Youth Group Winners!

And first place in the Youth Group Product Fair goes to. . . Pan de Banano from El Recreo!!!!  My youth group won the whole competition against all 11 other groups from all the training towns of Agriculture and Small Business.  What an amazing surprise.  The other groups were so, so good.  I was really impressed with all the cool products that were there, like mango chutney, bags woven from plastic string, soap in a hand-painted coconut shell, glass candle holders, and the list goes on.  The agriculture groups won 4 out of 6 winning positions (best product packaging to the El Rosario group with their bamboo packaged shampoo, best flavor to the La Palmera group with their coco-choco-bananos, 3rd place to the Guisquiliapa group with their soap, and my group at 1st place!)  It was a tough day, but paid off in the end!

Well, this next week is the last week of training.  Today's my last full day with my host family, so I'm going to attempt to make them beef stew for lunch as a thank you.  I hope it turns out as good as it has in the past and that they like it.  Yesterday some of us went to the town of Masatepe to go thrift shopping.  There's some great thrift stores here in Nicaragua!  I mostly bought some simple t-shirts (so now I know I can easily get those here for like 30 cordobas, a little over a dollar each), and some skirts to add to my wardrobe.  I was hoping to find a nice Nica dress to wear for the swearing in ceremony this Friday, but my funds were running low and their nice dress options were limited to prom-style tule dresses like you find in any thrift store in the U.S.  Not doing it.

So speaking of this Friday, I'm swearing in!  I will be an official volunteer as of about 11am on the 29th.  Spanish classes were officially over as of last Wednesday, so this week is full of charlas every single day.  Thursday morning we move out of our home-stay houses and head to Managua for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, for the ceremony and to spend one last day preparing to move to our sites on Sunday.  We had our final language interviews last Wednesday, and we find out tomorrow what our official language level is starting out as volunteers.  At the very end of service (after 2 years), they do an exit language interview also to see how you've improved.  My interview went okay.  I honestly don't think it was any better than the mid-training interview.  We've spent relatively little time in class for the second half of training than we did the first half, since we had two weeks off for tech week and the site visit week.  Plus with so many charlas during the weeks, you get to speaking a lot of English with the other trainees, and that can slow your Spanish progress down a bit.  But overall the interview was fine.  I'm still at an Intermediate Mid speaking level, which is the goal, so I'm not worried.  My language will definitely have to improve in my site where I'll be speaking Spanish 24/7, so it'll just come with time. 

So I finally have some info regarding my new address, but I don't have the actual address yet.  This is how it goes:  there are about 5 volunteers that live in the city of Jinotega, which is the closest large city to my site, about 2.5 hours by bus.  Those volunteers have a PO Box that they all share at the post office, and everyone who lives in the Jinotega area can use that one.  It sounds like the post office staff know that all the volunteers share it and let them take other's mail when necessary, like when they come into town they can deliver mail to their neighbor volunteers if they want, or the volunteers who live in the city can keep the mail at their house and we can just go visit them to pick up our mail.  So, I will have a PO Box number to share with you all for my future mail, but I don't know what it is yet.  I'll find out as soon as I can and get back to you.  But for now, hold off on any mail to the Managua address.  Since I'm moving, I won't have easy access to the mail that comes to the PC office since the traning staff always delivered that mail to us during training, and starting next week I won't be a trainee anymore!  Also, just give me a heads up in an e-mail if you can when you do mail stuff in the future so I know to keep an eye out for stuff to arrive.  It has been taking about 3 weeks to a month for packages to get here (even letters and cards too!), so keep that in mind if there's any time sensitive stuff.

Okay, Spanish lesson for this blog: "Si hombre" and "No hombre".  You say this in agreeance or disagreeance with something that the previous person just said.  It's like saying "Yeah man!" or "No way dude!" depending if you agree or not. 

'Til next time . . .

~Sarita~