More competitions and a drug bust

September 9^th – September 11^th

Once again, I had class cancelled on Wednesday. While this was nothing new, I went about my day like I have the past couple of weeks. I kept practicing my cooking and came down with symptoms of a stomach illness. Fortunately, it appears that it turned out to be just food poisoning. This was quite exciting news since it was my first case of actually having food poisoning and not something more damaging…like a parasite, giardia, bacterial infection, etc. It may seem odd that I would be so jazzed about this, but as I’ve mentioned in previous entries – my health is just not something I take for granted. With that scare over and done with, I’m not pushing 5 months without a major stomach illness. Such a champ.

Thursday, I headed to Telica (a large-ish town near León) to be a judge in their business competition. I had to wake up at 3 AM to catch the bus down there, and rolled in a little before 7 AM. Once there, I met up with the new volunteer there, Pieter. I figured I’d help him out with doing errands to help with the competition, and instead I was treated to seeing him have a typical Peace Corps experience (at least for a business volunteer). We went to the Casa de Cultura to grab some speakers and microphone that he got donated, only to find out that they were going to use the equipment for another event that morning. After some quick deliberation, the guys decided they had to give him the equipment (it was signed by the mayor after all) and we waited for the vice-mayor to show up with a truck to transport all the chairs and equipment to his school. We waited and waited before heading to the mayor’s office, “Oh, the vice-mayor is in Managua with the truck. Sorry.” Nevertheless, Pieter pulled it together and got the local government to come through on their end. His competition was pretty good, aside from being unbelievably hot (we’re having a severe drought right now – things are turning brown now and this is supposed to be the heaviest part of the rainy season). After the competition, Jordan and I (she was a judge as well) caught a ride with our project specialist to León. In León, we grabbed the mail, discussed the school year, and took a dog she’s dog-sitting for a walk (he looks like the dog from the TV show Wishbone and is named Pasa or Raisin in English).

After killing a couple of hours, we met up with Brie and made some rounds of León to try to fundraise some money for our regional business competition. We then hit the grocery store (it’s always great to at least look at all the things I don’t have in Achuapa) quickly before catching the last bus to Malpaisillo.

That night, a combination of an egg salad sandwich (hallucinogenic hard boiled eggs?), Brie’s whining baby of a dog, and being completely exhausted yielded some crazy dreams. The only really vivid one that I can recall was me cooking fried eggs on my leg, only to be scolded for the inappropriate nature of cooking food on a leg. Go figure.

The next morning, I had a small breakfast and caught the morning bus back to Achuapa. Like usual, I read the whole way back (who’d have thought reading for fun would become a usual for me?), but in the small town just south of Achuapa, Wiquili, I noticed a few police officers around. “Who cares?” you may ask. Well, Wiquili is a tiny “suburb” of Achuapa with a mere 300 people in it. I have a handful of students who live there and just about all my friends have family down there. Basically – there’s no reason to have a couple, or even one, police officer in the town. Well, when I got back to town, I got a phone call from another volunteer who told me to turn on the news. I headed over to my neighbor’s house to see that the National Police, and the Nicaraguan version of the DEA had busted a meth lab in Wiquili. One of the guys was from Achuapa, a relative of a friend’s family, 2 were from Mexico, and 2 were from Managua. Not only that, but they confiscated 5 million dollars worth of meth tablets, a whole bunch of barrels of chemicals and a lot of unprocessed powder.

What are the chances? Nuts.

September 12^th – September 15^th

Another weekend without doing much that was productive aside from improving my cooking. I finished another book, and Independence Day passed by without me seeing much of it (I just went to the store to buy pancake mix). While it is quite possibly the most important holiday in the country (I mean the kids miss upwards of one month of class preparing for it), I protested and did not go this year. Development does not come by having ten billion holidays a year (this is an approximate count of how many they have here). The kids miss too many days already, so I’m done going along with it. There will be no wilful compliance from me. Unfortunately, all this lost time has meant my kids who won the business competition have done nothing to improve their presentation or plan. While they’re probably in the same boat as the majority of the other groups in León, they still need that time to improve if they want any chance of winning the regional competition and going to nationals. We’ll see how they do.

Fast Food Nation – A. A book that is more like an investigative report into how the fast food industry has affected our country. Talks about the health implications (some of which are super super serious – obesity doesn’t have anything on some of these diseases), how food manufacturers have been affected, and even talks about how all the flavours are concocted à they’re fake flavours! I don’t eat fast food anyway, but this book made me scared to eat any food, or at least made me temporarily want to be a vegetarian.

Most of the day on the 15^th was boiling hot, so I took a bike ride around town and hung around and talked with people. On this vuelta of the town, my buddy Esteban told me that they’re dog is pregnant, and I could have a puppy if I wanted one. This news effectively ended the productivity of my day as I could not pay attention to anything for the rest of the night. I kept on going back and forth with the pros and cons, thinking about how I’d only want a dog if I were able to raise it from the beginning. I also threw getting a cat into the mix, but an outdoor cat that periodically comes home is not what I’m looking for. I want a cat to hang out and chill with me. Raising a dog from a puppy would make it more loyal, or so I think. However, what it boils down to is this à I don’t know if my landlord wants a dog in her house, a puppy cries a lot, and I’d be leaving in July. The pro to getting one would be that I would have a pet that I’ve wanted for so long. Up until now, I’ve been getting my pet experiences by going to other people’s houses and playing with their pets. It’s always given me a warm and fuzzy feeling that I’ve missed from being back in the States. But is it too late for that now?

More rain coming?

September 27^th

True to form, I woke up today unable to sleep. I think I finally rolled out of bed around 4:30 AM and was super confused since I was in that gigantic un-Nicaraguan house.

The big game plan for the day was to go to the grocery store to get some actual good food. It didn’t really go that way though. Sonia and I journeyed into the market to begin the day and were quotes 3-4 times the price that we should have paid. Needless to say, we bought next to nothing (only a handful of bananas), and went back to the house. After a quick and small breakfast of bananas and peanut butter, I headed to the gym with Avi for “Happy Hour.” It’s a gym run by a German guy and was the best-run gym I’ve seen in the country so far. We spent around an hour there before heading back to the house and waiting around some more. Danica and Elizabeth from Chinandega were heading down (as well as Kristen), so we decided to wait for them before heading to the facenta store. After they showed up, we all headed out to lunch (minus Sonia), and effectively put off our trip to the store yet again.

After eating, so we journeyed around Granada for a bit before going to meet a lady who rescued cats (Elizabeth wanted one for her birthday). We chatted with the lady for a little bit and socialised with the new 5-week old cat Elizabeth will end up getting before taking off back for the house. We had to wait some longer for Kristen to show up (since she was ETing) before we could head to the store again.

We finally made it to the store and back with a couple of treats and good ideas. We were craving some good hearty food (which is hard to find here if you aren’t willing to shell out a couple of gringo-bucks), so we bought a ton of food to make enchiladas. In addition to this, we decided to go all out and buy a bunch of wine too. In total, we slaved a good 2 hours over the meal; making everything from enchiladas to tortilla chips. It was super satisfying and a good way to enjoy my break out of site. Afterwards, everybody went out partying…except Sonia and I.

We thought it’d be a good idea to watch some Eddie Izzard – only to end up falling asleep 15 minutes into it.

September 28^th

After waking up early yet again, I had a full schedule ahead of me. Unfortunately, my long day only included travelling. I had a French toast breakfast (how hearty!) before finally taking off at around 8 AM. My journey home was interrupted only by a short stop in León to pick up all those packages I’d gotten the previous week (Thanks Heather, Phil, and Mom!). Fortunately to entertain me a bit on the last leg of the journey, the Japanese Peace Corps volunteer was taking the bus to Achuapa too.

Nothing too exciting.

September 29^th

I was exhausted having not slept more than 4 hours for so long that I fell asleep the previous night around 8:30. I’d been enjoying some of the new movies Phil had sent me, but just couldn’t stay awake. Around 12 hours later, I rolled out of bed the following morning feeling amazing.

