dear friends and lovers,

a long overdue update, although i'm starting to have my doubts on how many people read this. yet, for those of you faithful to your high levels of curiosity, i'm back. the long time inbetween was only partially my fault. the other part was that the jump drive that i was using and had a blog update saved on was stolen at my school. so i will start more or less from there and give you the last few weeks more or less.
thursday afternoon a while ago. i had been writing a blog update tracking how i felt at about 12:30 each day after teaching my more difficult classes in order to share with you my feelings and perspectives. to summarize, more tiredness than anything usually. i sleep enough but teaching in the setting that i am in can be exhausting... i will address the small changes i am making currently later. anyway, thursday afternoon, i had some students sweeping and mopping my classroom, then some 6 students came into my room to look at what was written on a desk, which reminded me that i was going to find the student that wrote those things to have him wash it. i went to go find him, leaving the students alone in my room. i came back and a couple of girls were still there, and i through them all out to have my student scrub desks and soon noticed that my jump drive had disappeared. this was disappointing, not so much because i cared that it was gone so much as that i knew other people would care and that i have students willing to steal things. i told another teacher, julio, and he informed me that he had had his jump drive taken also. when i asked our director, don vincente, what we should do, he wanted to have a meeting with the various students on monday. when i asked why not friday he told me, "no school tommorow!" how nobody had managed to let me know this interesting tidbit escapes me, but it is not new. there are some "communication issues" with the padre fabreto staff. anyway, that was really good news, and i got friday off. the jump drive never turned up after talking with various students... none of them saw anything. i have since become convinced that the jump drive evolved to a higher state of intelligence and made a concious decision to leave. so i'm not mad, just bittersweet that it decided to seek out a better life for itself.
with my newfound 3 day weekend i had a splendid time. friday i visited josh in his school. he also teaches english and it was very nice to spend some time with him in his work. we all work very similar hours and thus don't get to see each other in action. it was really cool to watch him teach a lesson that i had taught before and to see the differences and be able to appreciate the things he did better or different. i spent the rest of the day reading under a star fruit tree and then watching batman begins. it was a good day to myself and refreshing. that saturday i walked to the laguna de apollo (apollo lake) with mary. the two of us had quite a day that started out with getting on a bus for grenada and having mary point out that the 20 something girls in front of us were cracking open some cans of beer. oh yes. 8:30 am. at that point i thought that we should drop whatever plans we had and just go wherever they were going... i firmly believe that if someone starts drinking at that hour its probably going to be fun to spend the day with them (as long as you aren't responsible for them). yet we ultimately got to grenada and walked off in a different direction, headed towards the cemetary. from the graveyard its about a 4 1/2 mile walk to the lake and mary and i began the trek. we went through a small community where people greeted us as we went. i got the feeling that not many gringos, some but not many, walk through the area. busses go right to all of the hotels, hostels, and resort places but thats all on one side of the lake, and we were going to the side that was mostly uninhabited. we passed many small houses, made of 2x4's thrown up together with women washing laundry in the yards and children running around. people went by us on bicycles (a dirt road) and with cows pulling carts that they rode on. a little over an hour later as the population thinned we approached the lip of the several thousand year old volcano, long inactive, and filled with blue blue water. it is apparently 250 meters deep (more or less) in the center because it is the old core of a volcano just filled with water. there are no fish so the water is clear. super clear. amazingly clear and gorgeous. mary and i jumped in as soon as got there. it drops off quickly. you can basically dive off the edge into the water because of the quick drop. this, however, makes it tiring to swim a lot for those of us that are weak swimmers (me). the solution? we made a raft. using branches we found and vines we tied them together and floated out into the lake. i then entered into the most relaxing, tranquil, centered moment i've had in a long time. laying just right my ears would immerse under the water and my face would stay above and it was like (this sounds wierd) a womb moment. just feeling safe and warm and wet and content. mary was laying about 2 feet from me on the other side of the raft and i imagine she was having an amazing moment also. we both remarked how perfect the place is. we saw no people for 4 hours. only cows and horses and birds and trees and water water water. the walk back was also nice and peaceful and as we got closer we hitched a ride with a man with 6 large pigs in the back of his truck... we stood on the back but not inside it. we rode back to managua feeling fully refreshed.
this past week of school started after that fantastic weekend and i was looking forward to a positive week. it went downhill. some classes are good. most are rough. i think the students just really don't like have hour and half long classes. that last 30 min. they start getting really antsy and don't want to stay there. those are the hardest 30 min. of my day, every day. i'm trying to get creative but its hard. my mom sent me a highschool classroom management book and i'm trying to slowly implement some of the recommendations... i've started a "you are wasting my time so i will waste your time" system. if they are consistently misbehaving or their cell phone rings or they show up late etc. they have to come back during recess to stay for a while in silence. i'm coupling this with a rewards system for students that behave well and get good grades. i'm trying to do this as sort of a rewards/punishment system. both of these things i hate as that i would rather the motivation come from within instead of the classic stick and carrot system. sadly however, some students don't want english classes their bad behavior coupled with mandatory english classes has been creating an environment where learning becomes near impossible for the handful that do want to learn english. i hope things get better. i just truly dislike myself in an authority position. i get impatient and this past friday i even got angry. my most difficult group of students, group D, i have every friday. they want to go home, its the weekend, they do not like being in my class. the normal stuff happened: students curse at each other, hit each other, yell, throw stuff... but this time it was happening at much higher rate. i felt myself falling apart. i was hitting that point where i just stood there, wondering. looking at them. eventually at 10 min. til the end of their class i said "that's it!" i put their homework on their desks and threw them out of class. i had to regroup before the next group of students. even so it was a hard next hour. i was beat. broken. i had to talk to their teacher and some other teachers. i was reassured by the fact that even the computer teacher has been having problems with the same students, the same group. all of the kids like computers, so if the students are misbehaving there, its bigger than just my class. this is nice to know that there are other teachers working on these things and not just me. the other teachers were also very supportive. today i had group D again, and their teacher came to the class. they behaved much better, but it still worries me that come friday... well, we'll see. pray for me. i think the real issue is that i'm teaching in a second chance school... so many of the students have dropped out before, been kicked out, or failed out. who knows how many have learning disabilities etc. etc. and i'm just thrown in. i have high hopes for this week though as i continue making adjustments to keep them interested and explain things slower.
my favorite times, though, are all of those spent with my community. community living is all i hoped for and more, and for this i love the weekend because its all community, uninterrupted by work :). this past weekend some fellow fabretto english teachers from other nicaraguan cities were in managua in a hotel because one had been sick for a while and needed blood work. they had some of us over to swim and hang out and it was lovely. there is nothing like swimming for free in someone else's hotel pool. and yesterday was sunday. a good day. i cleaned the house. i planned this weeks classes. i welcomed some slu undergrads (jen lay and jess trout) to nicaragua where they are visiting for their spring break while studying in el salvador. josh, mary, and matt got back from a rewarding trek up a volcano and they told us all about that adventure... (check their blogs later for updates on that) and currently the electricity is out while i type on josh's laptop. i am well. work is my biggest stress and leaves me feeling emptiest. community is my biggest blessing and leaves me feeling filled with spirit. so my days fluxuate. thankyou to all who have prayed and continue praying for me. i can't wait to hear about your own lives, struggles, growths. you are all blessed. seek peace.

james