Back from my Homestay!

I'm back from my two-week homestay and have internet access again! It was a wonderful two weeks, and very hard to discuss concisely in a blog post. We did a lot - two weeks of Spanish classes, 5 trips to locations in and around Managua, and 3 days of shadowing the current Program Directors (PDs) and learning more about what we'll be doing in the next year. So my goal in this blog post is to give you a little background about Nicaragua as a country, and talk about my homestay experience and our outings - and my next blog post, this weekend or early next week, will be an introduction to Manna Project and what I'll be doing for the next year. My other goal is not to write a novel, and to keep it mostly concise...we'll see if I can successfully meet both of those. :-)

Nicaragua background: I think it's impossible to understand some of the realities of living and working in a country without knowing anything about the country, so here's some relevant Nicaraguan info to get you started. Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the Western hemisphere (Haiti being the poorest). Geographically, it's located in Central America and borders on Honduras and Costa Rica. There are somewhere around 6 million people in the country (note: less than in the city of Houston, which is a bit crazy), and 1.4 million of them live in Managua, the capital. Politically, there was a lot of unrest in the 70s. In 1979, a dictator named Samoza was run out of office after his family ruling the country for 41 years, and a man named Sandino took power. There are three big political parties: Sandinistas, Liberals, and Conservatives. The currently democratically elected president is named Daniel Ortega and is Sandinista, though the Sandinistas haven't had power consistently since 1979 and other parties were in power in between. There is an election in November, but it's questionable how fair of an election it is - Ortega is running again (he changed the Constitution so he'd be allowed to) and he refused to have international observers for the election.

Economically, the situation is not very good. Statistics-wise, with a GDP of around $3,000 a year per capita, it ranks 167th world-wide. Many people are unemployed, and many of those with work are underemployed - they have some kind of work, but it's not sufficient. Even with a university degree, it's difficult to find work here unless you have connections to people in government or with power. Many people live on under $1 a day, and don't have access to running water, electricity or adequate housing. Lots of people will sell food or trinkets on the street/in buses, try and wash your car window at a stop light and expect a small payment, or simply beg when they see a gringo/chele (two different words used for white person) walk by. Like in any country, there is an upper class, and there is a huge disparity between the upper class and the lower class.

Spanish school: All of the new PDs spent the last two weeks doing classes at a Spanish school called Viva Spanish school (http://www.vivaspanishschool.com/), which is located in a middle-lower-ish class neighborhood in Managua. We had classes 4 hours a day, 8am-12pm. I was in the middle level, and there were only two of us in the class. Jesse (one of my fellow PDs) and I both speak decent Spanish, but definitely aren't fluent. We had two hours of conversation to start out with each day, and the usefulness of it depended on the day. We got to pick the topics we discussed for most of the days, so learned some Nicaraguan slang/phrases which we'll hear throughout the year, lots about different foods here, and also about the political and economic situation as seen by the Nicaraguans teaching it. After conversation class, we'd have two hours of grammar, which was very useful to brush up (or learn for the first time...) on some grammar concepts. I definitely need to keep studying on my own throughout the next few months, as there's a lot I still don't know, but it was a good jump-start for my Spanish and I'll have all year to practice it. :-)

Homestay: Each of us stayed with a different homestay family, so it was neat to have eight experiences to compare. All the homestays were within a few blocks of Viva - mine happened to be right next door to the school, which made my commute each day quite easy! My host mom's name was Melida, and it was just her and her mom who lived in the house, but there were always lots of people around. Her brother and his 3 year old son were both around a lot, so it was nice to have a little one around! Other people were in and out a lot as well. My accomodations were simple, but adequate - the house had one main room, then an open air part, and two bedrooms off that. My bedroom was in the back, and just had a twin bed, a wardrobe, one light, and a fan. The bathroom was just a toilet and a shower (cold water only) in two separate little rooms, outside as well but under a roof. The neighborhood only had running water in the mornings, so after that I had to use a bucket to put water in the toilet tank to flush it, and would have had to use a bucket to shower if I hadn't just done morning showers. The family had a TV in the house and spent most of their time watching it, even during meals, so I didn't get a huge amount of conversation in with them, but heard a lot of Spanish which was useful. They also watched some American shows with Spanish subtitles, such as Law and Order and CSI, so I got a little taste of home. Here's a couple pictures:





Nicaraguan food: We ate 3 meals a day at our homestays, and mine were generally pretty typically Nicaraguan. So here's an introduction to Nicaraguan foods! The staple foods are rice and beans, which, when cooked mixed together, are called gallo pinto - literally means painted chicken - which is served at most meals. It's often accompanied by a somewhat strange cheese which we affectionately call "Nica cheese". It's kind of hard and salty and hard to describe...it's good mixed with gallo pinto and other stuff, but it's definitely not a cheese you would just eat slices of. They also have yummy corn tortillas which are often served with meals. There are a few interesting drinks, often made with corn flour or oatmeal, which are interesting but mostly good. Vegetable/fruit-wise, the most common to be served with a meal is either a zucchini/squash of some form or plaintains cooked in various ways, which are delicious. There's lots of fresh fruit here - one of my favorite things so far has been getting mangoes fresh off the tree to eat. :-)

Places we visited: As a group, we spent the first week doing outings in the afternoons to various locations. Here's the 1-2 sentence version of each. Granada is a colonial town south of Managua, which still looks and feels like 1500 Spanish colonization. It's next to a lake, which was a ton of little islands in it, with nice houses, wildlife like monkeys and birds, and a few restaurants on it. We took a boat tour of the islands on a little boat, and then walked around the town. There's apparently a big international poetry festival there in February, so I definitely plan to go back. Around Managua, we visited a look-out point to see the city, as well as the old and new cathedrals. There was a big earthquake in Managua after 1972, so some buildings like the old cathedral have never been rebuilt. We also went on a very rainy hike at a place called La Concha, went to see a very pretty lake called Laguna de Apoyo, and saw the volcano closest to Managua, Volcan Masaya.

Well, I kind of failed at being concise, but there you have it - my last two weeks in one blog post! I'll do another one soon-ish with information about Manna Project. If there's any particular topic you want me to write about, or anything I mentioned that you want more details on, just let me know! Hope you all are doing well - my internet isn't super great, but I'll do what I can to keep in touch!