I started out by heading to the mayors office to talk to him about donating money to my group for the LEC regional competition, “I have been so busy, I have yet to check to see if we have the money to give you – come back at 3.” After that, I stopped by the primary school to pick up the list of rules and words for the spelling bee. Since nobody at the school is very good at typing, I figured I’d volunteer the skill (on top of organizing the entire thing) to move everything along.

Things still hadn’t matriculated with the soccer team I was organizing so I also headed over to Vision Mundial to see what the hold-up was with the sports equipment they said they’d donate. After meeting with the lady, she told me that there needed to be a meeting between everybody to discuss the logistics of the project (what is there to discuss? It’s a soccer team.). She told me they needed to be clear on what was going to be taught for the kids to pick up the sport (seriously?) and that we could all meet on the 15^th to discuss it. Great.

While waiting for 3 PM to roll around, I headed to the gigantic pulperia to stock up on cereal (I’m tired of going there to buy a box of cereal every week), and also found that they had sandals and waterproof boots (SCORE – Like I said before, small things here mean so much.) When I finally got home it began to rain…hard. The rain never stopped. When it rains, nothing happens. On that note, I never left the house (Not like I could though since there were floods), so the rest of the day was a waste.

Maybe tomorrow will be more productive?

September 30^th

Since the power went out super early yesterday, I was forced to deal with the ridiculous heat the entire night. This yielded me finally going to sleep at 5 AM. Gross.

After waking up around 6, I headed over to the mayors office for the umpteenth time. There I finally met up with the mayor who scolded me for not showing up yesterday at 3 PM, “But it was raining!” His response to my excuse didn’t convince me that he was peeved or entertained by my answer, so that was good enough for me. A short call to the financial head of the office and I had a donation of 250 cords to the fund for my LEC group.

I stopped by to get a haircut as well before I was due to meet up with Johanni at noon (I was going to go with her to meet with a guy about renting a house). My haircut went about as awkwardly as it could have. The owner/hairdresser always chats me up about getting married and I generally dismiss the conversations with a “Well, fortunately I have other plans.” This usual discourse was mixed up by somebody dropping by and coming on in. “Ella estå enamorada con usted.” Yea, thanks Maria, I could’ve done with out that.

Fortunately the day got better after that.

I met up with Johanni and we headed to meet with a guy named Nelson. He rented a house to the PCV who I’m replacing and I was hoping I could possibly move into his house. He said that there was a room available next door that had a latrine and no shower, which put a damper on things a bit. However, after brainstorming some more, he realised there was a house in front of my private school (in the literal center of town) that was available. The owners are from Achuapa, but live in Managua the entire year except during December so the house is empty the rest of the year. He’s good friends with the family so he said he could call them up and find out what the deal was.

Johanni and I went to the house to check it out (a block down the road) where I realised that the house we’d been referring to is one of the nicest houses that I’ve seen in Achuapa. We talked with the neighbour who showed us a room in the back that was available to rent in the house. However, he knew nothing of the specifics of anything and said we’d have to talk to the owners. We got the number of the owners and then headed back over to give it to Nelson.

Little did I know, Nelson is a lawyer, and hence, amazing with words. He inquired about the house as well as presented my situation more eloquently than I could have in English. The result? The husband of the owner said that he’d be fine with me renting a room there but I’d have to speak with the owner to see what she thought. Nelson would call her later, and then they’d inform me what she said.

Five o’clock rolled around when I got a phone call from Johanni. She told me that the owner had no problem with me living there – and giving me access to the house. So how it will work out is that I’ll live in a room, and have access to the kitchen and bathroom. Not only that, but the lady said that I could rent it for 50 dollars a month. I’m getting an uber discount (I mean, I’m essentially renting an enormous house for 50 dollars) because I’m a volunteer, but also because I’ll be taking care of the house. When they come in December, I’ll be “just like one of the family.” Sounds like a good position to be in. Now I just have to get Peace Corps security to show up to approve it. If they do that, I can sign a lease by Saturday.

On a less exciting front, I finished the Mad Men series – amazing.

Amazing how things can be so in your favour some days.

October 1^st

Hule – rubber band (literally rubber), Rábano – radish

For the first time in what seems like forever, I went to Los Caraos to teach today. Little did I know how much changes in that amoung of time, particularly during the rainy season. There is a river just outside of town, called the Achuapita I believe, and every time I’ve seen it, it’s been a quaint little stream that would come up to your knees if you chose to wade through it.

It was a little different.

The closer I got to the bridge going over the river, the more eroded the road was around it. Normally it’s compact dirt with rocks in it, but in light of the rainy season and the floods (which I had just heard about and not actually been around to experience) most of the road was just rocks. This made the route pretty much impossible to navigate on bike, so I was forced to walk. Just a little further up was the bridge going over the river itself. The river, which was normally a cute little stream which people would walk their cattle through, was now a 75-foot wide raging river. Not only was it raging, but it had destroyed most of the bridge (a huge concrete bridge). I half expected the rest of the bridge to be swept away while I crossed it. And you thought commuting in the city was dangerous. The rest of my route to school was much of the same with the last stretch of road to the school being a river itself – next time I’ll bring the raft and life preserver.

While I dread going to Los Caraos during the rainy season due to the horrible commute, I actually enjoy the students the most. This made actually being in class pretty good. My counterpart has some parasite that renders her unable to go to school for a month, so I have to teach all the classes until she comes back. The plus side is that at the end of class I know the students actually know the material. On top of that, everybody listens to me and is silent, as oppose to their normal less than angelic ways.

Later that morning I headed over to the primary school to drop off the rules and vocab sheet for the spelling bee that I’m organizing. The directora is really excited about the whole thing, and I’ll plan with the teachers how to go about putting on the competition. The game plan now is to have the written exam the 21^st with the 5 best students from each class (just 5^th and 6^th grade are participating) going on to the final rounds (oral rounds). We’ll see how it goes.

Wanting to find out more about the house I am probably going to rent, I went to my institute afterwards to speak with Johanni. After reiterating most of what she told me the previous night, she mentioned that there was somebody living in the room I’m going to rent before who was paying 80 dollars a month. However, I have tons of people saying I’m a super responsible person (including her neighbour, who is also her cousin), so she’s more than happy to rent it to me for less. But it gets even better – when the owner of the house comes up when we’re making the contract, her cousin is going to ask her to “do him a favour” and charge me 40 dollars a month since I’m such a “valuable asset to the community.” I’m not holding my breath on paying 40, but it sure would be awesome.

In a small town, it really is about who you know.

October 2^nd

Today, being my first day since teaching in ISJ since the competition, left much to be desired. I was overly disappointed with the class since they put forth such a lackluster effort throughout the whole process, yet I resolved to continue teaching them as if they were continuing on anyway.

While the class began in roughly the way I thought it would – much like any other Nicaraguan classroom, I had little hope. I decided to jump straight into a review session of the past classes we’d done and the students were surprisingly receptive. One thing to note is that whenever you teach something and you ask if the students understand, they all say, “Yes.” Simple and sweet. But the really don’t understand anything. Then when you ask what you just said, they have no idea. That always catches them off guard and they switch on their brains (for the time being anyway). The review went pretty well, but the students returned to their delinquent ways once my counterpart started teaching some new material. However, they once again came around and I could see that the wheels were turning in their heads. When that happens…it’s pretty gratifying.

After teaching my class, I did the initial phases of business advising with a friend of mine, discussing the business he runs with his mom. We did a quick diagnostic and then hung out and chatted awhile until a guy showed up to the door and sprayed some mystery substance into the open door.

The whole scenario seemed almost like a joke – there was a man in goggles with a big tank on his back spraying what appeared to be fake smoke into the house – he was fumigating. It turns out that Achuapa fumigates every building in the entire town during the winter since the massive amounts of rain yields incredible amounts of mosquitoes.

