My dearest friends and family,

I hope this finds you all well!! It has been a while since my last email, but no worries I have accumulated a couple of awkward stories for your reading pleasure!

Firstly, my family came to visit me!! We spent a week traveling around Nicaragua visiting all my favorite spots. It was a lot of fun! The Barr clan took on Nicaragua like a champ! Also, any of them can be reached if you are considering a trip down to Nicaragua and need to hear the AMAZING reviews of their trip. Remember all visitors receive a free tour guide! And I happen to think I am a fabulous tour guide! Just throwing it out there!

I recently got a kitten! His name is Levi and he is the love of my life! He looks exactly like a miniature tiger and based on his love of the sneak attack/biting game, I believe he is under the impression that he is, in fact, a tiger. I originally was anit-kitten. Yeah they are cute and cuddly, but I am a hard core dog person and I wasnt sure how the switch up would go. But I went to one of my schools and the students there had this really cute kitten. So naturally I played with him and fell in love. Still I was not convinced that I wanted to take him home. But it turns out 3rd graders can be pretty convincing. After like 20 minutes of me telling them no, they were like, "Caroling (the way they say/spell my name here) if you dont take him home he is going to die! You dont want him to die do you?" I was like yall, I think that may be a bit over-dramatic, but they continued to recount the many kittens that had come before and how they had all met a tragic end due to some unknown kitten killer animal. So naturally, I now have a kitten. He is a ball of energy. Wakes up at 5:30 every morning and loves to play. His favorite game other than the sneak attack is shoving his entire nose in my left nostril. It is neither a game I understand, nor particularly enjoy. And its always the left nostril, never the right. Its very odd. I am still not sure how I feel about. Maybe he will grow out of it?

The bad thing was that I decided to take home this brand new, confused, and scared kitten the same day that the Ambassador of the US here in Nicaragua was going to visit me. So I come home carrying this crying kitten to find 2 security personnel outside of my house needing to have a quick walk around my town to make sure there weren´t any security risks. So around my town I went with a screaming kitten with two very large men wearing guns. I got some weird looks from the townies. The ambassadors visit went well. He did accidentally step on my poor Levi, which sent him into a frenzy again, but other than that it went very smoothly! He gave out baseballs (which I was not pleased about. I hate when people come in and just give stuff away for free. It totally goes against everything I am doing here!), checked out the library and school, my school vegetable garden, and tree nursery. He talked to some of the people and declared himself a big fan of my town. Yay for my town! There is even an official picture of me, the ambassador, and Levi that both the embassy and Peace Corps have. We are famous! Kinda.

So here comes the awkward! I am currently trying to raise money to buy plastic tubes to hang a volleyball net we have. We were donated a net, balls, and knee pads, but have no place for the kids to hang it up, nor play. So a couple of girls and I are hosting random events to raise money to buy said postes. So the other day, we had a game night that included popping balloon races. You know, when you have to pop a balloon with your butt and its relay style. However, here in Nicaragua, they pop the balloons with their butts while sitting on the lap of someone else. Lord knows how, but somehow I was peer pressured by a group of 15 year olds to participate in this game. I still have no idea why I agreed. None the less, they were like Caroling! We have someone for you to play with! So I was like whatever, lets do it. Turns out it is the guy the whole town wants me to marry, take to the states, and reproduce multiple times with. Like thats not at all awkward. And to make matters worse, I had to pop multiple balloons on this guys lap while a group of 11 year olds were watching. Including his sister. Insert awkward dance here. I was mortified. Awful, absolutely awful. So after this dreadful display has ended I am relieved and go sit down. But no! The dance competition portion has started. I would now like you all to flash back to any junior high dance you ever went to. This was my next 30 minutes. I had 2 high school students trying to con me into dancing with the same guy in the most obvious, embarrassing ways ever. And this, I told myself, is why you cant be friends with 15 year olds. I have no idea if I was actually able to portray the awkwardness of this moment in the email, but let me remind you once again, it was a stage 50 awkward.

