Graduation Station

The end of the school year turned out to be pretty busy for us. We helped out with a lot of administrative activities at the school and helped with end of year wrap up. With all the excitement, it was fun to see our seniors get ready for graduation. We also were invited to a variety of graduations in different communities outside of the town of San Nicolas. It was fun to see the accomplishments of the many students in town. We wish them the best at the enter Primary school, high school or move onto university or work!

Graduation in Quebrada de Agua (Pre-school and 6th grade)

This little guy is the reason we were invited to the Quebrada de Agua graduation. We met him on a bus trip with La Garnacha along with his “foster mom”. He has a rough past, but warmed up to us quickly and we became fast friends! He graduated from pre-school this December and we were invited to his graduation and party afterwards. He is such a super sweet kid, and just recently moved back in with his biological mom. We will be seeing him a lot less, but we hope to go visit his new home sometime soon with his foster mom (who has also become a fast friend for us!)

A few more pictures from his party…

La Garnacha 6th grade graduates

3 of our 14 students graduating from (daily) high school this year. There is also a  Saturday school option in our municipality that graduated around 60 students.

When the students graduate they walk down the center aisle with a parent, siblingg, grandparent, or other influential individual. Someone who was influential in their pursuit of education. It was great to see some of these relationships! This is one of our senior students, Katerine with her dad before they walk down the aisle.

Here’s one of our La Garnacha English students with her present for having the  best grades for the year! Go, Jenny!

After the La Garnacha graduation we decided to bike “the back way” to Esteli. It ended being about a 20 km bike ride and there was a DEFINITE reason that it is the rarely used “back way”. Loose gravel and pot holes were only some of the obstacles we faced. I actually crashed my bike once, but thankful only bruised my leg and scraped up my arm. At least we had beautiful views on our way---which  may or may not have led to the bike accident. Ha. Overall, it was a successful trip (we made it!), but one we ( I ) will probably never do again.

And finally, a reminder I put up in the library at the high school for our students to see..

“Education is like a tree, plant it and it will bear many fruits!”

Happy New Year, everyone!!

Love, Alli

Fiestas Patronales

Each town in Nicagua has a patron saint that represents their town. Our town is obviously Saint Nicolas, who’s day is on December 6th. We are talking about Nicaragua though, and these hometown parties aren’t just for a day they last for 2 weeks! There were many activities surrounding these parties. Rodeos each night, a horse parade, concerts, cooking competitions, and a queen contest (that one of our good friends competed in!). We live in cowboy country so the theme of the festival was cowboy/cowgirl life. It was fun to participate and take in the activities of these two weeks.

Our good friend, Estelvina, from La Garnacha competed in the queen contest.

She is absolutely stunning. Unfortunately she got 2nd place, even with the biggest, and coolest, cheering block!

Rodeo time! There was bull riding almost every night during the 2 weeks. We attened 2 or 3 times. It is not like rodeos in the states, most of the entertainment came from the drunk bull wranglers dancing and taunting the bulls. But it was still fun and great to see a lot of the community out and having fun!

Horse parade—Hipico

Kirk and Aaron arrived the night before so they were able to enjoy the horse parade and other hometown festivities with us!

Even the littlest got to participate

My horse watching companions—a teachers kiddos.

A picture of our town park—only a 1/2 block from our casa.

Overall, a great celebration of our town! We really have loved living in San Nicolas. The people here are wonderful and the views we get to see everyday are just a bonus. We were glad to celebrate this beautiful place and community alongside others who have a much deeper history here.

December Recap

Hello, Hello!! It’s been a while and I apologize for the lack of blog posts, but we have been so busy it’s been hard to keep up! There was a LOT going on this month with Fiestas Patronales (hometown party), Purisima (Catholic celebration, celebrating the immaculate conception of Mary), Graduations for Pre-school, 6th grade and high school, Christmas plans and activities, and Kyle’s family made the trip to visit us here in Nicaragua! It’s been a whirlwind but loads of fun!
I am planning to commit a blog post to each of these activities over the next few weeks, so be watching for those!

For now—we are on vacation from school, so no English classes at the moment. But we have a lot of look forward to in 2016! Thanks for following along.
We hope you had a blessed and happy holiday with family and friends. And that 2016 brings all good things your way  
A thought for 2016…

This has been a good reminder to me as I think of plans for next year and our experience here in Nicaragua so far. I have been pushed outside of my comfort zone in so many ways, and I know that will continue over the next two years…but I am constantly reminding myself that it is a good thing!

