Update #12

Update # 12

In this issue:

1. Director's update
2. School update
3. School needs

Director's 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

Next update: August 21^st, 2008

Update #11

Update # 11

In this issue:

1. Director's update

2. School update

3. School needs

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.

School needs:

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

Next update: August 7^th, 2008

update #10

update #10

July 10, 2008

In this issue:

• Directors update
• School update
• Adelante needs

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 4^th 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 4^th 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.

School update: Classes continue to go well. We have just finished week number 4 of the 6 week course. A couple weeks ago I put a sign outside of my house advertising the English school, and have been visited almost daily by people interested in taking the class. At present I have 8 people on the waiting list to take classes when the next course begins on August 4^th.

Adelante needs: As continues to be the case, we desperately need Spanish-English dictionaries for students to use during the course. At present I have 7 that are lent out between the 12 students. In August there will hopefully be another 12 students in the morning time. As you can imagine 7 dictionaries between 24 students is less than ideal, as such, any donations of dictionaries new or used would be greatly appreciated.

Mateo Garibaldi

Del Texaco Guido 2 cuadras al sur, ½ abajo

Leon, Nicaragua

Central America.

Next Update July 24th

Update #8

Update #8

In this issue

• Directors update

• School update

• Construction progress

• New collaboration

• Adelante needs

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, ½ abajo

Leon, Nicaragua

Central America

Next Update July 10th

Update #7

Update #7 June 2nd 2008
In this Issue:
Directors update
Class update
Current needs
Volunteer opportunity
Adelante in the news

Directors update: Hello from rainy Nicaragua! It has been quite a long and eventful two weeks since the last update. Nicaragua just finished an excruciatingly long transportation strike over the price that transportation workers pay for gasoline. The strike lasted for over a week, during which time no taxi's, buses or local city transportation was working in the country. Although it was nice to have the city streets clear of taxi's for the time, it made it difficult to do any business that required moving a large amount of goods. This in turn hurt many small family businesses as they could not get goods and merchandise to their shops to sell.

Finally the president approved lowering the price of gasoline for transportation workers which everyone was happy about. Fast forward one week, and he raised the price of gasoline 16 cents for everyone else in the country. I make no judgments. I only report on the situation.

As if it wasn't enough that Nicaragua's transportation had been halted by a strike, the next week, Thursday May 29th, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Honduras was ravaged by 130 m/hr winds thanks to Hurricane Alma. Unfortunately for me, the hardest hit place in Nicaragua was León, where I live. Thousands of people in the rural outskirts of the city and next to the ocean were evacuated to safer locations and thousands more the next day were left without electricity or water. Most didn't receive their electricity or running water for a very difficult 5 days. In an effort to aid people in more severe situation, a few friends and I filled up large tanks of water daily to take to communities that had no access to water. These communities didn't have water to drink, clean, bathe or wash. Although the situation seemed dire from my perspective, people reminisced about their experience in 1999 with Hurricane Mitch when it rained for a solid 8 days straight, so they didn't really feel that this situation was that bad. It was my first hurricane so I had more dramatic and emotional things to say about the situation than most others. We are in the rainy season now in Nicaragua but it is very unusually for hurricanes to appear this early in the year, I was told. This news did not aid in patching the holes of fear that the hurricane had created, instead made me think more about what on earth I was going to do when another hit, ha ha.
These past two weeks I was also excited to have visitors from home who had come to see me. Although their timing, as per the hurricane, was less than ideal for them, their visit was very nice and I was grateful they decided to come and experience Nicaragua. Because of one of their independent efforts, they facilitated Rotary Monroe in donating quite a large sum of money that we were able to put to use immediately in a local school, buying each student a pencil, pen, two notebooks, rulers, pencil sharpeners and pencil bag. Other supplies were also provided to the teachers and the school in general. Many students were excited to finally see ground broke on the beginning of their first recreational area. We brought in two goal posts which were immediately placed into the ground and cemented in permanently. It was quite amazing to see all the collaboration and enthusiasm that the small amount of money created within the community. You can see more pictures from the amazing day on the blog if you like.A big thanks to Polly and Myra who made it possible.

Class update: Classes open to the public on June 16th, and I am very excited to offer two schedules to accommodate the local peopless busy lives. There will be a class offered in the morning from 10-11:30 and one in the afternoon from 5:30-7:00. "Nicaraguan time" could quite possibly push back the start time by 30 minutes ha ha.
Current Needs: I would like to be able to offer dictionaries to all students but I don't quite have enough dictionaries to be able to do that yet, so any donations of any Spanish/English dictionaries would be greatly appreciated. I have a friend that plans on visiting in August which could be a good time to send them.

Volunteer Need: Adelante is in the process of finding a volunteer to exchange English classes for Spanish classes. It would be a great opportunity for someone to improve their Spanish greatly at a very minimal cost. We would like volunteers to commit to a time period of at least 6 weeks. Please contact Mateo for more details. Mateo.g@adelantenow.org

Adelante in the News: Adelante and its executive director have been highlighted in Amigos June edition of their newsletter. Please see their website for the article: http://www.amigoslink.org/news/mateo

Next update June 12th

Update #6

May 9th, 2008

In this issue you will find:
1. Directors update
2. Class update
3. Current Needs
4. Volunteer needs

Directors Update: Hello friends and family of Adelante! It certainly is cookin' here in León. As I write this update my computer tells me that it's 95 degrees outside this air-conditioned oasis. That's about the average daily temperature. I'm getting quite a tan here ha ha. In an effort to save a little more money, I have recently learned how to wash my own clothes. This, I'm sure, sounds much easier that it actually is. I now wash all my clothes by hand on a concrete "pila". Needless to say my hands are paying dearly for this new skill. But it's a nice get away as I can put on my iPod and just relax.

On another note...Adelante is cookin' too! This week we are finishing up our first English course. The final evaluation for the students in the course is to go to the main square in León, where there are a lot of tourists, and find someone that speaks English and engage them in a conversation. The main challenge with this assignment is that the students need to be sure to use some of the greetings that we have been learning in the classroom. For the past week we have been practicing and finalizing a dialogue and list of questions to ask a tourist. All of the students are very nervous and excited about getting out of the classroom and using what they have learned in the real world. On Monday, our final day, they will all come back and report how their experience went. I can't wait to hear the results!
In the house I have recently finished doing some personal construction. We took out one of the large gates and put up a wall that has a wooden door and wooden window. It looks awesome. I'll have pictures up very soon. As is to be expected, I miss and think about everyone back home all the time and appreciate more than you could probably imagine all the phone calls and letters that have been sent. Thank you!

Class update: As the closing of the first class is upon us this week, I have been inundated with requests for our classes. On June 23rd, we plan to open up the course to the public, and just in time! Word of the school has spread and people are already eagerly scratching at the door! Adelante is dedicated to having at all times half of the class full or partially scholarshiped. I am very excited to be able to offer these classes to people that are truly interested in learning English.

Current Needs: One thing that I would really like to give to all the students are English dictionaries for their personal possession. I have about 7 that I lend out during the class, but I would love to be able to build up a good stock of dictionaries. That being said, any new or used English Spanish dictionaries would be very helpful here. Please send to:
Mateo Garibaldi
Del Texaco Guido
2 al sur, ½ abajoLeón, Nicaragua
Central America

Volunteer needs: Volunteers are always more than welcome here. We will have more information as positions materialize, but if you anyone feels eager about the opportunity, please contact me personally so we can work out the details.
Next Update May 28th