So that is all for now! I miss you all and cant wait to see you!!!!

Nicaragua Monthly

Hello, Hello!! Hope you all are ready for this month´s edition of Carolyn does Nicaragua!

 

So this last month (well I guess its been the last part of June and the first part of July) has brought my village's fiestas and a canoe trip down the Rio San Juan. Let the stories begin!

 

   So, fiesta time in my village began on Sunday morning with a band consisting of a tuba, drums, trombone, and trumpet (all of which have the ability to play as though there were 15 of them rather than 4) and really loud fireworks going off at 4 am. Let the fiestas begin! Traveling bars and gambling games were brought in and set up in little tents, bulls were brought in for the bull ridings (who, coincidentally, were not at all mean...rather they jumped once or twice and then began walking around with the rider still on board...riveting.), and the worst DJ in history was brought in so we could all get our groove thang on. Luckily Susan, the volunteer I replaced, was visiting during these festivities, so I was able to duck out a bit early with her. I can only handle listening to really bad music and the DJ attempting to sing over it for so long. The next day of fiestas started off much the same, this time the band was accompanied with all the drunk people of the town. Everyone has told me about this little tradition for weeks so I was SUPER excited to see this little parade! So at 4:00 I went outside to watch them pass to find only 4 drunk guys parading behind the band dancing like fools. It was a bit of a let down seeing as I was expecting at least 20 drunkards...but alas, what can you do. Overall, I am glad they are over! I was sick of all the anticipated chatter leading up to the fiestas, which were not quite as fun as they all made them out to be!

  This week was a school vacation and seeing as 3/4ths of my group is currently in the states and I was sad I was not among them, I decided to head out on a little trip myself. So I joined up with a group of friends and we canoed down the Rio San Juan for 4 days. This is the river that separates Nicaragua from Costa Rica. It was absolutely AMAZING!!! Almost the entire Nicaraguan side is a Rainforest reserve meaning we saw 3 different types of monkeys (can everyone please imagine my reaction...I nearly wet myself every time we saw one!), alligators (or maybe it was a crocodile, I have no clue), iguanas, toucans, and lots of other birds! It was so cool!

   So the trip begins when the six of us met up to set out on our little river adventure. We pack our things in the three boats, choose pirate names for each member of the group, and christen the boats with a Toña each (really bad beer). As we are about to head out, we realize there are rapids that are we have to cross, so the guy we rented to boats from gives us instructions to cross the river and pass on the left-hand side of the rapids and we will be home free without any problems. Great! Off we go, paddling as hard as we can to cross the river when all of a sudden 5 different people start screaming at us from the shore 5 different sets of directions on how to cross the rapids safely. As you can imagine, we were very confused and were quickly approaching to the rapids. So as we are screaming back to different people trying to figure out what to do, we find ourselves smack dab in the middle of the worst part of the rapids. Ugh. Steph and my boat has somehow turned sideways, and rides about 4 inches shorter than all the other boats, and we hit the first big wave made by the rapid. Out boat is immediately flooded, Steph falls out of the boat, and all of our things are falling over the sides as well. I somehow manage to stay in the boat and am desperately trying to hold on to my stuff, our water, and the paddles still left in our boat. Meanwhile, we still have quite a ways to go till we have passed the rapids. Steph climbs back into the boat, I begin trying to bail us out with my Nalgene water bottle, and the next wave hits us. Repeat the last scenario...Steph falls out and I am struggling to keep our stuff in the boat. So luckily two guys in a motor boat came and saved us. They bailed us out and brought us to shore. Overall, we lost a bottle of water and a paddle. Everything I owned was soaked including two books, which I am sad to report will never be quite the same after their traumatic dip in the river. Overall, a fabulous start to the trip!

