Taking a vacation

October 31^st to November 13^th

My first day of vacation began at 3 in the morning. I had to wake up for that dreaded 4 AM bus and also because I was a tad worried about not getting everything packed, thrown away, and settled before taking off for a two week vacation. On top of the stress of ensuring everything was ready for me to leave, I was still dealing with my bacteria infection, the one that waged a war in my stomach for several hours each time I took a Cipro. I was on my last day of taking Cipro, so I hoped that it wouldn’t obliterate me on the 5-hour bus ride to Managua. While that was on my mind, I realised as soon as the bus pulled out of Achuapa that I’d left a bunch of food in the fridge, and some bananas handing from the steel beam above my refrigerator – oops.

Magically (I don’t know what else to attribute it to), I arrived in Managua unscathed. I spent most of the day there hanging out with volunteers and dealing with the med office (Leptospirosis hit Achuapa and a couple of people died, so now I’m required to take preventative medicine, Doxycycline). While I was in the office, I was also able to take advantage of the tasty restaurants that are around the office. Since I’d been sick, I’d eaten very little the previous 4 days, and what I had eaten had been limited to the very unimpressive meals, which I’m competent enough to prepare.

Following my day in the office, I headed to Masatepe – my training town – to meet up with a couple of my friends that live there, and begin my vacation. The ride to Masatepe was just as I’d always experienced it – with millions of people crammed in the microbus. Also, surprisingly enough, I ended up taking the bus with Jordan’s old host family’s sister, Iriana. So much for sneaking into Masatepe. I came into Masatepe via San Marcos and the bus dropped me off on the main road, leaving me to walk the main drag in town to get to my friend’s house. At this point, I was hit with a pretty significant bit of nostalgia, and as I walked past the gym, the guy who owned it was out front and asked me, “Hey chele! Where’ve you been?” It was funny to see that I hadn’t been to his gym since July but he still remembered me. Perry, a TEFL volunteer who is finishing her service in December, was kind enough to let me stay at her place during the first leg of my vacation. Furthermore, no more than two blocks later I ran into the rest of Jordan’s old host family. Her host mom is super gossipy, so it was set in stone that everybody was going to know that I was now there.

I arrived at Perry’s house soon afterwards and we sat around, chatted a bit, and bought some food for dinner that night. Oliver, one of my good friends while I was in Masatepe, was doing errands in Masaya, so the plan was to meet up with him later that night. Furthermore, Sonia, a TEFL volunteer from my group who lives in Masatepe, was going to meet up with us to make some tasty vegan food later that night.

As it turned out, Oliver was his typical Nicaraguan self and showed up a good 3 hours late, but redeemed himself by bringing food from his parents Comedor. However, with this free food, our plans to make vegan food that night were thwarted. Oliver hung out and chatted with Perry and I for a good couple of hours until we both were at the point where sleep became more important than chatting with Oliver about how he’s always late.

The following day, I somehow slept in until 8:30, which for me is a miracle. Well rested, I grabbed some breakfast at the Pali and set out to make a couple of visits to people I knew when I lived in Masatepe. Much like the day before, I had people who hadn’t seen me in months greeting me in the streets and asking where I’d been. Some of the people that I had conversations with I couldn’t even remember.

I was planning on just stopping by the house of some kids in my youth group before I ran into Armando Jose, my old host brother. “Where are you going? To the house?” “Uh…huh…yea, that’s right, I’m going to the house, who’s there?” Since I was unable to sneak into my former neighbourhood, I stopped by my old house and visited with the host family for a while. Things didn’t really end on the highest note, but since my old host mom wasn’t there, the reunion was pretty painless.

After my forced reunion, I stopped by a kid in my youth group’s house, Javier. Javier and his brother Ariel – probably 2 of the most intelligent kids in the entire town of Masatepe (Ariel was on TV for being the top student in the town – were both in their yard and appeared elated to see me. I had a pretty good relationship with Javier, so as soon as I walked in, he started looking for his chessboard.

The chessboard was nowhere to be found, so after making one, we played a couple of games of chess for old times sake and I chatted it up with him and Ariel to see how things have been going. Their mom, a teacher in the institute I taught at in Masatepe also showed up and I gave her the breakdown on my first 3 months in Achuapa. After finishing my games with Javier I said goodbye and just got out the gate when their Mom yelled at me, “Where do you think you’re going? Get back here. You need to eat.” So my exit was delayed a bit longer so I could eat lunch (no complaints from this end – free food is good food.

