Buenas Notas

I'm trying to stay a little more on top of this blog. So I'll put an entry in for the week, but its not gonna be to exciting. School was good this week. Like I said in my last entry, I have been working pretty hard during the first few weeks of school. I had been putting together note taking sheets for every class, every day of the week. While these take a long time to make, and is definitely not something that I look forward to doing, I am starting to see the payoff for the hard work. Progress reports came out last week and most of my students had improved their math grades. That was exciting to see! I can see in their faces during class that they are confident that they will be able to do the work when they get home and they are confident come test time. If that wasn't enough, one of our school administrators came up to me on Friday and pulled me aside. She just wanted to let me know that she was hearing from a lot of parents that they are pleased with how much their kids are learning in math class. I was pretty excited to hear that. So that's school.
I tried to consciencely spend more time at home this week with my Nica family. They have gone out of their way to make me part of their family and I am enjoying the time that I spend with them. So this week has been a good Spanish learning week.
That's it.
j

Kicking off the year

So we're off and running for school year number 3. This year has come on quickly, it seems like the summer flew by. We started the school year on August 11 and we're already six weeks into it.
I'm teaching the same courses that I taught for the last two years. I still even have the same sweet schedule. I have all four class periods in the morning, when I have most of my energy. If you don't know, I am most def a morning person. I am way more productive between the hours of 6 am and 12 pm then I am afterwords. Then in the afternoon I have only one class. Love it.
So far this year has been going really well. I started to make note-taking sheets for every class to hand out to the students and it has really seemed to help. So far all the grades are up for the year and I can tell a difference in the students confidence in class. So that is awesome! Of course I can't take the credit for that, one of the things that I have been praying for all summer and this school year is for the Lord to use me to be a better teacher. So far, prayers have been answered.
So that's school.
This is my third year at NCA and my contract is up after this year. It seems like everyone I talk to asks me, "What are you going to do after this school year?" That's a great question. I don' t have any idea yet. I have a few ideas rolling around in my head, but nothing that I have been able to nail down and say, "That's it!" At the same time I don't want to keep my focus solely on something that is months away, I need to keep focused on what I am doing now. So I'll continue to pray that the Lord gives me direction for my life after this school year. So if you're praying with me, that would be something that you could pray about.
This year I am living with a Nicaraguan family. I did this for two reasons; first, I wanted to improve my spanish, and secondly I wanted to learn more about the Nicaraguan culture. Both have improved so far. I can tell my spanish is getting better all the time and I am most def learning more about the ins and outs of Nicaraguan culture. So this has been a blessing in my life.
Those are some general things.
What's been going on lately...well, last weekend was the Independence Celebration for Central America. Our school puts on a festival every year for indepedence day. Each grade in the high school has a period in Nicaraguan history that they are responsible to represent. They make huts and do plays/skits reenacting that time period in Nicaraguan history. The grade school kids come around and get to see all the different stations and judges come around and grade how each class has done. Afterwords there is a dancing portion to the day. Each grade does a traditional Nicaraguan dance and then the teachers do a typical Nicaraguan dance. Of course, all the students line up to see all their teachers try and do a traditional Nicaraguan dance. First of all, most of the teachers have little to no dance experience. Secondly, I'm pretty sure that none of us have any formal dance training so doing a choreographed dance together is just not going to happen right. So needless to say, we stunk up the joint but we stunk it up to roaring applause, so it was fun. Afterwords there is a feast of typical Nicaraguan food, so we just hang out for a while and eat some grub.
After the festival I went to San Juan del Sur for a few days, since we had a couple holidays. It was great to just get a chance to relax for a few days. I had been running pretty hard for the first six weeks of school. The break came at the perfect time. I most def needed a couple days off.
Nos vemos,
j

Body Movin'

What up party people,
Hey, it's been a few days. Well let me update you on the last post about flag football. Turns out that gringo's tend to be better at American football than Nicaraguans. Shocker! Anyway we have had 6 games or so and we have won all of them. Of course now that I say that we will lose tonight. Pride cometh before the fall. We had a game a couple weeks ago and I was trying to catch a tipped pass and dislocated my pinkie finger. It was nasty looking, the top half of the finger slid on top of the bottom half of the finger.
This week our landlord has finally decided to repair the roof on our house. I don't know if many of you know this or not, but last rainy season whenever it would rain heavily, my bedroom would get flooded. It would drip water all over my bed and my floor. Not fun.
Anyway, after many months of trying to get the landlord to repair the roof. He waits until the next rainy season is almost upon us to repair the roof. Smart. The good news is that he is finally getting around to it. The bad news is that, for this week, I moved my into Bob and Robbie's room. In their room they already have a queen size bed, a twin bed, and now my single. Needless to say there isn't any room for walking around. I had to move out of my room because there isn't a roof over my room and all kinds of crap that has been in our roof, for who knows how long, is falling all over my bedroom. Oh, and by the way, our 'attic' has been home to hundreds of bats, rats, and iguanas over the years. Lots of fun stuff in our attic.
This week is just a regular school week. Only 5 and 1/2 more weeks left of school, not that I am counting down.
Sorry, not too much to report this week. Talk to you soon.
j

Standard Week

Hola,

This week there is not too much to report. We had Standardized Testing this week at school, which was cool to be on the other side of. I always hated Standardized Tests when I was in school, but being on the other side of it I actually enjoyed it. It was a really easy week, I didn't really have to prepare too much for classes, so I don't really mind the tests.

