Lessons.

I´m going to start a recycling project at my school. I don´t know what I´m doing, but I will learn. Also, I recently adopted an abandoned puppy. She´s about 10 days old, so it´s like having a baby, sleepless nights and everything. I feed her with a little medicine syringe. She doesn´t have a name yet. I have a lots of work to do, and less than 7 months to do it in.

Picture Updates

There is something that happens every year in Dolores called, 'El Tope' Well let me begin even farther back. Every town in Nicaragua has it's patron saint, and a day of the year that they celebrate that saint. So when the time comes in Diriamba, which is the town neighboring Dolores, there is a tradition where they carry their saint to Dolores, where it meets up with two other saints from two other nearby towns, and there's a little party in the streets. These are two of them, I forgot which town is which.

These dancer guys are always there. They are called El Gueguense. Look it up.

This was from an English summer camp I worked with. This was my group and my co teachers.


This is from a leadership camp I worked at. This is my group and they were great.


This piece of watermelon was smiley all by itself.

It probably seems like I don’t do any work, because I never talk about my work. Work is difficult, and success is hard to see. I can plan a dynamic, communicative class, but there are always going to be too many students in it, and there is always going to be a majority that really doesn’t care. And there are lots of reasons for that. Some of them might think that a high school education isn’t going to get them anywhere because they don’t have the money to pay for a college education anyway. Or maybe, they might think school is a waste of time they could spend working, and making money to help out their family and just pay for food and other necessities. Some of them genuinely don’t care because their parents don’t participate in their education, either because they don’t realize they need to (that’s the teacher’s job, not mine!) or because they don’t have time because they are working all day. As an American, comparing Nicaraguan culture to my own, there is definitely a difference in work ethic. People just don’t demand that much of themselves or other people, here. That’s not referring to every person in Nicaragua, because I know quite a few hard workers, but as a general culture, you do the minimum amount of work just to get paid, and then you go home. An American like me would say there is no professionalism, here. either. But maybe it’s just because those things aren’t that important because of the economic situation. All that matters is getting paid, because that money is so necessary just to survive. So why would you waste time trying to stand out? No one can afford to do that. It’s not impossible. I’m sure there are plenty of success stories about lucky breaks and people who just worked their asses off and finally made it big. But it’s really hard. And the only difference between me and my boyfriend is that I was lucky enough to be born in the right country. Nicaragua’s story is so sad, and if you ever get a chance to read up on it, you would wonder how the place even functions at all. Anyways, I teach about 16 class periods a week, which is like 2 hours a day, in the mornings. Two of those days I will hopefully start going to a rural community kind of nearby to help a couple of English teachers there. Two nights a week I have a community English class, which is just basic English, starting from zero. One afternoon a week I’m going a conversation group for English teachers, so they can practice speaking. I also want to do something more tangible, so I want to see if I can find a good wall to paint a world map on, with a group of kids I select. Nothing too crazy, just sticking to my assignment. The beginning of this school year has been tainted by some health problems I’ve been having, and I’ve missed quite a bit of school, have had to cancel some of my community classes, have been unable to go to the rural community, and haven’t met once with one of my teachers to plan together. Hopefully things will get going soon. And I also have to think about what I’m going to do when I get back. I think I want to work or intern or something, with some NGO maybe? I honestly don’t even know what defines an NGO, I just associate it with volunteer/development work. I definitely want more school, but I don’t want to rush into an area of study without knowing for sure it’s what I want. And then, add to the mix a Nicaraguan boyfriend and all of the learning and ups and downs that go along with that, my brain is left all tied up in knots. And I only have 8 months of this left (not necessarily happy, not necessarily sad. not simple).

Let me be honest. Sometimes I’m afraid that my Peace Corps service has thus far just been a huge blow to my self-esteem and my health. I may have learned and be learning a few things about teaching English as a foreign language, and about classroom management, and I may be realizing the challenges to truly understanding people from another culture and not judging them by standards and definitions of right and wrong, professional and unprofessional, good and bad, hardworking and lazy, honesty and dishonesty, from my own culture. Sometimes I’m afraid that I’ll never find the thing that I’m naturally good at, because teaching is definitely not it. Neither is being a camp counselor. At least in comparison to other people I see around me. Even though I have always wished I was THAT person. It doesn’t come naturally. I’m afraid that I’m starting to regret being a Physiological Science major. That I should have studied anthropology or sociology or even something like Latin American studies or international development studies and then added some light science-y minor to quench my interest in that department. Not that I know what I would have done with those majors, either. I’m thinking maybe there would have been things in those majors that sparked my interest more, and would have stuck with me, or maybe I would have just associated it all with school and stress and GPA and an obligation and it would be a huge jumble in my head or forgotten like all of the physiological science and comparative literature stuff is. Because maybe I’m not an intellectual. Even though I have always wished I was THAT person. Even if I was an intellectual, I most definitely do not have the conversational or social interaction skills to prove it or show it. And of course, my insecurities about those abilities make me avoid certain situations or think that I need to prepare for them and therefore put them off until I feel ‘ready’, and then I don’t learn how to deal with them and I’m back at square one. I feel like I am constantly in a struggle to prove myself, and that is exhausting. And my measurement of my success is so dependant on other people’s praise or comments and I’m sure there are people in my life that could have told me that ages ago. And if I don’t get that reassurance I interpret every glance or sideways look or whisper as something negative about me as a teacher, whether it is other teachers or students talking. And I know that’s wrong. Anyone that works with insecure teenagers knows to tell them that most of the time, that is not the case. But I’m not a teenager. I’m supposed to be acting like an adult. But I can’t seem to shake it. And I want to tell them “Don’t you know that I’m doing my best? Don’t you know that this is difficult?” But if that knowledge isn’t enough to convince me, how can it be enough to convince them? What am I missing, that everyone else my age, and even younger, has managed to figure out? And I know the answer might be “To accept themselves as they are, Neha” or maybes something harsh like “That the world doesn’t revolve around them, duh!” so what is the problem, here? Why do I want so badly to be someone that doesn’t come naturally out of me?