The rest of the day was filled up with the final planning for my spelling bee that I’m organizing, teaching English to Johanni, and hitting up the gym. School is cancelled in all the schools tomorrow because we’re supposedly going to get tons and tons of rain. I heard something about a hurricane that’s hitting Honduras, but really who knows? The storm is supposed to have started this afternoon and be absolutely ridiculous…but no signs of a hurricane yet.

Time will tell I suppose.

LEC Competition Pictures

3rd place

2nd place

1st place

LEC Competition and an invite!

September 20^th

Today I had one plan – go get caught up on the world.

I headed down to El Sauce on the 8 AM bus so I could use the internet for the first time in quite a while. Also, I was going to print the diplomas for the competition on Monday. Never did I think that would take so much time.

Before doing all that, I stopped by the house of a business volunteer there, Irene. She’ s also going to be a judge in my competition, so I chatted with her for a bit before taking off for the internet café/productivity.

Aside from the zillion emails from my grandma, I got an email from Peace Corps World Wide Schools. They paired me up with a high school teacher from Castle Rock, Colorado for correspondence. I was pretty ecstatic, so I wrote out a gigantic email and sent it to the provided email address only to find that…it wasn’t the right address.

All in all, it was pretty over stimulating getting all caught up again. So much stuff has happened with the U.S. economy, aka it’s been destroyed. As an economist, if I had been aware of everything that was going on with the U.S. financial crisis, I’d be losing sleep. However, being completely isolated from the news renders me relatively ignorant…and for the time being, I enjoy that.

Giulia and Claudia also emailed me, so I’ve got to come up with a game plan for when they come to visit me. I think in the 8 days I’ll be able to hang out with them, we can hit 4 of the 5 places they want to go to, but time will tell.

When I got home, it was raining like crazy. Since everything shuts down when it rains, it just turned into a waiting game. I decided to pass time by watching a movie. Halfway through, I got up and looked out the window (to see the status of the rain). If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve said I was on a houseboat. The field to the south of my house was 2 feet under water. If it wasn’t for the trees, you wouldn’t even know it was a field. As a result of this ridiculous downpour, I was rendered completely useless the rest of the night.

Here’s hoping for a more productive tomorrow?

September 21^st

It rained. The whole day.

My bike broke. The same part. Twice.

I organized the competition that will be happening tomorrow (finally).

I also told my counterpart that I don’t like lending my camera. Now apparently I’m always angry.

A pure facts journal entry since the rest of the day was filled with typical Achuapa type activities.

September 22^nd

Today was a little out of the ordinary, even for Nicaraguan standards.

I woke up super early because I had my LEC competition today. I woke up more because I was having nightmares as oppose to a legitimate to actually wake up early. I’d had nightmares of the competition going super badly in so many ways. One of them was none of my judges showed up, none of my groups showed up, and my boss unexpectedly showed up. She then expected me to present the projects of all my students. So, due to that dream, I woke up a good hour earlier than I planned.

I showed up about 45 minutes before the start of the competition (the time I wanted to show up to the competition), so I could set up all the tables and chairs, and for good measure, worry that my competition would go just like the dream I had. Two of my judges showed up first along with one of my counterparts. They were followed by most of the students from my school out in the campo.

We then proceeded to wait…for a long time. Nobody from the school closest to my house had showed up, so I figured I’d walk toward the institute and I’d eventually run into them. However, this was not the case. I made my way there to find the gate locked. Not wanting to waste anymore time, I jumped the fence which yielded a bunch of shrieks and gawks from the students in the classrooms. I then found my counterpart walking around the institute and my directora. “What are you doing?” “The students are coming.” “They were supposed to be there 30 minutes ago, what do you mean they’re coming?” Completely dumbfounded by this answer, I went straight to the room of my 4^th year students. In the room I found all the students doing work out of a book. I then proceeded to convey a “What the $*#@ are you doing here?” with my arms wide open and asking why they weren’t already at the competition. “We didn’t get permission.” “You should’ve gone straight to the competition, it started before school did.” I just don’t understand it.

Eventually, my students stumbled into the competition location (an hour late) and we got everything together and started the competition. Overall, I had 3 groups that didn’t present because they screwed around the entire semester, and never ended up doing anything.

The competition went pretty smoothly and was totally streamlined. All the competitions I attended took 3 hours or more, mine finished up in a cool 55 minutes. Now that’s efficiency. Fortunately, my judges chose the winners in the exact order I’d thought it would be.

I was exhausted from the competition and running around, so afterwards, I hung out with Irene (the volunteer from El Sauce) for a bit, and when she took off, I watched a movie, Don’t mess with Zohan. What a terrible movie. I also was able to get over to the gym for a bit.

Upon returning home, I got a phone call from Peace Corps. The PC secretary called me and asked how I was doing. “Uh…I’m…good…it’s raining a lot…so what’s up…?” She then told me that Carol, the sub-director of Peace Corps Nicaragua wanted to talk to me, so she transferred me to her. It was a possibility that Carol was going to come to my competition, so I figured the only reason she wanted to talk to me was because something bad happened. Perhaps somebody complained about my journal or something? “Well, I have some exciting news for you Richard…” (Thank god) “…the U.S. ambassador is going to be in your department and wants to have lunch with all the business and ag volunteers there.” So on Friday, me along with 4 other business volunteers and 3 agriculture volunteers are going to have lunch with the ambassador at a super high-class hotel (the one we get evacuated to in the event that something dangerous happens…like a lot of rain). He wants to talk with us about the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which is the main NGO I work with in Achuapa. So from what it sounds like, we’re all going to give our story about how we’re involved and what not. COOL. This comes after hearing last week that the ambassador made a speech in Estelí (the nearest city to Achuapa) saying that Peace Corps volunteers were the best U.S. developmental tool in Nicaragua. Sounds like he’s hardcore pro-Peace Corps. That certainly doesn’t hurt.

As for tomorrow…who knows what’s going to happen? All the stress of the LEC competition is over so…it’s all downhill from here I guess. I can live with that.

September 23^rd

No class today – awesome.

Even though I didn’t have scheduled class today, I did have a couple things I wanted to get done. First I headed over to ISJ to talk with the English teacher about when she wanted to meet. With that being the only thing on the agenda, my appearance there was brief to say the least.

The main thing on my agenda was to go to the primary school to finally organize a soccer team with the 6^th graders. While I don’t teach in the primary school, working with the school has been a sort of secondary project that was semi-forced upon me/my own choosing. Initially, I decided I wanted to work there so I could gain enough trust to gain access to the computer lab. However, it began to seem like I’d never be able to use it, so I threw out my ulterior motives.

Little did I know, but there is yet another huge celebration on October 12^th, and that is the primary reason I have to organize this soccer team. I don’t really understand the rationale behind it, but I just go with it. I spoke with the professor of the class as well with the directora and she was going to talk with the NGO about donating some equipment and whatnot, we’ll see how it goes. Furthermore, while I was there, I talked to her about the reading program I was trying to organize. I told her that I basically had no idea how we’d be able to enforce rules to keep things fair, so I mentioned my idea about a spelling bee to her and the sub-directora. It went over incredibly well, “When can we start to plan this?” “Um…tomorrow?” “Ok, I’ll get a bunch of books and we’ll plan it tomorrow afternoon.” Right there is an example of why it’s so great to be a PCV in a small site. It’s automatically assumed that I know what I’m doing. Consequently, I go through very little red tape to implement virtually anything. It’s awesome to be given pretty much free reign to do programs and projects, however, I know I better get results from said projects. If not…well, I might encounter a bit more reluctance.

After discussing the projects in the primary school, I headed over to the MINED office to talk to the delegada about any funds available to help pay for the winning business group’s trip to the regional competition. The answer was short and sweet – “No, we don’t have anything in any way shape or form.” Great. My effort came in the form of a letter to the mayor asking him for money. We’ll see if anything comes out of it. Even though I was tired of doing competition stuff, I have to do something to raise some money for my students to go to the competition (we need C$ 700). My counterparts aren’t exactly “motivated” so to speak, so I’m doing the heavy lifting this year for the competition. It doesn’t really require that much work since I live in such a small town, but at the same time, I have to work on the sustainability of the program. Therefore, I’ve got to work on doing some things to stimulate a little more response/participation from my counterparts in next school year.

