3 weeks under my belt

Sorry it's been a few weeks, let me try to catch everyone up:

My little El Recreo group has now had four official youth group meetings. Pretty much every meeting has had a new group of people.  Since the first meeting had a ton of boys and very little girls, our language facilitator had us walk around the neighborhood even more to invite more girls, so by the time we had our 2nd meeting, it was mostly girls!  One boy showed up that had been there before, otherwise all the girls were new to the group.  So my the 3rd meeting I expected maybe a nice mix of the two, which was more or less, but this time with way fewer numbers showing up.  We had our 4th meeting this last week, and only 3 people showed up, two girls and one boy.  But at least they were interested in what the project is.  During one of the meetings we had to make a 'priority matrix' to help the group narrow down their ideas of a product to make and commercialize.  They had ideas ranging from bread to wine to jewelry.  After narrowing down their 10 original choises, the top three favored were bread, wine (non-alcoholic of course), and frescos, which are types of juices made by local fruits. We had them make a list of pros and cons for each product to narrow it down even more.  Turns out they all had negative things to say about wine; the ingredients were expensive to buy, it's expensive to sell, and nobody buys or drinks it (basically, people rarely drink wine here).  So we were totally annoyed that they even mentioned wine because it was obviously a "NO".  So we moved on to voting between bread and frescos.  We did one final vote for everyone, they had to chose one or the other.  So when only 3 people out of 10 raised their hands for frescos, we were like "Yay!  So that means we're doing bread!"  right?  No. Turns out only like 4 of them (the boys) raised their hands for bread, I asked the girls who didn't raise their hands if they were fine doing bread, and they all had really pissy looks on their faces when they said no, that they didn't want to do either.  They wanted to do jewelry!  Which was one of the options we voted off the priority matrix earlier on in the whole process.  So we were kinda back to square one.  Our language facilitator stepped in at that point to explain that everyone had to agree to one product to do as a group, and jewerly wouldn't be a successful product to sell to everyone (like, guys don't want to buy jewelry!).  So after a lot of sour faces and lots of discussion, they 'agreed' on bread.  I'm trying to kind of convince them to try making something soft and delicious, like banana bread, or something sweet like cinnamon bread. The bread here in Nicaragua is, quite honestly, rather tasteless sometimes. It's commonly very hard, like breadsticks, or crumbly and flakey, but doesn't have a good flavor.  I'm not a fan.  My goal this week for the youth group is to make some banana bread to share with them so they can see another option for bread.  I'm worried they're not gonna like it because, really, if you grow up with one type of bread your whole life you tend to be resistant to new varieties.  But how can you dislike banana bread!  I mean, they eat bananas here!  Just put it in some bread, make it soft and delicious, and there you go!  My homestay mom said I could use her oven, which is a luxury, because not many people have ovens here, or if they have them, they don't use them because the gas usage is expensive.  Wish me luck on that one.

As for the garden, it's totally planted with the seeds we were given: corn, beans, two types of squash, cucumbers, and then later we'll transplant the tomato and pepper plants that are growing on my patio.  It pretty much rains everyday now, usually at night, but not always.  Today it rained midday just in time to get us all wet while my mom was giving me a cooking lesson on the outside BBQ.  We finally chose to do the garden at the local school since it had the best soil, it has pleanty of room, and it's already fenced in. One of the teachers was starting a garden project with two of his classes, so we're kinda working with them to get this done.  One weekend, about 15 of us total worked on clearing the first part of the area, then that next day we (me, Ryan and Paige) started planting our seeds.  The teacher said his group would finish clearing out the rest of the garden during the week, but surprise surprise, they didn't, so today we arranged to help the group work some more on clearing.  Turns out David (the teacher) didn't show up due to a fever, and only about 5 students showed up to help, out of like 20.  But really, I'm learning that that's just normal here.  People say they'll show up and don't, or they're really late.  I'm just glad those 5 showed up, cause we actually ended up doing a lot of work and cleared out another whole section of the garden to seed.  We're going to meet up with Profe David tomorrow to plan when they want to seed their section.  Their using our seeds, since we were given a lot and are willing to share, so we're going to help them if we can.  I'm trying to make sure that means we don't end up doing all the work for them.  Once it's planted the students really have to help maintain their section of the garden.  We're also working on about 3 compost piles.  We've actually accumulated about 6 total piles of 'basura', or trash, as the Nica's call it.  To them, everything is trash, organic and inorganic.  We've been told that if you tell kids to pick up trash in the street, they pick up EVERYTHING in the street.  And when people rake the leaves in their yards and patios, they consider that trash and burn it like the rest of the household trash (except my neighborhood actually has streetside trash pick up that gets taken to the dump).  So we've have to specify that the compost piles are for the organic 'trash', or all the grass and root clods that we've been clearing out to start planting. 

