are there any cool people here?

One comment, made long ago in one of my blogs, indicated a desire to know about specific people down here and if there was any cool ones... :) For starters, check out NCA Nejapa's webpage--from there you can go to the list of faculty. That is a good list of cool people. I have really felt like they all accepted me right away. They have continued to support and encourage me. I think they are an exceptional bunch. The guys always talk to me and want to teach me Spanish. They also want to learn English and enjoy my help with pronunciation. I've been invited by the teachers to some things outside of class, one of which I just got back from. Oscar invited me to go with his church to a beach on Lake Nicaragua. It was about an hour and a half long bus ride from Tipi Tapa (his home town, just north-east of Managua). I traveled to his place by bus. After 3 busses, I met him and he rode with me the rest of the way. I should have met him at the end of the second bus, but I got off too soon and had to get back on another bus. :) Most of the time our conversations are pretty superficial because my spanish is so limited. I'd say a large part of the time consists of us talking about language and trying to figure out new words and the correct pronunciation of them! :) Unfortunately, I need to hear the word about 10 times and use it about 5 times before I can actually remember it!

Outside of that group, I have gotten to know the NCA teachers, which is another enjoyable group of people. From this list, I am living with Mayker Bantz and Mike Deibert. Mike is starting a trade school here (click on his name). I don't know as much about it as I should, but I it's definately cool. Whenever I can, I participate in a bible study with my two house mates and a guy named Jason. On occasion I pop into the apartment of the same Jason and his wife Jess and chat it up. I've also been hanging out with Rachel. She was hoping I could say hi to her in my blog (she walked in as I was writing this). So... hi, Rachel. Rachel lives in the apartment right above Jason and Jess. They're all good people and I like them a lot.

So, I just realized that we're losing an hour tonight because of daylight savings. Not like we need it, but the US does it, so we do it to stay on track with them. It will be interesting because I believe the last time they tried this a bunch of people who didn't get a clear message stayed on the normal time and made things difficult. It's hard to implement something new in a country. Just think about what it was like when they started the 911 thing, or when recycling was just beginning. It took a lot of money to get it through the heads of all of the people. And for a country where things are less organized, I can see how it would be a challenge to implement this time change.

Tomorrow (Monday) is a day off for us. It's Nicaragua's Labor Day. I am grateful for this day off and hope to accomplish a fair amount of work. I hope to get a very good start on the planning for next week's exams. I was discouraged in first grade last week when i tried to give our first spelling test. These students haven't retained much of what we've done this year...and that on top of not having done much leaves them with very little learned. I'm really having a hard time with knowing how to teach them. Reading and writing seems to be incredibly difficult. They learn faster how to speak and listen, but it's much much harder to test those modes of learning.

I'm going to turn in and hopefully get a full night's rest. I'm finding that having a normal waking time of 5:30 means I am unable to sleep in past 7:30 or 8 on days off, and that's after waking up involuntarily for a couple of moments at 6:00 and 7:00. So an early to bed night is a good night. I'll try to get some pictures up on the site soon. Thanks for reading!