My new address

Richard Goggins
Apartado Postal 216
Leon, Leon, Nicaragua
Central America

I´m going to check this every 2ish weeks. So…send me crap.

Remember - Padre Richard Goggins, putting stickers on it, that sort of stuff goes a long way. Could be the difference between me getting the package and not.

An epic 21 page, 12,000 word journal post. Good Luck.

July 27^th

With 5 people crammed into a TINY room on 4 beds, I slept like total crap last night. Owen and Avi got home and got to bed at around way-too-late-in-the-night, and this definitely impeded me from getting any REM sleep the entire night. I woke up at 5:30 ever though I didn’t have to leave until 10:15 for Achuapa, and was pretty productive.

I packed up all my nonsense, and after eating breakfast, headed over to the Peace Corps office with David and Patrick to repack our bags (all the volunteers had bags at the PC office), and then take off for our respective sites. We hung out for around 30 minutes before David and Patrick hopped a taxi to the bus station and left me solo. I decided to go back to the SBD hotel to say goodbye to everybody, then over to the TEFL hotel to hang out with them for a bit before I headed to the bus station.

After parting with the TEFLers, I met Jordan at the PC HQ and we walked to the UCA with all our gear. I ended up bailing a bag of books and my medkit since I’m getting a site visit from our program coordinator on Thursday. This was an awkward array of things, so to minimize the confusion, I duct taped everything together into a neat little ball of mess.

In the microbus, Jordan and I sat in back of former Nica PC volunteer. She was a Nica 36 environmental volunteer and was back in the country visiting. She gave us some pretty good advice/helped us pass the time with stories about PC.

Jordan and I split up in Leon and I hopped on a bus for Achuapa, completely dehydrated. Luckily, everything from an ice cream vendor, to a hot dog vendor, to a corn chip vendor, to a water vendor, to a fresh cow milk vendor, to a fruit vendor walked through the bus, and I was able to quench my thirst (with the water, not the cow milk). The trip itself was made a billion times easier when the driver threw in a Traci Chapman album that really helped time just fly. On top of this, I kept falling asleep, and the driver was driving ridiculously fast. We arrived in Achuapa 45 minutes early because of the breakneck pace the driver had, and I was able to be productive.

After unpacking my bag, I decided to head over to one of my counterpart’s house to chat with her, and let her know I was back in town. She joked with me a whole lot (I call her Profe Bromista), and told me she was heading to Costa Rica on Friday and was therefore canceling class for the following week – awesome. I’m not worried about her since she’s such a great teacher though.

Following my rendezvous with her (where I was given a free dinner), I went over to another part of town where I met the JICA (Japanese Peace Corps essentially) volunteer that is in my site. She’s a tiny Japanese girl named Noriko and speaks no English, but very warm and chatty. We negotiated an exchange of English for Japanese classes, and for some reason, I ended up teaching her and her entire host family a bunch of Czech and German words, because they were curious.

Eventually, I headed back home and decided to blog before jumping into bed for a great sleep (Si Dios Quiere).

July 28^th

“Holy crap! I must have slept for 15 hours!”

This was the first thing I thought to myself upon waking up so incredibly rested. After sleeping 4 hours a night for the last week and a half, I was completely exhausted and could barely keep my eyes open at 9:30 last night. I’ve lost my clock or misplaced it, so it took a little while to consult the time. Nevertheless, I saw that I was completely rested and it was only 7:30 A.M. – I hadn’t even slept in! Double trouble!

My game plan is to save money by preparing my own breakfasts in the morning, so as soon as I got up, I threw on the clothes I was wearing the previous day and went to the mini-super to grab some milk. Right now we’re in a 15-day dry spurt called canicula (I think that’s how you spell it), and this meant one thing – another gorgeous day. The walk to the super was very pleasant and I was greeted by most of the people I passed. The super only had one half litre (or rather 473 ml, where the hell are my 27 ml?) of milk, and I was fortunate enough to get it.

On the walk to my house, some random guy with his shirt pulled up over his stomach came up to me shouting, “Oy chele! Repuso a Van?” Van was the last Peace Corps volunteer that was in Achuapa who left in March, and I’m replacing him. Apparently, the volunteer who lives in El Sauce told him that I was coming, and he was pretty excited. I chatted with him, Yader, and another guy on the sidewalk cleaning some shoes, Jorge, for about 10 minutes about what I’ll be doing in Achuapa, and how long I’ll be staying. There were real nice guys and I was able to pry out information about the owner of the gigantic bike shop down the street from my house. He told me that he was a really nice guy and that I could get a custom made bicycle to my liking there (I planned on going to the bike shop this afternoon, but I ended up unfortunately I didn’t have enough time).

I parted ways with Yader and Jorge, ate breakfast and then headed over to the elementary school in town. The school has a long history of working with PC volunteers, so I figured I’d continue the tradition. Unfortunately, the directora wasn’t there when I arrived, so I decided I’d come back later.

The next stop on my trip was to Instituto San Sebastian, one of the institutos that I’ll be teaching in. I have yet to establish a schedule there, so I wanted to get that all taken care of. The classes that I was going to teach all were taken out of the schedule since there was nobody to teach it, so as of now, there are some serious schedule issues – because there is no schedule. Furthermore, It turned out that the counterpart I was going to work with left when the class was canceled, so I was going to be working with another guy, Esteban. He’s a soft-spoken, but very nice guy and I went and observed a physics class he was teaching. He was giving classes to 5^th year students (12 grade more or less), and since I’m going to be giving classes to them, I thought it’d be useful to observe their class. After around 30 minutes in the class, he asked me if I had any words for the class. I didn’t really, but after presenting myself briefly, a student said we should do an icebreaker. Fortunately, I’d done plenty of those during training so I busted one of them out. The class was too embarrassed to do the one I suggested (think of an animal that begins with the first letter of your first name, then make the noise that animal makes), so I busted out another one that more or less worked. It was fun and I got to know all 23 of the students in the class. This is a bummer for them as they were yelling random English phrases at me earlier in the day when I was walking to the super. That’s not going to happen anymore.

I headed back home to kill time until I was going to go back to the elementary school (at 2 PM), and ended up falling asleep for an hour. After our employee (Coco) woke me up to tell me lunch was ready, I chatted with her about her job prospects in the future. She’s thinking about joining the police academy since it pays a ton with regards to Nicaraguan standards (5,000 cords, or ~200 dollars a month). During the conversation, some random woman I hadn’t met came in looking for my host mom. She asked me what I was doing in Achuapa, and after explaining that I was the new Peace Corps volunteer and would be teaching business as well as advising small business owners, she got super excited. She told me that she had a business that received a machine to make milk colder before the pasteurization process. She buys milk from farmers in the campo around Achuapa, and then gets the milk (2000 litres of it) down to a certain temperature so she can transport it to Chinandega (a 3 hour truck ride). She got the machine to cool the milk from the NGO that I’m going to work with, The Millennium Challenge organization. The organization is a U.S. government funded venture that is striving to reduce poverty in Nicaragua by improving roads, highways, and providing capital to businesses in León and Chinandega. She told me that she’s President of the company and is able to keep her costs down because the tank is in the Casa de la Mujer (literally women’s house), which she is the owner of. After talking about virtually all aspects of her business, I told her I’d be more than happy to provide an analysis of her business in the future, which she was ecstatic to hear. Furthermore, she said that teaching women in the town about accounting or basic business courses would be something that would be popular. I’ve already got an awesome work opportunity!

I unknowingly spent an hour and a half chatting with the lady, and had to run over to the elementary school to meet the directora. Since Achuapa is wicked small, it took me roughly 2 minutes to arrive (score!), and there I found the directora sitting under a tree talking with one of the other professors. I chatted with the directora as well as 2 other professors for around 2 hours about absolutely everything – I’m gaining trust! It turns out that they have an amazing computer lab with 20 computers in the elementary school. However, the lab is only available for teachers and students. But guess who just became the newest teacher in the school? I told the directora that I was very proficient in Microsoft Word and Excel and that I’d be more than willing to teach a computer classes if they wanted…so…I think I just gained access to only computer lab in town (and it has internet!).

The meeting with the directora lasted way longer than I thought it would (2 hours), so after this, I headed home and took another nap. Immediately after nap numero dos, I decided to drop by my counterpart’s house, to see if maybe, just maybe, I could get free dinner from her (like I did last night). On the walk there, not even 2 blocks from my house, I saw that my life was complete – I found a gym. Not only is it a gym, it’s a GIGANTIC gym with tons of modern equipment! It rivals the one I was using in Denver, but just a little smaller! The muscular owner was the only person in there and told me that he charges 100 cords a month (that’s like 5 bucks!). Finding this out totally canceled any possible negative attribute Achuapa ever had (see: rain). My counterpart didn’t end up being home, so on my way back to my house, I stopped by the Japanese Peace Corps volunteer’s house to chat. I found her host dad, Hervin, sitting on the porch and he warmly invited me in to chat. I found out that he’d been saving for 8 years and in December he’ll be opening up a hotel 2 blocks from his house. It’s going to be two floors, have 15 rooms, and his wife will work at it during the week. He was excited at the prospect of me teaching him how to use excel and help him with accounting as well as a business plan and action plan. In addition to hearing this awesome news, he told me that he has an idea to start a honey farm with 200 bee hives, and wanted help executing his plan – could I have had any more awesome work opportunities fall into my lap? So hopefully I can work something out with him.

What an awesome day – it was probably the most productive day of my life.

Thanks for the text Hil! What did you mean by ‘strand-happy?’

July 29^th

Oh wow did today begin early.

