Day 1 & Orientation

¡Hola!

Today wass day Day 1 in Nicaragua and so far everything is going well. My roommates Nicolette and Jessica are great! Today is our official orientation. We arrived at school at 9:00am but other days school starts at 8:15am. Breakfast is at 7 so we were up and ready to go. For Desayuno(Breakfast) we had a fruit bowl of Pineapple, watermelon and Papaya, and a banana on the side, there was toast and coffee and water. There is also a couple from Holland here on vaction, who we eat with and are really nice.After Breakfast Carlos, our homeowner's dousing told us about their family,his life story and a tour of the house. The house has so many paintings and antiques such as record player, German Clock, Cassetes, lots of books and of course my instagramed Fountain in the center of our house. 

Fountain in center of the house

Antiques, Painting, Rocking chairs, Record player etc

Meet Jessica y Nicolette, my awesome roomies!

Front of our school

Inside the school

Carlos from our home stay escorted us but the route is pretty straightforward so my roommates and i should have no problem finding our way around. The school is in a really cool building, and we got to explore by the balcony area.

Balcony with Nicolette

          First we did our Spanish Placement exam, which was interesting but turned out pretty well; I was placed in Group 4/6. Im glad i feel like its both a good representation of my knowledge and will be a good level/challenge for me. Its really cool some of the student in Group 6 are fluent and that will be helpful when we travel in big groups! 

Next we had our official orientation talking about rules, class structure, stereotypes and culture shock, pretty typical information.

Rice+chicken, cheese, vegetables, salad

After we had Lunch, which was delivered by our lovely home stay. It was deliciousAfter we walked around a bit to get some credit for our phones and then returned for Part II of classes.

We also had a performance by a dance company, showing us traditional dances and combination of spanish, indigenous and traditional Nicaraguan dances. All the outfits were soo colorful and beautiful. I also like the music, hope I can learn few songs before i leave.

My favorite outfit

The last dance all three couples danced together

The center of the school

Our class consist of Lecture followed by a lab. our Instructor is Iyad Obeid, a BME professor from Temple University. We talked about Medical Equipement in the Developing world and had crash course of important engineering concepts we should have basic foundation in like Ohms law, Fourier Transform, Amplifiers etc. For Lab we just received our equipment and our partners are the people we will be working with in the next month, my partner is Kaitlyn, she just graduated from university in Iowa.

Dinner was really early. Shortly after we arrived from school Dinner was served. We had eggs, feta cheese, salad and  Gallo Pinto ( beans with rice).  And Horchata( don't think i spelt that correctly) it was like a milky drink we all agreed it tasted like cereal milk. 

Being that it was our first night and hadn't organized a collective way to communicate as a big group everyone did their own thing. We just stayed home. There is wifi so we were on the internet or reading book.

Buenas Noches!