After running around all morning, I hang out for a little bit before another English teaching session. The consensus? If I was an English teacher here, I would kill myself, so thank god for that. It’s hard enough teaching business, but English is a completely different story.

Two hours later, I headed to the gym where I met up with some guy who has the key to they gym for some reason. After chatting to him for a bit about politics, the U.S. culture, etc., we got to talking about his family. He mentioned how he has a brother in the U.S. right now who is undocumented (ooooooo aliens scary!). Coincidentally, his brother (who has been in the U.S. for 4 years) works in Cape Coral, Florida – where my grandma lives. That gave me a chuckle and made the world just that much smaller. Maybe if his brother ever comes to visit we can talk about things to do in Cape Coral, like going to the Wendy’s or the outlet mall?

Small world.

September 24^th

I felt quite introspective today so I got kind of a late start to the day. As a result, I finally got out the door by 9:30ish. I went to the mayor’s office to see if he had approved my request for money. Fortunately he was there when I arrived but gave me the immediate answer of, “I haven’t had time to even read the letter you gave me, so come back later.” Since I’m taking off tomorrow, and will be in Granada this weekend, I’ll stop by on Monday.

Around that time, the Claro (the cell phone service here) went down – surprise surprise. The only competition they have is from a company that just started up recently, so they don’t have the overall coverage (aka I have one choice in Achuapa) that Claro does. As a result, the service provided by Claro is god awful. Some days (particularly recently) we don’t even have a signal, and other days, like today, the entire system failed across the country. If they had legitimate competition, Claro would lose customers in a heartbeat. That being said, I should probably drop out of Peace Corps and start a cell phone company – anybody want to finance me?

Just before the system failed, I got a text from my friend in Palacagüina. She’s been having a tough time with things, and finally had enough and early terminated. With her now gone, we’ve lost 4 people from our business group, and 5 from the entire Nica 47 group. That’s 12.5% of our group that has dropped out so far – steep. It’s kind of a bummer, but like I said after my buddy left a couple of weeks ago, it’s not for everybody. She’ll be in Granada this weekend, so at least I’ll be able to see her before she takes off.

Later that morning, I met up with my counterpart from San Sebastian and we talked for a bit before teaching our 3^rd year kids for the first time in about a month. It’d been such a long time since we’d planned the class, that we pretty much just winged it. The way it ended up going was us teaching 2 classes that normally take 3 hours in 30 minutes – now that’s efficiency!

After the class, I headed home for a quick lunch before going to help Johanni with her English again. The more I help her, the more I realise how hard being an English teacher is here. Or rather, let me rephrase that – I realise how hard it is just being a teacher here. The system really needs to be completely overhauled because the students that do pay attention and care really don’t get a lot of the skills necessary when they go to college/university.

After a frustrating session with her (maybe it was my 3^rd year students that put me in a funk?), I went to the primary school to help organize the spelling bee. I sat down with the directora of the school and we wrote down a bunch of the rules and chose words for the spelling bee. I’m going to pass by the school on Monday to pick up all the rules and words, then I’ll type them up so we can have a nice copy for all the teachers. Our school has absolutely no money, so it looks like we’ll either have to cut down on the number of participants, or kids will be sharing photocopies. Kind of a bummer, but what else can you do?

Today was gym day as well, so I went there for a bit and chatted with a guy who was there. He runs a pulperia with his mother, so I’m going to do a diagnostic and also teach them some basic English phrases so they can more easily serve the random white person who stumbles into their shop.

I need a vacation.

Independence Day and more of the LEC competition

September 8^th

Due to my incredible sleep deprivation the previous week, I slept close to forever – yet still let myself enough time to eat breakfast. While I did put in a good 11 hours, ‘sleeping in’ doesn’t really take on the same definition here. You’re sleeping in if you sleep past 8 AM. The extra hours come from the fact that you go to sleep so flipping early every night (because really, what else is there to do?)

Due to the upcoming Independence Day here, there are no classes in any of the schools for this week. They’re all practicing for the huge celebrations that will happen the 14^th and 15^th. While it’s all fine and dandy that they show so much dedication to preparing for this celebration, this is really the last thing the students need. They need to be in class – learning. I don’t care what country I’m in, spending so much time preparing for something like this is not a good use of educational resources.

Due to the continual practice, I had very little on my plate: a trip to the Enitel to see if my package came, work out, and meet my counterpart at 4 to plan a class. It was about 600 degrees outside so any outdoor activity would have to be severely limited. Therefore, just before lunch, I headed out on a mission to get my package from Enitel and then get some bananas. The end result was that I got neither. My package was never sent from León, and bananas are nonexistent in Achuapa today. This was completely unacceptable.

I resolved to do some sort of activity, so after lunch, I grabbed my bike and planned on taking a ride down the road towards El Sauce. Lindsay called me right as I was headed out and we talked a bit about how things were going. Almost immediately after she called, Kat in Estelí called me to ask about buying a used bike and what she should look for. I did an advising session with her (I wonder if I’ll be able to throw that on my work report…), then headed out on my bike ride. With the brutally hot and dry weather, I ended up stopping at the top of the first gigantic hill I came too. The planning of the trip was kind of slapdash, and I was without water, so I only rode for about 15 minutes. Nevertheless, it felt good to get on the bike and pedal my worries away.

Following my ride, I did some yoga and worked out, then read a bit before I headed over to my counterpart’s house to teach her about stocks. I rode over there to find her without her book because she’d left it at the school, and having not read the section either. I had no other option but to leave the book with her, and I’ll go back to her house tomorrow to help plan the class with her. It’d be nice if she would be prepared and enthusiastic, but whatever – bohuzel.

That spelled the end to my day, aside from me spending a couple hours reading about the Mayflower and those ill-prepared Pilgrims.

September 9^th

Being well rested, except not at all (I woke up wicked early and couldn’t get back to sleep), I was pretty stoked to have something to do this morning. I was to meet Gloria, the owner of the milk cooperative to discuss the ins and outs of her business as well as talk a bit about her ecotourism project she was going to start.

I got out of the house and over to her milk cooperative (3 blocks down my street) to meet with her at 8 AM. Unfortunately, but not exactly unsurprising, she didn’t show up, and I sat around for 30 minutes talking to some half-naked homeless man eating gallo pinto out of a cup. He asked when I came to Achuapa, told me the pulperia was closed, and gave me his weather forecast for the day. Not information I came for, but I was glad to get some sort of interaction out of my trip down the road. Not wanting to waste me being in dress clothes, I headed over to my institute to meet with Johanni, one of the English teachers. There I set up some times to meet with her so she could practice her English. Following several catcalls from my students I got back home.

I did around an hour of yoga before and decided not to lock myself in my room like I did the day before. It was yet another beautiful day, so I wanted to take advantage of it, as well of my enthusiasm to get out an exercise. I figured I’d take a bike ride down the road to El Sauce for 30 minutes, to see how far I’d get. The road itself is incredibly hilly and for a dirt road, in very good shape. After besting the first hill (which was quite a task), I was greeted by the some of the incredible views that surround Achuapa. In addition to the physical beauty, I saw a couple of deer, and a random flock of sheep (I think?). My game plan was to ride for 30 minutes, then turn around and be back in time for lunch. I became less inclined to continue after 20 minutes (and 5 enormous hills), after it appeared there was no worthy stopping point in the foreseeable future. No less than 2 minutes after turning around, one of my pedals locked up, rendering my bike pretty much unrideable. Before I’d turned around, I remember thinking, “Man, thank god I’m on a bike, I’d hate to walk home from here,” and that’s exactly what I did. The sun was absolutely brutal with the temperature no less than 90 degrees. It was a rough walk back home, but luckily I was able to coast down the hills (albeit with a terrified expression on my face since I had to ride in a very precarious position since my bike is fixed gear). In the end, it was another one of those “Wow, what an experience!” moments, and left me missing the snow more than ever – even if it is September.

