First week nearly complete!

Hey everyone,

So I've kinda started a routine of checking my e-mail each morning during breakfast (yay for wireless internet in my house!) and sometimes during lunches if there's time.  However, blogging tends to take more time since I have to sit and describe what's going on, vs. simply answering e-mails that I get daily (dammit Tina!  Why is it that you STILL take up most of my time even countries apart! :))  So here's a quick one to catch everyone up while I'm eating lunch:

Today's the last day of language classes for our first week with homestays.  We have Spanish classes Mon-Thurs, then Fridays are training days with the whole Ag group, in a bigger town where everyone can meet. Tomorrow it's in Managua.  Then on Sat this week we are meeting again but in Jinotepe, the closest bigger town to Diriamba, my digs.  Today in class we took a bus to Jinotepe (it's only 3 km away) to practice asking directions with the locals.  Directions here are different in the sense that there aren't any house #'s, just points of reference, like a school or church or store.  So my house address is "From the primary school, one block to the south", but in Spanish of course, and with the specific name of the barrio (El Recreo) and the School name.  And usually for "east" and "west" they use "down" and "up", or abajo and arriba, cause that's the direction the sun rises and falls.  Weird huh?  It'll take some getting used to.

Anyways, things are going well so far. I'm still completly frustrated with my Spanish most of the time, but I can only improve from here (I'm really trying to think positively ALL the time).  Yesterday was the first meeting of our youth group, where we introduced ourselves and told them (or tried to explain in our broken Spanish) the goals we have here with making and maintaining a garden, integrating into the community, and inventing a product to commercialize with the youth group.  At the end of training there's a competition amongst all the trainees, ag and business, with these youth group products.  Yikes!  No pressure! 
I'll keep you all posted!