My roommates and I have joined a flag-football league here in Managua, our team name is Los Bigotones aka...The Mustaches. Our team symbol is the hair and mustache of none other than...Magnum PI, Tom Selleck. That's right Mr. 80's sex symbol himself has returned to a Nicaraguan Flag Football Team. We played our first game this past Tuesday night and we won something like 51-8, I believe. Granted it was against probably the worst team in the league, but it was still pretty fun. We have another game tonight.

It's time for me to give a shout out to a special lady in my life that is having a birthday tomorrow. Happy Birthday Ellie! The day has finally come! No more of this "I be 3," you made it. Now it's "I be 4." Hope your birthday is full of love and fun.
Not too much else. Hope you all have a great weekend!
j

Surfin

This past week the waves have been huge!! My roommates and I have had quite a few chances to head out to the beach on the weekends. Bob and Chris, two of my roommates, and myself have been going out and having a good time together in the ocean. Here are just a few pics of us.

Pic 1: Me

Pic 2: Bob

Pic 3: Chris

Pic 4: Myself paddling into the sunset

Pic 5: uh...

nos vemos,

j

Semana Santa II

Hello,

Semana Santa passed about two weeks ago. My friend Eric Krauss came down for 10 days to visit. I hadn't seen Eric in 4 years, so it was really good to hang out with him again. Eric was a friend and roommate of mine in college. We had a lot of fun together joking and had some great conversations.

Eric came the week before Semana Santa. He spent a few days working, hanging out, and coming to school. We went on a short motorcycle trip to Volcan Mombacho with Joel and Lora Kleinsasser and some of their friends that came down to visit them.

The next day my roommates, Eric, some other friends, and myself all left for Costa Rica. My roommate Robbie lives half the time in Costa Rica and half the time in Managua. We stayed at Robbie's family cabin in the mountains just outside San Jose. It was cold up in the mountains, we were wearing jackets and started a fire every night. The view down on the city was beautiful.

We also did a lot of hiking and trail walking, as you can see from the pic above of Eric in the forest. We stayed up in the mountains until Tuesday evening.

Wednesday morning Eric left to head back to the states. The rest of us went white water rafting. It was a lot of fun. We split up into two rafts and went down the river for six hours or so. Thursday we headed up to Arenal, which is a volcano in Costa Rica where there is also a beautiful lake. The volcano is one of the most active in the world, at night we could see the lava running down the side.

Friday we went to some hot springs. They were OK, a little bit too touristy but they were still alright. Saturday we went horseback riding and canopy touring. We had quite a bit of fun. Horseback riding was a blast! Because we are in Central America they actually let you ride the horses instead of just trotting along. Saturday afternoon we headed back to Managua on our eight hour trek.

It

was a fun Semana Santa and definitely a needed vacation from school. Now we are up to the 4th quarter and I feel a little bit more mentally ready to tackle the last 9 weeks of school.

Nos vemos,

j

Mom and Pop Come to Town

Hola,

It's been a couple weeks, but I hope you all are doing well. I am doing very well. My parents were in town this past week; actually, they just left today.

We had a lot of fun while they were here. I picked them up Saturday evening. Sunday we went to Laguna de Apoyo, which is a crater lake about an hour outside of Managua. We sat around for a couple hours in the sun and went swimming in the lake a little bit.

Monday - They came to watch me teach. Classes went well, they stayed for the first four periods. Mom and Dad decided that I teach very similar to my everyday actions. Which was a compliment, always nice to hear that you comfortable in your profession.

Monday night we did the Volcan Masaya night tour, which was actually posted about here earlier (the second post). Anyway we saw the volcano, the bat caves, and the mouth of the volcano. Mom didn't particularly enjoy the bat caves, I don't think, but she was a trooper and didn't complain.

Tuesday - We drove to Granada, which is more of a touristy town about an hour and a half outside Managua. After Granada we went to Mombacho, which is a mountain nearby, and walked the trails. On the trail we saw a couple monkeys which was really cool. We also had a great view of Lake Nicaragua and all the isletas. Mom was also very stoked about all the wild orchids.

Wednesday - We went to the market early in the day. Shopped in the market for maybe an hour. Didn't really get anything but just had a good time people watching. At about 1 in the afternoon we took off for San Juan del Sur. It takes about 3 hours to travel down to San Juan. We checked into the B & B and went for a drive down to Playa Maderas, which is a famous surfing beach here in Nicaragua. It was really cool to see all the surfers.

Thursday - In the morning the owner of our B & B took us on a tour of some of the properties

available in San Juan, as well as some of the properties that he is developing. It was really cool to see all of the available places and for what prices they were available. In the afternoon we went to the coolest pool on a hillside. It was an infinity pool, at a resort called Pelican Eyes, that overlooks the bay and ocean. It is really cool (pictures posted below).

Friday - More pool action.

Saturday - More pool action. Then we drove back to Managua and went out to eat at Sushi Itto.

Sunday - Dropped Mom and Dad off at the airport at 6 this morning.

I had a great time. Hopefully you all are doing well. Feel free to e-mail anytime.

j