Los Pipitos

My morning internship is with an organization called Los Pipitos.  This organization works with children and adolescents ages 0-42 on different psychological and physical problems they may have.  This week, I have been working with the speech pathologist.  She has been showing me the different tools she uses to help her patients, and I have helped her make other things. 

Monday I helped Ivis, the speech pathologist, prepare for a presentation she was giving.  She hosted about seven parents and helped them make books in which they could keep pictures.  The pictures were of different foods, verbs, pronouns, and activities.  These books were to help children form sentences.  I helped the parents to make the books out of cardboard.

Today with Ivis, I helped prepare the pool for a therapy session.  This was a free session offered to all of her patients, in order to give them more opportunities to improve their speech and hearing.  Only six patients came, and they all got in to the pool with their parents.  The kids were probably between the age ranges of five and eight.  Their physical abilities also Varied.  The kids and their parents played games like telephone in order to work on speech.  The kids also played games identifying colors or different objects in the pool to help improve their listening skills and word recognition. The session ended with different speech exercises to help the kids more their mouths and tongues. The session was an entertaining and helpful tool for the kids and their parents. 

Casa Materna

I have now completed two weeks of occasionally working at my internships.  I am very interested in the concept of "La Casa Materna".  Women will come into the clinic anywhere from a month to two weeks before their due to have their child.  The women come from far and near and live in the house, where they have access to nurses 24/7 in case of an emergency.  The women range from ages 12 to 42.  Some of the women are first time mothers while others have already had four or five children.  Many of the women are financially challenged and therefor this house allows for them to have all the resources they need in order to safely give birth to their child.  

My first few days at the prenatal clinic consisted of entertaining the women and teaching them different skills. A peace core volunteer was in the process of teaching the women to make cloth diapers, so I joined in and helped the women sew. A few days later, I taught the women to make friendship bracelets.  This was slightly more difficult because I could tell the women were getting frustrated with me, while the point of the activity was to be relaxing.  

Meeting the Familia

On Wednesday at the hostel, the host families and host agencies came to pick up their volunteers.  My host mom came along with representatives from one of my internships, Los Pepitos.  My friend Claire is also headed to Chinendega, and her host mom and my host mom are sisters.  After each volunteer presented himself, the program directors sent us to our host families.  Claire and I have to drive with our host moms to our town which is 45 mins away. When I got to my house I met my host brother, Pablo and my host nephew, Bryan.  They are both very quiet but very nice. My host mom's daughter lives next-door to us with her family.  There is also a little girl named Margarita who is 5 and she is very sweet.  She and I draw together a lot. She gives me lots of hugs and spends a lot of time with me which makes me feel really good.  My host mom is also very nice and welcoming. I am a bit scared that I am going to do something that in my culture would be socially acceptable but in this culture is not, thus causing a problem with the family.  I have this fear because they are such nice people.

Bienvenidos a Nicaragua!!

I have finally gotten to Nicaragua and made friends.  Although I left the US feeling a bit overwhelmed and uncomfortable, I am now feeling very confident about the year ahead of me.  The other gap year students are so cool and I can't wait to get to know them more.  We are finishing up our first day of orientation and I have already learned so much about the country.  For orientation, we are staying in a city called Leon.  Leon is about 45 minutes from the city where I will be staying, called Chinandega. I am very excited to meet my host family and get settled in to the house and town. I am pleasantly surprised about the cultural differences between Chile and Nicaragua. Not only does Chile use different conjugations of verbs, but they also have different vocabulary words.  The difference in dialect will definitely keep me on my toes while I am here.  

Dear Reader

My name is Sydney Meyer, and I am from Columbus, Ohio.  Instead of going straight into my freshman year of college following my high school graduation I decided to spend the year volunteering in Nicaragua.  I will be shadowing nurses and physicians in a town called Chinandega. I will be sharing my experiences through pictures and words on this blog!