I ate lunch, then headed over to the bike shop to deal with my busted pedal and chat with Rene a bit. In the end we didn’t fix the problem, but with an approaching hurricane (this is a daily occurrence), I headed home to the dryness of my room and the refuge of the book I’m reading (who would’ve guessed I would’ve ever said that?). On that note, I’ve been thinking about how much I’ve been reading (just non-fiction), and how much random information by the time I’m done with my PC service. On top of that, going back reading for school work will be a total joke since I’ve become accustomed to reading huge amounts on a daily basis. Nevertheless, eventually I’ll have to decide exactly what it is I want to study. Do I want to get a grad degree in economics? Some environmental degree? Teaching?

Off to El Sauce tomorrow to be a judge in yet another LEC competition (I’m a professional judge now! This is going on the resume.)

September 10^th

I’d say today was a nice change of pace, but in light of last week, today was really more of the same.

I had to get to El Sauce super early in the morning to be a judge in the LEC competition, and caught the 5 AM bus there. Strangely enough, my counterpart from Los Caraos was on the bus headed to León because she’s got some chronic stomach problem. I talked to her for a bit during the trip, but I was really craving the sound of the Ipod over her at 5 AM, so I listened to tunes most of the way.

I met Irene at her house which is located in the center of town and hung out for a bit before Maria, an ag volunteer, showed up with her boyfriend in an absolutely enormous truck. Her boyfriend’s mom lives in the States and instead of coming back, bought him an enormous Ford F250. It’s an absolute beast and complete overkill for the streets of El Sauce. Nevertheless, we had a bunch of errands to run before the start of the competition, so it definitely came in handy.

After running around for an hour picking up chairs, tables, and refrigerios, we showed up to Irene’s institute to start the competition. She had some 20 groups participating in the competition, the most that would be participating out of any of the competitions I had judged. Most of the groups did I pretty good job, but there were a few outliers on both sides of the spectrum. Overall, the competition clipped right along, but unfortunately for Irene, all the winners came from one school (bohuzel for them), so we were a tad worried about getting lynched following the competition. It all turned out well, and after the competition, Irene and I went out for lunch before I headed back up to Achuapa.

I got the bus almost immediately after we got done with lunch, and was back in Achuapa by 3:30 – great timing. After stopping by the alcaldia to find out the mayor wasn’t in, I headed back home to drop off my stuff. Wanting to take advantage of being all decked out, I decided to get on my bike and look around for a house or room to rent. I headed to the hardware store and asked the owner who informed me she had absolutely no idea, but would look into it and get back to me. Dejected, I headed over to Ervin’s house where I found his wife sitting on the porch. I bitched about how I couldn’t find a house in the town and we sat around for 20 minutes before she said, “You know, the house across the street is for rent.” She then informed me that the owner worked around the corner. Totally stoked, I headed around the corner and met with the owner, who works at the election commission. He told me that the house was still under contract until the 25^th, but after that it would be available. Also, he mentioned that the guy living there now was paying 500 cords a month – around 25 dollars! Perfect! It’s the exact price I’d been looking for! It’s a split house that was built just a year ago, made of concrete, has real secure doors, and for a Nicaraguan house, is quite large. I can only speculate as to what it includes since I have yet to see the house. However, after peeking in, it has an ample living area, and apparently has a huge patio in the back. The one downside is that is probably has a latrine, and from what I heard, it might now have a shower. Back to the bucket shower?

I was pretty ecstatic about the find, but I’m trying not to get my hopes up (but it’s not working at all). I hung out at Ervin’s house for a bit afterwards and talked with Noriko, the Japanese Peace Corps (JICA) volunteer. We exchanged a bit of music and movies before I headed home. The rest of the night just included working out, answering the host family’s questions about when I was planning on marrying the cat, and watching a movie.

I finally have no reason to leave site for an extended period of time – man am I ready to stick around and get things rolling.

September 11^th

Today was supposed to be my first day back in the classroom…and that didn’t happen.

The day started early enough at 7, and I did my thing so I could get over to ISJ for my class. Once over there, I met up with the English teacher and set up a time so I could help her study for her English exam. Afterwards, I met up with my counterpart and we went to class…but the class wasn’t there. It turns out, with this Independence Day celebration, class was cancelled yet again for drum/dance practice for the big event that will be thrown Monday. Bottom line is that my students now have 1 week to work on their business plans before the local competition. Nobody has done any of them, 3 of the 4 groups don’t have a prototype, and all but one of my students got a 75% or lower on the exam. About 90% of them failed the exam, and the one girl who got a 100% hasn’t done any of her homework – like the rest of the class. In other words, it’s not looking good for their grades. Whatever, it’s their problem – I won’t pity them when they fail. They had the time and chose to screw around. I am curious how many people will whine and cry to argue their case – as if I’m going to change their grade. It’s going to be fun to wield my influence!

After my failure of a class, I left to meet up with the alcalde to see if he could perhaps give me some free photocopies. He’s a jolly guy who always wears a hat, and named Milan strangely. He’s always really receptive as he was this time, but after laying down my situation he just told me “Oh yea, the copy machine is broken.” Bummer. However, he did suggest I go to one of the NGO’s in town to ask for some funds to cover the costs. I headed over to the MINED office to talk with the delegada to ask how I go about doing that and she gave me access to one of their computers and printer to type up a letter. All of a sudden, I was blasted back to my days in Business Spanish LSPA 345 where I was writing a business letter asking for something. The only thing I could remember was that I needed to really beat around the bush and use a lot of fluffy language before I finally get to the point. After doing all that, I had a very aesthetically pleasing letter and only 2 grammatical errors in the whole thing. If only I could pronounce my words as flawlessly as I write! I printed it up, got a big thumbs up from our delegada and ran over to Vision Mundial to hopefully get some money. I had no idea how the process was going to go, but it just involved me dropping off the letter and leaving, or in other words, not what I thought. I thought I’d give them the letter and they would say “Wow! Here’s a bag full of money!” Don’t ask why I thought this would happen.

I stopped by the primary school to organize a soccer team, where I was directed to come back next week. I also wanted to get judging material to each of my judges so their ready for the competition, so after stopping by the school, I headed over to the cooperativa to hopefully score some free photocopies. I chatted with a couple of the people I know at the coop (I realised I know just about everybody), and got the copies before they told me to go to the cajero – DAMMIT, they’re not free! I didn’t have money for them, so I had to run home real quick, grab a quarter’s worth of cordobas and go back to the cooperativa to pay for my photocopies. Not all was lost however – my friend who works there had been inquiring about a place to live and found a place for me. She told me it’s a pretty big place but the lady wants to charge $50 dollars a month. She, like me, scoffed at the high price, and she said she’d try to talk it down for me – awesome.

After all that nonsense, I headed home thinking I’d been out forever. “It must be around noon!” I thought to myself. Oh how wrong I was – it was 9:20 AM. I ran all over town and did tons and tons of things, and it took all of an hour and a half. What the hell.

With nothing else to do (literally), I headed back home, worked out a bit and dove back into my Mayflower book for a couple of hours. Following lunch, I headed to the bike shop where I hung out for a bit and inquired a bit more about the town. The high point was me finding out that we have a bread shop in town and nobody bother to flipping tell me. I’ve been going around town for 2 weeks looking for plain bread and nobody has had it, nor bothered to mention that there was a place I could get it all this time. Oh I see how it is Nicaragua. As a plus to the whole situation, if worse comes to worse, when I move into a house, I can definitely fill my stomach with bread. With a big piece of bread ringing in at a whopping 5 cents, if the budget warrants it, I can make a meal out of bread and a multivitamin. On that note – gotta learn how to cook.

Was weird seeing absolutely nothing about the September 11^th attacks for the first time ever. I heard nothing, saw nothing, and only realised it after I saw today was the 11^th. Probably a good thing.

September 12^th

I effectively put an end to the only thing I had to do today by choosing not to observe the Independence Day practice at Los Caraos today. In a way it was a silent protest since we wasted so much time with it, but I also didn’t to go simply because I don’t care/I’ve been listening to the practice for the past month.

