Seis Semanas en Rivas

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...