The New Puppy

Neighbor Kids

Sunset Behind My House

A Good View of the Valley

February 9, 2009

Greetings everyone,

Big news here in El Charcón, if you can’t tell by the pictures, I got a puppy. His name is Hank, I don’t really now how old he is or what he has in him, some German Shepard I think, but we are going to be great friends. The owner of a little venta down the road gave him to me, and when I got him he was filthy and covered in fleas, but I have bathed him, the fleas are under control, and I am doing my best to fatten him up.

Peace Corps stuff is going exceptionally well. The three banks are up and running. Two of them have some members from last year who have decided not to rejoin and I was a little bummed about it, but I have decided to be excited to work with those who are really interested and to not try and drag the others to the meetings, so I hope that goes well. The community is in a really tight spot right now because the bean harvest was almost totally destroyed by the drought we have been having. The luckiest farmers are getting about a quarter of their normal harvest. The community banks would be really helpful for the people if they could come up with the savings, but many are struggling to make ends meet. The whole world seems to be coming apart financially, good time to be in the Peace Corps I reckon.

I went last week to talk to the teachers at the primary school about working with the world map that the previous volunteer painted, and that myself and another volunteer worked to finish. It seemed like the teachers now had this great resource, but weren’t really planning on using it, or didn’t really know how to incorporate it into their lessons. The vast majority of these kids don’t even know where Nicaragua is, not to mention anything about world geography. My idea is to go once a week and give a brief presentation on a different country each time. My first presentation was today, and it went about as well as I expected, which was incredibly awkward, but I got through it, so we will see how it goes next week.

The other project I have been working on is building a bathing area at my house and putting in a concrete floor in my bedroom. As it is now I have to bike about twenty minutes to bathe everyday, and by the time I bike back I am just as sweaty as I was before. To get the sand for the concrete I went with my neighbor by ox cart about 45 minutes away and dug it out of the creek bed. It was a very interesting and heavy experience. Of course when the mason came this weekend he said “oh no we are going to need at least double that.”

The community is really growing on me, and it feels really good to be busy and to feel like I am making process, no matter how slow, or seemingly insignificant. The people are starting to open up to me more, and I am actually understanding what they say when they do, so I am feeling more and more a part of the community. One thing I learned this week after going to church every Sunday with two of my host sisters is that there is one side of the church for the women and the other for the men, and they both neglected to tell me this and allowed me to sit on the women’s side every time. They thought it was just hilarious.

I hope everyone is doing great and keeping warm, I hear its getting really cold up there. I came into town in hopes of catching the UNC-Duke game, I have only seen one game all season but I am still nervous. Come on boys!

Austin