   After we passed the rapids (this time aided by the motor boat), we were catastrophe free the rest of the trip! We averaged about 8.5 hours of rowing a day(side note: i now have arms of steel. we´ll arm wrestle when I get back) and stayed in Nicaraguan army bases at night. As stated before, it was absolutely gorgeous! And because we were in between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, we were able to pop over whenever we wanted. (This was normally done when we needed a potty break...take that Costa Rica!) We saw animals and found a mini waterfall, and went swimming...so fun! So after two days of exhausting rowing (the first day was only like an hour or so of rowing before we hit the first army post), we decided to give ourselves a break and float until we hit the ocean. We were so relaxed and decided why not go swimming? So out of our boats we jumped and were having a grand old time, when some people on shore told us we should get back in the boats because there were lots of alligators around. We laughed to ourselves and didn't believe them, and continued on with the swim. Luckily we saw nothing, but when we finally got to our hotel and saw a map, we realized we had been swimming in an area that is apparently known for having a higher concentration of alligators than the other parts of the river. hahah. go figures. Whatever, no one was eaten!

   However, after 6 hours of floating and seeing no sign of the end, we decided we had to paddle to get to the ocean. We paddled for about an hour and a half and finally reached the ocean. Sweet victory! After the celebration, we sadly realized that we were not quite done with the journey and still had further to go to get to the town. This time, however, it was against the current. It was an hour of pure torture. My arms almost fell off, we looked miserable, and the people on the shore were all laughing at us because we looked so pathetic. Whatever, we made it! We were so proud of ourselves! So we had a couple of days to hang out in the little town at the end of the river, took a tour, at AMAZING food that some random guy we met cooked for us, and had all of our disgusting smelling clothes cleaned for us. It was glorious!

 

Anyway, thats all I have now. I just realized this is really long! Hope I didnt bore yall! And as always, send me emails and keep me updated!!!

 

Carolyn

  

 

Rough Week

Hello, Hello! I hope this finds you all well and dry! I have just entered into the rainy season, and am currently dealing with all the joys the rains bring such as bugs, mud, and a rapidly filling latrine due to the runoff! FABULOUS!

Since my last little letter home, I have been busy doing manual labor with my students! We have started tree nurseries in all the schools and are now starting on vegetable gardens. This means that my kids are working with shovels, hoes, machetes, and of course, the  trusty pick axe. Lord help us all! Basically it has gone well, we even have had some success! Little trees are-a-growing! But of course, there was a mishap. On my first day, I brought out all the kids (my first mistake!) to start digging a hole and using a tool called a zaranda to sift the soil and remove all the rocks and roots, basically leaving beautiful soil. SO, all the kids were working, and fighting over who got to use what tool, when all of a sudden I notice a kid clutching his bleeding forehead looking terrified. My first reaction was , "oh my God I`ve killed a kid!". So I ran over to find out what happened. Apparently he had walked behind one of the pickaxes, and was hit squarely in the head. Great. So I ran to the teachers to ask what we should do. They merely looked over at the kid and said, "Oh he is in the 3rd grade, he isn't supposed to be out here. Send him back to the classroom." WHAT?!?! He was hit in the head with a pick axe! But, alas, off he went to his class to do some math problems, head still slightly bleeding. But luckily, that has been the only "incident" i have had thus far.

In other news, Miss Emily Nicole Spangler visited the grand country of Nicaragua! We spent the week at a lagoona in the bottom of a volcano, the beach, and my lovely little house. She even visited one of my schools with me. We made Mothers Day cards and Miss Emily showed off her Spanish skills by reading a book to them! They loved it, I loved it, she loved it, it was a love fest! So, the moral of this story: you should probably start checking out tickets to see when you too can book your dream vacation to Nicaragua! Your own personal tour guide comes FREE with the package!!!

