OK – I know I’ve been here for 2 weeks for very few blog posts, but you won’t believe me if I try to explain how busy I am! A rundown of my day:
5am (ok, so I haven’t quite made it out of bed at 5am yet, but I’m getting closer! Currently 5:30am): wake up and review the Spanish homework I did the afternoon before.
6am: Exercise. Mostly doing 12-minute-athlete stuff, but also some bodyweight strength training as well (ok, I admit it, I haven’t actually started the bodyweight strength training yet … this week!)
6:45am: Wash clothes. Given I’m only travelling with 4 shirts, 2 pairs of pants and very limited underwear, I have to wash almost every day! If I don’t have to wash, try to read another few pages of my book in Spanish.
7:15am: Breakfast. World’s best granola with fresh fruit (usually a combination of pineapple, paw paw, watermelon, banana and rockmelon), followed by something small and hot from the kitchen. Today it was pancakes with honey, but more typically it is gallo pinto (one of the most common dishes in Nicaragua that is made of rice and beans) or a variation thereof, served with fresh tomatoes and fried plantain.
8:00am: Grammar class with Eliza
9:50am: Morning tea. The school has an abundance of bananas that you can help yourself to at any time out on the patio and they always make fresh fruit juice for the break.
10:10am: Conversation class with a different teacher each week
12:00pm: Lunch. Taken with all the other students out on the patio. Almost always vegetarian, almost always incredible!
1:00pm: Time out for email/social media. The only thing I read in english.
2:00pm: Homework
5:00pm: Mosey down to the kitchen to see what Chayo, Jardelina and Bretannia are cooking for dinner, write down the recipe if I don’t already have it and take photos for the cookbook
5:45pm: Pre-dinner entertainment. There are 2 chickens here that entertain us by leaping up to a high perch every night with a great deal of extensive and noisy flapping. Yes, we cheer them on 🙂
The white one in the photo has been lazy the past couple of nights and only 1/2 jumped and then crawled the rest of the way up through the vines – very disappointing. However, the superstar that appears in this video of the jumping chicken at La Mariposa Escuela de Espanol (courtesy of Sven Hanson – thanks Sven!) has kept up the performance 🙂
6:00pm: Dinner. Always includes dessert which is usually awesome.
And here’s the hardest thing to get used to — it is pitch dark by 6:10pm. So by the time 7pm rolls around, it feels like 10pm and everyone starts heading to bed. But last time I was here, and for the past week and a half, there has been a group of us who sit around after dinner just relaxing and chatting. Thank you guys for making this a really lovely and interesting part of the day! Was very sad to see you go on Saturday!
Around 8:30pm or 9:00pm we head to our rooms and I try to do about an hour of reading before turning out the light.
Oh and somewhere in there I’m trying to also keep my own journal… And this get this blog going…
Did I mention they were very full days?! And that is without the added extras – I’m also taking photographs of many of the projects the school does and do that some afternoons. There’s also a couple of activities that I didn’t do last time I was here and will do this time.
All good and fun times though 🙂
