We´re home now
So, after 11 weeks of training and a week in hotels in Managua, we are finally in our site, Malpaisillo, with all of our stuff. We are living with a host family for these first 6 weeks and we're looking for a house to move in to. School gets out for summer this Friday, so we won't have much to do in the way of teaching until February, but we have plenty to do as far as getting to know the town and language (at least for me).
During that week (actually 8 days) of hotels in Managua, we had our swearing-in ceremony. I was chosen to deliver a short speech thanking everyone and summing up what we did in training and what we have to look forward to. I was quite nervous as there were over 200 people there, including the US Ambassador, the Director of Nicaragua's Ministry of Education, various reporters and cameras, and the whole thing was in spanish. Afterward I was pretty happy with myself. Oh yeah, I also had a moustache during the entire speech.
After swearing-in, we got to go on a weekend vacation to a beautiful eco-tourism / coffee plantation resort in the mountains of Matagalpa called Selva Negra (translates to Black Forest and is supposedly reminiscent of that region of Germany). It was actually cold there and beautiful. Monkeys all over the place and lots of trails through the thick jungle like forest. If any of you come to visit, we'll try to go there.
We returned to Managua for the all volunteer conference for 2 days and after that we got to enjoy a lovely Thanksgiving dinner with American families down here. Some folks got to go to the Ambassador's house, or the director of USAID, or PC staff members from the states. We went to the home of the Press Officer for the Embassy. She is really cool and is about our age. She's from Colorado and has worked in Columbia and Mexico. She cooked an amazing meal. My best yet here. It was really nice to be able to participate in an American tradition with other people from my country. This year I was thankful for many things that I no longer have that I took for granted in my day to day life in the states. There are so many conveniences there that we don't even realize until we don't have them.
On another note... we got a phone, so you can call us if you want. I don't want to put the number here for the whole world to see, but you can get it from our parents or shoot us an e-mail if you wish.
Hasta luego...
During that week (actually 8 days) of hotels in Managua, we had our swearing-in ceremony. I was chosen to deliver a short speech thanking everyone and summing up what we did in training and what we have to look forward to. I was quite nervous as there were over 200 people there, including the US Ambassador, the Director of Nicaragua's Ministry of Education, various reporters and cameras, and the whole thing was in spanish. Afterward I was pretty happy with myself. Oh yeah, I also had a moustache during the entire speech.
After swearing-in, we got to go on a weekend vacation to a beautiful eco-tourism / coffee plantation resort in the mountains of Matagalpa called Selva Negra (translates to Black Forest and is supposedly reminiscent of that region of Germany). It was actually cold there and beautiful. Monkeys all over the place and lots of trails through the thick jungle like forest. If any of you come to visit, we'll try to go there.
We returned to Managua for the all volunteer conference for 2 days and after that we got to enjoy a lovely Thanksgiving dinner with American families down here. Some folks got to go to the Ambassador's house, or the director of USAID, or PC staff members from the states. We went to the home of the Press Officer for the Embassy. She is really cool and is about our age. She's from Colorado and has worked in Columbia and Mexico. She cooked an amazing meal. My best yet here. It was really nice to be able to participate in an American tradition with other people from my country. This year I was thankful for many things that I no longer have that I took for granted in my day to day life in the states. There are so many conveniences there that we don't even realize until we don't have them.
On another note... we got a phone, so you can call us if you want. I don't want to put the number here for the whole world to see, but you can get it from our parents or shoot us an e-mail if you wish.
Hasta luego...
posted by Mwiebe at 3:30 PM
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