So as stated before, I am currently experiencing some difficulties with my casa. The first sign of trouble was when I was sitting in my chair hammock, reading a book, enjoying my fan. All of a sudden I hear the sounds of some animal drinking water outside my house. I thought to myself, how odd is this? Where are they getting water? So I go outside to check it out, and to my horror I find a very dirty, stray dog drinking from the water bucket that I use to wash my dishes, brush my teeth, and wash my face. So I was slightly disgusted, chased her off, and went back to my hammock. Low and behold, 20 minutes later she was back! I chased her off again and realized that she has probably been using my bucket of water as her personal water fountain for weeks. Which would explain why my water has had lots of dirt in it. So I bought a better top for my water. Now I just feel bad that she doesn't have water so I am going to buy her a water bowl. 

Secondly, with the heavy rains comes lots and lots of mud. Every time I walk outside, I sink into mud. For some reason, its just my house that does this. So I have taken to wearing my big yellow boots to slosh through the mud or craftly climbing on walls and random rocks to go to my latrine. Which as stated before, is rapidly filling with water now that the rains have come. I ask you this, what is one to do when their latrine floods? Hopefully I will not find out! BUT don't worry, I will keep you posted!

Thirdly, with the rains come an insane amount of bugs. We are talking huge, small, in between. All over, all the time! Its not really that big of a problem, but they like to dive bomb me in the head and in the morning I have to sweep them all out. But the cool thing is this week I have had my house invaded by lighting bugs. So when i turn out my lights at night, it looks like little strobe lights. Really kinda fun if you think about it. I should convert my house to a disco! 

So that is life as of now! Hope you are all doing well! Keep sending the updates!

Carolyn

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! Sorry I haven't written in a while, but sadly I have had a relatively normal month or two. However, I figured it was time for an update, and since I am sitting in the Peace Corps office with bronchitis and FREE Internet, I decided this was as good a time as any! So...here we go!

 

I have started teaching in the schools. After a month of "observing" my schools and the classes I was going to teach (aka bringing in magazines and trying not to fall asleep at my little desk) I started giving classes in all 4 schools. The biggest shocker of the new year....I actually enjoy (most of the time) teaching my class! The kids are always excited for my class and behave well and participate! An even bigger shocker is who has taken the number one spot in favorite classes: The second graders! I know what you are thinking....I greatly dislike small children, which is true, but they are fun to teach! They are soo bright eyed and easily bribed and entertained by games! They really like my class and are actually more intelligent than some of my 4th and 5th graders, which makes my heart giddy with joy. I was so happy that after 2 weeks of no class (teachers randomly cancel class all the time and there is a holiday approx every 3rd day which cancels class) they knew what each part of a tree did! Woohoo! Other schools have no idea what the leaves of a tree do, but my second graders know they make food! Success!

 

Other news, it is soooooooooo hot here! I am literally frying in my little house that has a tin roof. Its around the 90's outside and 150 inside. My fan just laughs at me when i switch it on. It blows hot air at me and mocks me. I sit on my porch a lot to cool off. And of course there is the hot sun. It is so strong here! Everyone carries around big umbrellas to block it out. At first when I saw this I thought to myself, what are they doing? This is not 1820! BUT then I gave it a little test run for myself and I am now a believer! I walk around looking like Marry Poppins with my big ole umbrella happy as a clam!

 

The new love of my life is the portable DVD player I bought recently and bootlegged DVDs. God bless the people who sit in movie theaters and tape the latest releases (more enjoyable when people's heads are not in the way) and make it available in my town for the small price of 20 cords! (1 dollar). And sometimes you can get 3-4 movies (half normally in English) for the same amazing price of 1 big one! Thank you Nicaragua! I support your illegal activities with all my heart!

