Mi Vida

One man's trash another man's treasure

Yesterday afternoon we went to the dumps. It wasn't like when you go in the states to drop off tree clippings and see if you can find any cool furniture but rather to see another aspect of Nicaraguan life. Yeah it’s the dumps and people live there, and there are churches, and a school, and feeding programs, and vultures, and burning garbage, and cows, and horses, and pigs. Maybe for a minute you think “Hey, these shacks aren’t all that bad, they even get electricity and water (illegally)” but then you realize that those rolling hills are made of garbage and then start to think about all the carcinogens in the air that one is prone to inhale thanks to the constant fires. Then you go up a little higher and see the dump trucks coming in to dump stuff and people swarming with their bandannas and pitchforks to get to whatever first. One thing that gets collected is industrial-sized clear garbage bags. They find them and then clean them and sell them $10 for 100 pounds, which maybe wouldn't seem so bad but it takes a group 3-5 days to get the work done, so $10 has to go a long way. Other people collect cans and bottles or scrap metals whatever they think they can sell. It is hard to leave a place like that and figure out what purpose there was in seeing what we saw. What I am feeling right now is that I should just start throwing away really nice salvageable things. Well since a picture says a thousand words here are some of those to supplement my rambling.

This is a job

This is a fire

This is a neighborhood

This is a cow

This is a house

The life of a working girl
Before braving the dumps yesterday I went to my first day of school. When I got there I received my schedule.
7:45-8:30 1st grade A
8:30-9:15 1st grade B
9:15-9:45 recess
9:45-10:30 2nd grade
10:30-11:15 3rd grade
The funny thing about getting your schedule on the same day that you start is that you don’t know what time you start until you get there. So I got there at eight, like I did last year, and found out that I already was late. So 1st grade A didn’t have English. 1st grade B was fine I guess, all things considered. They definitely weren’t expecting me and were in the middle of doing a craft that involved glue. 2nd grade was miserable; I can’t even begin to explain. On the bright side that made 3rd grade look like angels. On Wednesday I’ll have workbooks for each student so I am excited to have something besides my mind to fall back on.
The schedule I listed above is what I will have Mondays Wednesdays, and Fridays. Tuesdays I have off and Thursdays I’ll just be there for the sake of being there. I guess I will help out with the 36 preschool students. I was talking to the preschool teacher yesterday and she said that they cry a lot and aren’t potty trained. Just in case you were wondering, my specialty is not taking care of whining, un-potty trained, misbehaved children, it is more closely related to alphabetizing and baking carrot cakes. On Wednesday afternoons I will be teaching or at least helping with 7-9th grade English. More details are going to have to follow on that one because the girl that I am supposed to be working with had no idea what I was talking about.

Some people don’t think 16 hours a week is full-time
So far my schedule is pretty light but I already have some supplementary projects in the works. Matthew knows a few families (I’m guessing Korean) that want English tutoring; he told them I would do it if they paid me well and that by paying me they will be helping his ministry. Also I met a Nicaraguan the other day that knows English grammar but wants help with conversation. So she said she could come out to my house one hour a week just to work on talking, and if there is one thing I can do it is talk.

Striving for the North American life
On Sunday on of the missionary families hosted a Super Bowl party, there were 60 or 70 people there. There were two TV’s, two projectors with screens, and tons of food. But the funny thing is that this is Nicaragua so about 20 minutes before kick-off the electricity went out. We had a generator but the cable wouldn’t work. After someone called the States and found out that the Bears had already scored their first touchdown, we called the electric company to ask when they were expecting the power to be back on. They said some lines were down and it would take one to two hours to fix. The announcement was made that another area had power and if we wanted we could grab some food and chairs and migrate over to a different house. As people were gathering chairs, approximately four minutes later the power went back on and stayed on the rest of the night. Now one may wonder why a country makes up stories about lines being down when really there is no problem at all, one thing is for sure, during the World Cup, the power stayed on. I was informed yesterday that only an estimated 15% of electricity here is paid for while the rest of the houses illegally tap into power lines, the same goes for water. That explains some bitterness on the corporation side.

I was going to write more but when taking the pictures into consideration this e-mail is already up to like 6,000 words.

Love, Joy