rabbit (say if first thing tomorrow morning)

It is rainy season. The streets are now rivers and water is plentiful. The air is fresh and I get to wear pants. The only problem (because there must be one) is that now those cold showers are back to being miserable. Oh and I'm supposed to be tutoring right now but can't because it is raining too hard to walk and I am, as always, out of minutes on my phone. Has having flaky friends finally rubbed off on me?

Yesterday was Nicaraguan Mother's day. It is a way bigger deal here than in the States. On Tuesday my school was only half day because there was some sort of Mother's day presentation. And then Wednesday there was no school at all. Hallelujah, I love moms. Another thing here is that Mother's day colors are red and white and pretty much every where is decorated to look like tacky Valentine's day.

Tomorrow is Kid's day or something so we have another half day and I was informed this afternoon that I am supposed to have some sort of game and prizes prepared. What games are appreciated by kids ranging in ages from 4 to 16?

I often mention that my kids are out of control but maybe I don't go into enough detail. I have to admit that sometimes I question myself about whether or not it is really as bad as I think, but things happen and I am comforted that I do teach at a crazy school. Now for one of the primest examples (yes, even beyond eating toothpaste for lunch): On Monday I walked into my 1st grade class and one of my students asked if he could go to the bathroom and I said no because he asks every single day as soon as I walk in. I ushered him back to his seat, along with the rest of the class, and then started to talk about the book we were going to read. Then I look up to the back of the classroom and there he is peeing on the wall. I was like “oh my, please don't be doing what I think you're doing,” but the other students made sure I knew exactly what was going on. So I told them not to worry about it and go back to their seats but one of them when out side and told their regular teacher who then came in and yelled at him in front of the class. At this point all of the students started chanting something and banging on their desks and Sacarias started crying. Yeah and just if you were wondering no emergency cleaning team came.

OK and maybe I've talked about my student's home lives being messed up too and now have a great example of that. I was talking to the pre-school teacher today, she's a good one to explain every one's history in the school. So I was commenting on what an attentive grandpa Lucy has and the teacher told me that it isn't Lucy's grandfather but dad. Which is crazy because he is old (no offense to my elderly readers, but you don't have a 4 year-old). Then the teacher started telling me about her own family. Her parents divorced when she was twelve because her father wanted a new woman. Through some process, that I would know more about if my Spanish had less issues, her father ended up marrying her brother's girlfriend. That is strange and I'm sure Deuteronomy has something to say about it.

Yesterday Cristina and I went around town taking pictures. We are hoping to eventually put them into a book along with some fabulous commentary that may be available for purchase one day. So be excited for that day.

I hope your life is going splendidly...let me know.

love, joy

i love lamp, and some other things

i love lamp
i went to the states for the weekend. i love usa. i love target. i love vanilla lattes. i love changes in temperature. i love hot water heaters. i love friends. i love english. i love weddings. i love unlimited cell phone use. i love 2nd birthday parties. i love cereal. i love english muffins. i love crepes-a-go-go. i love frozen yogurt. i love cherries. i love family. i love dry heat. i love poetry. i love shoes. i love coffee shops. i love walking in peace. i love garbage cans (as opposed to trash on the side of the road). i love you.
So I had a good time this weekend and this morning at 12:30 I got back to Nicaragua. The rainy season has officially started. That means it the humidity has kicked in. Today was pretty good, I actually woke up on time to get to school which surprised everyone (myself included).

back in time to may 15th, 2007
Last week I didn't update because things were a little crazy getting ready to come back. So here is a little on that. Last Tuesday my students grade 6 and up got to go on a field trip. I think it was the first one they had been on because they were really excited and parents came to wave us off, I felt like I was being sent of to war. Fist we crammed three to a seat on a yellow rented school bus then we made a few stops and were on our way to Volcan Masaya. I'd been there a few times already but none of the students had. We saw the volcano and bat caves and had lunch and went to a museum and the students filled out a worksheet on what they learned, it was like a real field trip. Matthew had gone to the States and raised support for everything so it was a very cool opportunity, and we are hoping to be able to go on more. The whole idea of raising support for this trip is odd because besides the cost of the bus it cost 10 cordobas ($.55) a student. It is strange to think that this wouldn't be in everyone's budget. Now for some pictures I'll try to not pick too many.

