bad spanish and hyper children and blisters, oh my!

March 2

Today I just tried really hard to wake up fresh and ready to totally keep an open mind and do my best. I had had a few issues- I realized my Spanish is so limited that I can't understand what the teacher is telling the kids to do so I sort of have to guess but I am just going to work on it everyday until it gets better. I can do it!

Anyway, one interesting thing about Nicaragua is that there big sport is not soccer, it's baseball. I know, strange but true. I went with a few of the other volunteers last night to a game. It was really cool. It was kid of a weird mix of American and Nicaraguan stuff. For example, they played that song that you yell "charge!" after but no one ever said it. Also, there was (really bad) pizza, but they had mangoes and these little green fruits that I don't like instead of hot dogs. The thing that totally made the night though was this little boy who was somehow associated with the team we were rooting for would go out on the field with his dad(?) and start dancing. He was so cute! Everyone was cheering for him while he was dancing. So I had a good time and the team we were going for (I think it was the Granada team) won, so it was all good.

Oh, and basically a miracle happened today. the bed I was sleeping on is supported by four pegs and before I came, one broke. It was kind of shoved back into place and so I always had to be careful to not move around too much because the peg could give out. Anyway, I got a new bed to replace the broken one! A brand new bed! Seriously, it is sooo nice! I have lowered my living expectations so much while I have been in Central America so a nice new bed is like having, I don't know, a butler waking you up each morning with chocolate or something. I don't even have hot water ( I don't really mind that though because it has been in the 90s every day I have been here so far). I feel so lucky!

March 3

Well, school was ok today. The kids don't listen very well despite the fact that they are only in school for 4 hours a day (including lunch and recess) but today they didn't do as much because it was another volunteer's last day so she brought a pinata and they got to break it open and eat all the candy that was inside (which is one thing that you probably don't want to do with kids that are already hyper and have bad attentions spans, but maybe that's just me).

One thing I am having some problems with is all the walking. We have to walk everywhere here. And while my house is probably the nicest volunteer house, it is the farthest away from everything. This has resulted in four large blisters on my feet (Actually that is really my fault because I made a really bad judgment call on whether or not to wear flip flops). I will be fine in like a week when I adjust(and my blisters heal), but right now I'm just walking weirdly.

Oh, I had my first Spanish lesson today. It was so great! My teacher is name is Lady and she was really nice. A lot of what she was saying was review for me but it was a good review not a boring one. Plus, I was speaking Spanish the whole time so it was really fun- she is really easy to understand.

Another good thing about today is I had a really good conversation with Tooey (I still don't know how to spell her name). We were talking about how I am a christian and how I don't drink and she seemed to understand completely. It makes me feel so much better that even though she goes out a lot she knows that I when I say I don't want to, it's not because I don't want to hang out with them. I feel like a weight has lifted off of me.

Today was good!