School buses and Gardens

Have you ever wondered where old school buses go? I would have said Ithough they get scraped for part or sold at some car auction. But Iknow know that they end up in Nicaragua as the mass transportationsystem. Every wed my pueblo mates (Katie and Jenny) and I hop on aschool bus to go to our training meeting in San Marcos. It´s always afun ride because were still learning which buses goes where, you mightend up rocking out to 80 music, or end up sitting next to a livechicken. So far we have made it to our training meeting on time andon the right bus.
September 14 & 15 were Nicaragua´s Independence days. Everyone inNicaragua had a 4 day weekend. There were tons of parades on Sundayin all the pueblos. I saw 3 different parades. The best one was withmy host sister´s school. Peace Corps however did not observe theholiday and we had a full week of classes. Spanish is going well. Iam learning new words all the time and correcting many of my grammarissues. But there is still a lot of work ahead of me but I am givingit my full effort so when Nov 21st comes around I will be sworn in a avolunteer and not be sent home.
We started our meetings with the ¨grupo de jovenes¨ (youth group). Inour second meeting our goal was to have the student make a communitymap. Well they really like the map activity so much that we ran outof time to finish it. Horrible time management. But we are flexibleand we will finish it on Tuesday at the next meeting. Oh and Ernie(our technical trainer) made a surprise visit to the meeting. it wasvery sneaky of him but the meeting was over good and it was our secondtime doing it. Today we completed another project with the Jovenes ,we made out Huerto (garden). 7 members of the group showed up, allgirls, to work on the garden. It took us two hours but we weresuccessful and created a really nice garden. Peace Corps (PC) showedup to help us just as we were finishing up. Ernie said we had a verywell made garden. So I guess I am a quick study at gardening 101.
This week coming up (week 3) we will be observing the elementaryschools because in week 4 we will giving our first of 3 charlas(lessons) in the schools. And it will as always be all in Spanish.It´s going to be interesting.
Other news:
Its rained the most of the week. Two of the days it seemed like myZinc roof was going to crash in from all the rain. Good thing I havemy mosquito net.
I´ve had a lot of really good fresh made juices and some interestingdrinks like oatmeal or a chocolate popcorn tasting corn drink. yum
I have rice and beans at least twice a day and up to three times aday. Who would have thought GalloPinto (rice and beans mixedtogether) would be a breakfast food.
I have found and bought Resse´s (over priced), Peanut butter (freshmade), and fudgesicles (mmmm).
Everyday something new or interesting happens. There is never a dullmoment. Oh and letters make training meeting a hundred times better.Ernie passes them out and its like Christmas morning. So start writing.