Weekend Trip: Laguna de Apoyo

Last weekend, we went to Laguna de Apoyo, a half hour shuttle ride away from Granada. Somehow a lake formed inside of a volcano crater, a lake with warm, clear turquoise water. The hostel we stayed at was called Paradiso, or Paradise, and the place was about as true to name as it could be. 

It was a weekend of reading on the beach or in a hammock, floating in inter tubes, pool and ping pong, and kayaking on some surprisingly rough water. I don't understand where the waves in the lake of a crater even came from, but the canoe bounced enough to remind me a bit of the panga ride between the Corn Islands. Looking back at the shore from the lake, it was amazing to see how lush the forest was, and at night there were only a few small lights on the entire hillside. We even saw some small squirrel-like animal that I thought was a lemur, but we couldn't figure out what it was. One of my favorite parts was the cats though! There were three adorable kittens, and since for some reason I could not sleep, I spent a lot of time with them at midnight. Which may not seem so late, but in Nicaragua the sun sets at a quarter after 6 and the roosters crow at 5, so the nightlife begins by 7:30. 

As I have also befriended the cat, Julio, at our hostel, I am finding that I may be a cat person despite some mild allergies... I never knew what it was to cuddle with a cat but I'm obsessed now. TC and I sneak him some yogurt when he jumps on the dinner table until one of the workers scold him and drag him away. 

(Not Julio, the tiny adorable kitten I had to leave behind :'( 

In other news, we're back at it at school. This week we reviewed the body parts we'd taught last week, then introduced some clothing items. We usually introduce a list of basic vocabulary in both Spanish and English and let the children take notes in their notebooks (which are often mysteriously missing, along with their pencils, making doing work impossible. But not really, they just don't feel like taking them out). One of the girls makes me check her notes every time and asks if they are good. When I say yes, she asks me, "Can you write 100%?". So I do, and she asks "And write, 'good job'? And draw a heart or a flower or something?" While I am glad that she takes such meticulous notes and cares about doing well, I don't know if I want to encourage working for the teacher's praise...

Then we try to do a game or activity to get them involved. The past couple of days (since we repeat lessons at two schools) we played a game that I'd played in Spanish class, Matamoscas. The teacher describes one of the vocab words, or in this case, gives it in Spanish, and two children from opposite teams race to find the word from the scattered words written on the board. As always, it works differently in every class. The older children especially, sit uninterested in their chairs. We literally had to drag the students of some classes out of their chairs to play a game, while in others we struggled to keep the children from running up to the board out of turn.

I realized that given the way the streets and traffic are, with cars, bikes, and pedestrians jamming themselves in whenever and wherever they can (if you are walking they will. not. slow. down. They will just honk as they speed toward you while you run, praying that you don't trip before you reach the sidewalk. Or at least I do) and people on the streets will constantly yell out for you to buy things, waving products in your face, it's no wonder that the concept of waiting in a line and sitting quietly until their turn is so foreign.

I have definitely had my frustrations. I have never had students so blatantly ignore me. When I tell students it's their turn, even the middle school girls will just shake their heads and purse their lips at me, and the boys will put their heads down and not even look at me as I stand in front of them. I'm trying not to be offended, but it's exhausting to face an entire class with this attitude. I am also disappointed that some of the volunteers, when I give suggestions for involving the class more, have told me that "Some of them just don't care, we'll never get them all to care." Nonetheless, I'm sad that most of our team of volunteers is leaving soon, and it may be TC and I with the French guys who speak neither English nor Spanish well. That will be a new challenge, but at least the children are starting to get a little more familiar with us! One of the older boys who sits alone in the back corner (classroom organization does not exist, ahh. Desks are scattered everywhere) at the end of the day gave me a smile and a high five, and I started to feel like hopefully, maybe there is someone who appreciates me coming school.