La Laguna de Apoyo.

So I have been talking a lot of about the Laguna de Apoyo. My first week here I went to the top of the laguna so you can look out and see the whole thing and the volcano. On Sunday I went with my family to the bottom of the lagoon to go swimming. This whole adventure is a blog entry in itself haha. It was really fun. Initially before we left I had no idea where we were going. I was told that we were going on a “paseo” which can mean a number of things. I knew we were going on a family outing but I didn’t know where. It took about three hours before we actually left. After all there are tweleve people in the house and then me, and then another grandson and the driver of the truck. My host sister made a picnic lunch for us. She made the Nicaraguan version of fried chicken and we also had rice and plantains and a fresco of Calala (a fruit it Nicaragua, not sure of the spelling). It was really good.

So to get to the bottom of the laguna you have to drive down a really sleep hill. I was sitting on the inside of the pick-up truck along with 2 other people, and everyone else was riding in the bed of the truck lol. So there were probably 11 or 12 people in the back of the truck! I should have take a picture of it. There were a lot of pot holes on the way down the mountain so the people in the back were bouncing all around. It took about 20 minutes to get down to the bottom of the mountain. My host mom said that normally there is a coastline at the bottom of the laguna but since there was so much rain, the water was really high and there was really no coastline at all. So this kind of scared me because I couldn’t see the bottom and it got deep pretty fast. So I decided to just go in just to my thighs lol. Just to be safe! I also know that not many Nicaraguans know how to swim so no one would be able to save me! There was another group of people swimming next to us. Two of the boys were using four 2 liter coke bottles as floating devices. It was hilarious. I was nervous for them. It was a fun day at the laguna with my family, and the view was great! Also we decided to go back up the mountain to another look out point to eat watermelon and relax a little before going home. On our way up the mountain the truck had some trouble getting up the hill because there were so many people in the truck. We all ended up getting out of the truck and walking the rest of the way while the driver drove to the top. It was really funny and the next day my host mom asked me if I was made at her for making me do unwanted exercise. So we had watermelon and oranges at the other look out point and then went home. I was exhausted after that trip.

This week we observed our first class at the high school. It was very interesting. The schools here are very different from the us schools. Our town is really small so its even harder to compare it to the US. The elementary school students go to the school in the morning and the high school students go to school in the afternoon until about 5:30. We are going to be working with the only English teacher. She is also the only female teacher in the school. The teachers don’t turn on the lights during class to save on electricity and there are NO BATHROOMS! That shocked me. So the teachers and the students can’t use the bathroom at all during the school day. The teacher we are working with lives in another town so she has to wait until she gets home before she can use the bathroom…wow... So we are observing this week and co-planning with our teacher. I am co-teaching my first class on Monday which I am very worried about. The students don’t know a lot of English and the teacher speaks a lot of Spanish in the classroom. I know that the only way to learn is to practice so each time I will learn something and improve. Ok well I think I wrote way too much. I was report back about how my first class goes.





Pictures: Typical meal that I eat. This is my favorite meal sopa de frijoles (bean soup) with an egg in it and tortilla and rice.
A picture of me at the bottom of the laguna
Me with my host mom.
Alejandra and Tito at the laguna
La laguna