News & Updates
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Update #12
Directors Update: Hola desde Nicaragua! Things are moving along quite nicely here. I spent a week long "vacation" during which time I planned for and created new curriculum for the upcoming class. So it wasn't so much of a vacation as much as it was time to prepare for the next course. I did a few radio appearances to get out the word about the organization, which were quite interesting experiences. It was especially interesting doing live radio and answering questions about the classes on air. Lets just say multi-tasking is not my strongest suit. Ha ha. However, I did learn a lot and we did get plenty of interest as a result of the radio spots. This last week I was also visited by a friend of mine from Seattle. It was nice to spend some time with her showing her the city and its surrounding areas. We ventured to Central America's youngest volcano and went volcano boarding, and of course visited some local beaches. School Update: The evening class just finished their second week of classes and the morning class just finished their first week. It has been a little more complicated teaching two completely different courses at the same time, but just as rewarding as I now am able to reach more students with my work. I am very happy to announce that not a single student dropped the course because they didn't like it, or think it was not rewarding in some way. One student moved out of Leon, and another recently started their own business and thus does not have time for classes. The 10 other students decided to continue on to the next course which tells me that I am doing something right. Presently I have 13 students in my evening class, and 5 students in the morning class. The evening class is learning about the past tense as well as how to express disagreement. The morning class is learning about the present progressive and how to express likes and dislikes. I have a contact that lives in another city just outside if Leon who is presently trying to organize a Saturday class for me there. They are organizing the student recruitment, the teaching space as well as transportation. I'm very happy to see that there is enough interest for them to organize this class themselves. In August and September I'll have visits from a potential school volunteer as well as from my mom, sister and brother. School Needs:Adelante still needs dictionaries! Please don't hesitate to send them directly down here. Contact me if you would like the direct mailing address. We could also use white board markers. The next big push for Adelante will be computers and computer related equipment and electronics. Please keep us in mind! Mateo.g@adelantenow.org |
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Update #11
Directors Update: Hello friends and family of Adelante! I'll start off by saying WHOA, it's been hot here. I actually burned the other day yeah...I know! Ha ha. Last week I took a trip to Granada where I spoke to students from a University of Washington exploration seminar. Later that week 5 of the students who were in the class took a trip down to Leon, and visited with me for a few days which was really fun. More and more I'm making both personal and professional contacts which has been very nice and refreshing. Bit by bit random people are wanting to help out with my organization. On a consistent basis I am reminded of how hospitable and warm Nicaraguans are. School Update: Adelante is marching right along. This week classes ended, and I am now gearing up for the next course which will start after a week break. As of today I have 13 students enrolled in the evening class, and 3 enrolled in the morning class. I'm optimistic that my evening class will reach capacity at 16, and my morning class will reach 10 students. I'm anxious to see how teaching two different classes each day works out for me as far as scheduling and energy. I have made a conscious effort to always include fun and dynamic activities in my classes so getting bored is really not an issue. It is not abnormal to hear jokes and laughter coming from the class, which I think is one of the things that attract students to the classes and keeps them coming back. As soon as we get the two classrooms up and running I have no doubt that we will be inundated with requests fpr more classes. I have people asking me almost daily if I offer classes for younger kids, as well as Saturday or Sunday courses. At present, I am not offering either of those things, but hopefully when we acquire the larger space and more teachers we will be able to offer those classes to the community. I have been talking with students about volunteers coming and wanting to stay with Nicaraguan families and many have offered their homes and hospitality. Hint hint. If you would like to come teach let me know and we can work out a host family situation. It is a great cultural exchange opportunity. Adelante still needs dictionaries, and now more than ever we will be soliciting financial donations. We are planning for our second fiscal year and as such are looking to cover the years costs as well as plan on some expansion of programs and staff. Please contact me directly for more information. Mateo.g@adelantenow.org |
