Goodbye, Granada & Nicaragua

It is unbelievable how fast time goes by....3 months of volunteering, hard work, fun, trips, parties, annoying and amazing kids, parasites, great people are almost over! We will enjoy our last week of school, teaching English, tutoring, the weekly pub quiz on Wednesday, the weekly volunteer meeting on Tuesday, etc. before we have our Goodbye party on Thursday....:(

La Esperanza Promotion Video

Here is a short video of the work we do every day...check it out!

And thanks a lot to Nabila for all the work!

Michael & Magdalena

Leon - Playa, Vulcano Boarding and Culture

23.3.-25.3.12

Leon, a city in the north of Nicaragua and quite close to the beach was our last weekendtrip while volunteering. We had 3 great days, one at the beach, one at the vulcano Cerro Negro where we did a nice 1h hike, saw 3 craters and did the vulcanboarding and on the 3rd day we visited some museums and churches. Look at the pix on our Traveling Nicaragua page! 

http://volunteertravellatinamerica.blogspot.com/p/travelling-nicaragua.html

Michael

Coco loco

I just found these pix and need to share it with you... this was on Corn Islands, in the Carribean See. Just find, open and eat a coconut and relax on the beach....aaahh amazing.

 

Workshop "How to treat kids with difficulties"

Today we had no school due to a workshop for all the teachers of our "barrio". They invited us to join this workshop and some of the volunteers agreed. So we went to another school today and joined this workshop, which was a bit different to the ones in Europe, or at least in Germany....After forming groups and a presentation ( my group sang a song on the melody of "guantanamera") we just read some pages in a book, did a summarize and presented this to the others... not really useful, in my opinion, but it was nice to see how workshops work here... for sure we will give them some advices for the next time!!
Michael

Olé, we won the battle! Strike over

Hi, finally the strike is over and although I did not believe it,  but the old director will stay with us in the school! They reached to convince the education dep. and above all from now on they will pay the daily food for our kids, what is amazing. Good job, professores!
And finally from tomorrow on we have "normal" class.
Michael

Canoping!!!

As we had no school on tuesday due to the strike, my volunteerfriends from my school and I decided to do the "Canoping" in the forest of vulcano Mombacho. For those who do not know what it is, just have a look at the pix. They show everything, above all the real fun we had!
Michael

On our way...

My volunteerfriends:Babsi,Scoot,Alejandro,Tania 

This ride is called SUPERMAN

Our group with our guides 

Update: Team English - Goodbye, Joan & Nabila!

There were five people in my English team - Annika from Sweden, Nabila from France, Joan from Canada, Carla from Nicaragua and me. Unfortunately, Joan already left last week and Nabila is leaving this Thursday! Our work was tough and tiring, the kids took all of our energy, and sometimes we really ran out of ideas and motivation - but we had a really great time!!! We always had fun, improvised and did our best to teach the kids some English..

Karla in the front; me, Nabila and Joan in the back

Joan in action...

Dinner at Tercer Ojo

Joan & Nabila - I gonna miss you! We were a really great team and the team won´t be the same without you!
Magdalena

Huelga - new strike

Hola, I just came back from school... we arrived and already saw that something was wrong. The teachers go again for a strike as the people from the education dep. arrived today and now those are in and the teachers out... well, without one teacher who seems to support the education dep. And whose is it? MINE! Dios mio... well, we have to go back at 12:30 to see if we have class in the afternoon or not. Actually it is interesting so see something like this going on in Nicaragua, but in the end it is only a loss of class for the kids.. I keep you informed and hope to be able to take some pix next time.
Michael

Day off - strike at school

12.3.2012
I just received an email yesterday from our organisation, that today is no school for me. Why? Because the education department of Nicaragua wants to kick off our director of the school. But as she does not want it, and neither their colleagues and the parents of the kids, they decided to strike today! But as our organisation does not want to have probs with the education dep., we were not allowed to join the strike.