Today I had to attend a security meeting in León that was to start at 9 AM, and that meant but one thing – I had to leave really early. I ended up getting up at 3:15 so I could have enough time to get ready before the bus ended up leaving. I’d only slept around 5 hours and definitely needed a shower to wake myself up. I got in the bathroom and after dumping the first bucket of water on myself – the lights went out. So I put my clothes back on and hiked back over to my room and scrounge around for my headlamp. After this, I finished my shower without any further problem (aside from being unable to see anything). I got out of the house just in time to catch the bus as it was leaving (or so I thought). Instead of taking its normal route, the bus drove in circles around the town 3 times before actually leaving which left me directionally destroyed, as I had no idea where we were going. I even got so worried that I needed to ask somebody if the bus was going to León (as if there were so many busses to chose from). I brought an IPOD for the trip even though PC suggests that you not because it was just too damn early. The music kept me effectively distracted and I was in a semi-conscious state the entire ride (for the second time in a row – the trip just flies by why I’m not really awake).

I arrived in León around 7:30 – plenty of time to go grocery shopping for things that aren’t sold in Achuapa (see: most things). I ended up picking up whole wheat pasta (2.2 lbs cost 3 dollars – what a steal!), some peanut butter (JIF!), some bag milk (since it’s hard to come by here for some reason), and then some breakfast for the morning. I kind of cut it close on time and had to hurry up to the hotel for our security meeting. However, after exiting the super market, I became readily aware that I had no idea what hotel I was going with, or where it was. I remember looking at a map and seeing that it was near some church, so I hopped a camioneta bus (literally a flat bag pick up truck with a tarp over the back to protect us from the sun), and went to the central park. By some stroke of luck, the first hotel I stumbled into was the right hotel, and there I found all the other volunteers from the León region. I knew a handful of them from charlas they gave us when I was in training and chatted with them a bit. One of the volunteers, the one from CSU, is leaving for the U.S. on Thursday and gave me his 2 huge raincoats that he had since he won’t need them in Colorado (I later found out that in Achuapa we get approximately 2 meters of rain a year – that’s around 6.5 feet of rain in a year! Holy crap! Something tells me that raincoat will come in useful.

Our security meeting basically was just an overview of everything I’d learned in training – except this time it was for the volunteers. The chief of police from León gave us a huge presentation, the head of security at the U.S. embassy gave us a presentation, as well as the head of security at PC. Pretty standard.

The meeting itself was in our potentially new EAP location. The EAP location is where everybody in our department would get consolidated if PC decides that it’s too dangerous to be in our sites. Most of the time, this happens during hurricanes when PC deems it necessary to consolidate us all in one area. However the thing about this potential EAP site is that it’s a 4-star hotel. Due to this, the highlight of the whole day was the meal we got afterwards. It was amazing food and could definitely be deemed “luxurious”. Who’d have thought?

After the meeting, I hung out with a couple of the volunteers and went and grabbed a quick ice cream with them before hopping on the last bus for Achuapa. I didn’t have music this time, so the ride didn’t quite fly by. I did, however, seem to be on another planet or completely oblivious that we made a stop in the biggest town along the way to Achuapa – 3.5 hours in a bus just fly by now!

I got home and ate a good hearty meal before receiving a call from the Japanese PC volunteer who had invited me to a birthday party tonight. She said it was already over (even though I was told it started at 8), so I just decided to stop by her house for clarification. Turned out there wasn’t anything going on, so I just ended up meeting the lady who celebrated her birthday instead. She owns a pulperia down the street from my house and is definitely a good person to know if I’m starving to death, or something like that.

After this, I went to my counterpart’s house to talk with her about observing her class tomorrow. I brought my headlamp, which she continually referred to as my “facenta lampara,” literally my “stuck up lamp.” She said it was facenta because nobody in Achuapa has a headlamp like that – whatever.

Another busy day tomorrow. I’ll be happy when I can just chill our for once – I’m completely exhausted.

July 30^th

Today I was finally able to get that 8ish hours of sleep I so desparately needed, but I still woke up tired. I guess I still have some catching up to do. I had to meet my counterpart at 6:45 at her house to go and observe the 4^th year class that I’m going to be teaching…when I decide I’m ready to start teaching. I showed up at her house right on time (I’m assuming my clock is 10 minutes fast), and since I didn’t have a bike to ride, she just told me to take her bike to the school and she’d take the bus that goes there (which costs a ton).

I was pretty stoked that she just told me to go because she rides awfully slow, or rather, not Goggins speed. Riding solo yielded me clipping along quite nicely and arriving in around 20 minutes – not bad. I observed the class, which was in the older building of the school (which is in a very rural community). The building itself is pretty run down and the entire back wall of the classroom is made of cardboard. The latter characteristic I failed to notice until one of the students came in through a gaping hole that was in the wall. Nevertheless, the class was very well disciplined (this I attribute to my amazing counterpart – she’s on top of her game), and worked on their projects. In the middle of the class, the students told my counterpart that I was shy – so I immediately jumped up and did a dinamica with them. They then quickly learned 2 things – one being that yes, I can understand everything they say, and two; I’m far from timid.

After the class was over, I decided to head back to Achuapa since I had several other commitments during the day. The bus that goes to the school never showed up, so my counterpart ended up riding this enormous bike that was a billion inches too tall for her. So as I was leaving, she told me to take that as opposed to her bike. The bike was all spiffy with flashy red everything and surprisingly, it rode like a dream. This was clearly not your typical commercial off-the-shelf Nicaraguan bike. The high quality of the bike was evident in the ride, and I took advantage of this by riding even faster than I did on the way to class. This was also because there are a few hills that I took advantage of more than I normally would.

I was supposed to leave the bike at my counterpart’s house with her employee…but…the maid wasn’t there, so I left it down the street with some guys who said they knew who the owner was (I figured if they were lying, my counterpart would kill them, so I wasn’t worried about it). After this, I headed back home where our employee told me to try some random mashed up dish. It ended up being a mashed up corn type paste that had the consistency of mashed potatoes and the taste of…well, corn. I downed that and two ears of corn before heading off to Instituto San Sebastian to observe one of my other counterpart’s classes.

I found my counterpart outside and chatted with him a bit about pretty much everything. I wanted to find out why he wanted to teach the class since he was a systems engineer, and he told me that he was interested in starting his own computer repair shop. This was something I was unaware of, but super excited to hear. Furthermore, he said that he’d like to open a cyber in the town, but since there aren’t landlines in the town (I had no idea until today), if you want the internet, you have to buy a gigantic satellite (we’re talking around 10 feet across) to get the connection. Nevertheless, he said that a lot of people in Achuapa have computers, and nobody fixes computers there – so there’s demand. I really feel like I broke the ice with him with this conversation, particularly since he’s generally a really quiet guy.

Afterwards, I observed another of his physics classes (but this time to the 4^th year students), and did a dinamica with the class that went over quite well. I say this because my intention, to learn (and remember) the students names and their favourite hobby, failed miserably. I had everyone in the group tell me the aforementioned information then proceeded to remember close to nobody’s name (however, since half of them said their favourite hobby was watching TV or listening to music, I was able to guess a lot of the hobbies), which resulted in lots of laughs from the students. All the better since I don’t food around with discipline in my class. That’s right, laugh it up now kiddos, because you’ll be crying later.

I headed to the elementary school afterwards to find all the teachers leaving and the directora asking me why I hadn’t shown up earlier, “I had a lot of commitments.” Me showing up was clearly of little importance to them as they proceeded to joke with me for the next 15 minutes about a myriad of topics. Since I missed the opportunity to meet other professors in the elementary school, I headed over to the bike shop to finally introduce myself – and this was a gigantic success.

The owner, Rene, had been good friends with the last Peace Corps volunteer that was in Achuapa, so I more or less had an advantage going in there. It was probably the strangest request he’d ever had, as I walked in and said:

“Hi, I’m the new Peace Corps volunteer, replacing Van. I’m also a cyclist and dying without my bicycle. So I was wondering if I could work here for free and you could teach me all the technical terms for bicycles because I’m having a tough time explaining bike things to people.”

This was clearly new, but after a couple of few minutes of talking, I was in the shop asking what every single tools and component for a bike was in Spanish, then telling him what it was in English. Furthermore, I was telling him all about bikes – types of bikes, how many bikes I had, etc. A short visit to introduce myself turned into me spending 2 and a half hours talking with him about bicycles, showing him all the tools I brought with me, and explaining what type of bike I was looking for. After explaining everything I wanted, he suggested I go to Estelí to check out the used bike selection they have there before having him make a bike for me. However, until he does make me a bike, he said I could borrow his awesome mountain bike and either of his road bikes whenever I wanted. What awesomeness!

In the middle of my 2.5-hour discourse, it began to rain – hard (2000 mm of rain, remember?). I wanted to head home, so I borrowed an umbrella from my new friend Rene, and walked through the hurricane-like rain back to my house. It rained so hard that the entire street going back to my house was under 2 inches of water – after 30 minutes of raining. After swimming back home, I grabbed my raincoat (thanks Mason!) and walked the umbrella back to the bike shop before returning home once again. I was the only person on the street and everybody who had a house on the street definitely watched me make my round trip journey to and from the bike shop 3 times. This yielded me striking up a conversation about how much I hated the rain with some random people who were standing on their porch. I tend to get the same answer – but if there’s no rain, there’s no food. To this I always retort back with “But you need the sun for food as well!”

Eventually the rain stopped and I checked out the gym down the street from my house (one block from my house, and one block from the bike shop!). There I found my counterpart from San Sebastian there working out, so I chatted with him for a bit before paying my membership fee. The process went like so: “How much does it cost for a month?” “50 cordobas” “Oh, I thought it was 100, do you have change?” “No.” “Ok, then I’ll pay for 2 months.” The guy then stuck the money in his pocket and that was that. He didn’t even write down anything, just said that was set. So now I’ve got everything I need in Achuapa – perfect.