Some students in front of the volcano

mi colegio walking down to the caves

mi colegio walking up from the caves

the lunch provided for the teachers

our trusty bus "Christ's Blood"

99 degrees and counting

It seems as if I have less and less to say recently but I end up writing the same amount. So I fully do not blame you if you can't put up with reading my ramblings.

• I am starting to write this at 12:30 on Friday afternoon. In the past 30 hours the electricity has been out for 15 hours, including right now.
• I took a taxi home today. Last time I took one Matthew gave me money and made one of the other teachers not only help me get it but also had her ride home with me. Today two guys from my work walked me to the street. While one of them told the taxi driver where to take me and paid him the other wrote down the license number.
• My school is in a canyon and to get to the main road you have to go up a hill, so me and my buddies (one of whom Cristina is pretty sure is the ring leader of all the people that sniff glue in one of the most dangerous areas in the country) were walking up to the road through the neighborhood where most of my students live and I still got this group of men yelling at me informing me of my white beauty and professing their undying love. I thought this only happens when you are by yourself or with a group a girls but no I guess it happens when you are walking with Nica men too. I then took the opportunity to reinforce to Julio that I don't go to clubs. The walk was much more eventful than the taxi ride.
• Another topic I considered addressing that someone somewhere might find interesting is the lack of good cereals here. The other day I had a dream in which I was at Costco and bought a box of Frosted Mini Wheats and it came with a free box of Grape Nuts “Now easier than ever to eat!” It was a pretty detailed dream.
• Last Saturday night I went to the movies and saw the new Spiderman. We went to the VIP theater which costs $6 instead of the regular $3. I'm a fairly cheap person and wasn't going to go but I got a sponsor. In the VIP theater you can order food to be brought to your leather recliner. I brought my own apple and trail mix instead of ordering Sushi but fully enjoyed the comfort of the chairs.
• On Sunday we went to fancy lunch. It was a expensive but I skipped my next to meals so it averaged out not too bad, plus my mom paid. It was definitely worth it because now I can tell people I ate lunch at The Club.
• Between when I started writing this and now I went to the mall and bought new shoes for $12.
• The electricity turned back on at 2:30, seven hours after it went out today.
  Love, Joy
  PS. I guess if you are expecting a surprise it is that I am coming home on Thursday for the weekend. This isn't a super surprise because chances are if I am going to see you, you already know that I'm coming. But I am very excited and if you live near by I would love to see you but I think I'll be on house arrest of sorts so traveling will be cut to a minimum.

Re: I love you

If you're bored I have a suggestion. You should write me an e-mail. You don't even have to respond to anything you have (or haven't) read in my posts it can be completely one sided about your life. Because maybe sometimes you think about it and then don't, this time you should. I'll even make it more exciting, for every 100 responses I'll do something really cool (I don't know what, I'm open for suggestions).

Last weekend I went to a woman's retreat for Christians in Nicaragua that speak English. It was at at a swanky hotel on the beach with the biggest swimming pool in Central America. It was a little pricey but we had high-pressured hot showers . I think it got rid of all the grime that had been building on me for the past three months. Maybe that was too much information. I'm really glad I went for other more spiritual reasons too.

My mom is here for a week.

A few weeks ago at this teacher meeting 100% attendance awards were given. I didn't get one. I didn't go to school on Thursday last week, Monday,Tuesday or Thursday this week. But now I'm not planning on missing any at least until the middle of May. Matthew just sent me an e-mail thanking me for my commitment.

There is a shirt being sold at a department store here. It is very cute but $25. They only have one left and it has been in the store by itself for at least a month but they still haven't put it on sale. Injustices like that don't happen in the states.

