Hi friends and loved ones!
It´s sort of lame of me to post a group holiday greeting like this, but I figure I haven´t updated a majority of you on my happenings and wanderings in some time... (aka since I moved to Nicaragua last January) and also wanted to wish all of you a very happy holidays! I hope this note finds you well, blessed, and at peace.
Things are wonderful here, I wake up every single day feeling blessed and in complete awe of where I live, work, play, and love. Cusmapa (the little pueblo I live in) has grown to be a second home for me, everywhere I walk I am followed by children shouting ´Adios Profé Callie! ´ and my Spanish has (bit by bit, with much confusion and many headaches and also laughter) improved to the point where I can ACTUALLY communicate with people! It makes all the difference in the world to be able to talk to someone in their native language, and I feel so lucky to have been given the opportunity to really learn to speak and listen in another language. I am still teaching the music program, we just had our last concert of the year yesterday, and a wicked dance party to close out the school year. We´re singing Bob Marley and Simon and Garfunkel, and I am that wierd teacher that dances around and giggles all the time! Bet you can´t even imagine that! Ha.
I have about a month of vacation (finally!) and my mom and sister, Cece, are here visiting for the next two weeks! We´ll go to learn how to make tortillas tonight, fresh cheese tomorrow, and are quietly enjoying Christmas with eachother and one of the families I spend a lot of time with here.
I´ve decided to stay here for at least another year. I feel that one year has barely been enough to tap the surface of things here, that I am just gaining the trust of all the kiddos and their parents, and starting to build real friendships and relationships. My roomate, Lauren, and I have so many ideas for projects we would like to start next year! One of the main things I have noticed in my year here is the lack of critical thinking capabilities, the kids don´t have books at school and learn basically by memorization and repitition rather by truly thinking and challenging what they are told about the world. You all know me, and know that this type of knowledge doesn´t fly in my book! The church here seems to be a good social force, but I feel that a lot of the times people are told what to believe and take it at face value rather than thinking for themselves. So, Lauren and I will be teaching a class to high schoolers here at the Fabretto center, with hopes of igniting some sparks of interest in their learning more about themselves and about the world. We are also going to start a knitting group with about 10 of the women who work at the school with us, one night a week in our house... knitting and cookies. Lauren being responsible for the knitting, me baking the cookies. There´s really not a lot of places for women to socialize here so we think it would be a great way to get to know more of the women in town, in a postive environment, and would be fun for them to learn a new skill as well. I am also starting a university choir (most kids study in other towns on Saturdays, and are free during the week, so they have time), we want to teach yoga classes, start a paper making program, some lithography (lauren´s an incredible artist), and scarily enough I will be giving more piano lessons!
SO to cut this ramble short, I am BUSY and finding lots of things to spark my passions. Life is good... slow and quiet days mixed with the breeze in the orange trees in our garden, neighbor children playing and laughing in the streets, snorkling pigs, cackling hens, the sweet tones of reggaeton music floating in from neighboring houses, rain on my tin roof, my horrific (yet improving) guitar picking, students jamming on bongoes and tambourines and anything else they can get their hands on.
I will be back to visit the states in July for Jason´s wedding (!!!!) and my little bro´s 21st birthday, and am hoping to see many of you then! (As my plans after next December still aren´t certain, Lauren and I may stay on longer with Fabretto or we may ramble through Mexico and the rest of Central America for 4 or 6 months...). I would love to hear from any of you, updates on life and how you´ve been the past year. I wish all of you many blessings, and for those of you who´ve been with me as a real part of this journey I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support. You fuel the flame that keeps me waking up every day here with a beaming smile.
I miss you, love you, and wish you joyous, joyous blessings.
Cuidate mucho! (Take Care!)
Peace, Callie
jueves, 20 de diciembre de 2007
martes, 4 de diciembre de 2007
Street Cred
When I first arrived in Cusmapa I realized two things:
1) I walk like a gringo. Fast-paced, as if I have an actual destination and am looking forward to getting there on time.
2) Nobody here uses a flashlight at night, and there are no street lamps… yet everyone seems to be able to navigate the cobblestone and riverbeds without spraining ankles and with a consistent knowledge of who passes by.
In order to adapt myself to the culture and to build up my (what I like to refer to as) “street credibility” (some may call it “street cred”) I made two adjustments to my behavior:
1) A conscious attempt at sauntering along at the pace of the snorkeling pigs. I am not allowed to pass any moving object, person, or animal… there are no passing lanes. I have to remind myself that it only takes 10 minutes to walk from one end of town to the other… I have no reason to hurry.
