A few videos

The students had a song prepared to sing for us when we arrived!

Here we are with the same song that we had happened to prepare for them!

This is a scholarship student practicing a read aloud with the younger children

Here is a student practicing a song that we taught them.

Some photos from our trip

Here is David, with his new book about David! The children loved the picture books that we sent.

Here is a picture of teachers with the secondary students that we worked with.

Here is Sarah with Maribel, a sweet little girl from Santa Celia.

The view from the mountain road by Santa Celia

Posing with all of the elementary students in Santa Celia

A student in Santa Celia

The mountains in Matagalpa

Day 6-Our last day here :(

Spent today driving back to the capital city of managua, and that was interesting as ever navigating the city traffic! We visited the market, which was unbelievable. We were able to get lots more traditional nicaraguan goods for school to teach our students about our sister community of Santa Celia!

So sad to be sitting in our hotel on our last night of the trip! I can't believe this week went by so fast. It was amazing how much we were able to cram into seven days. I feel as though we accomplished so much in the time that we were here. I believe that by teaching the kids how to teach, we have reached so many more people than we could have if we had just gone nd done fun activities for a few days. I hope the they got a lot out of it too. I know that I will never forget these nicaraguense, and I have a feeling that they will remember us too! This experience has changed me, no doubt. I am so grateful for all that I am fortunate enough to have in my life. Whenever I am feeling negative, I need to just remind myself about the families that I met here in Nica. They are the happiest, kindest people I have ever met, and they have very little. The children don't have books or toys, yet they are happier than children back home. I know that i will return to Nicaragua in the future. I won't be able to stay away, and besides, I told them that I would return- "regresaré!" I may be an American, but I feel like I now have a teeny bit of Nicaraguan me. Like the lyrics go, "soy puro pinolero, nicaraguense por gracias de dios!"

Day 5-A Day at the Beach

Today is el 19 de Julio, a huge festival in Nicaragua. The students have been on vacation all week, and this festival is bigger than our fourth of July easily. I is the celebration of when the Sandinistas took power during the revolution.

Since it was a holiday, apparently the entire country heads to the capital of Managua, so we would have had nothing to do in matagalpa. We decided to head to Leon and see the beach. Out hostel is really nice, and we arrived there bright and early at seven am, and they were actually able to let us into our rooms. We were at the beach by nine, and it was fantastic. It was the perfect temperature outside, and the beach was quiet and we set up camp at a hostel restaurant on the beach where we were able to drink $1 beers and relax in their hammocks all day. We spent over six hours just playing in the waves, collecting shells, and walking on the rocks by the beach. We are now all slightly sunburnt and exhausted from our relaxing and fantastic day. It was a much needed easy day.

Day 4- La Lima and Santa Celia

Today is our last day working in the villages. Tomorrow is a national holiday, and Friday we have to head back to Managua to get ready to fly home. we spent the morning in la Lima again, working with the secondary students. We were excited to be able to share with them how proud we were of the great teaching that they did yesterday. They also had comments and questions for us about yesterday. Most of them wanted to thank us for working with them and giving me skills to us. The education director for the San Ramon network from rainbow was here both days, and he told us and the students how important it was to learn these strategies and how they could go out and teach and reach so many people now. He used the phrase, "multiplicacion de conocimiento", which means multiplication of knowledge. It is great to know that they understood of goal, which was to teach them how to tach, and to hopefully affect more than just the 30 students in that classroom.

We got to practice some more activities. We showed them the plays that we had brought. We made bags with props in them to perform some simple readers theater plays, and we let them practice, then perform them for us. They were fantastic. Some of them were total hams, and loved acting. I think that those are going to be a lot of fun for all of the students. Jeanette taught an English lesson that she had prepared, and it was neat to see how difficult it is to learn a new language. They kept practicing, and by the end, they could introduce themselves and have a short conversation. Clay got to share his videos of his photos from his life, and the students really liked this part. They got to see snow, and his friends, and the Mississippi river. He talked about prom and said it was "muy importante!" one student said that it was neat to see what life was like for him and how they were different, but still the same in some ways.

