More training, just what I need...

I think that I have not really worked for the past 3 years, but instead sat in the same 3 or 4 trainings 20 times each. My AmeriCorps friends know what Im talking about. Yeah you do. Okay, so its been different trainings, but yet, they all seem so related and similiar. How many different icebreakers, energizers, and teambuilding activites can there really be? Im being to learn, not that many...but here they are called something else, but so similar. However, we have NOT played shake a tailfeather yet, which I am waiting for so I can figure out what to call it in Spanish.

Our training in the Peace Corps Nicaragua is community based, and weve been told its an amazing training program. Community based means that you have your language classes in a house where you live, you work in the community doing a youth group and we work/observe the English teacher in the pueblo. As part of our training, we are required to start a youth group in the town that we are training in. Those of us who are learning spanish, slowly, get to work as a group to complete our project. The group is supposed to be roughly 10 or 15 kids and you are supposed to complete a service project. We have 10 weeks to do this. However, you are gone for 2 of the weeks on site visits. It is week 3 and our first meeting was this Monday and we only had 6 teens show up to our first meeting. Most of them were family members that we bullied into coming. Because we didnt have very many kids, we are having our second meeting tonight to try and complete what we started on Monday. Hopefully, more kids will show up. Our project is based around drugs. Not doing them, but prevention of using as we explain to the kids who giggle every time we say were doing a project on drugs. We were told that it is a problem in this pueblo, and then again that it isnt and by others that yes indeed it is. So, we think that is what we are going with.

Also today we had our first meeting with the English teacher at the middle/high school which is one and the same. Actually, weve observed him once but we were there to talk to him about when we were going to work with him, what he wants from us, what we need, ect. So we get there and low and behold, he did not come to work today. My second encounter with Nica time. So we left a note which Im sure is hilarious because its probably terrible spanish and were supposed to be educated people working with him to teach English....yet we speak spanish like 5 year olds. Such is life.

I was going to upload my pictures today but I cant find the port on this computer which is fairly newish and I dont know how to ask. Im sure I looked ridiculous as I looked for it for like 10 minutes as well. Im sure theyre thinking, what is that crazy whitey doing?

Also one note on the food...I really like the rice, however I found out that eatting a lot of rice and beans and plantains is NOT nice to your digestive system. I think that I almost never go to the bathroom, which sucks because I have stomach aches all the time. And I really dont like most of the veggies here, or the cheese, or eggs. I have been known to be somewhat of a picky eatter. I feel bad because I dont want my Nica mom to think that I dont like her cooking, but I really am just picky. She has stopped feeding me the cheese because I never eat it. Imagine the saltiest cheese in the world. Now a little saltier. That is what the cheese tastes like to me. I would kill for some white cheddar right about now. Or Thai food. Or Stir Fry. Or the Pasta Fresca from Noodles. Or that tofu that Beth cooked at Menogyn. But beans and rice, not that bad, but not that nice for my digestive system at the same time, if you know what Im sayin...
Peace.