I don't like it when my knees are exposed and I am sitting in the back seat of a car and they rub against the seat in front of me. I thought that was a fairly standard annoyance but I said it the other day and nobody understood. Things/people touching me in general I just don't know how to deal with.

On Tuesday we went to this town Granada and to it's famous "Kathy's Waffle House," it was super good. I had the pecan waffle, oh man.

I got a new job tutoring, already. I could start today but since la mama esta aqui I decided to wait until next Tuesday. I'll be tutoring in math again. Good thing I retook Calculus, oh maybe that was to get off of academic probation.

Yesterday at school I was working with my second graders on the phrase "How are you?" and the various responses. So we had gone over them and I had drawn some really high quality pictures on the board and was going around the room asking my students what the words meant in Spanish. I asked this kid Dominic what Hungry was in Spanish and he answered "comida(food)," so I said, "what about food?" and he said, "pescado(fish)?...um...arroz con pollo(chicken and rice)?..." and he kept going and I was just standing in front of the class laughing because he was so confused.

Another interesting thing happened yesterday at my school. At 1:30 in the afternoon, about 2 hours after i left, 20 armed gunmen came to rob us. The went into the office and took our 2 laptop computers, $600 cash, and the cell phones of the people that were working. But today attendance wasn't down at all and everyone seemed fine, I wouldn't have been fine if I was there. Nicaraguans aren't considered a violent people, they didn't hurt anyone and and everyone knows who did it because the school is in such a small barrio. It is sad that people think they should go rob the poor school that most likely one of their relatives goes to. And it is lame that the police don't actively work at stopping things like this when last week I got pulled over for turning left.

My mom took us grocery shopping today and I got pickles and Gatorade and lots of other exciting treats.

I learned at school that May 13th is Saint Fatima Day or something like that so the rainy season is supposed to start, but on the other hand my roommate said her leg was hurting and she thought that was a sign of rain. I think I'll place my bets with Rachel's leg.

OK brief recap, fill me in on your life or just tell me something and if I get enough responses there will be a big surprise.

Cosas buenas

Hello again. I guess last week some people found my post depressing so I figured I'd try to make this one more up-beat because let's face it, I'm a happy person.
1) It is mango season, and fortunately my mom didn't pass on her severe mango allergies to me. Our apartment complex is full of huge mango trees and the gardeners like us so they'll bring them to our house if we ask.
2) On Sunday we were in and out of church in under 3.5 hours. I think that's a record.
3) This guy that works at my school (I'm not sure what he does, gardens maybe?) wears overalls with the top half down, a red wwf t-shirt, and a white pinstripe New York hat quite regularly. It makes me laugh every time, because he's definitely got the gangster look down just ten years late.
4) My least controllable class is 1st grade B. On Monday their teacher didn't come so they all were sent home and I didn't have to "teach" them.
5) As soon as I finished my bowl of cereal yesterday morning Leo came and took it from the table to wash it. Talk about quality service.
6) Within the last week both the boy I tutored in math and my Korean students told me that they can't come any more. I am definitely over having that responsibility but now I'll have to come up with some other way to keep myself occupied other than my four hours of teaching four days a week.
7) Today one of my friends came help me at school. She whistled "This is the Day that the Lord Has Made" with her hands.
8) A few weeks ago my brother came he down and brought us a wireless router (paid for by my niece), so now when the electricity is on we have wireless internet. Supposedly we are going to start having electricity rations again but no more than two hours a day, thank you Daniel Ortega.
9) On Saturday I went to this thrift store "MegaBotique," I bought two pairs of shorts for 25 cordobas ($1.50).
10) Then I went to this bookstore that has new and used books in Spanish and English. The lady said the magazines were free and I figured I would take a few for my school but the lady told me to take them all and to leave my e-mail address so she could let my know when she has more. I was already able to use some for a project with my Monday afternoon classes.
Well 10 seems like a popular number to stop at. Even though things can be frustrating life is good.
Love, Joy

