Well, guys, we made it through the first school week, and since we leave on like a Tuesday or Monday night or something, this means that we're 25% done. Friday felt like a rather busy day even though we didn't actually do that much. We went to our four hours of Spanish classes in the morning, and then stopped by the hotel we were supposed to stay at to see if we could move in yet. We've been staying in a hotel near the beach but pretty far away from the library and the Spanish school because there was a problem with the air conditioning at the hotel we were supposed to stay at. The people at the hotel told us that we could finally move in (initially, we were supposed to move in on Tuesday, then it became, Wednesday, then Friday), but we had to wait until 2:00pm, and it was only 12. Considering the fact that we have more bags than we do people and the bags that we have weigh about as much as a small child, we weren't quite sure how we were gonna move everything across town by ourselves. We went back to the hotel by the beach and asked if anyone could help us move our stuff, and a guy said that he could, but it had to be at 1:00 because by 2:00 he would be gone. We decided to just go with that because there was no way we were gonna lug enough bags for a small army across town by ourselves in the stifling humidity. Working extremely quickly, we managed to repack all of our crap in about 40 minutes, and have it loaded up in the truck by 1:00. The guy from the hotel by the beach drove us over to the new place, and took all of our stuff up to our room, and they ended up just letting us move into the new place an hour early. The new place isn't much bigger in terms of size/number of rooms, but it feels more homey because there are big couches and a somewhat proper kitchen and whatnot.
Anyways, after moving into the new place, we unpacked everything and put all of our food into the cabinets and made it all real nice and proper. We then headed over to the library to fill our more late notices for about two hours. This is rather dull and mindless work, but for some reason I kind of like it. It's easy, doesn't involve any movement, and it's indoors so there's no sun demon trying to fry you the minute you step outside. You know how there are lizards or snakes or something whose internal body temperature relies on their environment? So if it's really warm, their internal body temperature is warm, so they can move around super quickly and get lots done in their little reptile world. Or, if it's really cold, their internal body temperature is cold, so they can't move much and just kinda have to sit there until it warms up. I'M THE OPPOSITE OF THAT. When it's warm, it's like my limbs shut down and decide that they aren't gonna function at the normal rate, so if I'm gonna try to make them move, it's gonna be slow and painful and nobody is gonna like it. However, if it's cold, I'm good to go, because there is always a way to escape the cold. You can always put more clothes on, or use those little hand warmer things that are like small beans in a bag that somehow heat themselves up with your body heat, or you can start a fire or something. HOWEVER. You can never escape the heat. It doesn't even matter if you walk around completely butt naked, it will still be hot, you will still sweat, you will still get sunburned, and you will still hate every second of it. Reason number 5,987,436,219 why cold weather is better than hot weather.
I got sidetracked, that's my bad. Back to the story of the day. After we wrote a bunch more late notices, we went to the grocery store. This trip was actually an organized one: we had a list and extra money just to be safe, etc. Seeing as how we went to this store every day this week, we thought we'd already seen everyone who works there. Yesterday, though, we were checking out, and there was a new lady there. She looked at us with an odd look on her face when she was tallying up the cost of all our stuff, and then she said, "I think I know you guys. I've seen you before." To which we replied, "Well, yeah, we've been here every day this week, so you've probably seen us earlier this week." She shook her head and said, "No, no I've seen you before, a long time ago. You've grown a lot though. Have you been to San Juan del Sur before?" She also asked who Katie was, to which I stuttered out the response that she was an old friend (saying old babysitter sounds weird and from my experience merits lots of weird looks). My eyes were probably the size of potatoes by now, because what are the chances that this lady would remember us from 3 years ago?! I told her that we had indeed been to San Juan del Sur before, but it was three years ago. She told us that she remembered us from then, and that we've grown a lot, and she asked if our parents were with us too. I told her they weren't here yet but they would be later, and she sent us off with like 6 bags of groceries and a general wtf-just-happened look on our faces. Three years ago, I still had braces, my hair hadn't quite settled down yet, and I still looked like a kid for the most part. Now, my hair is a solid 4 inches shorter than it was then, I got my braces off which changed the way I look quite a bit, and I look (so I've been told) like an adult. I still can't believe that lady recognized us after all this time, especially given the number of random gringo tourists this lady's probably seen during the past 3 years.
Upon returning to our new condo thingie, we unpacked the groceries and sat down for a little bit. Suddenly, Katie had a craving for chocolate chip muffins, the mix for which we brought with us. I decided that I would go ahead and make them cause some chocolate chip muffins didn't sound so bad at that moment. However, much to my dismay, there was no muffin pan, so I couldn't make them properly. And, there were no bowls that were any bigger than what you would use to eat cereal, so I wasn't sure how I was gonna mix up the batter either. Fear not, though, creative thinking and desperate times calling for desperate measures came to the rescue! Using a pitcher and a spoon, I mixed up the batter with minimal difficulty. Then, after consulting my mom and my aunt, I decided to make the muffins in a cup in the microwave. I dumped some batter into the cup, stuck it in the microwave, and cooked it in 30 second intervals. Surprisingly, it worked out beautifully, and we ended up with some chocolate chip muffins to eat with our scrambled eggs (made by Katie also in a cup in the microwave because the stove wouldn't turn on) for dinner. Pretty solid problem solving, if you ask me. While eating dinner, we watched Legally Blonde on VHS (lolololol so old school), which was comforting because it's a chick flick in English and what have you.
