Our last week in Carazo

Well, our site visit to Matagalpa was great. We got to our site early last morning and fell in love with it, immediately. It sits on top of a mountain and is surrounded As you can see, by jungle. There are several cloud forests located nearby and it itself is part of a cloud forest. The town is quite a bustling little place of about 10 thousand people, but there are all kinds of rural communities near that we will be working in as well. We spend the entire week with our colleges. That is to say the nicaraguan counterparts we will be working with. One from the local health center, one from the casa materna and one from Save the Children. We will inevitably have other people to work with from other NGO´s as well, but this is plenty to start off with. There are many opportunities for work in our community. This is a picture of some of the women at the casa materna who were listening to a charla about family planning.

We met with an english class that we will be teaching, and a youth group as well. We stayed with the family that we are required to live with for the first six weeks. We are not very happy to have to do this, but it is the policy. The good thing is that we are taking over this site from another health volunteer who is leaving. She has a house there and all the things in it that we can take over. These are some picures of the house. It is quite cute and in a cute little neighborhood. It needs some heather and kory style love, (paint and clorox) but it will be a good place for us. This is a picture of our future street, our house is on the left a ways down the path.This is our house (left) , grey. Yes. But homey and ours. And I must say that it is pretty safe. (T, I know what you are thinking.. and yes its safe for nicaragua.)
This is the backyard, full of banana and or plantain trees. Room for a garden I hope, amoungst the pools of dirty water gathering there.

So here we are finishing up in Carazo with our youth groups here and all the peace corps odds and ends. Learning VOS form and brushing up on subjunctive in spanish and getting ready for our final spanish proficiency exams next week. I included this sweet skinny cow picture because these poor skinny cows are all over, even in Managua, hauling suger cane or wood or what have you. Being poked and whipped and living the life of burden. Sad.

This is Korys youth group and the fabulous project they finished the other day. THis is a mural about being healthy at a grade school. Pretty dang sweet!

Well. We are in the midst of semana sant. And as many of you know, this is a very exciting time for me. I have always wanted to be part of it. The problem is I cant see the forest for the trees right now because we are sooooo busy. I hope I can relax and see some of the festivities. There are processions every day. Religous movies on tv, and special foods galore. I think this bigger than Christmas here. The kids get the whole week off of school. If I have time, I will write more about what we saw and did after the week is over.

We have a new mailing address, so from now on, please send ALL MAIL TO THIS ADDRESS!

Monja Heather McKinnon or Monje Kory Fluckiger

Apartido Postal 58

Matagalpa, Nicaragua

Central America

Remember to send it in PAdded envelopes only, and smothered in religious (catholic) propoganda. Well. Signing off. Love heather