I am sorry for the delay of this long awaited blog
post. I am going to start with what is
new here, in Nicaragua and work backwards to my last weeks in Guatemala.
NICARAGUA
HOME
I am living in the city of
Chinanadega, three hours north of Managua, the capital. I am staying with the
Chavez family. My host mother, Anne, and my host father, Taylor, are pastors at
an evangelical church. I honestly could not tell you the exact denomination. I
believe the closest denomination to it in the U.S would be Baptist. I have two
host brothers, Taylor and Mateo, 11 and 8. They are very excited about me being
here and very full of energy. We have been playing a lot of the card Speed
during the last week and a half I have been here. They also enjoy beating
me at their soccer video game, but I am getting better and I hope to one day
make a comeback. I have seen lots of my extended host family as well. I have
two uncles, David and Tony. They live close by and we often go over to their
house for dinner, or they are over at my house hanging out. I have a host
cousin named Fernanda who is 14 and we have been getting along really well.
This weekend we all went to the beach early in the morning. To get to the beach
only takes about 15 minutes. At eight in the morning eleven of us all pilled
into the pickup and then stopped at a roadside stand that sells watermelon. We
spent the next 4 hours rolling in the waves and eating giant quarter slices of
watermelon that left our entire faces sticky with the juice. It was a really
good day. My host mother also took me to the market last week to buy fruit
because I told her it was my favorite. It is crazy and fabulous. I loved
every second of it. I have been to a couple of markets in the last month and a
half and I find them fascinating. They can be a bit overwhelming but We bought,
watermelon, melons, pineapples, oranges, tangerines, bananas, and mamonchinos.
I had never seen a mamonchino before. They are super weird looking. If you have
never heard of one either, you should Google a picture. They are sweet like a
strawberry with the texture of a grape.
INTERNSHIPS
During the week I work at my
internships arranged for me by the school. Monday through Wednesday I am at a
“Health Clinic.” I say “Health Clinic,” because really I am working in a
laboratory, inside a “clinic” that only houses a dentist office. The work is
not exactly what I was expecting. The last two weeks have been painfully slow
in the lab. Schools just started here and so people are a bit short on cash to
get labs run. My supervisor and co-worker are overwhelmingly nice thought.
Yessica is my supervisor and she has taken it upon herself to show me the city
and make sure that I have everything I need. The first day she gave me a tour
on her motorcycle and showed me central park. When I told her on Monday that I
was sad I had finished my book I was reading, she took me to three different
school supply stores to find books. Sad fact: there are no bookstores here.
Like no stores, at all, with books! We asked five people were we could buy
books and they all said the school supplies stores, which only sell
schoolbooks. So now I am reading Homers, The Odyssey, in Spanish. My only other
co-worker is Thelma. She is also really nice but I think she thinks I don’t
understand anything. The vocab of the lab is hard because it is essentially a
bio/chem class in Spanish, with vocab that I often don’t know in English. She
was talking to another girl on Wednesday and told her that I probably only
understood about 30% of what she said. I interjected and said, “ I think I can
understand more than just 30%.” The other girls said, “woops, she understood
that.” Dang right I understood. I was so mad. I have only been here a week
women, give me a break.
I don’t know if I am disappointed in my
placement or not. If nothing else I think I am a bit bummed. I am not getting
any patient contact hours and it is just not what I had in mind. When we have
nothing to do they send me over to the dentist office to observe. I don’t
actually have authority to do anything here so really I can only just observe.
I finally told them this week that I really have to desire to be a dentist and
they finally let me stay in the lab. Dana, our TA here in Nicaragua is coming
to check in on Friday and I am going to talk to him about possibly changing but
I don’t know if it is an option.
My other
internship is at a Christian school. I am there Thursday and Friday. I have
only been there two days so far but it was super fun. At the school, students
stay in their classroom all day and teachers rotate to them, essentially the
opposite of the typical high school in the U.S. I stayed in the 6th
grade class all day, both days. Subjects here are different and I wanted to
observe them all first. From now on I am going to be changing between the math
and the English teachers. The kids of the 6th grade are now all my
little buddies, and have helped me more with my Spanish than anyone else here
in Nicaragua. They are not shy about correcting me and laughing at me when I am
wrong. Karli is an awfully hard name to say in Spanish apparently. Here,
everyone has two first names and they use them interchangeably. The students
think that Dee is my second name and have been using it because it is easier. The
English teach, Lenny is also excited to have me. The first day we played games
with the class and then he had me help them correct their homework. The other
teachers just had me sit and watch, so I am excited to follow him around next
week and be able to participate more. The director has also enlisted me to help
them make first aid and emergency response protocols, because I took a class
last year and am certified. I am excited that I have something different to
bring to the picture and that I can use it to help them. Also I am officially
on the birthday list, so I am now legitimately part of the staff.