The rest of the night I read, ate dinner, and got the rest I have been craving for oh so long.

July 31^st

Today began easy enough, though I still was lacking that “Oh boy, I feel so rested” feeling. Nevertheless, Georgia, my PC program director was coming to Achuapa to bring up my things I left at the PC office in Managua, and also to meet up with my counterparts and my NGO.

She showed up at about 9:30 while I was hanging out in my room making a spreadsheet (well you tell me what to do with my free time). Our employee came and told me “A youth (joven) has arrived looking for you.” Huh? A joven? Who the hell could it be? And why did they come to my house? Do I need to look spiffy for this joven? Alas, upon further investigation, I discovered it was just Georgia.

I gave her an edited breakdown of how things have been going in my roughly 4 days at site and she was astounded to find out how much I had done so far, and the number of opportunities I had found. After brief analysis of my site, we hopped in the PC mobile to go over to meet my NGO at some place called CAFI. It’s some cooperativa in the town that sells all sorts of cool products, and is where a group that I’ll be working with congregates. Initially, we showed up at the wrong location and were directed to the “highway” (it’s a dirt road) towards Estelí. Apparently it’s the biggest building we’ll find on our right hand side – and indeed it was.

There we found my NGO counterpart, Ninoska, setting up a presentation for a group of farmers. After a short introduction we all got into the PC mobile and headed back “into town” (about 2 blocks) to talk with her over a coffee (which I don’t drink) at some coffee shop I had no idea existed. She broke down all the work opportunities I’d have working in Achuapa as well as where the groups need help. While discussing all of this, she mentioned that she would be heading over to the cooperative’s office (around the corner). We walked over there and while we were waiting for Ninoska to arrange our visit, a friendly man in army camouflage pants named Brigido greeted us. From what I gathered, he is the person in charge of organizing the international music festival that is put on in Achuapa every year. He said around 6000 people come to the fair (that’s almost double the size of the population of the city) from 13 different countries, an impressive statistic considering Achuapa is pretty isolated. After talking with him a bit, he brought up the need for translators – so guess what I’m probably doing at the festival. It’s a good thing to throw on a resume…if I really needed resume fodder.

While we were speaking to Brigido about the music festival, some couple walked in and hugged Brigido and started chatting to him. I don’t know what the connection between the couple and Brigido was, but it seemed like they were good friends. However out of nowhere the wife started speaking to us in English. After we told her we worked for Peace Corps, she mentioned her husband was a Peace Corps volunteer. We continued speaking in Spanish so Brigido could understand, only to find out that her husband was a Peace Corps volunteer in…Liberia. Whoops, we thought he understood Spanish.

Ninoska finally came back and said the lady in charge of the cooperative was ready to meet with us, so into her office we went. There she gave us a breakdown of the businesses that I had the opportunity to assess. Apparently there is a group of women that sells tea that needs help developing a business plan. Furthermore, there is a man who works in the campo of Achuapa that sells certified organic sesame seed oil. However, while he produces barrels of it, he doesn’t have a certified brand for it. He sells these barrels of sesame seed oil to Costa Rica (which then has a label thrown on it and is sold back to Nicaragua for a ridiculous price). The cooperativa and the producer don’t think there is a market in Nicaragua, and therefore are selling the product abroad – this is where I come in. My game plan is to get the information to show that there actually is a market in Managua – a huge one, or people that will buy his product, particularly since he had to go through such a thorough certification process to have the oil deemed “organic”. It’d be awesome if I could get him to get a registered brand for his product and find a place in Managua (I know a few) that would be interested in buying his product. Talk about potential!

In addition to learning about that awesome work opportunity, I was informed that there is a grupo de jovenes that lives in the complex where we met Ninoska in the building. Right now, it houses 23 youths who had interfamiliar circumstances/don’t have the opportunity to advance their lives, and all live together in this complex. They attend school in Achuapa in the morning, then receive life skills classes and other useful workshops and whatnot during the afternoon/weekends. As luck would have it, PC requires us to work with a group of youths, to try to set a good example, and teach them life skills classes. This is ridiculous – Achuapa fits me like a glove. Everything I want to do/am required to do is just throwing itself at me.

After this meeting, I told Brigido that I’d pass by the cooperativa to speak with him about the festival next week and we headed to Los Caraos to pick up one of my counterparts. We then went out for lunch before heading back to her house where we chatted for an hour and, strangely enough, peeled beans. It wasn’t what I thought I’d be doing, but my counterpart said she wanted to give Georgia some beans, so she busted out a gigantic sack of unpeeled red beans, and the 6 people that were there just peeled away for an hour. It was a strangely fun bonding experience.

I had a meeting with all my counterparts, directores, and the ministry of education delegate at 2 o’clock to clear up any and all issues my counterparts/myself may have. The meeting was quite brief and it answered a few of my questions, though I feel it was more helpful for my counterparts than it was for me.

Georgia dropped me off at my house afterwards with my block of things (I’d duct taped 3 bags and a medical kit together), and I went and rested. It was the first time that I’d gotten done with everything before dinner – exciting, I know. I read for a couple of hours before I remembered that I was running low on cereal. So off to the mini-super I went to get my awesome generic brand of cereal, only to find that they only had the brand name, and inferior tasting Kellogs Corn Flakes. Bummer. The box is half the size of the other one, and only costs 4 cords less. What a rip off. To hell with you Kellogs! You’re ruining my Peace Corps experience, and my budget!

On my way home, I decided to stop by Hervin/Noriko’s house since I hadn’t stopped by the previous day. There I found Hervin and Gloria (the lady who owns the milk cooperative) in front of their house chatting. We then talked for the next 30 minutes about things they could do, financing they could get, how to find a partner for their business, how to increase the profitability of their business, etc. In other words, we talked about things I wish I knew a whole lot more about. Fortunately, it’s all a learning process, and since I do know more about the process, and what options they have, I definitely have the opportunity to help them in some manner. However, they were pretty adamant, “You NEED to help me with this action plan!” they continually were telling me.

Hervin even brought me down the street to show me the hotel he was building. It’s far from what I initially imagined – it’s gigantic. It’s been under construction for 3 months and he has 5 rooms built already. It’s pretty much just the bare bones of the rooms themselves, but it’s really impressive. As of now, the plan calls for 5 rooms, a dining room, patio, washing area (for clothes/towels/etc.), and a path that goes past all the rooms and lined with plants. It should be amazing. He also told me if he gets a socio (a partner, I think. I’m forgetting a lot of English these days), he’s going to add 10 more rooms, a pool, and another gigantic patio. Talk about visionary.

After talking with Hervin for a bit, then talking with Noriko, Hervin invited me for dinner, or rather, he just told me dinner was ready. Woohoo! That’s one more meal I don’t have to buy. During dinner, I talked up a storm with Hervin’s sons – Hervin and Harbin. The conversation pretty much revolved around soccer, baseball, traveling, and other random topics for about an hour before I decided to head home – I was getting tired of hearing myself talk.

Another overly productive day. Service will fly by if these are how my days go.

August 1^st

I was incredibly excited because I had nothing to do today – at least that’s what I thought when I woke up. Unfortunately, I had neglected to remember that I had to go to Los Caraos to meet my third year students. I’d slept so well (till 7:45 – is that a new record?), and had to move a little quicker since I left myself little time to get ready and take the 20 minute bike ride to the school. Rene, the owner of the bike shop, lent me the bike he built for his wife (which is just a beast), and after buying some bread, I returned home to eat a quick breakfast. However, our employee brought me an enormous cauldron-like bowl of soup. What better way to start your day than sopa de gallina? I was able to down about half of it before I had to kick it into high gear and finish getting ready.

Fortunately, I arrived at Los Caraos with 2 minutes to spare, but to rather odd conditions. Every student was outside with machetes, shovels, and pick axes, chopping away at grass, earth, and whatever seemed to be in the way. I asked my counterpart what was going on and she told me they were doing some maintenance. Upon asking her why she didn’t tell me this was what was going on, she told me, “Well, if I had told you, you wouldn’t have come.” Of course I’d have come – it’s my job. I don’t have a choice. She wanted me to machete away with the students, but I got out of it by chatting it up with the Vision Mundial person who was there supervising the work the kids were doing.

It became obvious that class wouldn’t be happening, so I asked me counterpart what the deal was, and she said I could go introduce myself to the students today. I presented myself for around 25 minutes in what turned out to be a very easy going/smooth session. I was quite proud of the way I was able to handle my Spanish and explain my life/the role I’ll have in the class. A couple of the kids asked if I played volleyball to which I responded with “Sí, ¿Cómo no?” This yielded me playing volleyball with the kid for around 20 minutes, and dominating them on that note. Nevertheless, I had to cut short my participation in the game since I had to get to the elementary school. I’d said I’d stop by this week to meet the professors, but always ended up showing up too late as a result of my other meetings. After dropping off Rene’s bike, I headed over to the school and got there a cool 40 minutes before school got out – awesome. The directora sent me over to meet the 6^th graders – what I thought would be a brief introduction. This “brief introduction” turned into a 40-minute discussion about Richard, his life, the life of U.S. citizens, racism in the U.S., the geography of the U.S., why Richard isn’t married, and the new soccer team Richard is going to form. This soccer team wasn’t something I proposed – it was something that I just learned I was doing. The professor told the students, “Profe Richard will be forming a soccer team out of this class!” Taken aback, I responded with, “He’ll be starting a team? Well he didn’t know this.” Long story short – I guess I’m starting a soccer team. After the class was over, 31 kids, all of whom wanted to know the logistics of this soccer team that I just learned I was starting, surrounded me. I just told them I had no idea when I was going to do it and that I’d talk with them next week.

