Happy Halloween!

With a birthday care package from my mom complete with the perfect halloween candy mix and a candy dish found at an resale store that was 100% an American Goodwill, we have been celebrating halloween in style all week.

We are now celebrating my birthday in Leon at a wonderful bed and breakfast. There is a courtyard with a beautiful fountain....and it's extremely hot! We are heading out to the beach for lunch and then we are planning the rest of our time around breakfast, lunch and dinner--as any good vacation (and birthday!!) should be!

Just wanted to say Happy Halloween from the Stiffneys! We miss you all and hope you are celebrating with lots of good candy and great costumes :)

And maybe a few scary things...

How to: Do Laundry by Hand

When you are living in a different country and a different culture everyday seems like a new adventure. Something as simple as doing laundry, finding a seat on the bus, or grocery shopping can become a bit more difficult, and most of the time fun!  

This post will take you step by step in how we do our laundry by hand in San Nicolas, Nicaragua. While we have taken tips and tricks from our host families and others in town, we have come up with our own intricacies and methods that seems to work for us.

Step 1: Gather your dirty laundry and other necessary supplies. We often use our speaker to listen to This American Life, Radio Lab, or other awesome podcast. Also pictured, sorted laundry, bar of laundry soap used for scrubbing and a bag of powdered detergent for soaking.

Step 2: Soak clothes in a bath of well mixed powdered laundry detergent and water for no more than 30 minutes. Any longer and the clothes will start to take on a stale water smell. We all know that smell! It’s always good to separate dirty socks from other clothes, because the if your socks are muddy your soaking water will turn brown pretty quick.

Step 3: Take clothes out of soaking water and place on the pila (concrete washboard/station). This is a clean pila all set for washing. There is a basin attached on the right that holds your clean/rinsing water.

Step 4: Begin scrubbing the clothes with bar of laundry soap (it smells awesome!)

Step 5: Be sure to get lots of suds and use TONS of water to rinse out the suds. Kyle is going with the unconventional method of doing a pile of clothes at once. It works for us!

Step 6: Place clothes pins on current clothes you are wearing so you are all set to start hanging you clothes up outside.

Step 7: Hang clothes in the sunniest/windiest spot possible.

Step 8: Wait for clothes to dry. Sometimes 1 day, sometimes 1 week.

Step 9: When you hear it raining on your tin roof, run outside quickly to grab your clothes and hang on the clothes line in the kitchen.

We usually do our laundry over the weekend. The whole process takes about 1 hour if we have a normal week of laundry. It really isn’t so bad. And we actually find ourselves looking forward to the time to zone out a bit and catch up on podcasts. I am sure our methods will evolve and change over our time here, but we think we have a pretty good start in our laundry-doing abilities.

Have you every done your laundry by hand? What tips do you have for us?

October (Octubre)

Ohhh October , obviously the best month of the year! Am I right?? Of course October is my birthday month, but there is so much more to this amazing month…in the states it meant soccer and volleyball season, changing leaves, Colts football, sweaters and boots, hot drinks and bonfires. I LOVED every second of October! While things are a little different here in Nicaragua I still have the same feelings about this month. The mornings and evenings are getting a little cooler, I can wear a sweatshirt in the evenings, there is a busy-ness in the air at school as the school year is wrapping up, exciting ideas for next year are already brewing and the season is seeming to change slowly but surely, oh and my birthday is still October 31st, even in Spanish  

We are soaking up the month of October here. Can you believe it’s already more than half way over? I can’t! Even though we are missing out on some things at home—the end of volleyball season for my sister (you know I am skyping in for those sectional games!), get togethers and hugs from family and friends, professional development in our respective careers—we are feeling confident and very much at peace that this is exactly where we are meant to be in October 2015. Building relationships with people here in Nicaragua, accompanying them on their journeys, sharing our joy with them, learning Spanish, teaching English, sharing our skills and expertise, appreciating a slower pace of life and a new culture, and showing some of our own culture to those around us. We talk often about reverse missions with VMM, and that is exactly what we are experiencing. As much as we came into this wanting to give, give, give, we are realizing that these next few years we will be receiving far more than we ever thought possible.

It surely is a different October this year, but we are so thankful for it!

Love,

Alli

Random Happenings

…AKA Photo Dump Just wanted to post a few pictures of the last few weeks and let you know a few things we have been up to. Enjoy!

We helped some of our students prepare for an English song competition that took place it Esteli. It was really fun to get to know the students, and they worked really hard on their pronunciation and dance moves. They didn’t place in the top three, but they definitely deserved to be proud of all their hard work!

There was a “grand opening” party for the Mirador (Lookout) the muncipal government just built, that overlooks our town! There was music, lots of people and even bounce houses It was fun to see the community out, and the mirador is a great addition to the community—plus great views! We are thinking a picnic at sunset will need to happen here!

San Nicolas: Decoration at the mirador

San Nicolas from the mirador. It’s beautiful!

A lot of our time at the school has been working on the organization of the library. This includes going through all the books, making an inventory, and lots and lots of piles If you know me, you know I am right in my element…organizing everything. Davie and Sarah helped raise money to build the library. It will be a great addition to the school, and will encourage literacy and reading for fun.

 

Teaching a primary English class outside of the elementary school in La Garnacha because we didn’t have keys to get in. It worked pretty well. And the kids are super energetic about learning English, so that makes our classes a lot of fun.

Elementary English Class. Yes, texting has started to be a distraction, even in 2nd grade. Haha.

Graduation picture day for the seniors.

Stenciling out letters for the library sign at the high school.

My view of my sisters volleyball game. I loved being able to see Abbi and the whole team in action. Skype really is a pretty great invention. Go Bruins!!

Our neighbor—Henry—helping us put up some barbed wire fence. You will probably hear more of his name throughout our blog. He always seems to be in on all our crazy house adventures. Including snake chasing, flood prevention, and teaching us all about our plants and yard. He’s awesome and always has a smile on his face. We are blessed with awesome neighbors!

Mission Accomplished!

Things continue to go really well here in San Nicolas. Spanish is coming along poco a poco (little by little). Everyday we feel like we are understanding more!! I think I mentioned this before, but we really do love the small town feel of San Nicolas. And the sounds of horse shoes clomping through town makes us feel right at home (Middlebury!). We continue to build relationships, and continue to discern and plan for what our responsibilities may be at the school and in surrounding communities. We are excited about the possibilities!

We also continue to be amazed (and love!) the slower pace of life. We often find ourselves sitting at the ktichen table after spending 1-2 hours on dinner and saying that we would never have time for that in the states. We are getting pretty creative in the kitchen (homemade pizza and bread) and are also spending a lot of time front porch sittin’…watching the town go by We are soaking this up now, especially with the understanding that we will have more responsibility when the new school year starts.

I think that’s all of now! I hope all is well for you and that you are finding time to slow down and reflect and spend time together (even if it’s not baking bread or pizza!) Whatever moment you have to slow down…breathe it all in. Those are important moments for a break and reflection. Soak it up! 

Much Love,

Alli

English 101

We started teaching a primary school English class in La Garnacha on Thursday afternoons. This is outside the school day and completely optional, but we have had the whole school (15 kids...) come to our class. It's been a lot of fun, and as you can see from this video these kids are passionate about learning numbers and colors in English :)