 

I have been traveling around a bit more and have really enjoyed the change of scenery from my small village! I have been visiting other sites of volunteers and am planning on some beach time in the coming weeks! My latest outing was in the site of one of the other volunteers living in my department. We decided to go hiking in this "nature reserve" aka a coffee plantation speckled with a few trees. It was starting to get late so we decided we should probably head back. It might be good to mention we are probably the most directionally challenged people on the planet. So we are walking and talking, having a jolly good time when we notice that we never passed a big field of flowers on the way up. So we think to ourselves hmmmmm how do we get out of here. So for the next 40 minutes we spend trying to find a path that will not lead us to our death (there were lots of steep drop off points) and back to civilization. As the sun is setting and we start panicking by laughing hysterically and just wondering in circles. No worries, eventually we made it out of the reserve after another 20 minutes and a standoff with a group of cows that refused to let us pass.Moral of the story: The two of us should never go into the rainforest alone which had been our plan up until that point.

 

Anyway, as I said, pretty boring life lately! I hope everyone is doing well and send me updates!

 

Carolyn

 

Well, Hello There!

Hello all! I hope this finds you all well and warm. I know a lot of you are freezing, but in those times, think of me. I am sweating like a champion down here!

 

So I have officially started my work in the schools. I will be observing for the next couple of weeks and then start teaching my classes. My thoughts after my first week....oh dear lord! The kids get really really excited when i come into their class! they cant concentrate and just spend the whole time staring at me and trying to talk to me. hopefully this energy will be translated to awesome participation when i actually start teaching and they will sit there perfectly still and quiet hanging on my every miss pronounced spanish word....a girl can dream, right?! I have 4 schools. One is in my town, one is a 30 minute walk away, and the other is either a 2 hour bike ride or 30 minute bus ride and 1 hour walk away. My school in the mountains requires me to take a bus and then a milk truck up the hill. Unfortunately i can only take it one way and have to walk down the mountain. Apparently it will take like 3 hours, but i hear in the rainy season the milk truck cant make it up the hill, so I will have to walk to 3 hours up and down. When I get back I better be able to crack a nut on my thighs.

 

So...i dont really want to write out long stories, so i figured i would update you all with a list of my likes and dislikes from the last couple of weeks....ahem

 

LIKES

-rocking out to the ghostbusters theme song on the bus. One of the buses recently bought a new best of the 80s cd...its rocking my world

-baking and cooking my own food...i only eat rice and beans once or twice a week

-my library group that i started. I read a book and have an activity once a week for the kids in my town. they seem to really like it (more so the activity than the book) but i have had a lot of support from the community and the kids show up almost on time (only 15 minutes late normally) which is like a miracle here in Nicaragua where an hour late is considered early!

-i have a little veggie garden and compost pile...but that brings me to my dislikes: CHICKENS

-the daily herding of cows that happens outside my house everyday. My neighbor moves his cows from one pasture to the other and i get to watch them all pass. You would think i wouldnt be entertained by a herd of cows anymore, i see it everyday, but it still makes me chuckle everytime

-how superstitious (i have no clue how to spell that! we will blame my half thinking and spanish and half in english!) the people of nicaragua are. My neighbors spent an hour trying to convince me there was a witch that walked our streets at night and also that the man who rides his horse but doesnt have a head always rides through our town at midnight. I thought they were joking, but they are serious. They are honestly terrified of these things. I suggested we waited up to see if he passed, perhaps offer him a refreshment and talk to him a  bit, they were not amused. But this conversation still made me really happy! haha!

-my AWESOME new haircut! haha! perhaps some of you remember when I got irrated with my hair in high school and decided a Walmart haircut sounding like a good idea. Flash forward a couple of years and i did it again! I was really hot one day and decided my hair was just too long. I asked my friend to cut it, she cuts a lot of peoples hair in the town, and even better, for FREE! woohoo! i just wanted a simple haircut, but she decided to get fancy. I just chuckled to myself when she pulled out some kitchen scissors and started hacking away. I though,,,well this will be attractive. And i was right! I am now sporting, as cathy calls it, an awesome bi-level hair style! I know you are all extremely jelous, but dont fret! come to nicaragua and you too can have one! It doesnt bother me all that much...i can still put it up in a small ponytail and all is well. I just have some spiky bits coming out of the hair thing. oh and chunks wont fit in the ponytail holder,....basically i am really attractive.