I was exhausted after this previously unplanned day, and immediately went home to eat lunch and read. After a couple of hours of rest, I dropped off a book at my counterpart’s house, and then went to the bike shop – to build some more confianza with the owner. This turned into a big English lesson while we watched the new Die Hard movie in Spanish. He also showed me how to build some bike wheels – an important skill for those of you out there that like bikes. This all killed about 2.5 hours, and killed enough time for the gym to open (which seems to open completely randomly and not on any set schedule whatsoever).

When I got back from the gym, the lights went out for the 3^rd time in the last 24 hours…and…never came back on. I don’t know what the deal is, but the consistent electricity has definitely been and issue – and it robbed me of a full bag of milk that spoiled in the fridge.

Give me light!

August 2^nd

My prayers were somewhat answered at 2 in the morning today when the power finally came back on. I was ecstatic, jumped out of bed (I think because my fan went on), and plugged in every electronic gadget I had. I then happily drifted back to sleep knowing I had ceased my dark existence that had been prevalent the last two days.

I woke up at around 8:45 (A new record), and decided that today, the only substantial thing I would do is tackle this book I’ve been reading. It’s about a guy who was an economic hit man and the current state of U.S. driven economic development around the world. After finishing it, it really made me question where I am going to take my career after my Peace Corps service. I’m not sure if economic development is what I want to do anymore.

Unfortunately, shortly after finishing my book, the lights went again. This was followed by the water shortly thereafter – major bummer. Since I’d been kicked back down into a more primitive existence, I figured I’d entertain myself by heading over to the bike shop. I showed up right when the bus from León was showing up to drop off a bunch of new bikes and equipment that he had bought. For the next 2 hours I just hung out with him and the customers while I kept practicing building a wheel. Aside from a little help, I put the whole thing together by myself and did a great job! What a triumphant mark in my Peace Corps/Bike mechanic career! In addition to learning about bikes and teaching Rene words in English, I’ve found that going to the bike shop always yields a free bottle of soda from him – definitely a plus, just another way I can save money!

I came back home after this and decided to take on another book – one about child soldiers in Africa. This book is about as warm and feel-good as it sounds so I only devoted a good half hour to reading it. Yoga seemed like it was in the cards, so I did that to kill some time afterwards. Magically, the lights came back on, but this was just a teaser – they went back out 10 minutes later and I have yet to see them since.

Gonna be an early night, given I’m lacking light and water. I might have to go into hibernation to survive.

August 3^rd

Seeing how I went to bed so ridiculously early, I woke up at a pretty early. I had planned to do some chores…but…my motivation to do chores here is about as high as it is when I’m in the U.S., so that didn’t really happen. I set up my mosquitero and following a phone call from my counterpart, headed over to Los Caraos to “pasear”.

I had no idea what she was actually doing there, she just told me to go to the institute then to call her. After arriving there, she told me to go down a side road where I ended up rendezvousing with her daughter Lucy whom I followed to our ultimate destination – a farm. This farm belonged to the parents of one of the students in my 3^rd year class, Adelki, and this is where I spent the next 5 hours.

They were going to teach me how to make tamales or something (I ended up leaving before they were made), and we made some chicken soup. It started out with me husking roughly 100 ears of corn for the tamales, which took about an hour. Then the mother of Adelki came by with a chicken and tried to wedge its feet in between two logs while she put it out of its misery. The chicken didn’t take this very well and flipped out. The solve this problem, she grabbed it by its next and swung it around much like a child’s toy its neck was broken. Gross. I was really in the mood to be vegetarian after that one. It didn’t help that the chicken was twitching on the ground for the next 15 minutes either. When it finally succumbed to extreme adversity (I feel a broken neck qualifies), and after I got the stomach back, I went back to husking corn before feeding the husks to the cows. Had no idea cows ate corn husks – you learn something everyday. The rest of the time I spent here was much of the same – chatting with my counterpart and her friends, laying in the hammock, and being bewildered that I was on a farm killing chickens and making a fresh meal – literally. For the record, a fresh meal takes roughly 4 hours to make. On that note, I’d like to send thanks to the owners of grocery stores around the world.

When I left, the sun was at its hottest, and the ride back to Achuapa was absolutely brutal. The trip into town took roughly twice as long as it should, and left me pretty dehydrated. As I sluggishly made my way back to my house, I ran into Brigido, the man in charge of the music festival that will be going on this upcoming weekend. He brought me into the building, which will be the information center for the festival and showed me all the t-shirts, programs, and other information that will be available for the upcoming festivities. The t-shirts are great and are only 50 cords! Score!

After stopping by the bike shop and chatting with Rene for a little bit, I headed home and watched one of the many movies I brought with me. The power went out for the 5^th time in 4 days, so that meant I’d be eating dinner in the dark again. During dinner, more bad news came. Our employee advised me that I have to move out by the middle of November because the son of my host mom will be coming to live in her house, therefore I’m getting the boot. This was a tad disconcerting, since I was planning on living with a host family most of my service. While this was a major bummer the day ended on a better note as I found out from one of the people I know in town that his grandmother could rent me a room if worse came to worse.

Phew.

However, if I end up renting a house instead of a room, I’m definitely going to have no stove or refrigerator. On that note – send money.

August 4^th

All the housing nonsense gave me some pretty hardcore nightmares. However, they all came in the form of every potential landlord charging me $100 a month for a room – more than half my salary. Some people have the boogeyman, I have…well, a Peace Corps salary mixed with high inflation. An experience for sure!

Fortunately I woke up from my nightmare. However, I was kind of still living it, so I was pretty stressed for much of the morning. The housing worries combined with the isolation from other volunteers finally setting in stressed me out a bit. At first I didn’t know how to handle this, but remembered that the best way to handle these things is by keeping busy.

I had a class to observe at 11 AM, which was 2 hours away. I’d tried meditating to clear my thoughts, but the culmination of all my concerns was too intense to ignore – so I headed to the primary school. I was killing two birds with one stone by playing this card – I was getting my mind off of what was bothering me, and I was gaining trust of the directora, which means I can use their computer lab.

The directora was surprised, yet pleased to see me (see? Already gaining that trust). I told her I wanted to meet every professor in the school, so she walked me around to each classroom to introduce myself to the professors. I even went to meet the preschool teachers that were in a building down the street. In addition to the soccer team I was told I’d be starting, I think I’m going to do something like RIF (reading is fundamental) to try to promote reading among the students. We had a program in elementary school where we got pizza certificates for reading, and I think a similar type of incentive-driven program could definitely work here. If it did actually work, that’d be awesome.

After meeting all the professors, I headed over to my institute to try to figure out a schedule to teach there. After a few roadblocks, we finally hammered one out and I headed back home to kill a couple of hours before I had to go back to the school to observe a class.

Watching a movie (Lost in Translation – how appropriate!) during my break helped me feel positive again, and the rest of the day was cake. I was finally able to meet my third yesar students and was able to play a dinamica that they all loved. To make things easier, I know 3 of the kids in the class already. Furthermore, I’m really good friends with their father, and might end up living with them or their grandmother. I own them! If there was ever a hint that they’d be a discipline issue, any idea of that ever happening just flew out the window. After this, I picked up an Achuapa Music Festival shirt and then headed to the gym.

At the gym, the guy who I’d paid my “membership” to (yes, that no questions/no forms businessman) greeted me with a “Hey buddy, how are you doing?” This caught me off guard, but after talking to him for a good half an hour, I learned that he’d studied English for 2 years in the university in León, and will be moving to San Francisco in December to live with his mom. His English is phenomenal, and it actually helped both of us since I’d been missing it as of lately.

The rest of the day consisted of me doing an encuesta of Ervin (the father of 2 of the kids in my class), and then hunkering down after the rain knocked out the power (but it was only our for an hour – a new record!).

Oh yea – today, I ate fish eyes. A new experience.

August 5^th

Unfortunately my dreams were once again plagued with thoughts about my housing situation, as well as other issues I have to deal with. I rolled out of bed at around 7, giving me about 4 hours before I’d have to observe my class in one of my institutes. Unfortunately, now I can only get 200g boxes of cereal – and I’m dying. Half a box of cereal is a Goggins size bowl of cereal. All this means is that eating is just that more expensive, as if inflation wasn’t enough to worry about.

I headed to the institute a little earlier to make a good impression and to talk with my counterpart for a bit…only to find out that the class I was going to observe is already finished. They ran out of material, so they ended the class – so I didn’t observe anything. The directora is the daughter of my host mom, so I spoke with her a little bit about their broken computers they have in the computer lab, and she asked if I could help with it – I have no idea. I said I’d look into it, so I headed over to the primary school to talk with the guy who runs the computer lab there, and to also remember what the internet looks like (since all the kids were using the internet). He told me that it was a physical problem and that the computers needed to be upgraded to be of any use to the school. In other words, they need money – something I have none of. Who knows though, maybe I’ll be able to work with the ministry of education and get some kind of funding for a lab.

After dealing with all of that, I headed back home and sunk back into my “Oh my god, I’ve only been here a week and I’m dying” feeling. My attempt to alleviate this problem initially was by listening to some music, but that just left me to think about everything. Needed more sensory stimulation led me to the living room where I found consolation by watching 3 hours of the European figure skating championships. I’m not going to question why I felt better afterwards, but thankfully I did. After that “mentally trying” figure skating marathon, I took an hour nap before heading over to my counterpart’s house to plan for our next class we have to give tomorrow.

