Well, life is good thus far and I’m going to make an effort to tell
you about it more often. It’s Wednesday and I’ve been to 10 hours of
English class so far this week at the high school with my counterpart
(and best friend) Victor Rizo. Victor is a little bit of a
fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type in that he finds it limiting and
unnecessary to spend a lot of time on thorough planning but he’s a
good teacher. Because he speaks English in class and does it so
self-assuredly, our students are naturally instilled with confidence.
They trust that the activities he asks them to do are the very same
that helped him learn English and so they do them willingly. There are
exceptions, of course, but I can tell you already that there are a lot
of good things happening at Escuela Ruben Dario. My role with Victor
will probably be to focus him a bit more on creating learning
objectives and comprehensive unit plans instead of just “one-off”
classes that don’t scaffold the students’ knowledge or trigger a
different language skill or ability (speaking, learning, reading, or
writing).

At the very least, we have a lot of fun and not only do we work
together at the high school but also at his evening and weekend
English school called Prime English Center (PEC). PEC has roughly 60
students ranging from ages seven to 45-years-old. Victor and his best
friend, Omar, another high school teacher I work with on occasion,
give class almost every night of the week plus all day Sunday. One
really cool thing Victor started was giving the advanced English
students (high school seniors or recent grads) their own level one
class to teach. There is no better way to learn than to teach someone
else, right? Victor and I are hoping to do some teaching workshops in
the near future for these young, teachers-in-training.

I’ve attached a few photos of my house. So far so good. My landlady
kind of irks me but I am hopeful that I’ll be here in this 3-bedroom
house for the whole year. The biggest, best changes are that I have a
kitchen and a kitchen sink, an indoor toilet and shower, lots of
closed closet space, and walls and a ceiling that meet! The house is a
10-minute walk from the supermarket, the medical clinic, the central
park, and two coffee shops (the only two in town:); five minutes from
the open market where I get tupperware, fruits and vegetables, pirated
movies and music; and about 25 minutes from the high school which is
on the outskirts of town and is far from most everything.

While the department of Jinotega produces roughly 80% of Nicaragua’s
coffee, I’m trying to drink less. A recently acquired chai tea recipe
brings me happiness on the chilly evenings at home. Seriously, I often
wear a coat at night when it drops into the low 60s. We’re dead in the
middle of a 6-9 month rainy season that brings us showers or downpours
a few times each afternoon/evening. The other day I wore my new rubber
boots for the first time and felt like a schoolgirl!