I am curious about their stories tomorrow! And I really hope they make it to convince the edu.dep. of the great job our director Sonia is doing! Fingers crossed!

Michael

Geographie lesson

7.3.2012.
As our afternoon class just has started to learn geografie and how the world looks like, we decided to do some handicrafts with our kids. Look at our results...

It was quite hard to convince them not to shoot their globe all the time, but in the end ALL kids had one and noone destroyed it. Well, as they did not wait for our help where to put all the continents, now we have some globes with asia next to america and europe next to australia, but well, who cares....the most important thing was having an idea of how the world looks like and having some fun while doing it.

Michael


For more pix click and scroll on the volunteering tab !
http://volunteertravellatinamerica.blogspot.com/p/volunteering.html

Vulcano Mombacho

4.3.2012.
Excursion to vulcano Mombacho

Although we were still weak due to our parasites in us, we could not stay again a whole weekend at our house. So we decided to go up the vulcano Mombacho which is next to Granada and which you always see from almost every part in Granada.
You can decide wether going up by foot, which is a 2km walk, quite steep, or you take one of the pickups for a few dollars more... well, it is obvious what we did...haha. On the top you can decide between 2 walks. One is 1,5km and you can do it alone, the other one is almost 4km and you need a guide. So we booked a guide and he took us around the whole top of the Mombacho to different viewpoints from which we saw the Laguna do Apoyo, the lake of Granada, Isla Ometepe and so on... it was a nice walk up and down through a forest and the climate was so refreshing! We had great weather, that means it was sunny, almost no cloud so we had great views, and as at an altitude of 1200m it is usually quite cold, around 10 grade, we had around 18-20 grades and this was really nice!
Thanks to our nice guide Luis, a nica student who pays his university while working as a guide on Mombacho, and thanks to our amigos who joined us this day. Mombacho is really worth it, but we really recommend not to walk all the way up the vulcano, because the walks on the top are so much more worth it to do! And both is almost impossible... 


For more pix click and scroll on our "In&around Granada" Tab
http://volunteertravellatinamerica.blogspot.com/p/in-around-granada.html

Parasitos

1.3.2012
Get away you f....parasites!
After having problems with our digestion, we decided to make a test and they found out that we had parasites. Well, keep cool, that sounds harder than it was. We bought some pills and after 3 days they were gone. But we both had a very bad infection due to them an were suffering each 3 to 4 days in the bed and bathroom. Fortunately it took first magdalena and after she was good, it took me so we did not have to discuss about the use of the toilet....haha.

Nigel's Goodbye

Last week our oldest roommate Nigel said goodbye and we already miss him! Such a nice guy from Australia, travelling already more than 1 year by pushbike through america and his destination shall be the southern part of South America. Here is the link to his blog: http://www.browsinaboutonabike.com/

Nigel

We had a nice barbecue in our patio and some friends coming to say goodbye, including also our cleaning lady Maria and our spanish teacher Omar. It was a nice evening with some drinks and dance after our sit in in in our house Santa Lucia.

Nigel, we wish you all the best for your ongoing journey!
Michael

Inauguration of new school

On Friday, we had the inauguration of a new school, built by la Esperanza in one of the outskirts of Granada, where we also did our summerschool. This barrio did not have a place for teaching teenagers from 13 years on, imagine this! So with the help from different  donators and voluntary constructors from US and Netherlands, they build 2 classrooms where now the teenagers can finish their secondary education.
It was a nice ceremony, with speeches of i.e. a mother, in simple clothes and brimming with tears, or a boy, around 11 years, speaking for all the other students. Some kids did some dances and so it was a real nice ceremony with all volunteers, donators, the families and their children.
I also met some of "my kids" from summerschool, who I thought I will never see again! That was so nice, as the kids seemed to be as happy as me to see each other again! Nice day!

Nabila, french volunteer and our favourite kids from summer school