I headed back to Perry’s house and edited some of her law school essays before Oliver called me up:

“You said you’d call me.”

“Yea…I ended up playing more chess games than I thought.”

“You’re turning into a Nicaraguan.”

Oliver eventually came over to the house and Perry, Oliver, Sonia and I all headed over to enjoy the latest (and greatest) beer from the Nicaraguan beer machine. After a couple, we all parted ways because Oliver had to head to work and Perry had to continue writing her law school essays. While they did that, Sonia and took a hike around Masatepe. That effectively killed took up the rest of the day.

The day after Claudia and Giulia arrived, we woke up at a god-awful hour so we could make one of the first busses that headed down to Rivas. They were actually pretty lucky that we got such a nice school bus. This one had curtains, a TV (was my first bus ride with a TV), they sold drinks in an organized manner, and they had two cobradors. The ride itself was pretty easy, and we were the only people to get off as the bus was to continue on to Costa Rica.

“Hey chele! Chele! Do you need a taxi?”

“Yea, how much?”

“60 cordobas for all of you.”

“Pfft. You’re crazy, I’ll ask somebody else.”

“Fine! 40 for all of you!”

I refused to make this a silent taxi ride, so I chatted up the driver the whole time, which ended up lowering the overall price by 5 cordobas. We got to San Jorge (the boat from Ometepe leaves from here), only to realise that a boat didn’t leave for a couple of hours. Claudia and Giulia grabbed some food while we waited and I went to use a bathroom that looked pretty nice (have to take advantage of things like that). Unfortunately, it cost 5 cords to use the bathroom (which I bitched and moaned about), so negotiating that taxi fair 5 cords cheaper was rendered pointless.

The boat ride to the island was in a nice ferry with air conditioning (who would’ve thought???) and took around an hour and a half to get into Moyogalpa. We grabbed some money at the ATM and I asked around about getting to Charco Verde. There were plenty of people willing to offer us a taxi for anywhere from $10 to $25, and kept telling me the ride would take around an hour and a half by car. I told them all no and went about looking for information about the bus. “How much does the bus cost and how long does it take to get to Charco Verde?” “10 cordobas and about 30 minutes.” So on top of the bus costing 20 times less, it also got there an hour earlier…interesting.

The bus dropped us off a half kilometre from the entrance to Charco Verde, giving us a scenic and “rustic” walk to our hospedaje. The hospedaje itself was right on the lake, but since the rainy season had ended just days earlier, the hiking trail through the nature reserve was completely underwater. Furthermore, the beach was almost completely flooded. We were pretty exhausted from the trip there, so we just chilled out the whole day and night and watched the sunset, planning instead to explore the island the following day.

The next day (election day), for an exorbitant amount, we got a guy to drive us to a bunch of sites around the island. The sites, a precolombian museum with petroglyphs, Ojo de Agua (a natural spring), Playa Santo Domingo (a beautiful beach which unfortunately was completely flooded), and then to Altagracia where we slept during the night. The day was pretty much over when we arrived in Altagracia (even though it was 3 PM when we rolled in), and I met up with my friend Joanna who is an English volunteer in the town. We delivered some school supplies and then and hung out with her and her host family for a couple hours before she had to take off for one of her English classes. It was around 6 PM by the time I got back, so I took to the television to watch the results of the U.S. presidential election. It wasn’t going as quickly as I was hoping (but who knows why I was hoping it’d go quickly in the first place?), so Claudia, Giu, and I took a walk through the town to kill some time.

