Volcano!

I'm posting some pics of the hike I took up Volcano Telica in the volcano belt of the West coast of Nicaragua. It was a beautiful scenic hike, through corn and bean fields. We rested under a grapefruit tree where I ate a tart green fruit. When we reached the top I felt like I was on top of the world. We had a beautiful view of the other volcanoes in the distance, fields as far as the eye could see far below, and the open steaming crater of the volcano. Later we climbed up to peer over the edge of the crater. It was like looking straight into the core of the earth. And scary too, because the walls of the crater were steep and it felt like you could just stumble right over the eduge. We camped below the crater in a flat valley strewn with volcanic rocks and watched the sunset from on top of the world.

Living on Coconut bread

I just spent the last week on the Carribean coast of Nicaragua. There's really too much to tell here, so I'll just post some pictures.

The first picture is of the main street of Bluefields. The others are from Little Corn Island. I went with my friend Leo, who had to go for work. Despite the fact that it rained the first few days, the sun finally came out the last day and we enjoyed the colors of the water. I ate lobster in Bluefields, listened to coastal reggae and socca music on the wharf waiting for the boat to Pearl Lagoon, and learned some Creole sayings. I also took a variety of boat rides, from extremely scary huge waves on open sea to a speedy lolling ride from Bluefields to Pearl Lagoon. And of course, I ate a ton of coco bread.

Religion discussion

My friend and coworker Maria at the centro bought me a beautiful hardcovered planner for my birthday. It's in Spanish, and it's a bible planner. Normally if someone in the states gave me a bible planner, I'd probably be annoyed about it, either because of the assumption that I'm Christian or that I would want to convert to Christianity. In this case I felt differently.

During the Rosh Hashanah celebration that I organized at the centro, we had a discussion about Christianity and Judaism. One of my coworkers noted when I translated the prayers that they were very similar to the prayers that they say, blessing God for the food and shelter that they enjoy. We talked about how Jesus grew up Jewish and that we share the Old Testament.

Maria told me that she knew that I'd like her gift, based on the discussions we've had about religion. She participated with Gustavo in a project with youth in a neighboring barrio based on liberation theology, and what they call the misa campesina. The misa campesina is a collection of songs, readings and practices based on the values of social justice found in the Bible and in the life of Jesus. Maria and Gustavo organized the youth and encouraged them to take and interpret these texts based on their reality, and to use them to make changes in their neighborhood. I told Maria about Tikkun Olam, and how the base values of our religions are so similar. Gustavo jumped in saying that many people think going to church and passively receiving the words of a priest or of God make them the most devout Christians. But he said that people need to take action on these beliefs to really complete the contract with God.

I hope with this planner that I can learn more about how the Bible propounds these values to build bridges between my faith and that of the community in which I'm working and living.

Rainbow

It's been raining cats and dogs for about a week. It rained all day yesterday on my birthday, but I like the rain, so it was cool. Apparently October is the rainiest month. I remember when I came last year that it rained every morning, and in the afternoon usually as well. (as a side note, on Oct. 15 I will complete one year of being here!!!)

Today it started raining right when I was getting off the bus. I have to walk about 3 blocks from the bus stop to the Puntos office. At first I waited in the bus shelter, but decided to just run for it. I ended up getting totally soaked, including soaking through my shoes (they stink now).

It let up in the late morning, and started again in the afternoon. After English class with the kids, it had stopped raining and the sun actually showed its face. Reflecting on the clouds and the humidity that remained, a full rainbow stretched over the treeline in front of the classrooms. I think it might be the first time in my life that I've seen a full rainbow.

Whose got the biggest balls?

No this is not a joke. This was the name of a contest sponsored by the Mayor's office of Managua to raise awareness about waste management and recycling. The youth in Walter Ferretti participated, collecting plastic bags, plastic bottles and cardboard, working tirelessly trying to make huge balls of garbage. They met every afternoon glueing cardboard, tying together plastic bags and rolling them up like a huge ball of string (think aluminum foil ball on Peewee's Playhouse). I was very impressed by how well they worked together, dividing up tasks between the four balls and coordinating the collection of garbage. They ended up winning 3rd place in the contest, which was $100, and they're going to use the money to take a trip to the beach with all who participated.

Leadership

Gustavo and I planned a leadership workshop for the kids in the youth group that we facilitated on Sunday. It was a true collaboration in the planning process, as I contributed parts of the leadership workshop I did with Gina at Heartland, and he contributed his own ideas based in his 10 years of experience working with Nicaraguan youth. We both got really excited about our ideas and how to make the workshop as participative as possible.

Because we started late (an hour and a half!!), we didn't have nearly enough time to do everything we'd planned. The two activities we started with were fantastic! We did an activity called People and Things. In each group, one person was the "person" and denominated each person as a "thing" that they would use. In the first picture, Marling is sitting on her chair watching her TV, and in the second, the kids are sitting on their sofa. The idea being that they think about how it feels to be used and how it feels to treat others like things.

The next activity was a dramatization of the different kinds of leaders... autocratic, bureaucratic, paternalistic, democratic and passive. I was amazed by the kids' ability to improvise theater. They were hilarious and creative, and they didn't need hardly any props, just dialogues. I've definitely noticed that kids here are able to tell long stories from a young age, like their parents, with all the gestures and comments that adults make. It's pretty incredible.

The only things was that we couldn't really deepen the discussion. The kids started losing interest and didn't have the background knowlege I'd expected. When we asked them to think of a leader and the characteristics they admired in them, most answered their mom or dad because of the support they gave them throughout their life. It was very superficial. There wasn't time to talk more about leadership qualities and have them set their own goals for themselves about how to be better leaders. But the good thing was that they participated and maybe came away with something (including a good lunch!)

Participatory Evaluation

The other day one of my students at Puntos, who actually works for the Central American Women's Fund across the street (http://www.fcmujeres.org/) said that her boss wanted a complete evaluation of the class, to make sure that the money they were making a good investment in English classes and that the students were making progress. I played it cool, but was panicking a little, because I felt like it was a test of how good of a teacher I am. Ahh!

So I decided to go back to the book that my friend Jana recommended to me, Making Meaning, Making Change about participatory ESL learning. They say that traditional evaluations have been very unsuccessful, and that evaluation is a process of learning and collaboration between the teacher and the students that continues from the beginning to the end, starting with the students' goals. I took a sigh of relief, and gleaned many ideas from the book for ways to involve the students in the evaluation process using activities and excercizes that are applicable to their lives. Today I started by having a discussion about the times that they have needed or will need to speak on the phone in English. Out came some of their fears about speaking on the phone (which is so hard to do in a foreign language!!!). Then they picked one of these situations and wrote a dialogue about it. As one of them was about giving a financial report to their accountant in the states, they had to look up a lot of relevant vocabulary. Hopefully some of these tools will come in handy when I'm teaching English in the states...