Como va a ser mi vida por los próximos tres meses

To my beloved friends and family,


I have finally arrived in Nicaragua.  I wrote this blog to the sound of trumpets and Elvis Crespo at a dining room table while a 2 year-old imitated me with his pen and paper on a beautiful day with the perfect amount of breeze. (For the rekerd, this computer dusnt have spell check for English that I can find, so any misplelings shud be overlukt.)


After flying into Managua and being separated from real Nicaraguan life for 3 days, they finally judged us on our Spanish-speaking abilities and sent us into the country.  They sent me, and 3 others to Masatepe, a town of roughly 30,000 and no white people.  I am staying with a family far more well-off than I ever expected when I signed up for the Peace Corps.  Doña María Gertrudis, her aunt Salvadora, her husband Carlo, and their 3 boys all live with me.  Fabian (who's first name is actually Leikar, after the Lakers) is 9, Jeanfranquito is 2, and Agdel is almost 1.  Jeanfranquito doesn't really speak Spanish, more a mix of baby and Spanish, but tries to talk to me nonetheless, and appears to love having me beacuse he has boundless energy and is trapped in the house with his aunt and a baby most of the day.  He enjoys having a new jungle-gym, and I must concede that I enjoy being his play-thing.  Doña María works in the bank not far from the house, amd the house is above a little place in which the local kids can come play Playstation on 4 different TVs, which Carlo own's and operates, as far as I can tell.  It's a very nice house, has a flat screen and cable, and I have my own (albeit tiny) room and bathroom.  Cold-water showers are tough, but you learn to deal.


The other cool thing is that, because a lot of kids come by the house to play video games and the houses are close together, all the neighbors come around and hang out every evening to chat and watch the really little kids.  Today some people waved me up to their house to watch Nicaragua play Belize in the Central American cup that's going on right now.  And 2 days ago, my first evening here, I played jacks and "estop" (essentially Scattergories but even better and only requires a pen and paper) with some young girls from down the street.  As it turns out, Nicaraguan children know their shit, and I got destroyed.


I'm in class for most of the day.  It's a Spanish class for most people because the Peace Corps makes it very clear that the key to integrating and being accepted by the community is speaking their language.  But because I'm in the advanced group, we talk about specifically Nicaraguan phrases and customs and train for our service.  Today we went to the health center to meet the director and walked around town to get a feel for it.


So far it has been great, but its only been 2 days, and I'm guessing it will get far more challenging.  I also am guessing that when they send me to my site of service, it will be a bit farther from my comfort zone.  I'll let you know how that goes though.  Still working on getting pictures up.


I love and miss you all.


Nick


p.s. Shout out to Andrew Martinez because he said it would make him happy.