When it was time to go, a few of them had some very kind words to say. One young man told us all about how much they appreciated us, and how they aspire to be like us and that have taught me that they should have dreams and goals and they can achieve them. I was in tears as they were thanking us.

The afternoon in santa celia was fun, but bittersweet knowing it was our last time with our new friends. The secondary students got to practice again with the niñitos all of the new things that they had learned. They all really loved the songs, especially the vowels song..."salió la a, salió la a, no se a done fue..." they again did a phenomenal job. I am so happy to know that the education of the younger students will be effective and hopefully successful. After the practice, it was time to celebrate with a piñata. The kids of course loved this part. Jessica and I even got to take a turn. We had gifts for the children. They each got a toothbrush, a fun eraser, and a picture book. They loved getting the books, as most of them have never owned their own book. We even got to give higher leveled books to the scholarship students, although they were asking us for more David books!

We unfortunately had to cut our last afternoon with our friends short, since it had been raining all day and they were worried about us being able to get down the hill. We are now driving down the hill in a monsoon. It is absolutely pouring out, or as they say here, "está lloviendo sapos y culebras!" we made it about ten feet before sinking and getting completely stuck. It looked pretty dire for a bit, and it was literally a deluge while we all tried to figure out how to get it out. Within seconds, all of the boys from the school came running out to help. It was so sweet to see them so eager to help. They literally lifted, not pushed our car out! Then it was off down the hill at an even slower pace than normal.

On our way down the hill, we stopped at a house where a farmer reserve grows organic coffee. One of the workers from last week visited this house last week and what a find it was. This man and his family started this farm 18 years ago, and they built the house and buildings all by themselves, and it still is only run by family, with no outside help. It is also certified organic. We got to see the perezosos, or sloths outside too! He had warm coffee ready for us, which was great after being soaking wet. He told us his story, and then apologized for not having our order ready (we had stopped the day before to tell him how much we wanted.) he had to roast it for us, and he said that he was unable to use the roasting place that he usually does, since there was a problem with the electricity. However, he told us he would deliver it to our hotel in Managua, which is 2 hours away on Friday! It was delicious coffee, and we are so excited to be able to support such a nice, family run operation.

It was definitely tough knowing that we were headed down the hill for the last time. The students and adults all just kept asking us to remember them, and to please come back and to not forget them. We promised that we would.