The planning session was terrifying at first because it seemed like I’d be there forever, but after about an hour of discussion, and explanation of the theme (Marketing. Coincidentally the only topic I can confidently discuss in Spanish). My counterparts played ignorant in the beginning but in the end they through together a lesson plan and understood everything I explained to them the first time – it was amazing. I was able to get out of there after an hour of planning, definitely a new record for me (whether I was planning by myself or with somebody else).

Aside from watching another movie, I had some correspondence with Dianne, Nikki, and Joanna Pezko – thank god, outside contact, in english.

Rough week so far.

August 6^th

After phone conversations with other volunteers last night, I woke up worry free and without the feeling of isolation that I’d been hampered with since the weekend.

I was going to ‘observe’ the first class that I helped plan and got out the door pretty early. Being Mr. Puntual, I arrived with 5 minutes to spare – like a good American. My counterpart showed up 30 minutes later and then the class was a little choppy. We’re having some serious communication problems that I’m going to have to address in the upcoming days. Hopefully then things will flow a lot better.

While the class went pretty well, I was pretty eager to get home, get out of my work clothes, and chill out. Nevertheless, with my route home being a dirt road in the middle of farm country – I of course encountered a problem. This problem came in the form of a group of 200ish cows and horses walking down the road. Since I was riding a bicycle, I didn’t quite have the presence that a car has…so the cows didn’t move. I ultimately got by them by getting out of their blind spots so they could see me really close to them, which terrifies them. It’s works almost like a chain reaction – one cow sees me and takes off, but there are cows all around it, so it runs into others, frightens them, etc. It essentially turns into a huge ruckus and you have cows facing the opposite way mooing in angst/frustration, but whatever, I got through.

I went home and strangely went to my newest favourite past time – watching figure skating. For about 2 hours I melted my brain/calmed down via that medium before I headed to run some errands. While on my errands, I ran into Pedro, a guy who works for Fundación León 2000. It’s an organization that provides all sorts of financing/technical help to small business owners, which is exactly what I need for a guy I’m advising. I got his number and told him I’d give him a call so we could schedule a meeting – only to realise I didn’t actually save his number in my phone. Well, at least I know the resource is out there.

I watched TV for a bit longer before one of my counterparts showed up to plan our first classes. After we figured out that we’re pretty much the same age (we both thought the other one was 30), our relationship became a lot more cordial and easier to deal with. So the planning session went really smoothly, and I’m really looking forward to working with him the next 2 years. While he doesn’t know anything about business, he’s got the skills and personality to make this a huge success.

After our meeting, I watched some Deadliest Catch (the Spanish title directly translates as ‘Deadly fish”), and then got to watch my favourite show – Man vs. Wild (the Spanish title directly translates as “A test of everything” – uh….wrong). I then headed off to do the least sustainable activity in my routine – I went to the gym. I refer to it as unsustainable simply because the amount of sweating that goes on is unreal. I didn’t know my body held so much liquid – in other words, it’s disgusting.

After that, I headed over to the house of the guy that I’m advising, only to run into Brigido, the man in charge of the international music festival that is occurring this Friday and Saturday. They said they were excited that I could work as a translator and told me that my job would be to translate for people that were registering – phew. I had been worried that I’d be up on a stage translating for people, so this is definitely a lot easier. Oh yea, padding the resume. The rest of the day was pretty much down time – but at least the isolation feeling is gone (for now anyway).

August 7^th

I underwent the normal daily routine and got to school at 7:45 to observe my first class at the institute 30 seconds from my house. My counterpart is really soft spoken, so I was a tad worried about how things would go…and it turned out pretty much the way I anticipated. There are a few things that I will be changing in classes where I play a major role (aka, when I’m not observing), and additionally, I’d like to observe. I ended up teaching some of the class because my counterpart wasn’t clear on the material – my number one objective before every class. This seemed to be lacking with both my counterparts so far, so I’m going to drive this home. There are some PC volunteers that want to do a lot of teaching and don’t mind getting up in front of the class and teaching the material. I on the other hand am not like that. I don’t mind getting up there and laying down the law while teaching the material, it’s just that it’s anything but sustainable. When I leave, these teachers need to teach the material by themselves. That’s my goal, and it’s not an easy one.

I had a plan to meet with Brigido at 10 today, so after chilling out at home for a bit, I headed over to the newly transformed festival HQ to find…it wasn’t even open. Oh Nica time. I figured the office would open…eventually, so I decided to go buy another overpriced box of Corn Flakes for tomorrow.

(Warning – tangent)

The weird thing about prices in Nicaragua (well more so in the supermarkets in big towns, since there is no pricing methods in the pulperias in small towns), is that when you buy in “bulk,” or rather, the biggest sizes, it’s more expensive per unit than buying a smaller size. This is completely contrary to what we encounter in the U.S. Furthermore, per unit cost isn’t even advertised here which leads to the assumption – bigger bag, bigger price. I’ve noticed that per unit prices aren’t taken into consideration. Many tend to flock to a brand name before anything else, regardless if the quality of the brand name is better or not. Oh the power of marketing.

Anyway, on my trip to buy breakfast, I found a randomly located “supermarket” that reminded me more of a hardware store that sold food (just because of the layout of everything and the fact that inquiry is necessary to get anything you want – as if milk or a bag of straws is some sort of specialty item. Good thing the most embarrassing thing I bought was a can of apple juice and a bag of straws.

After my adventure at the supermarket-hardware store I headed back to festival HQ and discussed some small details about my job tomorrow – come back for a meeting at 5. Ok, I can do that. Due to the close proximity (next door), I headed to the bike shop afterwards to build a couple of bikes. I hung out and chatted with the owner while we built up this gigantic Chinese bike (this bike is too big for half the population of China), which I’ll be using until we get all the components together for my bike. I got to learn a lot more of the technical words as well as got the cogs in the brain rolling again. It’s good to finally get back into bike maintenance/bike riding again. It was really doing a number on me being away from my favourite activity for such a prolonged period of time.

I headed home afterwards to eat lunch, and also watched some ridiculous Chinese action movie that I totally didn’t understand (I wasted 4 hours of my life). I heard from the directora of one of my institutes that there is a workshop for all teachers tomorrow (everybody was told today), so my classes for tomorrow are canceled (awesome!). However, instead of attending the class, I have to attend a 4-hour teaching strategy workshop.

I headed to the meeting for the festival volunteers at 5 to find that…I was the only one there – big surprise. Punctuality is worth pretty little here. I stuck around for an hour and 10 minutes talking with one lady who’d been there all day working. I got a free tshirt for volunteering tomorrow, then for volunteering on Sunday (a hideous neon green colour – god it’d go good with my pink Goggins hat), so I my spirits were still high. The festival includes a horse parade as well as around 5 other activities that will take place Friday and Saturday, from 6 AM to around 2 AM everyday. I’ll probably work a majority of the time since…I’m the only one who is super fluent in English, but whatever, it’s a good way to help the community. I learned that 7,000 people attended last year, and that they’re expecting at least more than that (attendance has increased by about 500 people every year, including 2000 people last year), from at least 10 different countries. Due to the rising popularity of the event, the Nicaraguan minister of culture will attend as well as several other high-ranking government officials. Not only that, but there will be journalists from 10 different papers, and the every hour of the festival will be filmed. I’m pretty excited about the experience.

That pretty much brought an end to the night. This weekend should be nuts.

August 8^th

Today was foreigner day in Achuapa – at least it should have been.

The day started out in the normal methodical way, except this time I was able to get up a little because there was a workshop for all the teachers in the municipality. I caught a part of the Olympic opening ceremonies while I was waiting to leave, and that made it even harder to leave (particularly since it was raining). I punctually arrived at the taller (why?) only to have it start and hour and a half later because the facilitators had not yet arrived. The facilitators ended up being from Spain, and it was nice to see some other cheles (white people) in Achuapa, even though they were native Spanish speakers. The taller I attended (we had a choice of 5) was about logical reasoning (I didn’t stick around long enough to find out what that actually meant), but for the hour I was there, we just talked about terrorists in Spain, unjust laws in Spain, U.S. imperialism, and whatever other questions she could ask me about since I was the U.S. expert in the room. Other topics such as the election, the war in Iraq, the 1898 bombing of the U.S. Maine in Cuba, and the literacy campaign in Nicaragua in 1981 were also covered. Some of you might have noticed a trend here – no common theme (maybe anti-US?).

Luckily, I was able to bounce out of there at 10:30 just when we started doing the really boring stuff. I dropped off my stuff at my house, swapped shirts, and then headed over to the welcome center for the music festival for my shift. We did a lot of nothing for about an hour, and I started questioning why we needed a translator. All doubts were put to rest as a group of 40 people (none with any knowledge of Spanish) stumbled into the office. It was a volunteer group based out of England that was going to spend the next few days in Achuapa. We got bombarded with English speakers for the next 3 hours and I was effectively beat at the end of my shift. By the time my shift was “over” (I worked sporadically for the rest of the night), we had representatives from 22 different countries (Malaysia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa, Bermuda, Slovenia, and Poland to name a few) in attendance.

I ended up meeting TONS of people the whole night long, as well as making tons of connections. One was a reporter from Channel 51 in León who is filming the entire festival this weekend. We hung out for a couple of hours, talked about a wide variety of topics, and I even got a free soda out of him. In addition to becoming good buddies with the people I was working with (one who works in the Ministry of Education office), I ran into a bunch of my students, counterparts, colleagues, neighbors, and other people I know or know me. I even had people coming up to me calling my name on the streets telling me that they had a room for me to rent whenever I wanted to move out of my host family house.

