my first blog entry

To begin, I believe my sister, with the help of her very savvy son posted that photo of me.  It was taken about 30 years ago and was not exactly flattering then.  I am far more beautiful than that.  But, at least she posted something - I had not done anything so she is wayyyy ahead of me.

I am in the lobby of the Hotel Granada in Nicaragua.  There are 42 of us, Peace Corps Volunteers in Training.  We have completed 3 days of intense training hre and tomorrow we all go to our separate host families in little towns in the general area of Manuagua, the Nica capital city.  This is going to be some adventure.  We will get very very intense language training for the first 3 months, along with training in our assignments which will be teaching enviornment education in 3 schools, planting gardens and setting up youth groups to address enviornmental problems and start recycling programs in our assigned towns.  We can have an English language group in addition, if we want to.  I don't know a lot so far, but what I have learned is very very impressive.  I don't know what access I will have to internet in the future but I know I'll be able to get to it at least one time per week, hopefully more often.  We were treated to a special boat ride this afternoon around the hundreds of little isletas off the coast of Granada.  Some of them are privately owned and have fabulous homes on them.  Others have little shacks on them and others have nothing.  The boat pulled up to one of them and a couple monkeys boarded our boat and created some havoc.  That was exciting and I hope to post the video I took of the whole event as soon as I can figure that out.  More later.