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Update #10
Directors Update: Hello all! Last week marked my 3 months of living in Nicaragua. This happy occasion was soured a little by the fact that my visa expired. In order to renew my visa, the kind immigration officers at the local foreign immigration office in Managua told me to head to the border of Honduras, leave Nicaragua, walk across the border, enter Honduras, and then return that same day so they would stamp my visa and give me another 90 days. Well after making that long trip to the border, I was disappointed to find out that not only did they require me to stay in Honduras for 3 days before returning to Nicaragua, they didn't even have the stamp I needed at that office. Instead, they kindly informed me that I needed to cross the entire country from North to South and do the same thing except on the Costa Rican border. "Breath", I told myself as all I wanted to do was look up and yell in frustration. I tried everything I knew that had worked for me in the past so I could cut a corner or two. Generally speaking I don't like, nor do I advocate trying something that could be "mutually beneficial" for both the officers and me. However, I was reluctant to just give up and make the 5 hour bus trip back to Leon. Unfortunately neither my reluctance nor my repeated efforts to "help" them to help me made any difference. Instead I packed up my things, hopped back on the bus and headed back to Leon. I wasn't able to head to Costa Rica til the next Thursday because of my class schedule. This meant I was 3 days over my 90 day visa. So on Thursday night at 9pm, I took a rickety old yellow school bus from Leon destined for Peñas Blancas, the border town to Costa Rica. At about 11pm, the conductor woke us all up at a gas station in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua to let us know he needed to put air in the tires and we could all use the bathroom. "Good idea" I thought, "there probably won't be anywhere to use a bathroom for a long time" I said to myself. So with the 15 other passengers I entered the Stop-N-Go to use the bathroom and buy snacks for the long bus ride. I took my time, as most there were quite a few people in the women's bathroom line, and I was sure we wouldn't leave without them. Slowly I mossied out of the surprisingly clean Stop-N-Go only to discover that the bus in fact was not there anymore. I was immediately flushed with panic before my self-preserving calming kicked in. "Don't worry, everything will work out" I said to myself, trying to be calm. After the first 30 minutes went by I started to pace back and forth getting more and more nervous. Had they left with our bags? Why didn't anyone else look nervous? Was I the only one even remotely concerned that we were stuck in god-knows-where, at almost midnight? How could they force down ice-cream, hot dogs and nachos. I knew that I was really worried when the 1 hour mark passed and I couldn't even think about eating anything. I know that when I don't want to eat – there is a serious problem. At 12:30 in the morning the bus driver came screeching around the corner in the bus and pulled up to the curb where we had all been camped out freezing. We hopped on quickly and we took off. To my surprise no one asked a single question. Where had he been? What had he been doing? Was he inflating the tires manually by blowing air into the massive tires? I guess one will never know. All I know is that I got no sleep that night as we pulled into Peñas Blancas at 3:30am. Good thing we were insanely early to the border too because the border gates opened up at 6am. I slumped back into the school bus seats trying to get comfortable, to no avail. At 6am I crossed through the gates to go pay my fine for overstaying my visa and start the second leg of my never ending odyssey. After waiting for the office where I had to pay my fine opened at 7am, they told me I needed a copy of my passport and expired visa. "Just great" I thought. Where was I going to get a photocopy at this hour in the middle of this jungelous place they call a border crossing? They informed me I just had to walk about half a mile up the road to a store to do that, if they weren't open I'd have to walk 3 miles back outside of the boarder to get the copies. Yup, you guessed it, they weren't open yet, so I had to walk to the 3 miles back outside of the boarder to get the photocopies and then return. After I returned he gave me the necessary paperwork so that I could go join the other massive amounts of people trying to officially leave Nicaragua so they could officially enter Costa Rica. I navigated the lines and paperwork and people walking into Costa Rica where I encountered a very nice immigration officer who politely asked me "What the hell is wrong with you, why didn't you go to the border of Honduras?", after I calmly explained to the officer that his fellow officers at that border had informed me that there was, "no way in hell I could do it at that border", he frowned and said, "well you can go into Costa Rica but you can't come back today. You must stay at least one day in Costa Rica." I quickly stopped him mid sentence and simply said, "no" shaking my head. "I'm sorry there is no way I'm staying in Costa Rica and I was told I could enter and leave on