Training is Winding Down

Training is coming to a close and everything is happening so fast!  I only have 8 days left in my training town, but quite a bit to accomplish still.

I know I have mentioned my youth group in prior posts, but basically we have been working with a group of youth from day one on starting their own business and producing a product.  After several weeks of 2 meetings weekly we are complete with three very talented and dedicated young ladies.  Our product is a candleholder with repujado, which is where a design is pressed in to aluminum and applied to the recycled glass candleholders.  The name of the business is Nandaluz, Nandasmo for our town and luz(light) to represent the candle light.  Our competition to market our product is this Friday so wish us luck!

On top of the work that needs to be done, I haven’t really been sleeping much as this weekend marked the day of the Samosa dictatorship expulsion some 30 years ago from Nica.  This meant constant celebration with fireworks and bands playing through the night.  Today I had off from Spanish class because it is the celebration of the victory of the Sandanistas who won the infamous Revolutionary war that terrorized Nica back in the 80’s.  All of the yellow school buses normally used for public transportation were excused from duty to carry thousands of Sandanista(current ruling party) supporters to Managua for rallies in the streets.   People were piled dangerously high on top of the buses and hanging out of their windows with drunken excitement.  I decided to avoid that chaos and head to the Lake with some other volunteers on my day off which had me up early.  Not to mention the all girls sleepover that occurred at my house last night due to the lack of school today.  I watched the first twilight movie in Spanish and ate cookies with 8 lil Nica girls under the age of 14 including my sisters.  I had forgotten that Bella was originally from Arizona and all the girls gasped and said “Kati es su estado”(it’s your state) like it was a big deal ha ha!  And yes I had to watch as they rewound the DVD to watch Bella and Edward kiss again!

We have been celebrating a lot of birthdays in our group which means I’ve been eating and drinking quite well.  That’s the one thing volunteers love to do when given an excuse, splurge on good food!  Me celebrated my buddy Leslie’s b-day dinner in Masaya where we bought our first bottles of wine at a “French” restaurant or the Nica version of one at least.  To celebrate Michelle’s b-day last Saturday we ate lunch at a Mexican restaurant where I splurged on Chiliquiles, horchata and chicken tacos!  I’m not going to lie; I also had a piece of cheesecake alongside the b-day girl!  That night’s celebration was complete with a bottle of rum and card games, you can imagine the rest.

Another highlight of my past week was making bread at my favorite bakery, Panaderia Esperanza, with its owner Antonio and his wife Raquel.  Our Spanish teacher thought this would be a more useful language lesson than sitting in a classroom and I totally agreed.  The four of us volunteers here in Nandasmo spent the afternoon learning the process of mixing, cutting, rolling and stuffing bread to bake.  The best part was that we got to take it all home!  I was on bread overload for about three days!

I have finally made a Nica friend!  Irma is 23 and attends an American university in Managua but lives in my small town of Nandasmo.  I get to practice my Spanish and she gets to practice her English, perfect! I met her during festivities here in Nandasmo and then attended one of her dance classes with her, which was quite an experience!  It was like Nicaraguan folk dancing meets ballet! I was also invited to her intimate birthday dinner at her house, which made me feel pretty special.  She’s been practicing yoga with myself and my other fellow yogi volunteers as well.  They say you’ve integrated when you can make a Nica friend.  I’m really going to miss her when I move to Chinandega.