So, I'm officially a Peace Corps Volunteer! I'm at the hotel in Managua right now trying to get my stuff together to make the move to Chinandega...and feeling refreshed and energetic after having a tranquil evening in the hotel room. I have lots of pictures posted from the ceremony so you should check them out...including one of me shaking hands with the ambassador. Neat-o. Well, as soon as I can find a good internet cafe in Chinandega, I'll post again. Might take me a bit, I think I'll be pretty busy right at first but I guess that's good. --Elizabeth

Me and Katie...about sums it up for day #2 of meetings in Managua.

ROAR.

Made it to Managua! Staying in a hotel til Saturday that has wireless internet....SWEET.

So, we have NONSTOP meetings until the swear in ceremony on Saturday. About random things. Boring things. They last for hours on end. And I only got like 2.5 hours of sleep last night! I went out to dinner with a friend and didn't get back til 11:15. Then I had to pack up my entire room in Dolores to get ready for the final big move to Chinandega. But dinner was totally worth it.

Well...lunch is over. I probably have some lecture on AIDS or community integration to go to.

First Photoshop Project

So, who wouldve thought that in Nicaragua, I would actually become more technologically savvy? I got Adobe Photoshop! I had a class in college while I was still a journalism major that taught me the basics of using the program (its surprisingly difficult) and have managed to forget everything I learned with the sole exception of the ´drag and drop´feature. But, since I had 6 free hours yesterday after spending 5 in a staring contest with John, I decided to make a new Slack family portrait. Which is what you are looking at. The Slack family in a candid photo at the volcano in Masaya, Nicaragua.

P.S. Check out my pictures again, I uploaded more since yesterday. Too much free time?

Happy Anniversary Mom ´n Pop, here´s a blog entry!

<-----WITH DANICA

Definitely haven´t written in a while. Things are getting hectic and mundane at the same time if that´s possible. Like, we are really busy some days with 8 hours of PC presentations and workshops...and then some days, we don´t have ANYTHING to do. But, just do do a quick update... I´m going to live in Chinandega, Chinandega for the next 2 years! It´s in the northwest corner of Nicaragua, on the coast. It´s home to the tallest volcano here (btw, it´s visible from the ATM) and about 20 minutes away from a gorgeous beach. Unfortunately, it´s the sticky armpit of Nicaragua. It´s SUPER hot, even hotter on average than Managua. And air conditioning is nonexistent except for in the banks. Too bad I don´t have much business there. Haha.

Well...It´s Saturday night. We haven´t been able to leave our training towns today because today´s a national holiday. The Sandinistas are celebrating the anniversary of the revolution, so there will be lots of political rallies and events. It´s pretty controversial, and political events are known to get a bit hairy, so just for safety concerns we had to stay in our sites today. Oh well. I woke up around 6:50 to pee (couldn´t hold it any more) but knew it was a death sentence. I can never fall back asleep on that mattress after I wake up and get out of bed. So, I got a head start on my laundry today. There was actually enough sunshine today to get my bedsheets washed and dried! Then I called my parents. Then I went over to John´s house and we sat in the hammock and stared at eachother for a few hours. Then I decided to come here to upload some pictures (check them out by the way) before I go home for dinner and more excitement. If someone doesn´t take me salsa dancing soon I´m liable to gnaw my own arm off.

If you don´t hear from me for a little bit, it´s cause we´re all getting ready to go through another transitional phase that´s going to require lots of ´patience and flexibility´. We´re finally swearing in and moving to our sites!! The ceremony is in Managua this upcoming Friday, and Saturday morning, Danica and I leave for Chinandega. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention. Most of the volunteers got sent one by one to different spots all over the country, but a few of us got sent to the same place. Danica and I are going to be sitemates in Chinandega! She´s great. We´ll make great partners in crime.

My address will be changing soon, but you can still send me mail to the Peace Corps office in the meantime. That will always be there. Hint hint. :)

HASTA LUEGO.

quick...

I updated my photos today...take a peek. I´ve got the ones up from the volcano. Gotta run.
Elizabeth

another exciting Saturday night in Dolores...

Here´s a pic of me and my #1 chica, Iris. She doesn´t look very happy, it´s true, but that´s cause we just finished a round of English homework.

She wanted me to help her transcribe a song in English because here, kids in high school can choose to do a song-dance routine (in English) instead of taking their midterm English exam! The other day I got to go observe a class where this was happening...it was really bizzare. The kids from first-fifth year all divide up into teams of about 5 and pick a song, choose costumes, and correograph it (don´t know how to spell that) , and perform it for a grade in front of the whole class. The winning teams from each of the grades perform against eachother, and then the winning teams from all of the high schools in the department perform against eachother, and it eventually turns into a national competition. CRAZY. Anyway, I think my fellow gringos and I have been invited to judge the final competition between the grades in the high school here. The hardest part is trying not to laugh...One of the teams did ´we like to party´by the venga boys, except for when they sung it it sounded like they were saying ´we look sporty´...obviously the entire meaning of the song was lost. Other teams chose songs like ´man i feel like a woman´by shania twain, and other pop-rap songs by people like nelly and ashanti. verrrrry entertaining.

Today we had our site fair in Diriamba (which is actually a future site for one of the trainees in my group!). My top picks were Leon, Leon... Matagalpa, Matagalpa... and San Rafael del Sur, Managua. They are all very different from eachother. Leon, Leon is a huge college town...lots and lots of students come from all over to study there...the architecture is beautiful...there are some beaches relatively nearby...lots of rich culture...some tourism...but it is HOT HOT HOT. Matagalpa, Matagalpa is a little bit cooler, and a really big city. I´d be working with a big school with lots of counterparts. The really cool thing about this site is that it is a big coffee center (real coffee, not the instant kind), and people work there as coffee tasters. These people really want to learn English as it relates to describing and marketing coffee, and I feel like I´d be pretty good at that (cough cough, Taylor Books 4 life, cough cough). The third site is San Rafael del Sur, which is a beach town. I´m not sure if it has a port or not, but it´s hot, and has ocean. And opportunities to work with youth. They also just recently discovered oil there, so that means lots of money, resources, and opportunity for speaking English in the near future (SUSTAINABILITY!!).

There are at least 15 different other sites though...I´m making a conscious decision not to be upset if PC doesn´t put me in any of my top 3...it´s bound to happen... It´s really hard to say that you have a preference about where you want to spend the next 2 years of your life when you´ve never been to any of the places you get to choose from. But, I´ll keep you guys posted - we find out next Friday afternoon.

Well, I guess I´ll go sit in the rocking chair outside my house.

Elizabeth