Fiestas Patrias

A few weeks ago was Central American independence day. We celebrated very well here in San Nicolas. On the Friday before September 14th, the “running of the torch” took place. While the one we witnessed here in between the communities of San Nicolas was only a simulation, there is an official running of the torch that happens all throughout Central America and went through Managua on the day we had our running in town—really cool! The week of Independence Day we still “had school” on Monday and Tuesday, but it included a parade and ceremony on Monday and a reading of the constitution on Tuesday. We then had vacation days on Wednesday and Thursday (another post coming on that). Overall, it was a great week of celebrations. It was fun to see our students excited about their homeland--fiestas patrias means homeland party. And it was fun to see our town lit up in celebration. Here are a few pictures of the celebrations:

The running of the torch on Friday throughout the municipality

of San Nicolas

The torch arrived

Preschoolers singing a special song

Independence day mural-we helped with those letters! It says “Proud of my country, Nicaragua. Blessed and always beautiful”

The queens of the fiesta! They receive this honor for having the highest grades in the school. Go, girls!!

Prepping for the parade

Representing all the countries of Central America that celebrate independence together--No Belize, Mexico or Panama. It was fun to think of celebrating with El Salvador (Rachel and Luke!) and Costa Rica (Brittany and Luke!)

The little kings and queens of the fiesta

Nicaraguan National Anthem

The parade has begun…These dudes with sunglasses were some of our favorites to watch.

The drum practices we heard every afternoon from 2pm-4pm finally got to perform!

Not a bad location for a parade

Other students marching

We set-up chairs right outside our house to take in the action on main street

The baseball/football stadium where the party continued

Group photo of the band

Happy Independence Day, Nicaragua!!

Love,

Alli and Kyle

Party time!

When you turn 99 the obvious choice is to dance around and get the first hit at the piñata at your birthday party! We were lucky enough to be invited to this party by our adopted host family here in San Nicolas. There was a live mariachi band, cow stomach soup, and amazing views to boot!

 We had a great time, and of course, it always feels great to be welcomed into a group as close knit as a family. I never really forgot the hospitality that I was shown the first time we lived here in 2008—and San Nicolas is only proving to me again that Piñoler@s have hospitality in their blood!



Love,
Alli

A quick update!

Just wanted to write a quick update to let you know what we have been up to the last few weeks. We have been busy trying to keep up with Spanish, learn the schedule of the school and our new town, and build relationships! Personally—things have been going really well. We really love the location we have landed in, the people are wonderful and day-by-day we are feeling more confident in Spanish (although hour-by-hour is a different story! ha!) We are enjoying our home, cooking together, doing some landscaping and making it our own.

To keep you updated on what our work is/will be like here in Nicaragua…We  are spending the next 3 months diving in with our Spanish, building relationships and just seeing how things flow at the high school in San Nicolas and the town of La Garnacha (where we have the opportunity to work and help with the community farms and businesses in this small town). At this time, we truly are observing until the beginning of December when school is out for the long break in between school years—in the states we call this summer break. When the new school year begins in February, we hope to have a more consistent and set schedule or expectations, but for now observing and discussing and discerning is what we are doing.  There is some sense of a schedule that we have kept up from Davie and Sarah’s schedule they had while they were serving here. Currently, we are running 1 adult English class each week, and primary english class in La Garnacha (1x/week), and observing in the high school classrooms. With La Garnacha, we are cleaning veggies and helping at the farmer’s market on Friday’s.

In February, when school gets started again we will have a more solid schedule and idea of where we can plug in with our skills. A few ideas that have already been floating around are similar to that of previous volunteers, including assisting in English classes at the high school and teaching after school English classes and an adult class, as well. A few new ideas include; Alli helping with some counseling /social work initiatives at the school (parent meetings, “core values” education, future planning—career, college etc…), as well as a few organizational things at the school. At La Garnacha, there has been some talk of wanting help with a few basic accounting practices for the businesses in town and the farm. Also, the possibility of a computer class to teach basic word processing and maybe some excel to help with accounting.

