NCA- Nejapa - where I go every day.

What does a typical weekday look like for me? Well, every morning I wake up at about 6:30-7 am and listen to the Randall's get ready for school.  I usually read in bed or snooze and then get up sometime after seven.  I make breakfast and read some more, drink my coffee, before slapping on the sunscreen (every time I step outside folks!) and biking 15 minutes to NCA-Nejapa arriving around 9:15.

Grade 5/6 classroom - its packed!

NCA (Nicaragua Christian Academy) is located in the area called Nejapa and is a school for mostly middle class Nicaraguans who want to give their kids a better education than they can get in the public system, but can't afford the prices of NCA-International (school where Aleida teaches).  NCA-Nejapa conducts all of their classes in Spanish, and beside the Directors and Principal, I am the only North American teacher there. 

I am helping in 3 advanced English classes, with a teacher named Blanca Lopez.  She is really willing to learn and wants to make learning more interesting for her students.  That being said, she has grown up in a system of education that is all about wrote memorisation, so she is working hard to see education differently.  It  is definitely a different system of education, that is steeped in culture.  As a North American, sometimes it is hard for me to see what is cultural and what needs to change to make a better learning environment.  I have a lot of notes with ideas for improvement, but I only dole out a few at a time, as it can be overwhelming to be given suggestions all the time.  

Blanca helping a student

I have only been working in the advanced classes, as otherwise I am unable to help the kids, as the language barrier is too great.  It has been great getting to know them and even in my short time there I have grown to enjoy these kids. All of the pictures are from the 5/6 Advanced class.  I receive hugs everyday from some of them (high school student don't do that!) and the boys especially love to try and tell me stories in Spanish (I think they forget that my Spanish is a lot worse than their English).  

The second classes is the 9-11 grade Advanced class (31 students), which I love because I am with high school students and I get to talk about things I know.  Recently they had a unit on the Olympics, so I could share with them my love for it, as well as talk about the Vancouver games.  They were very surprised that I have tried a lot of the sports that are in the Olympics as there is not a big push for sports (except maybe soccer), especially for girls, in Nicaragua.

The last class of the day is 7/8 Advanced, and I remember the students names the best in this class, because you have to constantly tell them to be quiet!  There are a lot of great kids in this class as well, they just don't seem to be very studious yet...
English classes are done at 12:30 each day and sometime we meet as a department after that.   I try to debrief what went well with Blanca each day, and try to help her towards some reflection.  Its good to talk about assessment and what she is actually looking for and trying to help her make the questions reflect this kind of thinking.

Sorry for the thumb... but this expression is priceless

After classes are done, I bike 15 minutes back (all up hill) and immediately put on my bathing suit and jump in the pool.  I have also been using that as a time for working out, I swim for about 15 minutes each day as well.  Then I go back to the house and make some lunch around 1:30 and decided what I am going to do for the next couple hours before everyone else comes back from their jobs!  

I am glad to be working in a school, and one that has some challenges ahead of it.  Pray for a blessing on this school as their teachers strive to better Christ-centred education.

Visit from Family and the mighty Red Ant

Those are not freckles!

This week started with surfing on Sunday after church with a bunch of people at Grand Pacifica's beach.  Aleida gave me her king-size sheet in which we created a wonderful bit of shade!  Upon leaving the beach after sunset, we were putting our boards on the van, and we were all getting bitten by some kind of insect on our feet!  I thought they were mosquitoes except they were only on our feet... they were red fire ants.  As a result my feel look like this...all week...God bless the makers of Hydrocortisone cream and Benedryl.

In the created shade 

Wearing my wetsuit- saving my skin one surf at a time!

The other exciting part of this week was that I have a family member in Nicaragua!  Dani, my cousin Shannon's daughter is here with Abbotsford Christian's team, staying at the Nehemiah Centre.  I was able to tag along with them on Thursday as they went with the Centro de Faye School to an Ecological Musuem.  The museum was sponsored by the Canadian government!  So there was information about the dangers of deforestation, erosion, the need for recycling... which really are important issues in Nicaragua... the people just don't have the means, knowledge or desire to worry about them.  We also saw a sweet video, all in Spanish, about sea turtles (la tortiga) in Nicaragua, with some pretty graphic pictures of them butchering them as well as having them on their backs (alive) until someone buys them to eat. (poor turtles)

One of the posters- most of the scientific words were really similar...made me feel like I could read Spanish.

Then we went to La Machina - a national park that had this great waterfall.  We ate lunch there, and we sat in the water ... it was a little shallow for swimming.  But it was great to sit in the water and hang out.

 

Me and Dani with the waterfall behind us

Looking down on the waterfall

Waterfall - Dani is sitting with her friend at the top

Dani and friend talking... what is that other kid doing?

Apres swim - at the bottom

A Few Flora of Nicaragua

Last week and this week, I have been subbing at NCA-International for the history teacher.  Not only was this my least favourite subject in school, but I was also subbing for American History.  So basically I haven't known anything outside of the textbook, unless it was somehow related to Canada. (Canada is only mentioned in their US history book 3 times...max 3 sentences each... I checked.)  At any rate, it has still been fun putting my 2 cents in as a Canadian.

So since I was so outside my element, I thought I would use this post to show the science nerd in me.  I love learning about plants and like to identify them.  To me, its so interesting that the plants we see here in Nicaragua are the same as those in our Canadian homes and are merely labelled "tropical plant".  So for the plant lovers among us...here are some of the plants that I have seen in Managua, a lot of which you will recognize:  (mostly taken from gardens and hiking in Selva Negra - since its the dry season, they actually have water) *please forgive me if I incorrectly identify these!

