Life in the Training Towns

Life in El Rosario is perty darn good, if I do say so myself. We arrived on Saturday to open arms. My host family is spectacular. The matriarch of the family, Doña Gladys is a real sweet heart. We’re having a little trouble communicating, because she speaks the essence of Nica Spanish and I hardly speak any. Nica Spanish drops all of the “S” at the end of a word so “Gracias” becomes “Graciah”. Another example: the word for “enough” is “bastante.” Everyone who’s taken a semester of Spanish in their life knows it’s an easy language, because you simply read every letter on the page and say a word just as it looks. Well, when the words you use in every day language lose a very important letter, you might as well toss that first semester of Spanish right out the window.

I have a couple of sisters here as well. The older, Suzy, is around 40 and is deaf. She is incredibly sweet and spends the majority of her day cleaning the house, doing laundry, or just relaxing by a window. Two things I’ve learned:

1. Very few people here have “traditional” jobs. A lot have money sent back from Los Estados. Almost everyone sells something out of their home. Several houses have actual stores with a variety of products, but more common is a house that only sells phone cards, or cornmeal, or, like my house, ice and frescos (homemade sugar drinks, kind of like kool aid).
2. Nicas spend a large part of their day just sitting, talking, eating, cleaning or cooking. There’s an incredible sense of peace and continuity here, because just about every day is the same. Needless to say, I’m really enjoying it.

As an “aspirante” in the “Cuerpo de Paz” I spend my mornings in Spanish and technical class. The classes are actually being held in my house for the next 3 weeks, so I’ve got it the easiest of all the trainees in my town (4). We eat lunch with our families and then apply the lessons we learned during the afternoon. For instance, this morning we learned about modes of transportation, the costs, and how to be sure you’re getting on the right bus. After lunch, we went to the local bus terminal and asked the drivers and their corbadors (the guy that handles the money) all of the questions we learned that morning. Everyone was very nice, and we had my host sister and her friend along with us to help us in a bind. I have to admit it’s a great way to learn.

OK, what else is happing. My first day here I walked into our clothes line, which happens to be rusty old barbed wire. I put a little cut in my head, about 2 inches long. I did it to make my father proud, mostly. I went to the home of a nurse yesterday, and she said it was healing well!

There was a dog fight on my roof on Monday morning. I thought the two were going to come crashing through, but luckily it ended pretty quickly. Who needs alarm clocks when dogs fight on your roof at 5 in the morning?!

Jess and I have been split up for a few days, but her family brought her by Monday night for 30 minutes, so I took her around town. Tomorrow I’ll see her with the whole group. This weekend I’m headed to her town. Next weekend she’ll come here, as our “fiestas patronales” will be that weekend. Apparently it’s one big “religious” festival with a whole bunch of music, pyrotechnics, and cowboys. My kind of party!

Adios for now. Thanks for reading!

This is the main room of the house where we have class. Muy Bonito!

Here is my patio: