My experience in 28 photos

The content of this website/blog are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the United States government or the Peace Corps.

my team lost in a best of 7 series 4-1. we played well, but lost 3 close games, 11-10, 6-5, and 6-4, and we won our only game in the series off of a walk off home run

 

with the lil bro of one of my fellow volunteers

with my students in my 6th grade class

on a hike w us 4 in my town and the brother and friend of one of my classmates

ruben and i being totally normal

i think this was our first full day in nica

"Nicaragia: the joy of living in peace!"

making a huerto (veggie garden) with my students

we all tried to do backflips in the pool. at least this time when i landed bad, it wasnt like the ground felt when i had tried it on land (thanks nithin for always saving me tho)

my lil sis is on a dance team that performs at community events. most events are held at our cancha (sports complex)

spending time w my fav fam!

me with geri - the most cheerful girl in the world

us supporting Nubia in her schools equivalent of the queen of the school

my basketball team playing in the semi final of my pueblos tournament

us having a sleepover for claires last night!

obvi the best bro and sis evs

working with my students at the school. what a beautiful site that we did it together!

kickin it w some of my 6th graders

I want YOU to join me in the Peace Corps!

a beautiful hike

riding in a moto taxi

prepping for garden work at our school

My new school, playing baseball, and learning spanish.

BASEBALL

So the past few weeks I havent gotten to be able to go to our games, or when I have havent been put in many of the games. Our team is really good, so its not like Im sulking. But I wanted to get in, and today in the game they put me in. I still havent been able to do well batting, but I didnt do too bad at second base today. heres some photos. It felt incredible to get out there on the field. Its a childhood dream Ive had to pick up baseball again.

I just need to mention it that my real childhood dream is to be a pitcher. Ive been practicing quite a bit. He even had me warming up in the bullpen today, but I still need to control my pitches better before being put in. But Ill keep at it, and Ill be a hell of a pitcher one day.

LEARNING SPANISH

I am beginning to love being here. I am actually blown away that somehow, some way, I am learning spanish. I can have conversations now. I can understand what people are saying. I can respond (sometimes correctly).

Isnt that incredile? In the beginning, I just force myself to talk to people, to struggle thru, even when I didnt get what they were saying to me. I have kept at it every day, and even tho at the end of every day, you cant always see how u progressed just in the past 12 hours, but put those days together, put those conversations together, and, its incredible - you just learn.

Granted, Ive put in hours and hours and hours of studying, looking up words, writing things down, using words in sentences, asking people how to say things, watching movies and reading in spanish. but what amazes me is that before, i just to just hear a lot of babbling words, but now they are ACTUALLY words, that i can understand, that have significance. The human mind is incredible.

MY SITE VISIT - FAMILY AND SCHOOLS, AND BEAUTIFUL VIEWS

I visited my permanent site last week, and it is nothing shy of incredible. This community called San Jose thats surrounded by mountains, and the mountains are like RIGHT next to my community. It looks so boss. And from the baseball stadium, which is at the top of the hill, you can see mountain ranges way off in the distance.

Its surrounded by a community that specializes in milk and coffee production. My mom brews organic coffee every day, and shes an incredible cook. I cant tell you how many cups I had while I was there. so good.

My family there is incredible. The 13 year old boy is one of those rare mixes of a genius who is actually really cool and good looking. i dont know why thats a rare mix, but i feel like it is. my 19 yr old sis is really nice, just super geniune, but i am most impressed by the dad. he is involved in their lives, sits and quizzes his son each night at the dinner table, has a great playful attitude, and is just a lot of fun. There are few fathers who do that (im totally generalizing), but he does it, and he does it well.

I visited 2 of the 3 schools I will be teaching in. They are in rural communities. So show you how rural it is, one of my schools has 10 kids. ten. thats one classroom. the kids are from 1st grade to 6th grade, roughly 2 kids in each grade, but they all get taught in the same room. aka, i will be a teacher of a class of kids from  6 to 12 years old. Talk about a challenge.The other schools are very similar.

ITS CHEAP HERE

hair cut for 80 cents, a coffee for 8 cents, and 12 bananas for 45 cents.

went to the beach, and had 6 beers, a huge lunch, and went horseback riding on the beach (without a guide, they just give u the horse and u go where u want), all for 15 dollars. thats nuts.

my life here

The content of this website/blog are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the United States government or the Peace Corps.

