Sleeping with Scooby Doo

I´m in my training site! It is a beautiful rural town outside of the department capital of Esteli. There are approximately 200 people in my little village, and I live with a family of three, Doña Mercedes, Don Pancho, and their daughter Mariela. Their house is made of bricks and cement, with a tin roof, which doesn´t touch the walls. They have several acres where the grow coffe and corn, sometimes beans in the rainy season. There is a mango tree by the latrine, which is interesting to use.

In the mornings we take bucket baths with ice cold water, although sometimes I am lucky enough to boil some water first to mix in. The shower area is a cement pad outside of our house with four half length walls of metal. The sensation of bathing outside during the middle of the day is actually wonderful.

My room is kind of a brick cell in the house, and my mosquitero hangs over a bed which is two peices of foam over some boards, and believe me, I got lucky with that. Generally, I feel safe, and my host family is very warm and welcoming. Gallo Pinto (beans and rice) is served with every meal, including breakfast, along with coffee and tortillas. I told my host mom during the first week that I liked eggs, and for a couple days I got an egg with every meal.

The sheets on my bed are blue with scooby doo running all over them, and stickers everywhere in the house display winnie the pooh, and often barbie. A pattern replicated in all of the homes I have visited thus far. On my comforter, there is a picture of a dolphin, and my host sister spent a half hour arguing with her mom over whether it was a squid or a whale. It took me a minute to realize that neither of them had probably ever seen even a picture of either animal.

Speaking of sleep, bedtime turns out to be at about 7:30 or 8pm, but the roosters start crowing at around 4, so everyone is up and about by 5 - either making tortillas, or planting beans.

We have electricity about half the time, and there is actually a rusty television on which we watch telenovelas at night (soap operas). The show in vogue right now is called La Traicion, about a colonial woman who married a man who is the bad half of a set of twins, but is in love with the other. Its all very dramatic. :)

One interesting experience that I have had is what I would call the oatmeal drink. My host mother makes me frescas with fruit juice powder packets to drink, and boiled water. But a couple times, I´ve gotten something that tasted like soy, but at the bottom turned out to be a bag of quaker instant oatmeal mixed in to a cup of water uncooked. Admitedly, I kind of liked it.

Dogs are treated very differently, and I´ve already been bitten a couple times. My family keeps a baby german shepard named Osita (baby bear), who loves to jump all over the place. My family doesn´t beat their dog, but everyone around us seems to. Its something hard to adjust too.

Overall, I am healthy, happy, and well! Until Next time!