Absence makes the heart grow fonder?

My family just went on a camping trip without me. Talking to my sister about it I got this idea to compare and contrast family camping and my life in Nicaragua in an essay format. As I started to write I realized that it was taking too much time and that I haven't written an essay in a while. But I still liked the compare and contrast idea so I think I'll outline instead and you can turn it into an essay for me. Automatic A if anyone does that.

• While camping evidently my dad used window cleaner as soap, in Nicaragua I use bug spray as perfume.
• When camping the days are hot and you swim in the ice cold river, in Nicaragua the days are hot and you swim in the over chlorinated pool.
• Neither while camping nor in Nicaragua is there an option for a hot shower.
• In neither location is there electricity.
• On camping trips we bring a generator and propane lanterns, in Nicaragua we use candles.
• In the woods we play Ticket to Ride. In Nicaragua we go see the bloodiest movie ever called “Exterminio 2” aka “28 Weeks Later” because we have lazy Spanish and miss the part in the review that says the disease is people eating each other.
• While camping we eat a lot of instant oatmeal and hobo pies, in Nicaragua we eat at TGI Friday's 3 times in one week.
• Camping trips provide a variety of methods of exercise, Nicaragua has Curves and then the 45 minute walk home from Curves in the rain.
• Nicaragua has phones, internet, and cable TV (if there is electricity), camping doesn't.
• During camping trips no one in my family goes to work. In Nicaragua, if it isn't a holiday, I do go to work. This is not the case with all the teachers at my school. One of the 1st grade teachers didn't come last Thursday (possibly she was camping) there was no substitute and they didn't send the kids home. Instead they combined the two first grade classes for one teacher. What a reward for coming to work, 55 students. I went in to help and almost stepped on a kid who was lying on the floor holding his stomach and crying. While camping I'm normally the one crying because I am so bored.
• Other campers say “Hi, neighbor,” when you're camping, in Nicaragua people say “Hola, Chela”
• Both campers and Nicaraguan children are constantly dirty.
• In Nicaragua I have a maid, while camping I have my mom.

I think that concludes my comparisons for now, there are more, I'm sure. I haven't decided if life in Nicaragua's capital city or in the woods is more rural. Maybe now I'm just wondering why I'm in Nicaragua if I profess to hate camping.

I think I have a disease I like to call HSFA that stands for Hyper sensitive fore arm. Does that ever happen to you? It totally feels like I have an open wound on my left fore arm but it looks normal.

Happy Santo Domingo, we don't have school tomorrow.

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.

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?