Later in the night, we were greeted by some friends in our condo. Amara encountered a lizard (small, like the size of your index finger, unless you have really huge hands) in our bathroom, and her and Katie tried to catch it under the plunger, leading the lizard to eject its tail and run far far away somewhere. I was downstairs when all of this happened, but we couldn't find that lizard after that. When I came back upstairs, after I took a shower, Katie found another lizard in her bedroom. However, thanks to my ninja skills, I was able to catch it on her wall under a bowl. Then, very slowly and very carefully, we slid a folder under the bowl and then threw it outside. It was rather intense and there was a lot of screaming and Amara was just sitting there recording the whole thing and cackling at us.
I went downstairs to the lobby at around 9 to get closer to the wifi router and talked to my mom for a while then Skyped with my boyfriend. The talk with my mom helped me realize that though this trip isn't exactly turning out how I wanted it to, it's ok, and there are still many things to be learned by this experience. My four week curriculum that I slaved away at was cut down to three weeks because nothing was actually organized when we got here, and then I was informed that they have a break during the school week from the 8th to the 12th (Mon-Fri). I won't be able to teach during that week either, so my four week curriculum that turned into three weeks has now been turned into two weeks. If you know me really well, you know that I hate skiing. I've done it a few times and have never liked it. But, the reason for that is because though I'm very mellow and usually easy-going, I'm a control-freak. I don't want to control other people, not that kind of control freak. I'm the kind of control freak who needs to have complete control over herself and what she's doing at all times. It's for this reason that I don't like skiing. I feel like I have absolutely no control over where I'm going because I suck at it, and I hate the feeling of not being able to control myself. So, imagine this situation from my shoes. I've worked so freaking hard at writing all these lesson plans and raising money for the instruments thanks to the generosity of my friends and family and coworkers of my parents, etc. I've learned how to say "quarter note" and "eighth rest" and "trombone" in Spanish so I can teach these kids what I know about music. I have flown to Miami and then hurried to catch the connection to Managua in order to get here, to San Juan del Sur, where everything promptly fell apart. Though we were being continually assured that everything was organized and would be sorted out by the time we got here, this was not true, causing me to lose the first week of teaching. The library basically didn't have anything for volunteers to do, thus leading them to give us late notices to fill out as busywork (not so bad but not exactly life-changing). Then I find out about this break that the kids have, which is apparently their first somewhat long break in a long time, and there goes another week of teaching. Can you see how someone who needs to have control over herself and what she's doing would start to go a little crazy with all of this? I told my mom all of this and told her how I was really disappointed that this isn't turning out how I wanted it to and how I just felt like everything was completely out of control and how I really really hate that. But, as mothers tend to do, she helped me see another side of things. Though it sucks a lot that this whole experience is turning out to be less than favorable, there are still lots of things to be gained from this. Our Spanish is still going to get a lot better while we're here, regardless of how much we teach, because it's total immersion basically the minute we step out of our condo. We're here in a foreign country in a weird little town, and that gives us the chance to people watch, explore, and get to know the culture of the town. I love writing, as you guys can probably tell, so when I'm not teaching, I'll probably be focusing a lot on writing and bettering my writing because it's something I really like and I think I'm pretty good at it. As for not dealing well with the whole having zero control over anything situation, that's a good thing for me to experience. At some point or another I'm gonna have to accept the fact that not everything is in my control, and I'll have to learn how to deal with that. It's hard, and I really don't like it at all, and I don't think I'll ever like it, but it's a part of life that is gonna come up again, and if I can somehow manage to handle having no control over anything in a foreign country, it'll make it easier to handle this kind of thing in the future. This experience has made me learn a lot about myself already, and I know more of that will come. I've learned that I am DEFINITELY staying close to home for college (call me what you will but I love my parents and I don't like being this far away at all). I've learned that I feel pretty empty and incomplete when in the absence of my parents and boyfriend. I've learned that all Spanish all day is mentally exhausting. I've learned once again that we have so much back home and a lot of times we don't even realize how lucky we are. I've realized that I'm very dependent on technology, though I think a large part of this is because of the fact that the only way I can communicate with my people is through the Internet. The list goes on, and I know there will be more revelations to come. I guess what I'm trying to say by all of this is that sometimes, things just aren't gonna go your way, and that's something that we all (unfortunately) have to live with.
Before school got out, I watched Forrest Gump for an extra credit assignment in history. I wasn't expecting to get much out of this other than a bump in my grade, but I actually gained a lot by watching that movie, aside from just a boost in my grade. Two of the lessons that I took away from that movie were as follows. At the part where Forrest is running across the country for no particular reason whatsoever, a guy comes up and runs next to him while asking him some questions. While they're running, Forrest steps in dog poop. The guy says something like, "Dude, you just stepped in dog shit!" Forrest casually responds with, "It happens." The guy asks, "What happens? Shit?" Forrest says, "Yeah. Shit happens." I'm realizing that this is more true than I ever thought it was. Sometimes, stuff just happens, and there's not really anything you can do about it, because it just happens and you just have to deal with it. The other lesson that Forrest Gump taught me was the infamous "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." I feel like this just goes to show you that you never know how things are going to turn out. Things will pan out for the best but it might be a rocky road to get there. I'm still having some trouble accepting this but it's a slow process and I'm trying. So, to my history teacher from the 2012-2013 school year, thank you for putting that assignment out there, because I gained more from it than I thought I would.
This wasn't actually supposed to be such a long post but I guess I had more to say than I thought I did. Thanks for reading, guys.
Aneesa
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