We are very excited about the prospects of using some of professional skills we used in the states here in Nicaragua—working alongside people here and learning from them, as well! It seems a lot of that has already begun.

Thanks for following along on our journey!

I also wanted to take the opportunity to post our P.O. Box address in case you would like to send anything to us! We’ve heard that sending packages can get a bit pricey, but a card is always nice and the system is pretty reliable .

Allison y Kyle Stiffney

P.O. Box 46

Esteli, Nicaragua

Love,

Alli

Welcome Home!

The official tour of the VMM house where 2 other volunteer couples have lived and worked (and made many improvements to the house each year!—Thanks, friends!) And where we will be living for the next two years! We are already very much enjoying this space, our neighbors and the indoor/outdoor connection that many Nicaragua houses have.

It also helps that we have been sleeping wonderfully and have been able to cook our own (delicious) food in our own kitchen. There are so many positives to living with a host family in a cross-cultural experience, but there is something ever so valuable about having your own personal space. A place to relax, reflect and even speak a little English when Spanish is making your head spin!

Welcome to our home….

We begin our tour here at the front of our house….Painted a lovely blue by Davie and Sarah. We live right next to the alcaldia (mayor’s office) and live on what seems to us like “Main Street”, in a town of about 5 different streets!

Come on in….

This first room you walk into is open space…On Wednesday it is used as a natural medicine clinic for a lady who comes in from one of the villages outside of town. We use it for working out (Yoga and Insanity, mostly) and we have a few ideas on how to use it as a common room…possibly finding some rocking chairs or other seats to fill the space.

There are two guest rooms off of this common space. There is a double bed and single bed—Mosquito net included! Plenty of room for visitors!!

Continue through the common room into what we have named the “breeze way”. This area has already been used in a variety of ways….Adult English class, laundry organization, dinner/lunch, and a cool spot to read. We hope to get a hammock set-up in this area for more relaxation potential. See our backyard straight through, kitchen door on the right, and bedroom door is in the shadow on the left.

Welcome to our bed room…Hey Ash Jan, do you like my hanging plant??

Our bed is covered in a mosquito net. We have a wonderful wardrobe to store our clothes, a book shelf, and a desk.

….and my favorite part! The mood lighting

Across the “hall” is the kitchen! It’s a great size, with a gas stove/oven, a refrigerator and a sink to do our dishes!

Already getting our fridge decorated with a  few people you may know…

And then there’s our outdoor space. Pictures can’t really do it justice, but between the mango trees, basil and aloe plants and banana trees we should be all set! Oh AND  just beyond those trees is our lovely latrine…still getting used to the outhouse life…but I am sure by next month it will be old news. I hope!

And finally our laundry”room”. A pila for hand washing our clothes. We waiting 2 weeks too long to do our first load and spent a lot of our weekend washing clothes by hand. Note to self: Wash clothes every other day   There’s also a shower right around the corner behind Kyle. We’ve got a pretty great set-up here in San Nicolas!

Thanks for coming on our tour!! We hope many of you get to see this in real life   Visitors are always welcome and encouraged!

As always, thanks for your continued prayers, notes/emails, love, and support! We seem to be transitioning fairly well…but the language is definitely a challenge. Continued prayers for language acquisition and patience in the process are very much appreciated!

Love,

Alli+Kyle

Our First Baking Attempt

We spent an evening making a variation on the monster cookie for a fundraiser for the high school’s band uniforms. We had a lot a fun baking together, and enjoyed watching the students buy our cookies and exclaim “deliciosa!”
In typical cross-cultural living, we did not realize that the event was not just for the school, but was a lot a grand opening of a “central market” area in town. We were sure to make a sign telling the patrons that we weren’t just trying to make money for ourselves, but were raising money for the school
Another adventure in the books!

Cutting up chocolate kisses because we didn’t think ahead to buy chocolate chips in the capital city.

So cute!

Overall, a great celebration for the opening of the market and we raised some funds for the school, too! Oh and we have a few leftover cookies in the freezer waiting to be thawed on some of those “not so great days”.