San Juan del Sur (again) and normal life

The rest of last week went fine. The kids tested and I worked with them when I could. I helped a lot of kids study in the afternoons as well, so that was good.

Then for descanso I went to San Juan del Sur again. It's not my favorite place in Nicaragua, but most of the other volunteers were going there, so I decided to go along. It is a good place to eat non-Nica food and stock up on groceries. So we left Friday really early because there was a transport and Sana had her surf board so she didn't want to try to take the bus or hitch a ride. We got to San Juan at 9AM, really early! There actually isn't that much to write about the weekend, because we didn't really do that much. We stayed in a cheap hotel ($5 each) right across from the beach. It was really nice, because we had our own room; it wasn't a dorm. But the bathrooms were downstairs, so that was more hostel like. But it was a really nice location, especially because it was really too hot to sit on the beach. We tried a few times, but the sand was too hot, and even 5 minutes after swimming you were too hot. And there's really no shade on the beach. So we'd sit in the hotel, where we could be in the shade and look at the beach, and then go across the street to swim, and then come back. It worked well. So I swam and read and slept and ate good food (they have Subway there, and it's not very expensive!!) all weekend. It felt really long, even though we left early on Monday to get back in good time. I definately came back rested, so that was nice.

This week everything is back to normal in the schools. I have to figure out which of my kids passed their tests and which didn't. I'm also talking to the teachers to see if they want to rearrange any kids. Some maybe need less frequent appointments and there might be some new ones that they want to add. I'm also still figuring out the NIcaragua school system. One boy today told me he failed social studies because of bad behavior. I asked him what that meant, and he just said he didn't behave well during that hour in school. So I'm not sure what that means. But I told him it would be silly if he had to repeat the year because of bad behavior in one class, so maybe he'll try harder. We'll see. It's silly to fail a kid and make them repeat the year for bad behavior. Obviously they should behave, but the punishment doesn't seem to fit the crime.

That's really all the news I have! Just life as normal. We're managing to survive the heat (highs 90-95 and lows 70-75). That's just HOT. In a month or so it should start to rain, so hopefully that'll cool things off.