 

DISLIKES

-CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS! i think i have mentioned this before. They are annoying and only good fried. My little animal loving heart no longer feels sad for the chickens that i eat. i think, thank goodness, thats one less chicken outside my window screaming at 5 in the morning. Also they ate my first veggie garden. i shake my fist at you chickens!

-The crazy wind storm that blew off part of my porch roof and broke my garden gate. Curse you crazy wind!  

-Walking the hour and a half (due to the intense wind) to one of my schools to find out my teacher didnt show up.

-TEACHER MEETINGS! the most pointless things in the entire road! luckily i brought a book and claimed to not understand what was going on...so i sat in the back and read.

 

Well  thats all for now. keep ùpdating me on life! i miss you all!

 

Carolyn

 

January 5th, 2009- Living Alone at Last!!!!

Hello Hello! So I was going to post this on the blog, but i have forgotten how to get there agian! Sorry! Anyway, I hope this finds you all well! Please feel free to email me your adventures! I love to hear from you guys!

So I am now officially in my own house! WOOHOO! I moved in yesterday and have it pretty much set up! Its really bare, but I am just so excited to cook for myself (tonight is burger night!) and not wake up to really loud music at 6 am! So basically it is bliss! My neighbors have been really helpful as well as my host family! Between the two families, anything that was broken on my house is now fixed, my stuff is in the house, my hammock is hung up! My favorite ¨´lets help out the crazy gringa moment¨´ was when i walked into my house to discover that ants had taken over EVERYTHING! I was so disgusted and was being bitten by them, so I ran out of the house screaming ANTS ANTS! My neighbors, a little concerned by the noise, came to check on me to find me flailing about trying to get rid of the ants. So i asked, half panicked, what can i do to get rid of them! I need to kill them! And my little gaurdian angels came over with some VERY powerful pesticide (i might die soon) and killed them all within 10 minutes! The day was saved and I am now living in an ant free environment! So basically I am doing well and being taken care of! The only problem i forsee is boredom, but i can always go visit people! This is my first experience of living alone so we will see how it goes! Where better than Nicaragua?! haha

Christmas here was a little bit of a downer. They dont really celebrate it! They all claimed to have big dinner plans, but i never saw that happen! Basically they got up as usual, cleaned the house, made tortillas, cooked beans, same old same old. And at first I was really upset and a bit angry that they had told me of all these exciting plans and non of them were happening, but i figured, Christmas is my favorite time of the year and I wont let this get me down. So, i took out my holiday shirt that I made last year (if you were there you remember how beautiful it was, if not it was a painted snowman with a sparkly vest and googly eyes- the kind that move when the shirt is moved) Its really ugly, but it made me happy! It was soooo hot in the long sleeve shirt, but I stood strong and refused to take it of! I actually got a lot of compliments on it to! I may have a business in tacky christmas wear here in Nicaragua! And after my shirt, i caught up with the other volunteer (who is now sadly gone) and we made christmas cookies, I bought some spanish dubbed christmas movies and we listened to music, watched movies, and make cookies with one of our favorite families. The family htought it was all very silly, but we were happy and thats all that matters! Overall, not too bad of a christmas! For New Years I headed for Leon with some other people from my group to have a beach day and a night of dancing! It was such a nice relazing couple of days! The beach is great, the food was great (they have some really great restaurants in Leon, sadly the same cant be said about Chontales), and I only spoke english! Lots of fun! However, the best ´Carolyn moment` was when my friend and I met up in the capital of Chontales to travel together to Leon. We were chatting along, happy to see each other and be talking in our native tongue when we saw what we believed to be the express bus heading out towards Managua. The man working on the bus called out the destination, which sounded like Managua, so we hopped on. We found a seat and were chatting it up for 15 minutes when my friend eralized we were heading towards his site, the exact OPPOSITE way of managua and Leon. EEK! So we were a little annoyed and were trying to figure out how long this little mistake would take to correct, when the man coming to collect our money for tickets came by. We were kind of embarrassed, but i decided to ask him how we could remedy the situation. I explained that when he had screamed apparently La Rama, it sounded a lot like Managua and we had boarded the wrong bus, when is the next bus headed to Managua. He told us he wasnt sure but he would help us out if he could. So my friend and I sat there giggling at our stupidity when all of the sudden the bus comes to a stop in the middle of the road. Apparently a bus going to Managua was passing and the bus worker had waved down the passing bus and told them he had some people wanting to go to Managua. So both buses are stopped in the middle of the road, and the bus worker comes down the aisle screaming, ´¨Donde estan los cheletes¨ (Translation: Where are the white people) of course the whole bus points at us and we are then escorted off the bus onto the correct bus with 10000 eyes on us. Dont worry, it wasnt at all awkward! We thought it was funny!