Day 3- la Lima and Santa Martha

This is a post written by Sarah. Increible! That would be the word to describe our day today.  I'll get into the details soon, but let me start with last night.  We headed to town for dinner and ate at a little hostel where the group from last week stayed.  It was right in the heart of matagalpa, with noisy traffic and people everywhere.  We barely fit inside, but it was cute and cozy. Almost all of us got the coconut curry, which was a steal at about $3.50, along with a beer for the steep price of $1. The curry was fantastic! We headed back and relaxed before bed. Today we didnt quite make it up for yoga before breakfast, but oh well. Today, in addition to our fruit and gallo pinto, we also had pancakes. Hooray!  Our bumpy, crazy ride was about twenty minutes shorter today since we were spending the morning in la Lima, which is down the hill a ways from Santa Celia.    Our job today was to work with the secondary students, who range in age from 13-18. They essentially wanted us to teach them how to be teachers.  This was right up Jessica and I's alley.  I will admit that I was a bit nervous about working with the older students, as I am used to working with little kids.  I wasnt sure how they would respond to us.  However, it turns out there was no need to worry.  They were very receptive and eager to hear what we had to say.  We started out teaching them a whole binders worth of gone and poems that we had brought.  We prepared enough materials to send copies to each community.  They absolutely loved this part. They wanted to sing them all over again when we finished.  I taught them all of the rhymes that I had made up for using in my classroom, for lining up, getting their attention, etc.  we thought that having some classroom management tools would be a very useful tool for them.  After singing for a while, we moved on to our math activities.  We had also order binders full of simple but fun math games for to play that require very little umpire or materials.  We obviously can't just give them worksheets that need to be photocopied, but we had to really think outside of the box about what kinds of games they could do over and over again. We came up with a lot of them that involved dice or flash cards, since w had brought a huge stash of those! They really seemed to get into the games.  Jessica and I would sit down on the floor and model how to play one, then we would have them try to play it in groups,  this allowed us to check to be sure that truly understood how to play, since they would be expected to teach them to the younger kids.  We then did some activities with the copies of chica chica bum bum that we brought.  This book is great for teaching letters and letter sounds.   We then taught them some fair tales, and let them practice reading them as well.  After that, we worked on doing an effective read aloud.  This was one of the most important things that we taught them, I think. We modeled for them how to talk about the pictures and to have students make predictions, connections, and more.  We had them practice this a lot with each other while we went around and gave them pointers. after about three hours of teaching, it was lunchtime (more beef jerky and cliff bars.)  After lunch, we headed up the hill a bit to Santa Martha.  Now it was time for our secondary students to use what they had learned.  We laid out all of supplies and told the students that they could come and pick out some materials to use, and when I turned around one minute later, they had already found themselves a group of children and were teaching! The 15 year old girl in the back was doing a read aloud in a fantastically entertaining voice and was asking them questions about what they thought  would happen next.  Another young man was singing the song that we had just taught about the vowels, complete with actions.  It literally gave me goosebumps to watch.  I was amazed at how these students just dove in, and actually used what we taught them. For an hour we just watched and gave tips while they played math games, sang songs, did rhymes, and read books with small groups.  The rest of the village was all crowded around the outside watching through the windows, and the kids loved it.  I can't say how proud I was of those kids. It felt like we were really doing a helpful thing by not just going in and doing fun things with the kids, but by teaching them how to teach, which will last so much longer and will have an even greater effect. Our principal said that maybe our new jobs should be to teach educators! I'm not giving up my day job just yet though. When we left, a few of the scholarship students thanked us personally, and the little ones asked when we were coming back. We are now on our ride home, and as i type, we just played a game of chicken with three cows in the road! The ride is bumpy but beautiful, and the view coming down the mountain is absolutely breathtaking.  The sun is shining through the trees, and the valley below looks amazing. I am sure  that my car mates ate getting sick of me exclaiming, "wow, just look at that view!"  I have taken hundreds of photos of this wonderful place, both the scenery and the people. It is truly an adventure of a lifetime, one that I will never forget. 

Day 2-Santa Celia

Whew! Today was a whirlwind of a day.  This is Sarah writing. I'll try to recap it as briefly as I can, though that may be tough, since we got to do so much. Jess and I started out our day early at 5:30 AM to do some yoga. I had brought a video, and r set it up on the patio overlooking the mountains and did it while the sun rose and the rooster was crowing. Talk about zen! 

We ate our breakfast at the hotel. Fresh fruit and gallo pinto, our breakfast every day thus far. Gallo pinto is red beans and rice, very delicious, though I'm not sure if I'll be saying that after five more days of it for breakfast and dinner. We have to be so careful about what we eat here, and avoid the water. About 75% of he group that was here last week got I'll from food poisoning. Dr Judy said its pretty common for most of the group to get sick during or after the trip!

We took off in our three big cars. There are twelve of us, along with three Nicaraguan men who serve as our drivers/translators/bodyguards! They are super nice and have helped out on every one of Gundersen’s trips here. It's nice to have people who know the area and can tell us about what we are seeing.

Marcos was our driver, and of course as soon as we started, it began to pour, rainforest style! The clouds were so low and we were up so high, he could hardly see the road in front of him, but he did great.

The road was windy and bumpy, and after a half hour, he said, "so, you thought this road was bad!" with a laugh as he turned onto what could not even be considered a road. For the next hour, we traveled on the bumpiest road ever, I'm talking flying off our seats and into the windows bumpy! It was shiny to see all of the houses along the way. These Nicaraguans are living in one room shacks, with n ventilation for their fires. It was not an easy thing to see, as I've never experienced poverty as great as this. When I think about how our house is getting redone because of a few hail dents, I realize just how lucky and spoiled we are in the US.