Bougainvillea spectabilis 

Plumeria 

Couldn't find this one - but its beautiful

Jatropha podagrica

Reminded me of the prairies!

Epiphytes - look kinda like bromeliads

Selaginella - some kind of fern

Matagalpa, Nicaragua - travelling north

This past weekend, Aleida and I drove up to Matagalpa, which is about 2-3 hours north of Managua.  Aleida's friend Carey hosted us, and showed us the sights.

There are a lot of things that are great about Matagalpa, the greatest being that there is a 5-10 degrees decrease in temperature (to me this is perfect!)  Another great part is that the city is pretty safe, and walk-able. We arrived on Friday night just before dark, and had to drive around a catholic parade, that was doing stations of the cross on Carey's street.  After eating at a local Nicaraguan place, we walked the city a little and visited a friend.

Directions to Carey's house

The next morning we got up early and hiked up out of the city (its in a valley) and hiked along the ridge surrounding it.  Unfortunately, we don't have pictures of this as its pretty remote, and Carey said that bringing our cameras was an invitation to be robbed. We hiked for 3-4 hours around the perimeter of the city and it was great to see all the green!  Matagalpa is very green and lush compared to Managua, and especially as we are quite far into the dry season, Matagalpa still has green trees.

We drove to a lookout so we could have pictures of the whole city.  

After this we got home for a snack before heading out to the "El Castillo del Cacao" chocolate factory.   The factory was started by two Dutch people and a Chilean.  Here in Matagalpa, 2 women make artisan chocolate, mostly by hand, with cacao from Nicaragua.  They make 700 bars of chocolate per day, from the cacao bean, roasting, crushing, mixing, heating, cooling, molding and packaging. Amazing and delicious.  We got to try all the different kinds, and they also had delicious coffee to go with it (the other main resource there).

Miking the chocolate to make it smooth

Making packaging for the chocolate

Super sterile!  Or at least Nicaraguan style

We visited the NCA-Matagalpa school as well and played ultimate frisbee there as in the afternoon.  Let's just say I was pretty tired after that!  We went back and made dinner and then went to sleep.
We got up the next morning to travel about 30 minutes farther north to Selva Negra, which is a cloud forest protected area.  There is a hotel and restaurant there as well as many hiking trails.  We hiked the Mosquita trail higher on the ridge and got to enjoy the rainforest.  It was nice to see so many familiar plants!  Aleida said she should have come there when she was feeling homesick for Canada.  After hiking we had a delicious organic burger and cake, along with a couple more cups of coffee (all in little dutch cups).  After enjoying a lot of food, we made our way back to Carey's house and hung out for another hour before making our way back to Managua.  All in all, a beautiful place, and it only makes me want to go back!  To me that's a mark of a good place.

Carey and Aleida hiking the hills of Selva Negra (named after the Black Forest in Germany)

A beautiful chapel on the grounds

The roots of the tree

Hiking down a less developed path

Coffee in the black plastic bags, roasting or drying in the sun!

What Matagalpa is known for: coffee beans drying in the sun.

Nicaraguan moon and fumigation

Just a quick post about two random observations that surprised me this week:

1. The Moon

I was driving home the other night and saw the Nicaraguan moon (see below).  For some reason I was surprised to see that the crescent was on the bottom not the side of the moon...hello North American-centrism. So the next day I looked at the textbooks that they had at NCA-Nejapa and they are all published in England or the United States... so a figure of the moon like this would never show up in their books.  I have noticed before that as you travel closer to the equator the Big Dipper gets closer to the horizon, but somehow, this phenomenon has alluded me.  

picture taken from the internet... mine did not turn out well

2. Fumigation 

Last night at about 8pm, I was talking with Aleida in her apartment, and there was a loud motor sounding noise outside.  It was the fogger truck!  We quickly went to close the windows, as to avoid the majority of the pesticides in her place.  Apparently they were fogging for mosquitoes since there has been some Dengue fever lately in Managua. I know being from the Lower Mainland has exempting me from the fogging experience in Canada (the only other time I have seen it is in Winnipeg - Lynnette!), but in Canada there is usually some warning that the trucks are coming by.  While I appreciate that they are looking out for people, as the DDT clears, I got to wonder why are there are so many mosquitoes when its the dry season and it hasn't rained in months?  

Surfing

So one of the other great perks for coming to Nicaragua is that is a great surfing location!  I also am staying with a great surfing family, the Randall's.  They have been super generous with their boards and transportation, to take not only me, but others, under their wing to keep the surfing generations going. The first three weeks I was here, we went surfing every week. The beach is about a little over an hour away, and the pictures are all from one of the surf locations which they call "robin's".  Basically its a house that their friend Robin owns (he lives in Miami) and they take care of it for him.  There is a surf break directly outside of the house, though it is a little narrow, as their are rocks on either side.  What I love about it is that there is SHADE!  I know, I come to Nicaragua, and every where I go, I seek out the shade.  Its a never ending battle of my desire to be outside and making sure I don't burn.  In that effort, I am wearing a spring wetsuit in the water (full sleeves!) to keep the burn away.   My skin is grateful, though I still burnt the first time out because I was in the water too long.  So the next times, I had Aleida time me, and I took a break after an hour.  My mind loves the beach, my skin, not so much.

Getting ready to go...lots of surfboards!

Paddling out

Aleida

Amanda

Gates to the beach at Robin's

At 4pm all of these dragonflies showed up!

Sunset surf with birds overhead

Sarah coming out of the water

Enjoying the sunset

Bonfire on the beach after some good food