Just About Halfway Through Training!!

My tech trainer wasn't lying when he said the weeks are going to get busier and busier as training continues. These past two weeks have been so packed with Peace Corps Training requirements that I've barely had time to process everything, let alone write about everything. I guess I'll try to sum up the important things for now...

Last week, we gave our first “charla,” or lesson, to our youth group. (During the meetings before that, we had been solely focused on getting our recycled materials project going with them.) PCT requires us to give two charlas to our youth groups though, and our kids voted for one on drugs and alcohol. Overall I'd say it went pretty well! Our youth group kids are amazing, as I've said before, so we had some of them act out a socio-drama about what could happen to a kid that gets caught up in drugs and alcohol. Then we discussed the causes and consequences associated with such problems. I think it was much more effective to get their input, than to spew a bunch of “don't drink or you'll die” propaganda.

This past week, we also had to give the surveys we designed to the people in our communities. In our training town, we decided to survey the kids in 4th and 5th grade to determine what they have already learned as far as environmental education (since that's what we're all here to teach.) Again, I'd say it went really well. We each had to interview 5 kids and this coming week, we'll be analyzing our results and preparing a plan of action to present to our peer trainees from the other training towns. The kicker? Our presentation must be completely in Spanish, just like everything else.

I also taught in my first Nicaraguan classroom this week! I had to teach the fourth grade about the causes and consequences of pollution. I can't believe how well it went! The kids were awesome and they actually got a lot out of the lesson! We played a game at the end to let them show off what they learned and I was so pleased to see that I was able to get my point across!

To top things off, ALL of our seeds have germinated and are sprouting! We now have baby tomate, chiltoma (pepper), pepino (cucumber), pipian (squash), and ayote (bigger squash/pumpkin like thing) plants growing! Hopefully our barrier continues to keep out the school kids, chickens and dogs!

To finish off our week, all 42 trainees got to visit Volcan Masaya yesterday! It's an active volcano located in Masaya, Nicaragua, and was really cool to see! Unfortunately, we happened to be there during a “high alert” day, which meant we weren't allowed to hike anywhere around it because we had to stay close enough to the vehicles to get away if something were to happen! Crazy!! We did get to see the smoking crater though. So cool!