a great week and trying to prepare for the craziness that will be the next two!
