Adjusting to life in Rivas has been getting easier now that I have friends in site. It's amazing how much it does for a volunteer once in site. Susana and her family have been super active in asking around for places that I can rent, my friend Rodrigo's cousin Johanna had walked all around town with me looking for places, my friend Ivan called his friend who is a lawyer and lives in Rivas to help me look too. For one reason or another some of these options haven't worked out but I had the safety and security coordinator come to site yesterday to look at a place I have in mind. It's on the same street that I currently live on and from what I know, is safe. The family seems pretty nice so far and I hope we'll be good friends.
Teaching is getting a bit easier as I am getting to know my students in smaller groups rather than as a clump of 60 in most cases. As I mentioned before, my counterpart and I have been working with the students on their business plans. I've set aside "office hours" (2.5 hours at a time, twice a week) for my students to talk to me about their products, business plans, and what difficulties they're running into. Some of the most common questions dealt with creating a logo and a slogan for their product. I have been trying to find examples in the community that they'd be able to relate to and be able to apply the concepts to their project. Interestingly enough, the Hollister brand is pretty popular here and the bird symbol/ "H" served as great examples in terms of teaching the concept of logos. There's also an incredibly addicting song for channel 10 here that I used to teach the concept of slogans.
I am currently in Managua attending an informal meeting with the director of Yale University's International Relations master's program. My friend David who is an aggie, found out that she was going to be in town and set up a time for those of us who are interested, to chat with her. I hadn't really considered this program for grad school because it wasn't development focused but a lot of things can change in 2 years so I figured I might as well show up anyway.
Watching the Olympics has been a great momentary escape to America even though it's in Beijing. Wierd but this is the best I can do to explain. I was watching all of those American commercials of Applebee's and it totally brought me to tears. I don't even LIKE Applebee's! So for those of you back home, enjoy the endless air conditioning, clean water, electricity, food, etc for me. I've been thinking about coming home for Christmas but I am so afraid of the reverse culture shock of going stateside and then culture shocking again coming back to Nicaragua. But I figured that I should take advantage of the vacation time during these two years to travel in the region without having to worry about visa issues. I am hoping that my mom will fly down here in December and we can travel a bit here and in Costa Rica but we don't have set plans just yet.
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Joanna, I'm glad to read that everything is working out. Hope you find a place that is safe. And having friends will surely make life more enjoyable out there for you. But where are the pictures?
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