So today I gave another art class, and in the afternoon went to the Casa Materna sat around for an hour waiting with a psychologist for a meeting to start, only one participant arrived so it was a no go. The art class was a blast. The previous one hadn’t gone so well. Trying to get 11 year old boys to sit down and paint shades and tones.
Yesterday was much more interesting. I was in one of the rural communities, where I have the only remnants of a functioning youth group. Myself and the five girls met to plan a class about “How to make a good decision” which we were going to give in the high school.
I’m not going to lie, I was highly skeptical. I thought it was a highly condescending topic, and to compound the problem I have absolutely no Spanish vocabulary to tackle the topic. I can talk all day about pregnancy, the stages of pregnancy, warning signs of complications, HIV/AIDS, the importance off vaccinations, and nutrition all day long, but this topic. Na-uh.
We had the class in second year in the high school, the students aged from 14 to 15. In the main activity we had the class of 45 students break into 6 groups. Each group was given a scenario to think about, come up with your options, and choose one. For example one card said something like “you and your friends are out at a fiesta. They are drinking beers, but you don’t want to because they always make you feel sick. Your friends insist that you drink, otherwise you’re not a ¨Real Man¨ what do you do?” Maybe the students didn’t understand the assignment, but none of the groups seemed able to complete the assignment.
In this specific scenario the boys decided that they needed to drink because they didn’t want to loose their friends. That was it. End of discussion. Not one of the 8 kids in the group could come up with a single other option. It took a lot of poking on the teachers’ part to get any conversation going. It seemed that one person would come up with one option, and that’s as far as they got.
I think the problem was that I took for granted that A. I’m older and with things like problem solving I’ve had more experience than your normal high school sophomore B. In school here its copy- paste- regurgitates- repeat; creative problem solving has no space or funding in the schools. C. I have minimally functioning Spanish. I’ve gotten really accustomed to the deer in the headlights look that I get all the time. The combination of the three, my arrogance in assuming (what’s the saying, when you assume you make and an ASS of U and ME) that this was easy, and my lack of real understanding of their understanding, pretty much hindered the activity. I caught up after class with one of the teachers who was participating, and she said it went really well, that I just need to learn the vocab (damn Spanish! You think after a year I’d have this figured out). So maybe if I can organize, and maybe learn to break the steps down into more basic steps I can maybe reach at least a couple of the 45 students, and that alone I feel, could give me some more meaning to my being here.

Food.

My body seems to have pretty much adjusted to the food here. I will get cravings for beans and rice, and my body doesn’t crave as much as it used to the fruits and vegetables that were readily available back home. There has only been really on food that didn’t sit with me well. It’s called Mondongo.
In my first few months in site, I went to visit a nurse that I work with. They were eating Mondongo soup. I had a hard time with its smell let alone even eating it. It was this stinky tough oddly colored meat floating in a sparse broth accompanied by a couple vegetables. Trying to be polite I quietly gagged the hard rubbery/sponge like substance down. I swore to myself that I would never again put my self in a Mondongo-eating-situation ever again.
Well yesterday I went to visit with my old host family, and to my great disappointment, they were eating, ta-da, Mondongo soup. I had forewarned my host mother that I previously had a traumatizing experience with the said soup. She informed me, that this soup had been properly prepared and that ¨you don’t eat Mondongo soup from just anyone.¨ We had walked a few blocks across town in the blazing heat (we’re getting into summer here high 80s 90s at night) to the mother in law of her daughter who cooks and sells beans, cheese, tortillas and on this specific day, mondongo soup.
So there I was sitting terrified at the table (Apparently I wasn’t doing such a great job at hiding my contempt for the soup) sipping at the broth. When people make soup here, they keep the vegetables and meats in large pieces that are taken out of the soup and placed on a plate to cut up and eat. The first thing out the broth was the Mondongo. It sat there squishy and white doing everything but tempt me. I finally worked up the courage to try the meat once it´d cooled down and assumed a more solid form, and to my surprise, hey it wasn’t so bad! The soft squishy brownish-purple part isn’t the best, but the white rubbery bit actually tastes kind of like chicken. So I guess the take away lesson from Mondongo is that hey, sometimes you just get a bad first impression, and it never hurts to give it a second chance.

Oh I didn’t mention; Mondongo is the stomach of a cow. It has to be prepared and cleaned properly or else it comes out hard and stinky, when you want it to not smell and be nice and soft. I’m not going to order it when I go to a restaurant, but if it’s offered up as a free lunch, I now know that I’ve got at least a 50/50 chance I can stomach it (no pun intended).