Since I decided to not attend that event, I had little to do. I headed over to the hardware store to one, foster some sort of friendly relationship with the owner (when I move into a house, the hardware store will be the first place I go – maybe I could get some sort of discount, or maybe at least some free haircuts), and also to get a recharge for my phone. I took a bike ride around the town as well to find that they are paving (well, “blocking”) two of the most treacherous streets in town. That was big news – welcome to small town, Nicaragua. Aside from that awfully exciting news, I started another book, called Prague appropriately enough. Great book so far. I also helped the English professor at one of my schools again today.

With the Nicaraguan Independence Day on Sunday, school is cancelled Monday and Tuesday. So I’ve got a huge weekend, yet I’m staying in site since I’d been out of Achuapa for so much time in the last 3 weeks. I’m kind of bummed at the timing of this, but there will be plenty of time to leave site during the summer break in November, December, and January.

We’ll see how this super long weekend goes.

September 13^th

Today I had the sole game plan of going to the cooperativa to make sure one of my potential judges, Juan Bravo, the president of the cooperativa, was still in fact, going to be a judge.

I woke up way earlier than I thought I would, yet was somehow well rested, and I rolled out of bed. I’ve found doing yoga every morning gives me that…vitality if you will, to start the day in a clear and focused manner. This relaxing session was followed by the unpleasant, yet unsurprising attacks of these tiny little ants that are all over our housing compound. Today, they devoured me in the shower.

To kill a couple of hours, I sat down to the Prague book again and got through a few pages before sleep was beckoning me yet again. Supposedly well rested, I ended up yielding to my physiological demands for just a bit – but then I’d head to the cooperativa to at least be somewhat productive during the day.

I got all decked out, got on my bike (always a good feeling), and was on my way to checking off the only thing on my to do list for the day. However, upon arrival I found that the office wasn’t even open – oh no, my only chance to be productive was thwarted. Without any idea of what I should do next (I didn’t want to go back to my room and read another hundred pages today), I rode around the blocks for a few days before running into Ervin on the street. We discussed his business plan and how things were going with his job before parting ways – but like hell I was going back home. I made it about 50 meters before stopping at the bike shop. Here I would spend the next 6 hours just chatting with any and every person that walked in.

While from an outsiders view looking in, “hanging out at the bike shop” the entire day appears to be incredibly unproductive. Hell, from my initial perspective, that’s exactly what I was labelling it. What this schedule-filling occurrence ended up doing was turn a potentially bad day into a great day. It’s the little things that get you through the day and this was one of those little things.

The whole thing started in the conventional and banal manner with me just walking and taking a seat in one of the lawn chairs in the workshop. Yet 6 hours later, I had talked with everybody about literally every topic across the map. It began with talk about Independence Day in the States, and what we do there. It evolved into September 11^th and where we were, what we thought. This developed into a conversation about huge buildings, including the huge tower in the country that I multiple times failed to name in Spanish.

As some students from Los Caraos called me from the street as they rode by on their bikes, “Profe Ricardo!” the conversation changed yet again – into how half the town is in love with me, and whom I’m going to marry. Nobody. Yet, as somebody who is 22, I should have married a couple of years ago, so changing the subject was just not happening

The rain came and thankfully, and washed away the current topic. It now was the Red Sox, bike components in the States (and of course, how much they cost), and teaching them (Rene, and his [now mine as well] friends) a wide array of English words and phrases. “Flight attendance” “No, attendant” “¿Attendant? Como…una persona que…” “…que atiende a los pasajeros.” “Ahhh, así es.”

The end result? What started out as a habitual act (going into the bike shop to kill time), turned into a 6-hour cultural exchange (one of the main objectives of being a PCV). Not only that, but my stumbling, bumbling Spanish (as it generally is at the beginning of the day), improved to such a degree that I was making connections in my head and turning them into sentences even before I could translate into English what I was saying. In other words, I was thinking in Spanish.

What a developmental day.

September 14^th

Today was filled with obligatory plans – I had to go watch the Independence Day celebration. I wasn’t overly excited to go and participate, but when you live in a town of 3,000 people and something like this goes on – you have absolutely zero alternatives. Everybody closes their shops, pulperias, hardware stores, etc. So if I did want to do something else, I’d be doing it alone, and I’d be doing it outside of the town; I could perhaps go hiking.

The power went out yesterday at 10 AM and never came back on, so I woke up earlier than normal because it was bloody hot without my fan on. Therefore, instead of sleeping through the Independence Day celebrations, like I wanted, I woke up at 6:30 AM – plenty of time to partake in the festivities! Since I got out the door so early, I headed over to the bike shop where I killed a good hour before we heard the kids from ISJ marching down the street. It wasn’t actually that bad at first – a good cultural event. However, after a while, it just became redundant and I grew weary of listening to the same drumming they’d been practicing the last 3 months.

Nevertheless, I stuck around until 11:30 (after 4ish hours of watching), before going home to eat lunch and lay down (I’d been standing up for all of those 4 hours). The afternoon possessed more of the same until it all came to an abrupt end (wasn’t too smooth of a transition) around 2 PM. After this, I went looking for a house to rent. The one house I’d found – my supposed dream house – was absolute, and total garbage. It was one room, had no pila (a place to wash clothes/dishes), a latrine 40 feet from the house, and just a water spigot in the backyard from which I could bathe myself (amongst the severely undernourished and perhaps dying livestock that populated the yard. If that doesn’t sound glamorous, I don’t know what does.

That put a severe damper on things – I was super excited about living there. I saw a friend of mine, Kenis, in the streets and she showed me a house that was available just around the corner. It was a gigantic house available for 50 bucks a month. While it was more than I wanted to spend, it was an absolutely gargantuan house and definitely worth it. When we went to meet the owner we were informed that he in fact was no longer renting it, but selling it – dammit. I headed over to Ervin’s house after this and proceeded to sulk for a couple of hours. In the midst of being disappointed/pissed off, a lady I’m advising told me I could rent a room in her house for 100 dollars a month – uh no. She then kicked it down to 70 dollars a month – still no. For some reason, nobody seems to understand that I have no money. Every foreigner that has ever come to Achuapa has had money, so I’m getting the price that they would pay. Another house that was being rented by a French guy was being rented for $300 a month – get real. This put me in an even worse mood. What happened next came straight out of a Hemingway novel – it rained. This was an appropriate enough omen for me, so I made a hasty exit, hopped on my bike, and rode home.

It all falls back into that Maslow’s hierarchy (did you pay attention in psychology?), and my housing situation in the future is looking seriously grim. I love everything about Achuapa except my totally unknown housing situation. I refuse to get totally ripped off and pay a ton of money (see more than 50 dollars a month) for housing. In fact, if it comes down to having to pay an exorbitant amount of money for my housing, I’m going to ET (Early Terminate for those non PCV’s out there). I will not be financially taken advantage of because I should have a bunch of money. I’m a super cheap/frugal/economical person, so when I’m seriously worried about my finances like I am now, this is a non-negotiable issue. I brought this issue up to my host family, and was offered a room in the old health center for 50 dollars a month. I don’t really want to live there, but if it comes down to it, that’s where I’ll temporarily live while I wait for my host mom’s kids to go back to the U.S. (so I’d live in the health center for 2 to 3 months). The one advantage is that I wouldn’t have to buy furniture, and it has a toilet, shower, and ceiling. Nevertheless, I don’t want to take this route – I want to find a place I can call my own. I want to put stuff up on the walls – I want to make it my place. I don’t want to keep moving all over the place. Another option apparently is for me to live in the Casa de la Mujer (the women’s house), which I also don’t want to do.

So to all those foreigners out there who decided they want to make a difference in the world by volunteering in tiny places in the middle of nowhere – thanks @$$holes, I can’t afford to live here because you’re too wimpy to commit to volunteering for an extended period of time like a Peace Corps volunteer. Thanks for artificially inflating the prices here. This is the San Francisco of Nicaragua, and it doesn’t have anything to warrant it.