In other news, it appears that i get a small bit of signal in my house, so if you feel the need to buy a calling card and give me a ring, I would be HAPPY to chat it up! I dont know the country code for Nicaragua, but my cell phone number is 493-6478! I love you all and hope you had a great holiday season!!!



***Post-note from Cathy*** If you would like to call Carolyn, you must dial 011-505 and then her number.

Hello Hello! I am excited to be finally using this blog thing- i finally figured it out! Woohoo!

So I am officially in my site and I am trying desperately to improve my spanish and learn all the names of the people in my site. I am slowly learning both but have been forced to write down everyone´s name and where they live in a notebook, which most people find pretty commical. What can you do. My first week featured climbing the Cuapa rock, which is literally rock climbing without any of the saftey harnesses or guides that you would assume you would need for such a trip. The best part was that the volunteer I am replacing made it a field trip, so we had about 10 kids climbing this crazy rock with no shoes and no support. Only in Nicaragua! But it was a lot of fun and apparently the local English teacher really knows how to climb the rock and help others, so if you visit me, expect some rock climbing action! The next day I went with some of the locals to their farms. It took us a 30 minute bus ride, a 45 minute bumpy bumpy bumpy ride on a milk truck, and an hour of hiking to get to the first farm. We then proceeded to hike to the other guys farm which was another hour downhill on slippery rocks. I felt like such an idiot because I kept slipping and falling. What can I say, all those years of dance helped my gracefullness! haha. The farm was absolutely amazing though! It has this virgin forest in the middle of it with this beautiful waterfall. It was amazing to get down there and walk around. Apparently there is a group of monkeys that live there too, but sadly I didnt see them! And after this beautiful two hour hike, we rested right?? Oh no we did not! We continued to climb three small mountains (and when I say small, I dont mean like it was a walk in the park, merely it wasnt quite the size of the Rocky Mountains). It was the most intense day ever! We hiked uphill for like 6 hours straight. My legs were killing me by the end, but it was a fun day! An ouchy morning after, but a fun day!

Yesterday was my host sister´s graduation from high school so I went to my first graduation here in Nicaragua. It turns out they are also long and boring! There was also a fiesta at my host house that night. It was from 6-2am and the music could be heard from across the town. It was insane. I had no idea music could be played that loud! But I wowed the town with my white girl dancing, so overall the night was a success!

Overall I am doing well here in my site. I still have teh last volunteer here which is a huge help! She has really helped me get to know the community and is helping me find a house! I dont know what i will do when she leaves me, but we are having fun while it lasts! Other than that my host family is good, they are a bit overbearing at times, but they are really trying to make me feel at home. Oh funny story, one day I didnt want to shower, and then every other day I shower at random times, so my host family has this idea that I hate to shower and never do it. So today my host sister sat me down and explained the importance of showering and how I really should try to make an effort to shower more. It was hilarious and highly awkward. I was like yeah thanks, Ill try to shower more often for you! Haha! Anyway, thats all for now. Sorry this is kinda boring. I hope to have better stories soon!