Diharrea Divas

Today, March 8th, 2013, I was assigned to my training site.  I will be in Diriamba with my host family.  My mom and dad will be more like abuelos as they're about 64.  Their kids, however, will be more like padres; they're in their early 30s.  I will also have a sister who is about 6 months old.  So, though my training family doesn't have a little one that I'll be able to practice my Spanish with, I am hoping the baby will make a great opportunity to speak with my host family about different things, especially as a jumping off point to talk about the reality of maternal health here in Nicaragua as that is one of the major areas that will be concentrating on as health volunteers, alongside healthy lifestyles (sexual education).

In Nicaragua, photos can be very expensive to have made so when photos are taken, people generally don't smile, so their photos can be reminiscent of mug shots.  The photo of my family is in black and white and my family seems very serious.  We were reassured, however, that all of our families are very sweet.  Though I'm nervous, I'm excited to begin with training.  Additionally, right now I'm feeling like I'm embarking upon a greater unknown so it feels more difficult to leave.  Though, just a few days ago where I am now was an unknown and now it feels like a giant cocoon of safety.  We're basically locked inside of this hotel though and really only left today to visit the Peace Corps office in Managua. 

Over the past few days a great deal of other things have happened.  Primarily, I got a rabies vaccination that is still sore.  I got it yesterday and it was hard to sleep on.  Por lo menos, if a bat bites me (?) I won't get rabies.   We also got our medical kits yesterday and included were our misquito nets and EMERGENCY DIHARREA KITs.  When our Medical Officer was explaining it to us, though he kept referring to it as 'diharrea' which we all thought was hilarious because we are collectively in third grade. 

Lastly, Nicas use vos which is awesome because it'll give me a better handle of what I was introduced to when I was in Argentina.  They also leave their 's' out of words.  I have been waking up to the radio here and the first day I did it the radio announcer said escucho but it sounded more like ecucho. 

Today, we had our first Spanish class.  It was really interactive and a lot of fun.  We played a lot of games, or dinamicas.  We were actually placed in our training towns so we would be with people who are at our same level of Spanish in our same field.  So in my town I am with Isabel, Patrick, and Lucy who are all around intermediate level.  So, we are all health volunteers in the same town with our instructor Maritza.  All our health peers are in three other towns and are no more than 12 km from us.  So, though some of us that have become will be separated, we will still be close to each other.  The business volunteers will be about 40 minutes from us and we will have some meetings where we are all together. 

As it's our last night here at Hotel Ticomo, I am going to go ahead and finish this post so I can be as present as I can with my new frands ("family").  Goodnight!