Seis Semanas en Rivas

 Hello again, Over the past couple of weeks, school has been meeting regularly for the first time in about a month, so I've finally been able to teach with some regularity. My regular day begins at 5:30 when I wake up and have coffee and bread for breakfast with my host dad, José Ramón, and my brother, Daniel. Then at 6:30 José Ramón drives me a couple of blocks away to the bus stop where I board a van full of students that goes from Tola to Rivas that drops me off at Santo Domingo. Then, on most days I am teaching English from 7:00 until 11:30, followed by a one hour break for lunch. After that, I teach again until 4:30. Then I go home on the public bus which is actually an old school bus from the United States, so it's usually extremely cramped when it's filled to the point that people are standing in the aisles. After getting home, I usually help cook dinner, eat and watch a movie with José Ramón and Daniel. Then I go to bed around ten. I'm currently teach

Hello again! From the title of this blog, that does not include teaching, you could probably guess that the political situation has not improved too much here over the past couple of weeks. We went two whole weeks without having any classes from Monday the 4th until the 18th. Thankfully, gas prices and food prices are now more or less back to normal as most trucks coming from Managua are taking a detour in order to avoid the roadblocks. Despite this, there has still been a lot of violence in other parts of the country with several people losing their lives daily at these roadblocks that have become the sites of small battles between the national police and the people who oppose the government. Although the school is quite removed from this violence, Fray Carlos thought that it would be wise to refrain from having classes until things become a little more stable. In addition to this shortage of gas and food that we had last week, on last Thursday the group people protesting the presid

Hello all, Since the last time I posted, I have started living with a family in the town of Tola, about 20 minutes west of Rivas. I am living with José Ramón, a teacher at the school where I'm working, and his son Daniel, who is in ninth grade at the school. Thank you so much to you two for welcoming me into your home and into your family! Here are a few pictures of the family, the house, and the neighborhood.   On Monday I taught my first day of classes. I taught for seven and a half hours, so I was pretty exhausted by the end of the day. The students as a whole were extremely well-behaved and excited to learn.  That night, however, we were notified that classes had been cancelled at the school for the remainder of the week. The next day at a meeting with all of the teachers, Fray Carlos let us know that classes had been cancelled because many students were having great difficulty getting to school because of the roadblocks. These blocks have resulted in there being almo

Greetings from Rivas, Nicaragua! I arrived here on Monday afternoon, and I am currently living with a community of three Dominican Friars. I am extremely grateful for this community and the way that they have accepted me like another brother in these past couple of days. Below are the three friars from left to right: Fray Carlos Aldana, the principal of the school Santo Domingo de Guzmán, Fray Fernando, a teacher at the school and a Ph.D. student, and Fray Carlos Irías the president of the Dominican college that is next to our house. Before I write anything more about my experiences thus far in Nicaragua, I think chronologically speaking it would make more sense to address my travels here. On Sunday afternoon about twelve hours before I was supposed to go to Logan Airport, I received a WhatsApp message from Fray Carlos Aldana saying, “It would be best if you could postpone your trip for 15 days because there are road blocks, and it is difficult to access the airport.” Unfortun

My name is Jack Murphy, and I am a sophomore studying Social Work and Spanish at Providence College. A couple of months ago, I received the news from my college that I had received a Smith Fellowship. This fellowship sends students from PC, a Dominican college, to live with another community of Dominicans in another part of the world for six weeks during the Summer. This year, eight other students will be living with Dominican communities in Zambia, Australia, Argentina, South Africa, and the Solomon Islands. I will be living with the friars in Rivas, Nicaragua. A great number of things led me to apply for this fellowship, but perhaps the thing that influenced me the greatest was the time that I have spent in Paraguay. After high school, I did not really have any desire to go straight to college, so I decided to follow in the footsteps of my older sister and do a year of service. I lived with a community of Franciscan priests for nine months in Asunción, Paraguay's capital. I wen