Chaos

I think if I needed to pick one word to describe my teaching situation it would be (as the title suggests) chaos.
How can I start? I'm sorry if this comes across as ranting,
Yesterday morning I got to school pretty close to on-time, I was excited because Friday I hung up a note on the classroom door telling my parents that the 1st graders need to bring in an empty notebook to use only for English. So I was all scheduled to have my students copy a few numbers off the board and then a few more the next day and so-on. That way the students that can't write as well won't feel so overwhelmed. For my first class the majority actually brought them and only a few had to use the paper that I brought for back up. The problem at my school is that I'll have one thing going for me and 100 against me. For example during 1st grade A, Julio, our maintenance man/driver was standing on a table in the middle of the room installing a ceiling fan. Why would anyone think that is an OK thing to do? So there is poor Joy trying to figure out how to teach with this stupidity going on. So I decided to try go outside. But it is really hard to keep 30 first graders under control (regardless of the location) but especially outside when there are other kids from the neighborhood wandering around playing marbles and such. And this is all before 8:30.
It is difficult to describe the behavior in my 1st grade B class. I guess if you take take the worst child you have ever met and imagine 19 of them in a room together and then pick the 3rd worst child you know and add 8 of them, then maybe mix in 2 that are fairly well behaved. There you have a rough estimate. I think maybe 40% of these students brought their books and probably 5 students didn't copy anything off of the whiteboard. Sometimes I keep them after during recess but usually I am about at my tolerance level of being in the same room with them after the first 15 minutes of class, so that's really more of a punishment for me than them. That brings me to 9:15.
9:15 is recess it was fine. Usually I chat with the other teachers or students. Yesterday was more or less the same but the students get so touchy and they're all sweaty and sticky and it as been so hot lately I just can't reciprocate their affections, so I spend a lot of the time swatting them away.
After recreo I teach 2nd grade. Two of them brought in their homework. The page we covered in our book was "where are you from? I'm from________." It's pretty funny since they are all from the same country, city, and barrio and thus pretty pointless to have them ask their classmates where they are from.
Third grade is definitely my best behaved class but I still question whether or not they are actually learning anything, and some of them just won't stop talking and whining. I wanted them to color this picture and had to explain to them that if they don't bring crayons it is their problem not mine, obviously by this point in time I was full of sympathy.
On Monday's I have afternoon classes at school too so usually Cristina comes sometime during my 2 hour break and brings me lunch or we run to a coffee shop, but until she gets there I get to hang out on campus. Today there was a missions team there. Possibly you missed previous e-mails where I shared my opinions on people coming to "help" so I'll give you a brief re-cap. Chaos. This time was a little better since they showed up an hour late which made them not be there until after school was out, I think this defeated their purpose of coming to pass out gifts to select children who then can play with their toys in class while the rest of the students watch. The group was from Texas but one of the girls graduated from Davis so that was exciting.
The second half of my break I spent drinking a caramel macchiato and telling Cristina how stupid my school is.
After break I have 8th, 9th, and 7th grades, in that order. These classes are not only smaller but usually I don't have to stop students from hiding under their desks.
Jeremy's school gave me some old lower elementary class readers so I brought those to class. I passed them out and we went through the stories "Pop!" and "See the Cat?" with little difficulty. Then Julio decided to pick this time to install another ceiling fan. He asked me if he could, I said no, he said he needed to. I don't know why he couldn't do it during the past 2 hours that the classroom was empty. So first he came, then their normal Nicaraguan English teacher came in to say that they needed to take their exams. This took a chunk of time and then I didn't know what to do because there was only five minutes left before the bell was supposed to ring. I really shouldn't have worried because it rang 10 minutes late.
In 9th grade there are a whole six students. When I got there they were still finishing their English exams, when they finished I passed out the readers and had them move to sit under the newly installed fan. On a side note, fans are all fine and dandy but do absolutely nothing when the power is out, which has been happening a lot lately. Anyways I gave them their readers then the director came to ask if I could take a five minute break because this lady needed to come in and take their measurements for new PE uniforms. Even with only six students there is no way that can only take five minutes. When she finally left we continued our reading until the bell rang late, again.
My 7th graders have the best English skills but very low attention spans and it is hard because the range in age from 13 to 18. They also were continually going in and out of the classroom because of fittings. But the lady was going to do it in front of the classroom until I asked her if it was possible to work in the hallway, so that was better I guess. One thing different about the classes here is that the students think once they finish their work they are able to leave, they aren't, right?
That about completes my school day, I got home at four.