Before going to our permanent site:

I cant believe we already got assigned our permanent sites! Its so crazy. Ill get to that. Today our principal from our sites came to meet us in Managua, and we had "classes" together all day to get on the same page. Its so cool that they are here to bring us to our site, show us around, introduce us to the schools we are going to be working in (I will be teaching three different classes in three different schools), all of which are rural. Many of them are multigrade classrooms. 

Today was an exhausting day in spanish. All of the sessions, all of the talking, all of the planning - all in spanish. Its kind of cool that we can do this, and every day I am both encouraged, and I admit to getting discouraged often. 

Learning spanish is the most difficult task I have ever undertaken. Its taken humility, confidence, patience, time, failure after failure after failure. It takes dealing with embarrassment, confusion, tiredness, and a never give-up attitude. It stretches me beyong my barriers almost every day. After my two years here, I feel confident I will call it one of the greatest accomplishments of my life, that each day I fought through it. And at the end of the day, I kept moving forward.

I am inspired a lot by Rocky. Just as he said, "You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done! " - Rocky Balboa

I watched Rocky the other day in Spanish, and it was encouraging, uplifting, and I felt inredible. And, I could understand most of it. Its so cool to finally be able to watch normal things and udnerstand most of what is said, and at least the gist of what was not understood in words.

I also was able to site through an entire church service and I understand over 90 percent of what was said. How incredible is that! Talk about a miracle.

I feel truly lucky to be here. It sounds silly, but I really feel like Im living my life to the fullest. When else could I ever say I literally got up, left my family, left my home, left my job, my responsabilities, my friends, my grad school, and my life in the united states, all for the pursuit of something greater. I left to go learn from a community different from me, to teach kids, to learn, to challenge myself, to learn new skills, to learn a new language, to encourage others, to hopefully be a beacon of hope and light. to be a community facilitator, and an optomist. speaking of optimism..

Sickness

So I finally got my first fun sickness here. I got lucky and got two at the same time, actually - a bacterial infection and a parasite infection. Luckily Peace Corps is so awesome, that they picked me up from my house because I couldnt walk or anything.

I was dehidrated enough that they needed to take to the capital - Apparently these infections made me have so much diarrhea and vomiting, that I couldnt even make it the hour trip to the hospital without kindly asking the driver to pull over so i could walk into the woods (thankfully there were woods there) so I could poop (arent you glad you read this post?).

The funny thing was that I asked him if he could pull over so I could vomit, which is what I thought I had to do, but then when I got like two feet into the woods, I realized I had to poop more than vomit. Oh, decisions.

The thing about this day was that it was the day we were supposed to find out about our permanent site assignments for the next two years! wowww well unfortunately, i missed that meeting, so a lady from the peace corps came to deliver my folder to me with the contents determining my future - it was a fairytale moment. I have a sweet picture of it that Ill put up later.

Im feeling much better now, actually. yay!

Site

So, my next two years are going to be in this place called Boaco. And apparently its on the side of a mountain, and has an awesome sports scene, with a sweet sports complex, which is rare here.

We are going to visit out sites for a week starting tomorrow - how crazy! so exciting.

Its SO epic to take a step back and look at what Im doing. Im living out my dream in life. 

"Two roads diverged in the woods. And I took the road less traveled..."

Baseball

Our team is in the semi-finals of the towns playoffs, and its a best of 7 series, and we are down 3-1. I have found out its tough to jump right into a sport that requires a lot of skill and practice when you haven’t played it since you were 9. But I am fulfilling a dream by learning how to pitch. I feel alive when Im out there, and I could pass hours on hours on the mound, its so relaxing. Im so lucky I have guys in the pueblo that want to help me learn. I feel on top of the world when Im out there.

Basketball

we made it to the finals of our towns tournament, and we are up 1-0 in a best of 7 series. those games are a hell of a fun time. im loving it so much. They are at night, under the lights, and a lot of people from the community come to support. Ive been playing decently well, for being removed from playing for a little bit of time. But im good enough to jump right in. ive been averaging maybe 8 points a game.

Heres a few pics from my first game 

overall, ive been shooting about 50 percent from the field, but surprisingly my free throws havent been the best. however, when push came to shove and we were down 1 point with less than a minute in the semi final, i knocked down two free throws to put us up. we won that game.