September 15^th

Last night, was plugging in my battery charger and I electrocuted myself (the wiring in every house is pretty shoddy). I went to bed soon after with worries fresh on my mind.

I wasn’t feeling too socially active upon waking up, so I decided to screw around on my computer for a bit (my broken computer keys magically repaired themselves following my electrocution), and deal with the rest of the Achuapan world a bit later in the day. By the time 8 AM rolled around, my phone was ringing – my counterpart was calling me yet again. Since the previous night, she’d found 3 places available to live and was sending her son over to my house to pick me up to go see them.

Her son picked me up literally 2 minutes after I got off the phone with her (small town remember?), and we headed over to one of the houses. On the way there, I learned that Achuapa has perhaps the biggest pulperia in the world. I’d never ventured over to that area of the town, so I’d never seen it. Basically, it’s a warehouse with tons of stuff. In any other country, this wouldn’t be anything – but being in Nicaragua, it’s absolutely incredible. This rivals the size of some of the grocery stores that I’ve seen in Nicaragua. Not only that, but it had the cheaper (and tastier) Corn Flakes that I’ve only been able to get in Chinandega – they’re 36% cheaper than the Kellog’s Corn Flakes of the same size. This magical gigantic pulperia is everything I’d always thought I lacked in Achuapa (for the most part). I was absolutely ecstatic after seeing this pulperia that I didn’t even care if I found an affordable house. One of the houses that is available is about half a block down the street from the warehouse pulperia and is where the dirt road starts. We waited a little bit for the owner before we were told to come back later.

We then headed over to Enma’s house (she’s a professor in one of the schools in Achuapa, and one of the first people I met in town), because apparently she had a room available. Enma had a setup where I’d have my own room, living room (pretty small, but a living room nevertheless), shower, toilet, and even a room for guests to stay in! She has an enormous yard, and it was just perfect. To make it even better – she just wanted me to help pay to pave the floor in my room. Aside from that, she told me I could pay a dollar a month, 5 dollars a month – whatever I wanted. I was super excited to find this but then reality set in immediately upon exiting her house – it’s across the street from a bar. This is a non-negotiable with the Peace Corps (though I think I’m going to ask them about it anyway), so I left her house dejectedly and went back to the first house.

Back at the other house, the wife of the landlord let me see the house. The house has a gigantic living room that as of now has a dirt floor. But in the room behind it are 2 bedrooms, a shower, and the most modern kitchen I’ve seen in Achuapa – it has a SINK. It has a giant hole in the wall where the living room is, so I was a bit worried about that one. However, everything in back of the living room was great. While it has a latrine instead of a toilet, this is a trade-off I am willing to deal with. The landlord’s wife told us we could find him on the other side of town, so that’s where we headed. We found the guy (I think his name was Tino) and I talked with him about everything that needed to be done with the house as well as what he’d be willing to charge. He told me he would fix the hole in the wall (with cement no less!) and he would put ceramic tile on the living room floor (!). Price wise, he told me around 1,000 cords (around 50 dollars), and that would include lights and water. I was pretty satisfied with this, but time will tell how it goes. It’s a huge house, so I think it might be worth it just because of that one.

After talking with the owner, I was finally able to head home to eat breakfast (I’d been carrying around a box of Corn Flakes for the past hour and a half while I was talking to all these people about houses). I relaxed a bit more while I was there (mainly because the water went out), and did some reading and screwed around on my computer some more.

Soon after lunch, my counterpart called me because some of my students showed up to her house to get me to look over their business plan for the competition. I went to her house and checked out the business plan and as I was headed out the door, another group with their business plan showed up. I graded the second one and then headed to the Institute where I was to meet the English teacher. I helped her out for about an hour and a half (after meeting with her just 3 times, I’m already seeing incredible improvement!), and since it was pouring (as it does everyday), we chatted for another hour before I headed home. Before we parted ways, she said she’d go check out a house she thinks is available for 30 dollars a month (double trouble!).

I was home only for a brief moment before heading out yet again to do some more housing investigation. I don’t know anybody’s name, but they all know my name, so I just popped my head into some random person’s house and asked them if they knew somewhere a house was available. They knew my situation and were disgusted that so many people were charging me outrageous prices for renting a place. They brought me around the corner to see a room that some people had empty. This room (while small) she said I could rent for the price of 300 cordobas (around 15 dollars!) a month – wow. They had two rooms available, the bigger of which Peace Corps could have security issues with – but it’s good to know about that option as well!

Strange how things just took a 180 after I got electrocuted – it’s like something out of a movie.

September 16^th

Tons of things on the agenda ≠ having a productive day.

I woke up pretty early today to meet with Gloria (finally) to talk about her ecotourism thing she has going on, as well as her milk cooperative. I got all ready to roll and out the door by 8 AM and headed on over to her casa de la mujer to find that…she wasn’t there (surprise surprise). Leslie, the grandson of my host mom was working there and told me she wasn’t there. She had told me the previous time when I saw her in the street that she’d been waiting inside. He told me that she had actually lied about that and so I shouldn’t hold my breath that she’ll show up this time either. Well whatever – I’m not losing any sleep over it.

I told Ervin I’d stop by his house afterwards to work on his business plan, so I expedited that on the schedule…only to find that he was sleeping. Batting 0 for 2 now. Off I went to one of the dentist’s office afterwards (the dentist, Dr. Bonilla is going to be a judge in my LEC competition) to pick up a business plan I lent her so she’d know how to judge the business groups on Monday. She hadn’t finished reading the packet, so she asked me to come back at noon. Woo – strike three!

With my entire morning plans destroyed, I headed to the bike shop where I hung out for a little bit before thinking about some things I’ll need when I eventually do move out of my host family’s house. A buddy of mine, Freddy, builds beds and rocking chairs so I think I’m going to have him make most of my furniture. Then it hit me…where the hell am I going to put all this furniture while I’m looking for a place? So off to my counterpart’s house I went.

There I found Profe Maria and her son and chatted them up a bit. We talked about the nice little house I’d found and due to security concerns with the owner (and the fact that he hangs out at the bar all the time), it seems like it could be a poor choice. Profe Maria then mentioned how she wants to buy another house in Achuapa, and if he (the sketchy owner) would sell the house for $5,000, she’d buy it and then rent it out to me for close to nothing (for those of you that just figured it out, buying a house in Nicaragua is REAL cheap). All for this idea, I headed over to the house with my counterpart’s son, Rafa, to go inquire about selling it. Unfortunately, he wasn’t around, but we’ll inquire in the future.

I ran into Ervin on the way back from the house and then sat down with him to do his business plan. For the next 3.5 hours, we worked on writing his business plan (though I told him 3 weeks ago to do it, and then we’d go over it). We did 2 sections of it before lunch finally rolled around (longest Achuapan morning ever). One incredibly amazing thing did come out of the morning session though – I found out that in the next couple of days that conventional telephone lines are going to get installed in Achuapa. This is huge and incredible news! With telephone lines comes one amazing thing – internet access. Here’s hoping.

In addition to all of the above, I once again helped the English professor (she’s the most motivated Nicaraguan I’ve met since I got here in May) and chatted with her a couple of hours as well before heading back over to Profe Maria’s house to hopefully get some free stuff. The water has been out the past couple of days, so I was hoping to score something to quench my thirst. While she laughed at my motives for coming over, she did offer me half of an apple – a very facenta (pretentious) thing to buy here in Nicaragua since one apple costs at least a dollar. After mooching off my counterpart, I saw the gym was open on my way home (it’s been closed the last month because of rain), so I dropped everything right then and there and worked out until they closed. Overall it was a relatively run-of-the-mill day mixed in with a few incredibly miniscule events that change my life so significantly. Sometimes I feel like it’s the 1800’s when we lose all utilities (we lost water, light, and the cell phone signal all today for most of the day). Then when they come back, I get super excited. “Oh my god! There’s water! I’m going to go buy some containers to fill!”

It’s really a way to add some spice to your day – how long can you go without electricity, water, and a telephone? As if I wasn’t isolated enough without newspapers – when all that goes out, be on the lookout for smoke signals.