Now on to the chaos that is Nicaragua. I will give you my top three stories from the week.
1. Last Monday night the windows got stolen out of my friend's car. Nothing from inside, just the windows.
2. On Friday at around noon, while my neighbors were at a stop light someone started to steal their back lights. Fortunately, the light turned green before they were able to cut the wires. They did however get the Toyota emblem.
3. Saturday morning probably takes the cake. As my roommate was in her car about to have the guards open the gate to let her out, suddenly Nicaraguan special police jumped the fence wearing masks and carrying guns. When they got in, they opened the gate to let in a truck with more police. They ran past her car and spread out to a few apartments to break into. We later found out they were looking for some Mexican drug-lords that were part of a group consisting of Mexicans, Guatemalans, and Nicaraguans that was busted in another town earlier in the week. Two people were arrested. I'm honestly not a big fan of drugs and wish they could have worked on sneaking in Mexican food.
Now on peppier note.
This past week has been pretty social. People came over for dinner a few nights and one night I actually hung out with non-roommates or family. Friday night I saw Letra y Musica and I really liked it. One of the previews before it was for She's the Man which came out in over a year ago and another for The Prince and Me which came out in 2004. On Saturday night I saw The Pursuit of Happyness, on DVD because it still isn't in the theaters here, I liked it but was pretty stressed out by his life being so terrible for so long. I also went to a baby shower and to a different church than normal and to one of the maid's houses in this really cool town about 30 minutes away by car. We went to pay her because she just reupholstered our couch and it looks really good. Plus she took the cushions back and fourth on the hour and a half bus ride she takes every morning to get here.
I had big plans of sending this out first thing this morning to prevent it from being any longer. But once again my idealistic plans got thrown out the window because the electricity was off from 8 to 2:30. But that is all I am going to write about my day.
How are you?

Happy Easter

Today is Easter and I am writing my weekly update. Things have been pretty busy since I last wrote but much of my time was spent with people that speak English. When I actually talk to people then I don't feel the need to write as much. And the fact that I'm exhausted may have something to do with it as well. Right now all my roommates are gone because they have tomorrow off of school. I have class so will be home alone for probably the third night in my entire life and what better way to spend that time than comunicating with you.
Last Saturday morning I left for Costa Rica with eight other people. It is a fairly common belief that the trip would have been better if the group had topped off at six. But enough of that, I will let you fine people in on some things you could have learned about me if you were on the trip (which I probably would have loved).
1. As long as I have one person around me that I can relate to I can handle just about any situation. Fortunately on this trip I had one of those people. Unfortunately, that lowers my tolerance level with other less relateable people.
2. I have no concept of when people are upset at me. Usually I think that people are joking. But in my credit, once I find out I usually feel really bad.
3. The whole hand gas on ATVs is completely beyond me and also at times my sense of direction totally flees. But sometimes it is good for my pride when these flaws are openly displayed, especially when I'm starting to feel pretty good about myself being less annoying than certain traveling companions.
4. This really shouldn't be a numbered point but I figured I should stick with the theme. Last Sunday in Costa Rica we went to church, it was a treat because not only is Tica Spanish easier to understand but this kid translated for us. One of the things that the pastor talked about was how vultures they'll be flying around wherever and it will be beautiful but they are just looking for death. I should be the other way, looking for the good not the bad, the whole Philippians 4:8 thing. This is really difficult and takes constant training. And quite frankly conversations revolving around the faults of others can be amusing.
5. I have no idea how reading these e-mails of mine effects your perspective of me but I guess it is too late to worry about things like that.
6. One of these e-mails I should list all the things I did while in the process of writing (I've had a very short attention span lately).
7. Peace out yo.