2) I do not use my headlamp or a flashlight of any kind to walk around in the dark, even though I finish teaching at about 7 PM every night and sometimes have to walk back through darkness where I can literally not see my hand 6 inches in front of my own face.
I figure that if I do these two things, people will look beyond my whiteness to see the Cusmapan within.
So I’ve been building up my “street cred” around town, “poco-a-poco” (bit by bit) yet I keep hitting major roadblocks which set me back to the gringaness factor I found in square one nearly a year ago. These roadblocks include but are not limited to the following:
1) The first week I was in town, walking home after lunch for a much needed siesta, a bus horn surprised me and I ran face-first into the mayor’s office sign in front of a bus full of people and the mid-day center of town loitering crowd.
2) Two months ago walking to school with Hannah, we walked by the billiards hall and passed two little children who gawked in fear at our oddness. I giggled and right as I was saying “I just love it when I say hi to kids and they look at me like I’m going to eat them” (aka: making fun of these kiddos who’d just been frightened to death by my friendliness) I looked at the sky and BOOM fell over a small rock in the road and nearly broke my ankle (karma’s a real bitch). When I got to the school the house doctor told me that I should probably “take some ibuprofen, ice my ankle, and stop looking at the clouds while I walk”. Thanks for the stellar advice, doc. I’ll write that one down.
3) A month ago, walking to school with Lauren, head in the clouds thinking about a boy (of all things, seriously?!) I again stepped funny on a small rock and landed directly on my OTHER knee (right after the scab on my left one had finally healed). Lauren, being the kind friend she is, didn’t laugh in my face. She sat with me as I crawled to the curb and angrily fought back tears for a few moments… THEN laughed at me. Or rather, with me. Let’s just say, my knees are not in good shape these days.
4) I kept using the word “bicho” to talk to Facundo (the guy who takes care of our house) about the various bugs we have in our house… because in my Harper Collins Spanish Concise Dictionary “bicho” refers to “a small insect”. My Nicaraguan friend Mayerling recently informed me that the word “bicho”, when used in Nicaragua, actually refers to a “vagina”. I have been talking to our caretaker about my vagina for the past two months. If that’s not a roadblock to building a strong foundation of street cred, I don’t know what is.
5) A moment I like to call “THE KICKER” in my complete lack of street cred in Cusmapa. Walking home from school last week, I passed the soccer stadium where the high school boys were playing a late afternoon pick-up game. Their ratty ball conveniently flew over the barbed wire fence 20 feet in front of me so to the yells of “Oye! Profe Callie! El pelota!” In a moment of absolute stupidity (my excuse being that I was in a riot of a good mood) I picked up the ball and took a bit of a running start to kick it to them over the fence (thinking: “that’s right, girls can play soccer too!”) and… WHIFF. Not even kidding you, I whiffed. With my foot. And a soccer ball. Needless to say, the boys and I were all doubled over laughing and I mumbled something about needing different shoes to kick a soccer ball properly (obviously my Chacos were not the right footwear choice for the moment) and threw the ball over the fence.
So, now I resolve to take the following precautions in order to retain the shred of street cred I may currently possess:
1) I will walk with a flashlight. Because not walking with one down my riverbed of a street is just plain stupid.
2) I will no longer make fun of small children while walking. Karma always bites me in the ass.
3) I will no longer look at trees, animals, or the sky while I am walking. That’s just asking for a skinned knee and a visit to the school doctor (whose motto, as I’ve stated before is “take ibuprofen, and if you don’t feel better in four days… you’ll be dead!).
4) I will no longer talk about insects in the presence of “the Cound” (Facundo’s nickname) as I think we’ve had more than enough conversations on the topic of my vagina. I will spare him the pain.
5) I will invest in a pair of soccer cleats in order to be fully prepared for my next opportunity to drop kick a ball into a field of high school boys. Well maybe not, but I will not soon forget the reality of my complete lack of hand-eye coordination and will try to plan my behavior accordingly.
6) I will continue to laugh at myself and hope that others do as well, with the thought that if we are laughing together they’re not directly laughing AT me… I’m just making other people joyous through my follies.
1) I walk like a gringo. Fast-paced, as if I have an actual destination and am looking forward to getting there on time.
2) Nobody here uses a flashlight at night, and there are no street lamps… yet everyone seems to be able to navigate the cobblestone and riverbeds without spraining ankles and with a consistent knowledge of who passes by.
