Saturday, September 8

Hello friends,
I haven´t written for a week because Ive been in my training site since last Saturday. I live in a small pueblo called Santa Cruz, just south of Esteli, in the northern highlands of Nicaragua. Luckily Hurrican Felix changed its course and headed north before hitting us in the west side of the country. My host family is really large...I still havent figured out whos related to who and everyones names and there´s always someone new showing up.
It was quite intimidating the first day and a half. I was dropped off alone at this house that is very different than anything you´d see in america. We have electricity but no running water. We pull water up out of a well for everything from cooking to bathing. I take bucket baths with cold water in a concrete 4 walled enclosure in the middle of the porch where everyone congregates. And because of my height, I can see everyone while I shower and I think they can see me. Goodbye privacy!
I have my own room-house-barn. I think its a converted barn that has 4 concrete walls with no windows and a tin roof that isnt attached to the walls so birds and bugs fly in regularly at night. I also have the pleasure of being awoken ALL night long by roosters that dont understand that they should only crow in the mornings. Because of the lack of enclosure, it seems like they are right inside my room with me and I havent been able to sleep past 5am yet. Theres also newborn puppies on the other side of my room that cry all night and a pig tied up outside another wall. He´s pretty quiet except when I wake him up in the middle of the night with my headlamp as I´m trying to find a plac eto pee outside because the latrine is filled with cockroaches at night.
Ah, what a life!
And the language is really rough. I don´t understand much that my family says but it gets better each day and theres definately a lot of people around to practise my spanish with.
We also have a couple days of technical training a week which gives me much needed time with other americans and where I´m learning basic ag skills for Nicaragua...mostly gardening and composting. Our big goal with Peace Corps Nica Ag is youth groups, so part of our training is to start a youth group in our community and build a garden, tree nursery, and commercialization project in 11 weeks! We´ve already had a group meeting which was difficult finding youth in one week in a new community!
Its been a hard adjustment the last week and I imagine theres going to be more hardships, but each day does get easier and things that I thought were totally strange at first become more normal.
Thats all for this week and hopefully I´ll have more stories for next week and maybe some pictures!