In just three weeks in El Viejo my life already seems so settled here. The Birthday celebration this week really made me feel like I had become part of the community. It's difficult to put into words what you feel like on the morning of your 27th birthday, when realizing that through drug and alcohol addiction, university degree, great job and responsible life, you have arrived at school teacher in poor Central American pueblo. Most of the time this is a great feeling, but in complete honesty their are gaps where your still have lingering thoughts of something that resembles the American Dream, and when you have even just one of those images in your mind the last place in the world you would want to be to make it a reality is in a classroom of 60 screaming Nicaraguan teenagers who think that Continental America is a place in Africa. I am not saying that this is the emotional state I awoke to on my birthday, but clearly my detailed description of what that might be like suggests that I have had more than a split second thought of my now, very glamorous past life in the U S of A. Oddly enough there are no doubt Peace Corp Volunteers all over Nicaragua, and the world for that matter that would argue my life is still pretty glamorous. Whatever, I got a bed, a table, and one of the hottest PC site in the Western Hemisphere.

On Thursdays I spend my mornings in the big public institute where more than 1000 teenagers attend classes every morning, and another 1000 or more come in the afternoon. Many of the classes are filled with boyfriends and girlfriends who spend more time whispering sweet lollabyes to one another than they do taking notes. Many of these couples have come to the conclusion in 15 years that they are undoubtedly in Love in a way that no human being, especially some Idiot American Profe could every understand. It's hard to laugh at them when you've been there, but I ask them please to consider their circumstances before deciding to make whoopy in the park bringing yet another starving infant into our sweet Nicaragua. Of course like in any school there are the kids who study hard and dream of the day when they will sit in a University class room in Leon or somewhere fancy studying Literature or some other fascinating subject that the their friends wouldn't even understand. I had a girl tell me the other day she wishes to speak Arabic. ARABIC! Why? She told me it was a beautiful language and she wishes there were a place in Nicaragua where she could pursue this dream. Clearly there are more than a handful of students with great potential, and it is for those students I hope I may somehow bring new insight and motivation to accomplish goals that others wouldn't even think possible.

As for my party the kids first wanted to break an egg over my head in customary fashion, but I declined that offer letting them know that I had another school I was required to teach at and rotten egg dripping from my face wouldn't serve me well in my first lesson. At the end of the first class they started taking cordobas so that they could afford to buy a pinata. 30 minutes later one of the girls who had dissapeared to run into town returned with a beautiful, colorful pinata that was filled with candy. This was an event not just for my classes, but for the entire school. It didn't matter that only a select group had chipped in to buy Profe's gift. By the time we had this bad boy strung up on a tree outside the class there were hundreds of kids around. I think people outside of the school heard about our celebration and made their way in with hopes of snatching a chocolate. After being blind folded and spun I attached the air with a tree limb that had been passed to me in the preperation process. This is common in Nicaragua, that is to use wood, machetes, and other strange objects for things like fixing bikes, breaking pinatas, and whatever else might come up during the day. Either way the wood stick was functional, and actually kind of empowering. There I was in front of several hundred Nicaraguan teenagers violently waving a stick at the air. I finally struck the pinata, and because I was late for my other class I grabbed it by the neck and just started pounding. Pounding with the stick, with my fist, with all of my power I pounded. I finally felt the break and immediately was tackled to the ground. I managed to get my hands on one tootsie roll before the madness had settled. It all happened so fast that I didn't even realize how special it was until later. With the head of my pinata tied to the back of my bike, sweating from the activities of the morning, I made my way to my second school, proud to be a teacher in Nicaragua.