the same day", I said. Then he tried to tell me that I had to at least wait till the afternoon, to which I also said no. Then he said, I should at least stay for a couple of hours. I agreed. I walked the couple miles to the Costa Rican side of the border where it took me about 2 hours to get through the entering Costa Rica line, and then the leaving Costa Rica line and then walk back to the same officer who then just shook his head and told me to go wait for another couple of hours. At this point I was so fed up and frustrated with the entire system I didn't have the energy to explain to him what I'd already been through nor did I really want to talk to him. So I told him, "fine, I'll be right here till you decide I can come in". I took about 10 steps back, stood there with my arms crossed looking at the officer, and decided I would wait the 2 hours out there. Who was he to tell me I couldn't come back into Nicaragua. Not one person knew exactly what the legal process was as they all gave me different versions. About 5 minutes into the staring competition he decided to try and enter into an arguing competition, one which at this point in my sleepless journey he was not going to win. Within 2 minutes we were laughing, shaking hands and vowing that we would never see each other again. At 4pm on the 4th of July I returned back to Leon from my 19 hour saga to renew my visa. Why couldn't the foreign immigration office in Managua do this for me? Good question. Why do they even have a foreign immigration office if they can't even renew a visa? Yet, another good question. For the 4th of July I met up with a group of Peace Corps volunteers living and working around the Leon area. It was very nice to relax and recount my story… in English. It felt like it had been months since I had spoken English, and it was nice to commiserate with some other fellow Americans who were also living and working in Nicaragua. In the grand scheme of things though, if you compare what I went through to what foreigners have to go through in the United States, I feel very lucky to have only been asked to do this. I have been talking with students about volunteers coming and wanting to stay with Nicaraguan families and many have offered their homes and hospitality. Hint hint. If you would like to come teach let me know and we can work out a host family situation. It is a great cultural exchange opportunity. Del Texaco Guido 2 cuadras al sur, ½ abajo Leon, Nicaragua Central America. Next Update July 24th |
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Update #9
Directors Update: Hello friends and family of Adelante. Well, now going on 80 some odd days here in Nicaragua and I'm settling in quite nicely. This week I bought a stove finally. Now I can really call my house a home. I think this weekend I'll christen the house by having a few friends and family over for dinner after I buy some pots of course. I'm keeping busy preparing the daily classroom activities as well as planning for more long term class assignments. In my spare time I've been following the Euro Cup (which is disappointingly unpopular here). Soccer is definitely not the sport of choice here but rather, it is baseball. But wherever I go, people are nice enough to change the channel for me. They usually are the ones that get a show when they see how I react in the games. They spend the game watching me while I watch the game. I'm sure for them it's quite hilarious. Ha ha. As always I miss my friends and family back home too much to describe but knowing that I'll be back in November for a visit gets me through the homesickness even though that seems like a lifetime away. School Update: I'm happy to report that classes now are taking place on site. Well...sort of. The classes are in my house, but not yet in the classrooms. I purchased a large whiteboard, chairs, and long conference style tables. The entry space of my house really is almost perfect for a classroom. It would be nice if it was a little bit bigger but it really does the trick for now. This is week two of the first public course that I have offered and I'm happy to say that I have 12 students that are coming four days a week. So far, the course has been going well, people seem to be enjoying the class and learning a lot. I have found students through various people that I know and as well as randomly. Today, for example, when I bought the stove for my house, the young lady who was helping me expressed interest in taking the course when the next one opened. This is not an isolated incident; in fact that is how I have met quite a few people for the course. For the next session I plan to offer a course in the morning as well as in the afternoon. Construction Progress: We have recently completed phase one of the house construction. Phase one, a student bathroom, was completed this week and turned out really well. The construction workers put up the 3 walls, made the door, put the floor and ceramic tile in, and installed the toilet and sink in less than a week, and to my surprise a tad under budget at that! Phase two, repositioning and repairing the roof over the projected classroom space will take place very soon, pending funding. New Collaboration: As I mentioned in the last update, Polly and Myra took a trip down here to visit