September 17^th

With nothing on the plate for today (classes were cancelled yet again), I had a pretty casual morning, with the most taxing task being rolling out of bed. I know – PC sounds pretty tough.

I figured in light of my lack of set activities for the day, I’d call up PC to ask some security related questions about some houses I could live in. I’m quite fond of the room with the professor I know that was unfortunately across the street from a bar. I talked to my APCD (my program director) and she said that since I’m a guy, living across the street from the bar probably won’t be an issue so I’d probably get the ‘OK’ on that one. In addition to answering security related questions, I mentioned an idea about a secondary project I wanted to do – a spelling bee. The number of Nicaraguans with poor spelling skills is absolutely alarming. With competitiveness being the most profound characteristic of Nicaraguans, I figure what better way to drive home the importance of spelling than with a competition? With the spelling bee in the elementary school, the only thing needed to motivate then will be some miniscule prize like a bag of candy or something. Besides, Nicaraguans just want to win anyway.

Aside from the phone call to the APCD, I made my regular appearance in the bike shop, where I hung out for most of the morning. Lunchtime rolled around and I had one of my favourite dishes. However, it dawned on me that I’d always been eating it, and never actually had any idea what it was. Well today I asked, and whoa boy did I get an answer – cow tongue. All I can say is that I liked it a whole lot better before I found out what it actually was. The entire meal I just kept thinking how much it was like my own tongue. The whole mental image was how I was just eating my own tongue; it had the same texture and everything!

I made it through lunch and afterwards went to the institute to tutor the English teacher (in what has become the most sure thing about my schedule since I’ve been here). Following an hour and a half of a pronunciation boot camp, I went over to one of the NGO’s in town, Vision Mundial. With rapidly approaching ominous storm clouds devouring the mountains to the east, I had to expedite my trip and make it as succinct and to the point as possible. There answer was equally to the point – come back Friday. Hopefully by Friday, I’ll have some funds of some sort to help cover some of the costs for the competition.

The storm then came in and knocked out the water, then the power (twice), and I was back to square one yet again. With the rain, there was little to do but to relax, so I deferred some of the stress (can it be called stress?) and did some yoga.

Tomorrow I’ll teach my first class since August 28^th! Finally.

September 18^th

Today was an early morning; in fact, it was one of the first that I actually needed an alarm to wake up for.

The day began at 7, and I got really pretty quickly then headed over to the institute. When class started, I didn’t even bother waiting for my counterpart to come in. I was going to lay the smackdown on my class. This would be the last class we’d have until the competition on Monday, and I had a feeling that they’d bitch and moan – and that’s just what happened.

“So how many of you have done your business plan?” Silence. “You all know that the competition is Monday right?” Shock, outrage, and complaining. In spite of all the “legitimate excuses” that they were throwing at me, I shot them all down pretty quickly and they didn’t even bother to draw it out. I successfully diverted all the blame for not having anything done onto them. So what turned into a potential nightmare with tones of whining turned into a super productive class. It was the first time they actually worked when I told them to. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them pay so much attention. One group actually had turned in a business plan for me to grade, which I went over. It had a ton of errors, so I spent around 30 minutes explaining step by step, what was needed in the business plan and the presentation. By the time class was over, I was laying out all the necessary steps for another group (probably the only other one in the class that will actually do anything), and stayed 15 minutes after class just so I could go over everything and make sure the students understood. So attentive!

I was beat after that epic “last chance class” that I had to teach so I went straight home and jumped into bed to relax for a second. And coincidentally, no less than one second later, my counterpart from Los Caraos called me to tell me to come to her house because my students from her school were at her house and needed me to correct their business plans – oy, it’s never over is it?

Over at my counterpart’s house, unlike the other day, I found close to every single student in the class. I figured that with each group, I’d briefly look over their plans, give them back a marked up copy of their plan, and they’d leave…and I was wrong. It turned out to be exactly like it was at the other school – I went through step by step, each part of the business plan and presentation – and there went my morning. What I anticipated to be a brutal class turned into a brutal morning. Fortunately, I was out of there by lunchtime and went back home to each lunch.

I watched some of my Discovery channel (which I can completely understand, but still prefer in English. I’ve found that I like to be ‘wowed’ a whole lot more in English than in Spanish. The delayed reaction, since I process everything slower, bugs me. I also headed over to the bike shop for one of my “teach Rene some random words” and just to see how he’s doing. I later picked up a copy of the business plan from my counterpart’s house only to find that one of the groups was STILL there. This meant but one thing – I got roped back into correcting their newly revised copy of their business plan. On that note, I’m really proficient at evaluating business plans now.

I headed back home afterwards, business plan in hand, only to have some students from the institute show up to ask for the copy of a business plan so they could do theirs tonight. Just because I don’t want to hear any of their complaining, I’ve decided to show up to class tomorrow to give them last second help. God only knows how their business plans are actually going to turn out.

To fill out the rest of my day, I tutored the English professor – the only Nicaraguan in the country that ever shows up on time. Things like that keep me going. Small things, big impacts.

September 19^th

Today was the day I’d find out if my Vision Mundial could donate anything for my local LEC competition.

I woke up early and was out the door by 7:45 – good time I initially thought. I’ll get there bright and early….oh right, that’s too early. Since they didn’t open until 8, I turned around and walked the opposite direction towards Instituto San Jose. I wanted to give the kids there one more class so I could help them out since they really weren’t ready at all.

I went into my directora’s office and told her I’d like to work with the students one more time before the competition was over. “When do you want to work with them?” “Uh…sometime today.” “Yea, no problem I can give you a class period to do that.” And right there she rang the bell. In the middle of the period she just rang it and said, “There you go.” Unexpected, but it helped keep me on schedule.

After helping out the kids there, or rather, standing around and yelling at them (the groups that still hadn’t done anything) for slacking off the whole time, I headed to the NGO to see if my money request had been approved. I met with the Vice President of the Vision Mundial office and pleaded my case with him. He told me that this month is the end of the fiscal year for the NGO, so he couldn’t promise me anything, but he would make some phone calls, and I’d need to come back at 1 for an answer.

To kill time, I did some rounds around town – visiting people I knew, going to the cooperativa, checking out the location for my competition, hanging out in the bike shop, etc. Furthermore, I prepared the packets of materials that I have to give to the judges of the competition. Overall, I got everything pretty much set for the competition (except for the 1^st through 3^rd place certificates which I’ll print off tomorrow).

I eventually went back to the NGO at 1, and he told me to come back at 3 because he still hadn’t heard anything. So I came back at 3, and he sat me down in his office. In the best was possible, he explained how he couldn’t help me since this was the end of their fiscal year. The was he put this was, “Pues, estamos jodido.” or literally, “Well, we’re f*cked.” This gave me a good chuckle in spite of the negative response. I think the whole process was worth it just for that answer. While that was negative news, he did tell me that if I come back on the 10^th, he’ll most likely be able to give me something. So that’s what I’ll do. He said that their NGO likes anything that helps with intellectual development, and that everybody at the there was ecstatic about my proposal – it was just bad timing.

No hard feelings.

After dealing with the NGO, I went to my counterpart’s house to drop of my camera since today is her birthday. On top of that, one of my business groups was at her house to ask me for suggestions on how to present their paper and such. I was pretty stoked to see them caring so much since this is exactly the opposite of what is going on at my other school. I just told them to chill out and reinforced a couple main points and that was all they needed to do. I hope they win.

My counterpart’s birthday party was a hoot and a half. The party consisted of me, her son and daughter, and a bunch of her teacher friends (about half of whom I knew). I got to practice my Spanish in wild social situations with mucha bulla (lots of noise). I did pretty well and got a free dinner, cake, and drink out of it to boot. How economical!

I also found out big, big news – when we get the phone lines (I heard it will be within the next month), one of my judges will be opening a cyber café. AWESOME. As soon as that opens, I’ll never have to leave Achuapa. Achuapa will have it all, well…except a bank.