We arrived in Santa Celia finally, and the children ran to greet us. They were so excited and grabbed our hands to head to the school. W listened to a presentation Ian which the community leaders introduce themselves. They all kept saying how grateful they were to have us there, and how they thanked god for sending us. It was such a humbling experience for us.

Then it was our turn! All of the work that Jess and I had put in this summer paid off. We were literally putting on a show for other from 9AM til we left at 4! We sang them our Nicaraguan song that we had all practiced. We gave them the shakers that we had bought and sang lots of songs. Tis as probably their favorite part as they kept asking us all day to do it again..."Los huevitos, Los huevitos!" 

We got to demonstrate an example of a play for them, as we has created a dozen bags full of props and scripts to leave with them. They thought that we were were pretty funny sunflowers!

We did lots of other activities, then we got to read to them. They loved the pigeon books and the David Shannon books in Spanish that I read to them. I had so much fun doing it! We served them their lunch, which was another humbling experience. They get a daily lunch of rice and tortillas, but we has brought some meat leftovers from our dinner to mix in, so they were very excited. We ate our lunches of granola bars and beef jerky, then we spent the afternoon playing games outside. They taught us many that we will use with our students back home, and we fought them red light, green light, duck duck goose, and more. It was so fun. I had a few kiddos who would not leave my side-

Maribel, David, and more. There were so many cute babies, too, many of them belonging to very young mothers only 15 years old. 

We got to do our craft that we had prepared for them, making the Nicaraguan flag, and they really got excited about it. After all of this, it was time to leave. We have to leave fairly early so we are not driving on those roads in the dark. 

It was so much fun to get to teach these kiddos and play with them. It is amazing to see how happy they are, despite the fact that they have so little. I honestly have a jaw ache right now because I don't think I stopped smiling all day long. Those kids made it all totally worth this trip!

So, that was totally not brief, but oh well! I'll try to update tomorrow. We are going it who work in la lima, the town before Santa Celia where the secondary students go. We will be helping to teach them how to tutor the younger ones. 

I’ll leave you with a roster of our staff:

Sheila Riley: Administrative Lead

Sarah Kratt: First grade teacher at North Woods International School Immersion Program

Jessica Hembd: Fourth grade teacher at North Woods International School Spanish Immersion Program

Sandy Brauer: Principal; North Woods International School

Clay Fuhrman: Onalaska Luther High School student

Judy Klevan: Physician

Rachel Thompson: Physician, Translator

Sydney Klink: Translator

Lindsay Engh: Public Health; Global Partners Intern

Kae Creech: Registered Nurse

Owen Johnson: Photographer

Jeannette Fox: Westby Middle and High School Spanish teacher

Hasta mañana.

Greetings from Matagalpa, Nicaragua! This is Judy Klevan posting tonight. Many of you who are reading this have been to this city in Nicaragua with us on previous trips but others may be trying to visualize the sights that we are experiencing.  Here are some things to get you started:  Matagalpa is a medium-sized city in the mountainous central region of Nicaragua.  It is the rainy season now which means that there is daily rain, interrupted by brief episodes of torrential rain.  Yesterday the rain came down from the sky with more force and volume than I have ever experienced, even during a heavy midwestern thunderstorm.  It was so loud on the tin roof where we were working that we could not hear each other speaking. With all this rain, the area is green and lush and muddy.  Along the curvy roads there are beautiful flowering plants, great expanses of coffee plants and, traveling at breakneck speed, there are crazy colorful ancient buses overloaded with people and produce.
We are working in the small village of Le Grecia, which is about a 45 minute drive from our hostel.  First we drive on a paved road and then on a dirt road.  Each trip is an adventure as we always encounter a new obstacle in the road.  Today there were several- a herd of bony cattle being led by a small boy, then a spare tire which had actually fallen off our lead vehicle, finally a group of men airing out a big tarp in the middle of the road.(why not?)
In the community of La Grecia, we were greeted by helpful community members who worked along side us as we set up our stations to begin the second day of health and literacy assessments. Our electronic data base collection system was quickly activated so we could begin seeing the families that were waiting.  Our team is dream-team composed of La Grecia community leaders, La Grecia secondary scholarship students, our Nicaraguan interpreters, students from UW-L, Viterbo, Notre Dame U., UW-Madison, and U of M. Measuring heights and weights is a UW-Lacrosse professor, while reading glasses are dispensed and literacy measured by our Spanish speakers.  Two Gundersen-Lutheran physicians and 1 Indiana University pediatrician see patients and 1 radiologist/techie-nerd makes sure the data does not disappear into cyperspace!  It's an amazing demonstration of cooperation where everyone has a role and is focused on making the process a success. In 2 days we checked over 200 people for diabetes, anemia, hypertension and malnutrition.  We gave reading glasses to all who needed them, enabling them to finally take advantage of the adult literacy programs in their community.  Also importantly, we evaluated women's access to contraception and cervical cancer screening.
It was a wonderful day and we went home in the rain, dodging livestock and potholes.

