My Routine

Some people have been wondering what exactly my job or day-to-day life looks like here in Corinto, Nicaragua so I thought I’d share an average week.

Monday and Tuesday are generally what I call my free days. This means that if I need to make any meetings, work on any side projects or plan my classes I do it on Monday and Tuesday. This isn’t to say I do nothing on Mondays and Tuesdays, I just don’t have any consistent obligations on those days. Mondays and Tuesdays I go to the health center in the morning and work in the nurses’ office. Sometimes I’ll have meetings in the mayor’s office or in the schools, so I’ll go there. But my home base for those days is the health center. I hang out, chat it up with the nurses and doctors and do my work. I’ll usually eat at a small café right next to the hospital that serves rice, beans, and some sort of typical Nicaraguan meat dish.

Wednesday’s and Thursday’s are my busiest days. In the mornings of each of these days I go to elementary schools and give health classes to 5^th and sixth graders. Right now I am at the end of a twelve week series in two different schools, so I know the kids decently well. This might be my favorite thing because its fun to hang out with kids of that age. My classes have been topics such as self-esteem, puberty, effective communication, and preventing HIV and teenage pregnancy. I have a good time with the kids but my level of enthusiasm for teaching goes on a week by week basis. Some classes go really well and others not so well. But overall I really enjoy teaching in the schools.

Wednesday and Thursday afternoon I also meet with two separate youth groups. About 3 months ago, my counterpart, Xiomara (in charge of community outreach and education for the health center) and I went around Corinto looking for adolescents in different neighborhoods to form youth groups. Right now we have 3 different functioning youth groups. Sometimes Xiomara and I meet with them together, but since she is busy with other duties, a lot of times I meet with the youth groups alone. I plan ahead of time games and a topic to talk about. The topics are generally the same as the ones I cover in the schools.

Friday’s vary. In the afternoon I meet with the 3^rd youth group. In the mornings sometimes I go to the hospital or have another meeting. But a lot of times I wash clothes Friday mornings. Washing clothes by hand takes time so in order to catch up with my mountain of laundry, I’ll wash on Fridays (to supplement my Saturday and Sunday morning washing).

Weekends also vary. I usually go out for some beers one night of the weekend with my friends Manuel and Vilma. They are two Nicaraguan friends my age who have been great friends to me since I moved to Corinto, they helped me find my house and helped me get acquainted to Corinto so I’m lucky to have them. In the mornings I’ll wash my clothes and in the afternoons I’ll clean my house, go to the beach, go hang out with the other volunteer that lives in Corinto or go into Chinandega (the closest big city) to buy things or meet up with other volunteers. Another things I like to do that surprises people is keep myself up to date on movies. They sell bootleg dvd’s here for $1 (fairly bad quality but still watchable) so I’ll buy them or borrow them and then my neighbors and I will watch them on their dvd player. I have seen The Simpsons, The Departed, and Ocean’s 13 among other in the past couple of months. I’ve probably seen more new releases here than I would have in the U.S. Anyways, I also read a lot to keep myself entertained. I read about a book a week, and Peace Corps provides us free Newsweeks (we can pick them up when we are in the PC office in Managua) to entertain ourselves.

Along with this, I try to go running at least 4 times a week. Now that it’s gotten a bit cooler here in Corinto I run at 5:30pm along the beach and it’s fairly comfortable. Plus I get to watch the sunset every day which is added motivation to go run. All of this routine stuff added in with the random obligations of life keeps me fairly busy.

That’s my week in a nutshell. Any questions?

This is a picture of a couple of the girls in one of the youth groups. This particular youth group is all female. The other two are coed. It wasn´t our intention to have an all female group but they were the only ones that maintained interesting in attending the group meetings. The woman on the right is my counterpart, Xiomara.