GUATEMALA
Saying goodbye to Guatemala was
shockingly difficult. I still long for my home in Quetzaltenango, even though I
left it almost three weeks ago. My Guatemalan family is incredible. They were
just as sad to see us go, as we were to leave. We were their first host kids
and I feel so proud to have that title. I hope they continue to host students
as they made such an impact in my life and on my time in Guatemala and I hope
other students also have the opportunity to be changed by this family. At the
same time, I hope they will never forget their first host kids and the
incredible two weeks we had with them, I know that I never will. During our last week in Guatemala we did not
have formal classes of Spanish at the language school. Every day we had a
lecture with our professor there with us in Guatemala, and we also had guest
speakers almost every day. In the afternoon we still had activities. One day we
had a four-hour long cooking class; another day we climbed a volcano, smaller
this time: and another day we went to the house of youth immigrants that had
been deported from Mexico and are sent to stay at this house until their family
can come pick them up. I was unable to go because my roommate was really sick
and I was busy getting her doctors appointments and medicine, but talking to my
friend about it was really interesting and heartbreaking. As I mentioned before
we went to the Quinceñera with my host family and had an incredible time. All
the women wore traditional dress including the birthday girl and all the men
work tuxes, including my host brothers. After 3 house of ceremony, and hour of
eating a traditional meal reserved for special occasions, and cake, and then
watching a slideshow of pictures of the birthday girl, we danced. We danced for
nearly three house non-stop to traditional music with all of my host family. During our last week we also went to the fiftieth birthday of our uncle, layer on the roof and watched the stares, went to mass and played more rounds of spoons. I was on cultural experience overload. I was exhausted all the time but it was worth it and now I miss it dearly. I like Nicaragua, but I love Guatemala.
THE PLUNGE
We left Quetzaltenango at 8 in the
morning on Saturday the 30th of January, with tearfully goodbyes and
long hugs and began a long-standing CASP tradition known as The Plunge. On that morning we were
given enveloples with the names of our team members, the name of a town, a list
of things to do, three rules, and a pile of cash. We were told to find the
town, complete the list of tasks, try to spend as little of the money as possible
and arrive in Antigua by Monday afternoon. My group was Rachael, Katy, and
Camina and we were sent to the town of San Lucas Tolimans on lake Atitlan. We
took chicken busses to Panahachel and then a microbus to San Lucas. The
microbus was not the cheapest way to go but it was the fastest. We arrived
around three in the afternoon on Saturday and found a cheep hotel to spend the
night at. The gal who ran the inn was really nice and like a host mother for
the weekend. When we were in our rooms we left the doors open and she would
stop by and talk to us. Her granddaughters were always running around and would
also stop by to say hi. We spent Sunday completing the list of errands, which
included talking to a priest, talking to four people about their life story,
finding out what there is to do in San Lucas, and buying a souvenir. As it turns out there is nothing to do in the
small town of San Lucas. Of the dozen people we asked the most popular answers
were “the lake” or “nothing.” We talked to a cute old man who told us about
growing up and working in the fields during a time when all men wore
traditional clothing. We also met a baker who almost drowned crossing the
boarder into the United States with a coyote when he was fifteen. He lived
there for fifteen years until he was deported. We took five chicken busses and
a truck tax to get to Antigua on Monday. When we arrived at the bus station in
Antigua, on of the girls found her bag had been cut and her wallet was gone.
She was able to cancel her debit card when we got to the hotel, other than that
she only lost about ten bucks. It was just a really weird feeling of being
really vulnerable. But we made it. We took a tax to the hotel and we heard our
professor’s voice and I think it was the sweetest sound I have ever heard. We
spend the rest of the week in Antigua. We had classes and toured a convent and
did a bunch of other, kind of random things. It is a beautiful city but more
touristy and it was a bit ruined after our eventful introduction. We flew out
for Nicaragua at three in the morning on Friday. After two days at a hotel, our host families
came to retrieve us.
Sorry again that this post took so
long. Over all I am doing well. I am happy and having fun experiencing all that
Nicaragua has to offer, despite my slight boredom at my internship. I have
limited access to Internet here but I will try to keep in touch and keep this
blog bit more updated. Now that I am here and have fewer activities during the
day, I hope to have more time to write. I am going to try to upload photos soon, but they take time that I don't have right now. I hope life is good back home and that
all are well and health. God Bless, love you all
Karli