This past weekend's training day was all about how to make certain local products, how to package and label them, and how to market, commercialize, and sell them.  We had little 'cooking' sessions all morning teaching us how to make chocolate, soap, wine, cough syrup, bean fudge (so good!), and other food items from local ingredients.  Pretty interesting.  There's this tree here called Marango that has rediculously high levels of nutrients.  It's called the miracle tree by some. I don't remember all the facts, but you can use basically every part of it, the leaves (fresh and dried), the bark, the seeds, and it's nutritional levels are out of this world!  When dried, it contains 25 times the iron of Spinach, and like 7 times the calcium of milk, plus more vitamin C than oranges and so many other things.  If you scar a dried seed and put it in a glass of water, after some time it will purify the water.  Volunteers have held sessions for pregnant and nursing women to incorporate it into their diets considering the higher levels of nutrition it provides.  In our session we learned how to make a powder or 'spice' out of the dried leaves to sprinkle on food.  Just look it up and start growing it somewhere.  They tell us it grows in almost all types of soil and does well. 

Well, as the title states, we've officially finished our first 3 weeks of training, so starting tomorrow (Monday) we're moving on to a new language facilitator for the next 3 weeks.  And this time the classes will be held at my house.  Fun times.  Hopefully my Spanish continues to improve this next round.  It had definitley improved so far, but I still get really frustrated when I can't think of the right word to say, or how to conjugate a verb in the past tense, or just to get my message across to whoevery I'm talking to.  I'm understanding people better, but there are definitely still plenty of moments where the whole 'just smile and nod' mentality takes over.  I should probably work on asking people to repeat themselves, or asking them to explain themselves so I can actually understand what they're telling me.  But you know how it is, after a full day of brain-cramming Spanish class it's hard to find the energy to ask someone to please repeat that entire thought they just told you so that you could break apart each sentence to figure out what all the pieces meant.  It's just another one of those "Get back on the horse!" moments during PC training/service that I need to work on. 

On a sad note, the dance class I had attended a couple times has since been cancelled.  Don't know why for sure, except that they were just having some issues.  So no more dance class for me.  Unless I start my own. . . hmmmmm. . .

So far, I haven't really visited anywhere else besides my town and the few nearby towns where we have training sessions, like Jinotepe.  My training companion, Ryan, however, has gone to the coast twice!  And, it was the first time he's ever seen the Pacific ocean, too.  Pretty cool to see it in Nicaragua first.  Although I wouldn't know what it looks like since I haven't been there yet.  My mom tells me that we'll go to Masaya sometime to see the handicrafts and things they do there.  She tells me it's pretty.  But honestly they just don't allow us a lot of free time during training.  Monday through Saturday are booked with language classes and training sessions, so Sunday's the only free day of the week, and we usually spend the morning in the garden then.  Plus, I really love my naps on Sunday afternoons when I can get one in.  Actually, I'm due for one right now. . .

I'll end with another little Spanish lesson:

When people 'greet' each other as they pass by on the street, they typically say "Adios" to one another, instead of "hola" or "como estas" like we may expect.  I suppose the reasoning is pretty much because you're passing them, so you're saing goodbye as you walk by them and then away.  Huh, different, right?  I'm still getting used to it. 

One more thing, if anyone's planning on mailing me anything, here's a suggestion:  I'm in need of some simple t-shirts.  Like crew-neck or small v-neck style, nothing too low cut for modesty's sake.  Plus, when everything gets handwashed, it stretches a lot, and the two deeper cut v-neck shirts I brought have stretched to the point that I have to wear a cami underneath so I'm not flashing the 'girls'.  Plus, a t-shirt is pretty light and can roll up small into a package.  Wide-strapped tank tops are good too, just nothing that exposes the bra straps.  It's nice to be able to expose my shoulders sometimes during hot days, and my family's pretty low key about their wardrobe, so I like to wear comfy shirts on the weekends that aren't my button-up shirts for class during the week.  Okay, that's my rant about t-shirts, thanks for listening :)