In order to adapt myself to the culture and to build up my (what I like to refer to as) “street credibility” (some may call it “street cred”) I made two adjustments to my behavior:
1) A conscious attempt at sauntering along at the pace of the snorkeling pigs. I am not allowed to pass any moving object, person, or animal… there are no passing lanes. I have to remind myself that it only takes 10 minutes to walk from one end of town to the other… I have no reason to hurry.
2) I do not use my headlamp or a flashlight of any kind to walk around in the dark, even though I finish teaching at about 7 PM every night and sometimes have to walk back through darkness where I can literally not see my hand 6 inches in front of my own face.
I figure that if I do these two things, people will look beyond my whiteness to see the Cusmapan within.
So I’ve been building up my “street cred” around town, “poco-a-poco” (bit by bit) yet I keep hitting major roadblocks which set me back to the gringaness factor I found in square one nearly a year ago. These roadblocks include but are not limited to the following:
1) The first week I was in town, walking home after lunch for a much needed siesta, a bus horn surprised me and I ran face-first into the mayor’s office sign in front of a bus full of people and the mid-day center of town loitering crowd.
2) Two months ago walking to school with Hannah, we walked by the billiards hall and passed two little children who gawked in fear at our oddness. I giggled and right as I was saying “I just love it when I say hi to kids and they look at me like I’m going to eat them” (aka: making fun of these kiddos who’d just been frightened to death by my friendliness) I looked at the sky and BOOM fell over a small rock in the road and nearly broke my ankle (karma’s a real bitch). When I got to the school the house doctor told me that I should probably “take some ibuprofen, ice my ankle, and stop looking at the clouds while I walk”. Thanks for the stellar advice, doc. I’ll write that one down.
3) A month ago, walking to school with Lauren, head in the clouds thinking about a boy (of all things, seriously?!) I again stepped funny on a small rock and landed directly on my OTHER knee (right after the scab on my left one had finally healed). Lauren, being the kind friend she is, didn’t laugh in my face. She sat with me as I crawled to the curb and angrily fought back tears for a few moments… THEN laughed at me. Or rather, with me. Let’s just say, my knees are not in good shape these days.
4) I kept using the word “bicho” to talk to Facundo (the guy who takes care of our house) about the various bugs we have in our house… because in my Harper Collins Spanish Concise Dictionary “bicho” refers to “a small insect”. My Nicaraguan friend Mayerling recently informed me that the word “bicho”, when used in Nicaragua, actually refers to a “vagina”. I have been talking to our caretaker about my vagina for the past two months. If that’s not a roadblock to building a strong foundation of street cred, I don’t know what is.
5) A moment I like to call “THE KICKER” in my complete lack of street cred in Cusmapa. Walking home from school last week, I passed the soccer stadium where the high school boys were playing a late afternoon pick-up game. Their ratty ball conveniently flew over the barbed wire fence 20 feet in front of me so to the yells of “Oye! Profe Callie! El pelota!” In a moment of absolute stupidity (my excuse being that I was in a riot of a good mood) I picked up the ball and took a bit of a running start to kick it to them over the fence (thinking: “that’s right, girls can play soccer too!”) and… WHIFF. Not even kidding you, I whiffed. With my foot. And a soccer ball. Needless to say, the boys and I were all doubled over laughing and I mumbled something about needing different shoes to kick a soccer ball properly (obviously my Chacos were not the right footwear choice for the moment) and threw the ball over the fence.
So, now I resolve to take the following precautions in order to retain the shred of street cred I may currently possess:
1) I will walk with a flashlight. Because not walking with one down my riverbed of a street is just plain stupid.
2) I will no longer make fun of small children while walking. Karma always bites me in the ass.
3) I will no longer look at trees, animals, or the sky while I am walking. That’s just asking for a skinned knee and a visit to the school doctor (whose motto, as I’ve stated before is “take ibuprofen, and if you don’t feel better in four days… you’ll be dead!).
4) I will no longer talk about insects in the presence of “the Cound” (Facundo’s nickname) as I think we’ve had more than enough conversations on the topic of my vagina. I will spare him the pain.
5) I will invest in a pair of soccer cleats in order to be fully prepared for my next opportunity to drop kick a ball into a field of high school boys. Well maybe not, but I will not soon forget the reality of my complete lack of hand-eye coordination and will try to plan my behavior accordingly.
6) I will continue to laugh at myself and hope that others do as well, with the thought that if we are laughing together they’re not directly laughing AT me… I’m just making other people joyous through my follies.
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