This week I started giving art classes to a small group of kids in a friend’s house. I originally wanted to have 2 girls and 2 boys, but unfortunately the mothers of the little girls’ wouldn´t let them leave the house. Boys here really have a lot more freedom, girls are taught at a very young age that their role in the world is really cooking, cleaning, and making and taking care of babies. I´ll have to swing by the houses today and talk with the mothers again. The class though, went well. The boys were pretty punctual even! We learned color theory, and practiced mixing colors and making color wheels.










last week my counterparts and I celebrated the Febuary birthdays (Meaning Mine! and one of our work friends Juanita) I like food. I like sharing food, so heres a photo of the food we ate.Beef, rice, plantains, and a small tomatoe salad.

Sometimes it’s just really hard to decide what to write about. Sometimes I´ll have an idea, and by the time I make it to the library to type it out, it’s gone. Other times I´ll have a whole blog posted, and it won´t feel right, just doesn’t click, so it doesn’t get posted. I guess that’s the nature of blogging.

I recently had some friends and family send down some art supplies. Today I’m going to binding some small sketch pads for a group of about 6 children, and then tomorrow, all going well, I´ll be starting art classes! I´m hoping to start with color theory, then moving onto shades and tones, then next shapes and forms, etc. Each kid will get their own book, and little paint set (which will be returned to me after each class to the guys don´t destroy them) but over all I want this to be a space for creativity, self identity. Here these aren´t really focused on. The kids copy and paste in the schools and don’t have access to the resources for artistic creativity. We´ll see how this goes!

Anyone have any good lesson plan ideas?

Hazel

For the first day of school, the kids had an acto which is where they put on a couple cultural numbers. Here are two of the first graders performing, they were adorable. I think the little guy on the right is in the running for the cutest kid in the world. He´s the grandson of a friend of mine (all my Nicaraguan friends are atleast 30).

Doing the right thing.

This morning I went to my health center, and was talking with one of the nurses when we heard this grunting-huffing sound. She gave me an inquisitive look, and I said, oh it must be one of the dogs outside (of which there are a plethora of and they´re always making strange noises of sorts fighting over food etc.) We heard it a couple other times soon thereafter and I again blew it off. I looked out the window and saw nothing. She decides to go and investigate and come to find out it was a man laying outside our window convulsing. As the nurse later told me, ¨that thump was a human body hitting the ground¨(which I didn’t hear) I felt horrible. This was something serious and I had dismissed it partly from lack of experience (It was and odd sound) partly lack of interest, and partially lack of curiosity. Now I would label myself as an interested, curious, and to a lesser extent experienced person, yet I passed on a very legitimate opportunity to do the right thing. How often do we miss opportunities like that, without even knowing? This isn´t an isolated experience either, I vaguely remember similar things, passing up on helping someone (It’s not my problem) when a small action like handing the lady vomiting on the bus a plastic bag rather than changing seats, would take little time and thought on my part, but would make a huge difference in the other persons day.

When the man was carried into the center, I went back to the nurse and told her how terrible I felt, and she just smiled and gave me a hug.

The other night I went to visit with me neighbors. I love going and sitting with them out front of their house, just talking. I asked them about some local beliefs and I thought I’d share.

So This is very much like our ground hogs day. They say that the first 6 days of the year will paint the 6 months of winter. So for example if the first day is cloudy, then we´ll have a good may with lots of rain, but if the second day is sunny then June will be dry, so and so forth. It was surprisingly like our ground hogs day. It’s interesting how cultures have developed similar traditions such as these in order to help the locals determine when to plant and perhaps to give people some hope for the upcoming growing season.

Also they told me how every November a huge flock of birds passes over head, usually to high for the naked eye to see. My neighbor told me, ¨And the beautiful thing about this is that they fly in a circle over head, ¨ pointing to the sky making a circular motion with her finger, ¨ is stay there and wait until all the other groups have arrived, and then they continue on their journey.

Saturday a friend of mine´s son celebrated his 11 birthday so my self and the other Peacecorps volunteer in my site went over to celebrate. We ended up jump roping, playing limbo, and magical chairs in the house. It was a blast. Initially I was worried that it was going to be boring, but my site mate was brilliant in that when he came to Nicaragua he brought with him jump ropes, singles and for double dutch. its really great with all the kids! I would never have thought to bring something like that. I have a kite, but there are too many powerlines for it to be a safe activity.





this picture is myself, the birthday boy, his mother and a family friend.



Me in a skirt! unheard of!