me and the school. Because of their visit they have both decided to fundraise on their own in an effort to encourage young children to stay in school. Their tentative plan is to raise enough money to provide three schools with enough schools supplies for every child, as well as a little extra for a small construction project on the playground. Their project, called "Vecinos", meaning neighbors, will be a collaborative effort with me and Adelante. I will help prepare things on the ground here in Nicaragua and help decide on schools who will receive the aid, while they do the fundraising work. I'm very pleased and excited that they have decided to make this a priority in their lives, as I'm sure hundreds and soon thousands will directly benefit from their efforts. Thank you Polly and Myra! Adelante Needs: I continue to need Spanish/English dictionaries as many students do not have them here. I offer them to the students for use during the class and they come in very handy. Please, if anyone has one lying around the house, or would like to go to Half Price Books and pick up a couple I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you everyone for your continued support and feel free to send anything to this address: Mateo Garibaldi Del Texaco Guido 2 cuadras al sur, ? abajo Leon, Nicaragua Central America Next Update July 10th |
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Update #4
Directors Update: Hola desde Nicaragua! Very recently I became fully aware of how truly hot it is here. I spilled a cup of water in my room the other day. I soaked a lot of it up with a spare dish towel I had laying around. I went into the kitchen and rung the towel out a few times and tried to clean the towel, and when I came back into the room, the water had already dried up completely. Yes. It is hot here! Apart from that, the people are wonderfully nice as expected, the weather is hot and the cold showers are a welcome break from the day. I have begun the transition recently from purifying my water and buying bottled water to just throwing caution to the wind and drinking the tap water. Mistake or adventure? Well, if it? an adventure I?l be sure to write about it in the next update, if it? a mistake I? sure you all know what the consequences will be and I?l spare you the gory details and refrain from telling you all about it. I? optimistic though as I?e gone about 3 days so far on tap water and have not noticed any unusual ?ctivity? I? spending my days here developing the curriculum for the classes, filling my house with yummy goodies and furniture, and riding my host families bicycle around town. It? taken a bit to get used to those o-so-comfy bike seats ah yeah they?e not comfy, though I?e mastered what I?e called the ?ide-ride? I?l let you figure out what that means. Class Progress: Our inaugural test class of friends and family shall begin this Monday in the classrooms that the pre-school across the street has graciously given us the use of during the evenings. In return for the use of the classrooms I?l be teaching pre-schoolers for 1 hour a day, 4 days a week. This should be both challenging and exciting at the same time. I?e not thought too much about teaching without using reading or writing, and as I was recently reminded they cannot read or write?a ha. So I?e had to drastically change the curriculum that I?e been planning on using for the adults. Anyway I? happy for the practice and experience that this is sure to provide me. For this first class there will be no charge to the small class of students as it will be a test run for me to get feedback from the students and plan more for when I open it up to the public. This will also be a shorter class running approximately 3-4 weeks, for 4 days a week. Construction update: Construction thus far has not begun yet, but is still planned to happen pending more fundraising. Many vital materials needed for building have pretty much doubled since we last priced them a year ago. Plus, we would rather not spend all our budget on constructing the classrooms right now, but wait a little while longer. Thus, giving ourselves a small financial cushion and taking advantage of the generosity of the school that is across the street from us. Volunteer Opportunities: In the near future I would like to offer volunteer opportunities here in the school. This should be of particular interest to those that would like to either improve or start learning Spanish. Volunteering through Adelante will provide you with not only a valuable teaching experience in Latin America, but also with one-on-one Spanish tutoring and a homestay with a Nicaragua family. Spaces are available upon request and advance notice. There is a nominal fee which pays for Spanish lessons as well as food and lodging with the family?. A minimum of a two weeks stay is suggested. ?Price subject to specifics desired and length of stay Current Adelante Needs: As classes begin we will be in need of more and more school supplies for students. The following items will be very helpful for teachers as well as students:
Mateo Garibaldi De La Iglesia San Pedro Sutiava, 1 al sur, ? arriba Le?, Nicaragua Central America If international shipping is too pricey you may also send it to Adelante at: Adelante 16702 SE 11th st. Bellevue, WA 98008 | |