On top of the millions of Nicaraguans I talked with all day long, being the official translator of the music festival, I was dragged all over the place translating for people. Even more, a lot of the visitors to the festival made me the go to guy for absolutely any question that could be asked in English. As a result, I spoke tons of English (needed that) the whole day, mixed in with tons of Spanish. I might even go as far to say that it was the most talking I’ve done in one day in my entire life. I seriously could never go more than 10 feet without stopping and talking to somebody about something. Furthermore, I met a lot of teachers from the states, their students, and random world exploring couples.

I mixed all of the above in with sporadic trips to the main stage where various old people were playing (today was viejitos day) all sorts of instruments. There was even a guy from Arizona playing a banjo! It was a really fun filled event that included to organizer of the event coordinating absolutely everything, yet still having time to be on stage singing, playing the guitar/the accordion, and dancing – that guy is superman.

Towards the end of the night (well, my night anyway), while talking with an American couple that was locked out of their housing place, the police chief of Achuapa (Richard), the police chief of El Sauce, and another officer from El Sauce showed up. I ended up talking with them for a while and found up several surprises from them. First being that our police chief studied in a police academy for 2 years in northern Germany in the 1980’s, and the deputy from El Sauce attended junior and high school in the U.S. – so he spoke English. He studied in San Francisco, but had a wicked New York accent, which I totally didn’t understand. After chatting with him a bit longer, I discovered that he had served in the Marine Corps for 5 years with a group based out of New Jersey – how random.

Definitely an awesome day.

August 9^th

Today was more of the same – more music festival. Unlike yesterday though, there wasn’t much translating that was needed. In fact, I don’t think I did any translating the entire day. The whole day though, I met a lot of people that would make awesome contacts for the future. One is the host of her own TV show, and told me whenever I’m in León to just give her a call. I also met an American couple that lives in Managua. Her boyfriend didn’t speak any Spanish, so I helped him out a little bit. It turned out that his girlfriend is the co-director of the U.S. millennium development project that is in my department in Nicaragua. Coincidentally, the millennium development project is my counterpart organization that I’m working with, so she is probably the best person I could’ve met. Another notable person I met was the president of the Nicaraguan theatre organization – somebody who was completely taken aback to discover that I spoke Spanish.

Aside from meeting all my good contacts, I spent most of my day hanging out in the information office helping people register for the festival and buy t-shirts. Brigido, the guy who organized the festival, wanted to show the people from the television station a scenic view of Achuapa, and invited me to go as well since I’d been hanging out with all of them the past 2 days. The scenic point was only 7 km away, but took an hour to get there since there really was no road to get there. Or rather, there was a road, but it was more for a rock climber than for a truck. However, once we got up there, it was well worth the trip. For anybody that wants to visit me, we can go see it – if you’re down for a 2-hour horse ride, maybe we can go camping on somebody’s property there too. Seeing Achuapa from that point really put into perspective how untouched the entire municipality is, it really is just gorgeous.

I decided to turn in a little earlier tonight even though the festival will go on for the next 5ish hours. I figured I had an excuse since the town is 4 blocks long, and I can hear everything anyway. What a good (and busy) weekend!

A better site to send me text messages!

I found a more user friendly site to send me text messages - so please do! Texts/Phone Calls will be my only form of communication most of the time, so this is a good option.

http://plexinium.com.ni/?x=sms

And for Gram/Non-Spanish speakers:

1. Just click on Nicaragua in the map

2. Under “numero de celular”, put in my number: 924.9465

3. Under “tu nombre”, put your name, whatever you decide it is for the day.

4. Under “mensaje”, write your message (up to 120 characters)

5. Click “enviar”

Off to site - be back later…a lot later.

Well, as I leave for Achuapa in around 4 hours, I feel it’s necessary to point out that I will have access to the internet way less. There is word that there is a primary school that has a lab, and if I gain some mega trust I can use it. The school has a history of working with PC volunteers in the past, so maybe I could teach some Microsoft Excel/Word classes in exchange for some internet time. If I could, you can expect posts a lot more frequently, but time will tell. If I don’t gain that trust that I’m aiming for, I might go 2 weeks without posting but fear not, you’ll get my day to day report of work in the field - for those of you that have the patience to actually read all these posts. And since I didn’t take any pictures of swearing in, I’ve been stealing them from other people who did take some, this is one of those pictures:

Owen, Nikki, Me, Joanna P, Joanna C, Liz S - Look how we all pretend not to be terrified! (Thanks to Joanna C for the picture)

Hasta Pronto!

Officially a volunteer!

July 25th

On our last morning as Peace Corps Trainees, we all had to get up wicked early again due to our swearing in ceremony starting at 8:30. The ceremony was at a real nice hotel down the street from the Peace Corps office and started off with a ceremony to thank the host families for allowing us to stay in their homes for the last 3 months. My family didn’t show up…so they gave out a bunch of certificates to the families and everybody socialized with their families following the ceremony. I ended up strolling around awkwardly with Joanna Pezko and my buddy Shyra pretending that we had somewhere to go and people to talk with.

After 15 minutes of socializing, they brought us all in the conference room where the U.S. ambassador, training staff, host families, MINED representative, and 7 news crews were to watch us to swear in as formal volunteers. It was by far the biggest hoopla over something that I’ve ever been a part of. We had to sing the Nicaraguan national anthem, the U.S. national anthem, and go through the formalities of the ceremony before hearing speeches by two of our fellow volunteers. For us SBD volunteers, we elected Avi to give a speech about our host families, which ended up being well thought out and endearing. Joey gave the speech during the big ceremony with the press and ambassador and gave us quite a surprise. He ended up dedicating a part of his speech to each trainee in each of the training towns and transitioning his clothes from business casual to a traditional Nicaraguan dress that he had been wearing underneath his clothes. This really didn’t go over highly with the ambassador, and made the training staff super nervous, but we all got a huge kick out of it.

After the ceremony, we had a pizza and mingling session with the Peace Corps staff before finally going to our respective hotels. I went with a couple of the SBD volunteers down to the mall and picked up some clothes for the celebration we were going to have that night for officially being Peace Corps volunteers. Coincidentally, I ended up finding a Bata shoe store (a Czech shoe store). Also by chance, it ended up being the only shoe store in the mall that had shoes that would fit me – can you say fate? Thank you Prague, I love you. We also picked up some custom shirts for our trainee group, Nica 47. Joanna, my friend whose family didn’t show up to the ceremony, drew a design that we ended up putting on a bunch of t-shirts to recognise how flipping awesome we all are. The shirts look great and have the very appropriate Nicaraguan phrase: “Hasta 2010…Si Dios Quiere”, or “Until 2010, if God wants”.

We ended up making a reservation for 37 people at a club near the PC office and hung out there the whole night. It was good to unwind with everybody in the group before heading off to our sites this weekend. Gonna miss them.

Nica 47 SBD

Nica 47 TEFL

Joey - after disrobing

The last day of training before becoming volunteers

July 24th

More charlas. More waiting. That much closer.

Had to get up at around 6 today to, you know, keep a rhythm. IPADE gave us a breakfast that was the fulfilling but not entirely exciting gallo pinto, white bread, and salty omelet, and it left me wanting more – more vitamins that is.  I found Sonia, Danica, and Dianne and we all decided we yearned for something a bit more…exciting for breakfast. After settling on a plan, we headed to La Colonia, the grocery store right next to the mall where we went and saw Batman last night.

However, all too often you plan something here that doesn’t go according to plan – and that happened again. We had a charla at 8, but figured we could get to the store and back before all was said and done. The microbus rolled up to the store at 7:30…but the store didn’t open until 8. With everything starting on Nica time, we weren’t overly concerned with being late to the charla since they never start on time anyway.

Waiting seemed like the best idea since we’d just paid a quarter to get over to the store, so we parked ourselves in front of the door and chatted for a while. Unfortunately, the grocery store was operating on Nica time as well, and opened 10 minutes late – as if we weren’t in a big enough hurry already. We figured devising an excuse as to why we were late would be a good idea, and coincidentally, things unfolded exactly the way we were going to say it did. The store itself had next to nothing to offer, then we ended up getting called by PC staff 3 times asking us where we were, when we were going to get back, and reminding us we were late.

Ultimately we ended up stumbling into our first session 30 minutes late, quite terrified, but without the scolding we thought we’d receive.

Our first session was a simple, but long handbook review with the country director. Following this, we met the former U.S. ambassador (his service ended Saturday), who told us how the embassy worked, programs the embassy is involved in, then just broke down how we can get support from them in the future.

It was pretty interesting, but we were all beat from charlas, and this feeling carried over into the afternoon sessions where we barely were able to listen to a presentation about USAID, before finally being sent off for the day. And that’s where we are now. Time will tell what we do tonight. I think we’re heading to the mall to buy the rest of the basics (yoga mat, maybe another pair of dress shoes?), before heading off to our sites on Sunday. Exciting!

Last day of training…almost

July 23rd

With plans to head off to Managua following our last day of training, I woke up at 4:30 in the morning so I could show up to Managua at 7. I ended up getting there 45 minutes early, got suckered into buying a newspaper, and waited.

Eventually, I found the PC party bus and was shuttled along with the rest of the aspirantes to the IPADE, some hotel on the highway to Masaya.

We went through our final medical charlas, as well as our final security briefing, and ended the charlas with a presentation of each of the 5 sectors that Peace Corps is involved in here in Nicaragua, so we’re aware of cross sector work opportunities if the opportunity comes up. Following the charlas, I had my close of training work interview just to clear up any questions I had about my site, training, and just any general questions. I got another stack of books to drag up to site that I’m just going to leave for my project coordinator to bring up to me when we have a site interview on Thursday.

After this, we finally had freedom – and in Managua. After a dinner and hanging out with the rest of the trainees, a group of us headed to the gigantic mall that is down the highway. Literally, it was more American than an American mall. I went and checked out the price of a yoga mat, then we all went and saw the new Batman movie – awesome! Nothing else too exciting aside from running across the highway.

