So I meant to post this weeks ago..... I am already slacking on the blogging thing. Forgive me!
Part of our training program has all of the SBD (Small Business Development) trainees visit a current volunteer in their site during week 5 of our training. I was sent to a town on the west coast, in the department of Managua and stayed with a SBD volunteer who has been here since last summer.
When I arrived at my volunteer's site we immediately changed and headed to the beach with a couple other volunteers and another trainee. It was a short bus ride away from my volunteer's site and it was lined with little huts where fishing boats came in, cleaned their fish and sold it right on the beach. We went to this pier where the infamous ex-dictator of Nicaragua, Somoza, used to park his yachts. It is partly collapsed in the middle as a result of the revolution. A group of Nicaraguans were watching us as we swam out, climbed up the ramp and jumped off the end of the pier. As white people, we already get a lot of attention in this country. To top it off, most Nicaraguans can't swim very well, if at all, so I'm sure they thought we were crazy to be doing this and were waiting for us to start drowning. Overall, I was grateful to spend a day on the beach.
Part of our training program has all of the SBD (Small Business Development) trainees visit a current volunteer in their site during week 5 of our training. I was sent to a town on the west coast, in the department of Managua and stayed with a SBD volunteer who has been here since last summer.
When I arrived at my volunteer's site we immediately changed and headed to the beach with a couple other volunteers and another trainee. It was a short bus ride away from my volunteer's site and it was lined with little huts where fishing boats came in, cleaned their fish and sold it right on the beach. We went to this pier where the infamous ex-dictator of Nicaragua, Somoza, used to park his yachts. It is partly collapsed in the middle as a result of the revolution. A group of Nicaraguans were watching us as we swam out, climbed up the ramp and jumped off the end of the pier. As white people, we already get a lot of attention in this country. To top it off, most Nicaraguans can't swim very well, if at all, so I'm sure they thought we were crazy to be doing this and were waiting for us to start drowning. Overall, I was grateful to spend a day on the beach.
I spent the rest of the week basically job shadowing my volunteer. She explained to me that her site was a "new site" meaning they had never had a PC volunteer living and working there before her. It didn't take long for me to realize that being a new site meant that is was a lot more challenging to do her job. She has five schools in which she is teaching the Entrepreneurship class. One of them EXTREMELY challenging, to the point where she and her counterpart walked out of the class 10 minutes early because the kids were not paying attention to a word she was saying. This scared the crap out of me because I am already nervous about managing a classroom. BUT...... most of her other classes went quite smoothly for Nica standards and the kids were engaged and participated a lot. This made me realize that no matter where I am sent. I will find that each school in which I will be teaching will be different from the other. Some easier and some more challenging. I was able to take note of a lot of her teaching techniques that I will be sure to utilize when I arrive in my site.
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