Days 2 and 3

Good morning from Irene again in Matagalpa. I guess I missed a day, easy to do when it is busy. On Monday we spent the day getting to know the community of La Grecia, where we are doing our work this week. We had a meeting with the community leaders so we could all get to know each other and let them know the work we would be doing together with them throughout the week. We also met the scholarship students who will be an integrel part of our work here as well. As always, we are welcomed into the community with open arms. After our meeting we split into teams with most teams doing home to home visits to conduct interviews and learn about the strengths and challenges of the community members. The leadership team, Mark, Judy, Paul and I were able to walk through the community, accompanied by the community coordinator and Maria Elsa, one of our dear friends who is the Rainbow Network coordinator for this community.  We were able to get a wonderful overview of the community and gather good information.

Yesterday we began our day early, getting to the community by 8:00 so we could get everything organinzed and set up to begin the individual health assessments. Each person in the community comes through the assessment to have a basic health screening. Those 16 and over also have a basic literacy assessment and those 35 and older have a vision screening to see if they need reading glasses. If they do, we fit them with a pair for them to keep.l All went very smoothly and despite some technology delays and difficulties, we saw 160 men, women and children. Each child coming through receives a book and each family receives a bag of either rice or beans. It always amazes me when the community members all show up and wait in line, sometimes for quite awhile to be seen. The data we gather will inform Rainbow Network and us about the best way to partner with the communities in this region to be healthy communities on a sustainable level.

Speaking of technology, Mark, our technology guru had some big challenges with the electronic data entry system he has been developing along with a team from UWL. He finally went to the top of a hill where he could get a cell signal, phoned his contact in La Crosse, discussed the error messages people were receiving and received a call back within minutes telling him how to fix it. He did, and we were off and running with no more issues.
It is an amazing thing to be able to capture electronic medical information in a remote village in a developing country.
 As always, the most amazing volunteers, so many of them young adult students, have stepped up to be in a place they have never been, with a culture and language they are not familiar with, doing work they are learning to do on the fly, and are doing it with excitement, enthusiasm, respect for the citizens here and incredible joy.
So, off we go with another day of the same, hoping to capture data from all of the community members.
 Please stay tuned!

Day 1

This is Irene on the first day of our work here. We had a rainy and breezy day yesterday, much cooler than at home! Despite the rain we had a good trip to Matagalpa and a lovely time in the rain forest, though a bit muddy. We settled into our little hostel which is our home for the next 5 days and had a nice dinner out in one of our favorite restaurants. We also spent quite a bit of time getting ready for our day today, with Dr. Gilmore doing extensive training on the community assessments which we start today. As always we have an amazing team, with an awesome group of young adults who are so excited to be here and anxious to start their work. Keep in touch.

Back in Nica!

Hi! This is Irene. Well, here we are again, back in our second home, looking forward to an amazing week of work. The trip to Managua went well, with just a bit of a delay in Chicago. We met our friend Rachel Thompson who was already here, a lovely reunion with her!! Today we travel to Selva Negra and enjoy the rain forest before we start our work. Then to our hostel in Matagalpa, where we are staying for the first time. We will be meeting our awesome Nicaragua friends and interpreters this morning and are so excited to see them again!Thanks for following us and keep in touch!