Thanksgiving Day

We celebrated Thanksgiving day here is in San Nicolas with a big dinner and invited some people from town over to share this day with us. We invited the school director, Idalia, and her family over, our adult English class, as well 2 Peace Corps volunteers. In total, we had 10 people sharing in our Thanksgiving feast.
The cooking and baking was a ton of work, but so worth it for the delicious taste and the sharing of our culture with our community here. It was especially enjoyable to go around the table and talk about what each person was thankful for.
If you would have been here, these are a few things you would have heard (In Spanish):

• Thankful for good health and an active body
• Thankful for family and friends
• Thankful for my English Teachers (that’s us!)
• Thankful for food and housing, when many people are not as fortunate to have the same.
• Thankful for family and community in the United States, but also a new and fun community here in Nicaragua.
• Thankful for the sharing of cultures and traditions.
• Thankful for food and friends.
• Thankful for each person around the table.
• Thankful for friends and families that will be able to visit during the holidays.

We then thoroughly enjoyed the menu of the night; Turkey, Mashed potatoes and gravy, dinner rolls, sweet potatoes, salad, stuffing, honey glazed carrots, and pumpkin and apple pie.. Yum! To say we were full is probably an understatement. In the end it was well worth the full day of cooking and I learned a ton about cooking, baking, and how gross it is to deal with a raw turkey

Here’s the 12 lb turkey before going in the oven. It turned out wonderfully and we had lots of leftovers—we just finished off some turkey noodle soup this week!

Mashed potatoes, of course!

First ever attempt at pumpkin pie with homemade crust…not too bad!

Our thankfulness white board and menu listed! By the end of the night it was filled with the things we are thankful for, in both Spanish and English.

Our table setting (thanks to MCC volunteer Ariane for the sweet table runner!)

Photo of the crew without kyle

Photo with Kyle. We had a full house (for our house!)

While it was hard to be away from home and family on this first major holiday, we loved sharing this tradition with our community here, and hope to continue the exchange of ideas and cultures. We are already learning so much from the community here, and hope they are able to learn from us, as well. We are so thankful for this experience and all of YOU who are supporting us from afar. Thank-you!!!

Photo Dump again…

Here’s a good photo dump and a short update:

Things have been going well in San Nicolas. We are still in the initial stages of planning for next year and finding our exact roles. But each week seems to get busier, which is a good thing! There are, of course, ups and downs of any cross-cultural experience. But we continually remind ourselves that we also had ups and downs when living in Indianapolis. Some days just don’t go your way (*cough* Spanish is hard), so you go to bed and start over in the morning. Our goals over the next few months are to discuss with the school director what our role will look like at the school next year, get a plan in place for continuing Spanish classes, lessons or personal goals for our language development, keep the students entertained over school vacation (reading program?). and continue working in the town of La Garnacha—however we can be the most help!

We are also looking forward to family visiting over the next few months and can’t wait to show them our lives here in Nicaragua.

Enjoy the photos!

We attended a Peace Corps sponsored entrepreneurship competition with some of our senior students. Their proposed business plan was homemade chocolate so we had a lot of fun being taste testers and helping them with their business plan. This was their first year competing and they did really well along side many schools that have been doing this for years. We are really enjoying getting to know this group of seniors and will be sad to see them go next year, but they are off to do great things!

With their professor

Photo op with the peace corps volunteer that co-teaches at the high school in San Nicolas.

We visited Leon for my birthday and had a great weekend away. Our awesome bed and breakfast gave me a cake (for breakfast!) and sang to me

Checking out the beaches around Leon. Gorgeous!

Touring some Leon churches

Our co-volunteers (living in Managua) came to visit our site and hang out for the weekend. We had a great time celebrating birthdays and reconnecting after 3 months in Nicaragua.

Picnic at La Garnacha

We toured the rock sculptures…which everyone will do if they visit us! It’s a must see! And just check out our tour guide (Also, the rock sculptor). He is part of the experience.

Elsa Piñata for birthday celebrations!

The library is coming together nicely! (don’t look too closely at the leaning book shelf…) Now to finish the inventory and plan for reading programs for vacation (December-January) and into the next school year.

Baking cookies with some of the neighbor chicas has become a favorite past time for everyone! Including the neighbors we deliver the extra cookies to

Serling helping us with cookies. She was one of our host sisters when we first arrived in San Nicolas. She is a little stinker…but she is super cute!

We will update more soon! Thanks for taking the time to follow along on our blog and thanks for your continued support in prayer, words of encouragement, and checking in.

-Alli