Martin Hadsell do Nascimento

I woke up this morning to the scurrying of a cockroach across the floor at the foot of my bed (see proof above). An astutely aimed grammar textbook resolved the issue, and gave me a sense of accomplishment as I showered, dressed, ate breakfast, and set off for the parade with my host brother.

September 14^th and 15^th comprise a two-day Nicaraguan Independence Day celebration. The 14^th celebrates independence as won from William Walker, the infamous American filibuster, and the 15^th, independence from Spain. Here, in Masatepe, today’s celebration took the form of public orations at the town square on the steps of the cathedral, the presentation of achievement awards to students and professors, and a parade of bandeguerra musicales, bands fielded by every school in the city that feature squads of uniformed cheerleader/dancer-girls to ranks of drummers to flag bearers. Each school’s bandeguerra musicale makes its way down the sometimes paved, sometimes cobbled streets past an array of onlookers for the purpose of what I imagine to be school pride.

This past week or so has been occupied with a number of activities that have kept me very busy. First (in descending order of activities that keep me busiest) is my Spanish class. Around 7:45am most weekdays I leave my host family’s house to walk over to that of a fellow trainee. Meeting my professor and two more trainees there, we have class until noon at which time we typically break for lunch.

The morning sessions have largely been occupied with lessons organized to tweak our language abilities  (as all of us in my language group went into training with a fair amount of prior language training). As such, we’ve spent our time working on such activities and presenting articles from newspapers to each other, preparing and giving lessons that may be of use once we begin our teaching duties, listening to lectures on grammatical nuances or otherwise playing silly games. Sometimes our professor will ask us what new words or phrases we have learned since our last class and we’ll spend some time talking about Nicaraguan quirks and cultural peculiarities. (One of my favorite new words is bisné, a term adapted from the English ‘business’ meant to imply a good deal or a bargain price).

The afternoons have so far been far less structured, have thus far been oriented less towards the achieving of specific learning goals and have been more of a time during which our language group has worked to further our training projects and duties.  All training groups are required to form youth groups as this is one of the major responsibilities of TEFL Volunteers in Nicaragua. Thus, last week my training group spent a number of afternoons meeting with the administration of a number of pre-existing organizations and groups that work with youths in an end of finding members for our group. Specifically, we met with the Jovenes Sandinistas, the youth branch of the FSLN (the political party of Daniel Ortega), who agreed to both convey invitations to their members to our group’s first meeting and allow us to hold the meeting in their headquarters.

I certainly didn’t anticipate that anywhere near the 20-or-so youths that came to the meeting would do so, and it didn’t seem like the Jovenes Sandinistas had foreseen this either given that we barely had enough seats to play musical chairs.  What’s more, the eagerness that the group brought to the session astounded me and after an hour and a half of playing get-to-know-you games in English, I was very satisfied if also pooped.

The final task that my training group has been working on during our afternoons has been preparing to co-plan and eventually co-teach English classes at a local high school. Thus, we’ve visited the school on a number of occasions in order to meet with the school’s director and with the English language teachers, and to observe a couple of class sessions. On the whole, it has been my impression that both the administration of the school as well as the English teachers have been very welcoming and amenable to working with us. Here too I was surprised by the enthusiasm of the students whose classes I observed, although it struck me that at times , when left unmanaged by the teacher, this contributed to making a more chaotic classroom setting.

Lastly, once last week (and twice later this week), all the trainees of my ‘class’ are assembled for technical training sessions that last the majority of a day. Last week we found our way to IPADE in Managua where we received lectures on computer policy, medical conditions, a presentation from a representative of the Ministry of Education, and rabies vaccines. As I understand it, this week’s sessions will take place at a restaurant near Masatepe on the Pan American Highway and will involve more comprehensive discussions on TEFL teaching (and another vaccine or two).

So that’s what I’ve been up to. All in all, things have been going very well this past while, as demonstrated by this series of pictures taken by me and my host brother:

~ by Martin on September 14, 2010.

Posted in English, Peace Corps