A meltdown and getting better

July 19th

Well, good or bad, I intended to document my experiences here in Nicaragua so I could look back on them in some years and say “OH YEA!”

Today I had a complete meltdown.

All the stressors of the week:
-    Last due dates for projects
-    A youth group without a tangible result
-    Some issues with the host family
-    Word choice blunder
-    Finishing ASBO project
-    Finishing youth group prep/presentation
-    Bobby getting sent home
-    No clean clothes
-    Mold growing on all my hats (save the Goggins hat) due to rainy season, total loss
o    Losing my sense of identity with this one
-    Lent my sandals to a fellow volunteer, came back with a not so nice smell

All in all, they were all small things, but holy crap did they ever pile up. I canceled everything I was planning on doing right as I was walking out the door because I realised I just couldn’t handle it.

I ended up locking myself up for 5 hours meditating and being introspective. This session helped a lot.

Not regretting being here at all – love it here. Not wishing I could leave – excited about what I’m here to do. It was just a completely new experience. When they said you’d be exposed to extremely stressful situations, they weren’t kidding. Intense experience.

The field trip into my mind was all I did today. That was an intense enough activity for one day.

July 20th

The day today started relatively bright an early at 6:30 (still not able to sleep in) because I had to get out of the land of SBD volunteers. I was just craving contact with my fellow TEFLers, particularly following my meltdown of yesterday. The game plan was to meet Danica and Dianne in Diriamba (whoa – mega alliteration!) just to hang out. However, while I was getting ready Dianne called with dreaded news – she was sick so she wouldn’t be coming (it turned out that most of the TEFL volunteers were sick with an amoeba and bacterial infection (double whammy!) that they got from food they got in a workshop with the ministry of education. So with her out of the picture, I called up Danica and planned on just hanging out with her.

The bus ride down to Diriamba was a…new experience, as it appeared to have 2 clowns on it making the ride to Jinotepe. They were just bickering back and forth with jokes and making balloon animals, making the ride itself quite entertaining and tolerable. I ended up buying 2 balloon animals from them to give to Danica and Dianne, as well to support these guys who obviously put forth an impressive effort for out hard earned cordobas.

When I got into Diriamba, Danica and I chatted about the whole situation with Bobby, then met up with Maria, a new TEFL “aspirante” who is a transfer volunteer from the Republic of Georgia (she came straight from Georgia following her 2 years there). We walked around and hung out for a bit, then went to the Pali to put together a care “sack” (cookies, banana, and juice boxes) for Dianne since she wasn’t feeling too well.

Dianne was super surprised by our unexpected visit, but she ended up needing the visit just to improve her mood (it’s the end of training blues, everybody’s got them), in addition to improving her health. We ended up spending about 2 hours there before convincing her to go to Jinotepe to go indulge in some pizza.

Our lunch trip to Jinotepe was full of distressing, as well as poking Maria’s brain for info about spending 2 years as a Peace Corps volunteer – how it wears on you and whatnot. However, the conversation covered several million topics (I can rarely remain focused, but apparently other people couldn’t either), and it was just a good way to relax following the overly stressful week. Apparently TEFL had been pushed to their limits after the last week as well, so we had a good venting session. This venting session was continued as we made our way to a bar in Jinotepe to meet a bunch of other TEFL volunteers – good times.

Coincidentally, the bus ride home included the same entertainment that I enjoyed on my trip down to Diriamba this morning  - that’s right, the clowns were back. This time, I was able to refrain from buying one of their balloon animals, and just donated a cord to their cause (yea, only around 5 cents, but 5 cents goes far here).

Definitely a good day spent unwinding and getting out the tension, for all involved parties it seems.

July 21st

Today started early. I woke up at 5 AM so I could be out of the door by 6 AM because Peace Corps wanted us at the UCA at 7:30. I got out after a few issues (my host sister was sick), grabbed Jordan, and we headed to the bus stop. After a quick stop by the ATM, we were in the bus and I was seated on a bucket (they were out of seats).

Our cobrador was anything but pleasant and insisted on giving crap to pretty much everybody. He made me move to a different seat 3 different times, as if it were more efficient. However, in the end he got his own – the bus got pulled over and was ticketed because we’d crammed 25 people in the bus and people were standing. He continued to whine before the guy sitting in front of me, a 20-year officer (I think a general) in the Nicaraguan navy just told him to shut up and quit his whining.

Jordan, Owen, and I ended up being the first people to show up at the UCA. We ended up finding Douglas, the awesome Peace Corps party bus driver waiting for us and enjoyed all its air-conditioned goodness (it’s about 87 degrees here at 7 AM everyday). After we got the majority of people in the bus (Avi was sick, and Joey was severely bitten by a dog), Douglas proceeded to take us to La China, Matagalpa. The ride itself was absolutely gorgeous and reminded me of how Colorado would be if it were incredibly lush all the time.

La China is situated in a mountainous community just outside of Sebaco, Matagalpa and really is quite a beautiful place. All the SBD volunteers went there so we could observe an agriculture volunteer and learn more about agrobusiness opportunities (well for those of us that are in small sites). There we had a 3 hour presentation by the program director for Peace Corps Ag program, then broke for lunch. One of the projects the volunteer had done was create a park for the town. This involved getting 55 dump truck loads of dirt brought in to level the ground, a bank donated a stage for the park, they put in a tetherball pole, and he recently just got funding to build a basketball court. In addition to that, he’s been working with a woman who started growing mung beans in a garage. She went from having absolutely nothing to building a house, installing running water, a flush toilet, and buying a flatbed truck to deliver her beans as well as other goods in the community to the supermarkets in Managua. She really was a rags to riches operation and really amazed us all – just an incredibly talented, driven, and smart woman.

In addition to the aforementioned, we talked with some farmers from the area that the volunteer worked with. One is getting certified to be an organic farmer, one was lauded for having for “good farming practices”, and we talked with a few others that were creative/innovative farmers in the area. We ended up getting a tour of the organic farmers farm where he grew papayas, tomatoes, and passion fruit. He had all these incredible methods of naturally keeping pests off his crops it was unbelievable. But not only that, his papaya trees had at least 100 papayas sprouting off wherever there was room on each tree. All the other papaya trees I’ve seen in the country have not even compared, generally there would be 10 to 15 on an enormous tree.

After seeing the farm (and getting papayas for free!), we got to observe a methane storage area that a previous ag volunteer had created. In involved taking horse manure and mixing it in a gigantic concrete vat with water. The methane gas would rise after mixing it with the water, and in turn, this gas was used for the stoves in 3 houses. It was really incredible and one of the most sustainable things I’ve seen in the country – totally cool.

We ended up leaving around 4:30 (an hour and a half after we planned on leaving), but it was worth it in the long run. I’m excited about the opportunity to potentially find ag projects to work on when I get to Achuapa. Furthermore, PC is going to give us a ton of ag resources for those of us with the opportunity to work with farmers. Douglas, with his fearless driving, got us down to Managua in about an hour (instead of the 2 hours it normally takes), and I ended up getting back to Masatepe at around 7 PM.

The days tend to go by pretty quickly whether it’s a good or bad day.

July 22nd

Well, as our last day in our training towns, you’d think the day would go a bit differently – and you’d be wrong. The day started out at 7:30 AM so Jordan and I could arrive at Olla de Barro on time for our 8 AM charla. To say we were stoked to be having our last charla in our training towns would be an understatement. The wear and tear of training really has started to set in on us, particularly after this past week. Nevertheless, we stuck with it and will just hold in all the tension until we’re alone at our sites so we can explode there – just kidding.

Actually, the charlas today were halfway useful on top of being straightforward and non-sugarcoated, something that is always welcomed after 11 weeks of charlas full of icebreakers. The end is just over the horizon, and we’re ready to just get to it. The charlas themselves weren’t really noteworthy, but provided us with the information we’ve been pondering from the very beginning – at least we finally got it.

We ended up getting out of Olla de Barro at around 4:30, completely charla-ed out, and with but a mere afternoon left in our training towns. Katie, Lindsay, Jordan, and I ended up grabbing going to the Pali in Masatepe, then hanging out in the park for a while to do some reflecting on the day/enjoy some ice cream/oreos/chocolate milk. However, as luck would have it, it started to sprinkle after very little time, and we had to split ways.

On the way home, I stopped by the Tiendita, the shop my host mom’s cousin owns, because I heard she had a guayavera (a lightweight Nicaraguan shirt) that was in my size. Unfortunately it had 4 pockets, and struck me as more of a lumberjack shirt than one that would scream “authentic Nicaraguan,” so I ended up holding off on the purchase and will just swear in as a Peace Corps volunteer in my normal clothes that I teach in – I’m not here to impress anybody (with my looks anyway).

The rest of the night just held the always-dreaded packing. It’s awfully strange to have packed up my entire life in a bag 3 times since December. I’m actually looking forward to getting to my site and having all my stuff in one place (well, when I move out of my host family’s house) for an extended period of time. Who knows? Maybe I’ll find more of a sense of myself than I did in the U.S.?

PC continued…

July 17^th

729 days to go! Just kidding.

