Training goes really fast!

This is gonna be a rapid recap of everything that has happened in the last 8 weeks because using dialup internet makes everything seem like a chore....

Every morning I wake up around 6am (except for Sundays when I get up around 8). I crawl out from under my mosquito net to go outside and take a bucket bath. The first splash I always have to hold my breath
so I dont scream. The water is FREEZING in the morning. After my bath I finish getting ready and have breakfast around 7. My Nica mom calls me when its ready. Usually, breakfast consists of coffee, a
piece of fresh bread and some pineapple.

Just before 8, I walk the two blocks to class. Everyday I wave to the old tailor sitting out on his porch drinking cofee and Anita, the woman that makes the best bread in town. My favorite kind has honey in the center. The three other volunteers in my town and I have class until 12 when we all walk home for lunch. At one, we head back to¨class¨but really we spend the afternoon walking around town, getting to know people in the community, talking to the mayor or the schooldirector and practicing our Spanish.Wednesday afternoons, the whole day Friday as well as Saturday mornings we have business conferences with the whole small business group. We also get lots of vaccines. So far, Im vaccinated against typhoid fever, the flu, hep a, hep b and rabies.

Every night at 6pm my family and I watch the telenovela Marina. If its Tuesday or Thursday, the youth group we started shows up at myhouse at 7pm to have our meeting and discuss plans to fix up the park.

Most of my free time I spend hanging out with my little brothers and my cousin. My one brother is 16 and is absolutely great.

Ah, one thing I think is really funny is that just about every time I come home I get a welcome parade from my two little sisters (they are 6 and 3). The youngest one cant say my name so she just runs towards
me screaming MANTHA!

The other volunteers and I were sitting in the park in our town when the mayor drove by. He got out of his car to introduce himself to us and tell us that he was at our complete disposal for whatever we needed. Its a really strange feeling. Very surreal. I feel like Im dreaming most of the time.

and now back to present day......

I FOUND OUT MY SITE TODAY! (Drum roll, please)... For the next two years I will be living in Somotillo, Chinandega. On the map, its in the department in the northwest corner of the country, a little bit inland, half an hour from Honduras. It´s a small town, less than 10,000 but there is electricity. We have running water, but it is rationed daily so mostly we only have it at night. The climate is ¨savannah¨ and its supposed to be REALLY, SUPER hot. We shall see how that goes.

I will be working in three schools (two of which are technically not in my town--I have to commute, hopefully by horse). I will be co-teaching a business class with the ultimate goal of teaching the professor how to teach it after I´m gone. I will also be working with small business projects coordinated through Save The Children and an NGO called Nitalpan. A lot of my work will also be focused on HIV/AIDS education/prevention because 60% of the adolescent population in my town is HIV+.

I will have lots more info next week because Tuesday I head up there for five days to meet my new family, my counterparts (i.e. the teachers I will be working with) and the people I will work with at the NGO.

I´m super, super happy with my site placement!!!!!