Woke up at a more reasonable hour this morning – 6 AM – where I pondered over whether or not I’d head to Masaya to get a shirt for the swearing in ceremony. I ultimately decided that I would not because I’m cheap. That 10 dollars could be the difference between me eating for 2 days or starving – who knows what the situation will be at site? Anyway, we have to present our youth group tomorrow to the rest of the business trainees/PC staff about our results, or in our case, our “learning experiences.” I worked on that a little bit before ultimately deciding to work on our business advising report that we also have to turn in tomorrow. We’ve all been doing interviews/assessments of a small business owner (in most people’s cases, this small business owner was in the family), and we do an assessment of their business, and give advice accordingly afterwards. In particular, we look at 4 areas – Human Resources, Production/Operation, Administration, and Marketing. After analyzing their responses and observing the business itself, we lump our recommendations into one of the aforementioned categories. After making the recommendations we are required to make a plan of action for said recommendations and indicate the priority of each. The whole prospect of doing this and providing feedback was incredibly daunting, but after jumping in, I got on a roll and it became relatively easy and I churned out a good 3 pages of recommendations. Just gotta get your feet wet I guess.

In the midst of writing my report, a “Buenas” came from our front gate where some desconocida was looking for me. She just came on in and asked for my name. I had no idea what to make of her – whether she was from the government/Peace Corps/was there to kill me/give me a present or what. It turned out she was the lady who was going to give me my language interview at 1 that afternoon. However, since she was in Masatepe, she wanted to try to get one interview over with in the morning. So I did mine a couple of hours early, and judging from the questions she asked me, I think I tested around the same area. She asked me a bunch of technical questions, about bicycles for example, and riding 21 miles for my birthday. She wanted to tell me how it was – what am I supposed to say? “Well…it was fun, pretty, lots of hills…” I also didn’t/don’t know the names of bike components in Spanish so that really set me back. Overall I was really unsatisfied/pissed with the interview, but whatever. I’m already at a high language level, this interview was worthless for me anyway.

I then headed to the gym for a couple hours to de-stress – god I missed the gym! There is a gigantic (like the size of 2 Olympic swimming pools enclosed paved area in back of the gym where there were around 20 guys brushing kidney beans around on the ground. I’ve never seen anything like this before in my life, but I think they were drying the beans? Honestly couldn’t tell you, but it was just a whole bunch of beans – and now I know the process they go through before they get to my plate.

Following the gym, I worked a little longer on the small business report before meeting up with Jordan and our youth group to discuss our presentation that we’re going to talk about. It was a pretty successful meeting, and we didn’t have to pull information out of the kids like I thought we’d have to. Nevertheless, during the brainstorming process, we asked Javier what he thought about the goal of doing a mini-project. He responded:

Visualizar un proyecto que nos sirve de alguna manera para mejorar el ambiente o facilitar información histórica de nuestro pueblo.

The above is just a bulleted caption for the quote, so it’s not conjugated, but what it says is that we wanted to visualize a Project that would serve the group in some way to improve the environment or facilitate historical information about our town. We were pretty dumbfounded as this is the kind of textbook like answer that we, and Peace Corps want to hear, but it came straight from his mouth without feeding him ideas. Nuts.

After our rendezvous, Jordan and I threw together a quick presentation for tomorrow for the rest of the trainees, and that was that.

Got 2 free pineapples too! Sweet deal!

July 18^th

Today started out as a pretty bad day – with tons of rain. Whenever it rains, almost everything in Nicaragua is bad as it inevitably causes not so happy things to happen.

I woke up to what was a dull roar – no, that’s a bad assessment. I woke up to an incredible roar, even though I was wearing earplugs. I got up to find that the source of this powerful noise was in fact the incredible downpour of rain. Whenever it rains, I have no desire to go anywhere because any and everything you possess will be completely drenched. Basically, you end up becoming so wet that it would be a laborious task to explain to anybody that you were in fact not swimming in your clothes. Another thing the rain brings – mold. When I first read about this in other volunteer’s blogs, I was not really concerned as they pointed out this is spontaneously occurs on leather products. Well, little did I know that mold grows on EVERYTHING. Mold has grown on every single one of my cycling caps, what the hell? I don’t know what the combination is to yield such an outcome, but it’s unreal. Some days I can’t even take this mold.

Wow, tangential.

Anyway, we had to go to Ave Maria today for a training session/youth group presentation, and this rain wasn’t conducive to any of this happening without massive issues. It was raining way too much to not wear my sandals and bring my shoes in a bag, so I compromised my professional look. I ended up arriving at Ave Maria completely drenched anyway, but fortunately, I had some warm/dry shoes to change into – oh yea, that’s planning ahead.

We had a charla on alcohol, which was a pretty standard informative but not overly new information for us. Generally this is how all the charlas are – they fill in the gaps for things you don’t know since most of what they teach you is common sense. Example: alcohol can impair your judgement. Further explanation is unnecessary. This was followed by our youth group presentations. At first only one youth group out of all the training towns showed up because apparently the PC bus didn’t show up to pick up any of the youths. The kids from my youth group were some of the missing youths, which led to worry – our youth group didn’t succeed, and now they aren’t there to help explain what happened? Oh no. Eventually they showed up because they took a normal bus (good kids!), and we gave our presentation. At first I was nervous about it compared to the rest of the groups, since they actually realised a project. However, in the end I discovered that if you presented a convincing argument for the outcome you got, that was ok.

Following the end of the ceremony, our youths got sent home and we headed to lunch. The afternoon session was followed by presentations by the trainees from San Juan de Oriente. They did an amazing job, particularly considering the horribly difficult topic that they had to present – easily the most difficult class we’ll have to teach in all our Peace Corps service.

After the presentation, we did evaluations, and then we all got hit with a total curveball. For reasons I won’t delve into, our fellow PCT Bobby was told he will be sent home and won’t be allowed to continue as a volunteer. Basically they believed he wouldn’t be a successful volunteer, so he’s getting sent home. We were all shocked and incredibly set back by this decision and headed straight to a bar afterwards. Due to potential issues with this, I’m going to limit the description of this incident to this paragraph.

After a couple of hours hanging out with the other trainees, we all headed back home to cenar (eat dinner). This trip home was a quick trip back as we were all going straight back out to San Juan de Oriente to hang out with Bobby for the night. So after getting some food in my system and money from the bank, I headed over to Avi’s house where Owen, Avi, and I sat around and talked with Avi’s host family before taking off. It was about 8:30 by the time we decided to embark – meaning there weren’t busses running. This meant that in order to get there, we’d need to be creative. Or in other words, we’d need to find an alternative way to arrive at our destination.

We ended up catching a ride in the back of a truck where we had a conversation with a police officer that was from 22 and from Masatepe. Apparently hitchhiking was the only way he can get to work in Masaya that late at night, but it’s far more efficient than any other form of transportation, and he does it every night.

We arrived in Catarina where we met up with Kat and Andrea to talk a bit. This meeting lasted only a bit before we headed to the Mirador to hang out with Bobby for the last night. Our rendezvous lasted a couple of hours but was a good time overall. The trip home ended up being more entertaining as I had to deal with some amiable drunk guy for 20 minutes. A cab ended up being the only car on the highway, magically, and we caught that home, putting an successful end to our not so great day.

More gym and meeting some NGOs

July 16^th

Today I woke up super, super early (4:45) because I had good intentions, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions – so they say. Kind of how the day unfolded in the long run.

When my alarm went off, I searched around for the clock so I could turn off the alarm, but couldn’t find it in the dark. I ended up just hitting the desk until I hit the clock, and in the process knocked most of my things on the floor – but the alarm turned off. Success! I wanted to go to the gym but ended up putting it off until 6 AM. Just had a light 2-hour workout and then headed back home by around 7:30.

After eating, Jordan and I did some errands and then stopped by the cyber. It’s kind of weird going so long without using the internet and getting online to find so much huge news that has happened. I was astounded to find that the U.S. had the highest inflation in 25 years for a month, and Zimbabwe was doing a little worse with an inflation rate of 2,200,00%. For those of you that aren’t really mathematically inclined – that’s 4.18% inflation every minute of the day. How terrible.

We had to make a trip to Managua this afternoon, so I went home and ate lunch really quickly before we headed to Managua at 11:30. Strangely, I haven’t grown weary of eating gallo pinto so frequently, but as they say – variety is the spice of life. I’m starting to understand why.

After a relatively comfortable ride to the UCA, we all met up and had an “NGO Fair” for lack of a better name. There were 6 organizations, and each of us has the opportunity to work with some of the organizations that have a presence in/near our sites. One of the NGO’s told me that there is a guy in Achuapa who wants to export honey to the U.S. and that I should talk to him to see what’s up. Awesome! Maybe I could finally realise one of my dreams of being a beekeeper – in Nicaragua no less! Learning about this guy who wants to sell honey was really the most useful information I took away from the charla itself. After this, I had to go to the PCHQ where I was briefed over the word choice of a certain comment I made on a video. Words say a lot.

After this rendezvous, I once again had to make my way from the PCHQ to Masatepe. Avi was with me, so we had to make our way back – and this came in the form of a regular ol’ school bus headed to Pontillo (wherever that is). The bus roared by us and we lamented the fact that it was totally oblivious to the fact that we in fact wanted to catch the bus. We stood around for 2 minutes before ultimately deciding to run 3 blocks to try to catch the bus at a red light. Magically this happened. However, there were a good 150 people on a school bus made for 65, so I ended up riding a couple of blocks hanging outside the door, but ultimately I made my way inside of the bus. It took a really roundabout way of going to Masatepe, but this just meant that seats started to open the farther we got from Managua, AKA we didn’t have to stand the whole time.

About an hour and a half later, we got into Masatepe (and saved a whole 10 cords in the process by taking this as oppose to the microbus!) and headed home. I downed another plate of gallo pinto, met up with Owen to give him a book, and paid Oliver some money I owed him (he bought me some peanut butter which unfortunately was crunchy, next time I’ll specify creamy).

2 years from today my Peace Corps service is over. Crazy.

Oh and Gram – a charla is a presentation, more or less. Just a talk about something.