Following the walk, Giu and Claudia went to sleep, and I parked myself in front of their hotel’s TV and watched the election results. The Nicaraguan news presented the election in such a way that was not very conducive to actually telling us the results, so I only was able to read the ticker at the bottom of the screen and look at the two bubbles that showed how many votes Obama had won, and how many McCain had won. To make things worse, while I was watching this, the Liberales had a huge party outside the hotel, so I couldn’t hear anything the announcers were saying about the election if I wanted to. I sat like this for a good 2 hours (until a little before 10 PM) before I got frustrated with the lack of action. My quick solution was to change the channel to Acción 10. Unfortunately, Acción 10 had absolutely no coverage of the U.S. election, and after waiting for a couple minutes, I switched back to the crummy channel I’d been watching. “Obama – 297, McCain – 145,” then at the bottom of the screen a was the message, “¡Obama gana la presidencia!” I was shocked. Not only did he win, but he won at 10:15 – flipping early! It was an absolute blowout! I couldn’t believe it (as I’m sure much of the U.S. felt too). Too ecstatic to sit around watching them tally the rest of the votes (which were now being counted in vain), I ran through the hotel telling everybody who wasn’t watching the TV (which was everyone) that Obama won the presidency. The hotel was just full of a bunch of French people, and they all cheered. I then set out to the streets – I had to tell as many people as possible. I ran back to my hospedaje, and though I was extremely tired, I couldn’t go to sleep. I called a handful of people as I stood outside the building where my room was (I was the only one staying in the hospedaje). The owner of the hospedaje, believing that I was locked out, woke up and came with his key to unlock the door. “No, no, no. The door is open, but Obama just won, so I’m super excited!” “Obama won?! Come chele! Let’s watch it on my TV!” So I spent the rest of the night watching the election results with the owner of the hospedaje and his family (thanks for those up to the minute text messages Phil!).

The next morning, I woke up super early, still pumped because of the Obama win (and the Musgrave loss!), and was up at 6 AM. I headed to the shower only to find a dog sleeping in it. Luckily there was another one and I was able to get out of there a mere 20 minutes later after a hug from the owner who was very grateful that I decided to stay in his hospedaje instead of another one.

Claudia, Giulia, and I caught the 7 AM bus and when all was said in done, we were back in Rivas by 10:30, ready to go to our next destination – Granada. On the bus ride from Rivas, I sat next to a man named Eduardo Tercero who I chatted up during the entire trip. He told me about his whole life, what he did, his 11 kids, his home on the Mombacho Volcano, his almond trees, and we talked politics as well. The whole conversation took place while he took swigs of agua caliente (homemade booze), and ate handfuls of peanuts (he even bought me a bag). When we ultimately arrived at his stop, he grabbed his broom that he’d just bought from a guy on the bus, gave me his number and told me I was always welcome to stay at his house if I ever returned to Granada.

The bus from Rivas dropped us off at the far end of Granada, which meant we had to take a trek through the market to get to a hostel. Once we got Claudia and Giulia’s stuff dropped off in the hostel, we set off to explore the city. Surprisingly, mostly due to Giulia’s exuberance, we saw all but one landmark that Granada has to offer tourists by the time the sun set. After deciding our plan for the next day (to head to Masaya), I set off for Avi’s house where I spent the night.

I awoke early to go grab Claudia and Giulia so they could change hostels and we could eat before heading off to the Masaya market. At the market, Claudia and Giulia went shopping for a couple hours while I translated for them and got bargains wherever we went. We also grabbed some pizza and headed to the supermarket before going back to the old market for a bit, then making our way back to Granada for the night. That night was the birthday of a volunteer from Matagalpa who was in town, so we headed to the Irish Bar that night where I enjoyed my first real beer in 6+ months, a Guinness. Ok, I’m lying, I didn’t enjoy one, I enjoyed three in spite of the enormous 75 cordoba price (Hey, I’m vacation). So for the price of those 3 beers I bought, I could have paid my electric bill for 3 months, bought 23 Nicaraguan beers, or paid for a round trip bus fare from Achuapa to Granada. Where are my priorities?

The next day I had training in Managua, while Claudia and Giulia headed for Volcán Mombacho. Training was not too exciting and could’ve been more helpful, but I guess that’s what comments are for. On top of it being training, a bunch of other volunteers were in the office, including ones who were completing their service, so I was able to say goodbye to some of them.

That night was the birthday of my good friend Dianne, so after meeting up with Claudia and Giulia to see how their day went, and decide what our plan was, I took off for Liz’ house with Dianne. As luck would have it, Dianne got a wicked bacterial infection and was pretty much immobilized much of the night – so much for having a happy birthday.

The next day, I woke up super early from being sick and also since I’m always on campo time, and headed to Claudia and Giulia’s hostel. We then headed to breakfast before grabbing their stuff and catching a bus to the UCA in Managua before catching a microbus to León. We got into León around 11 and found out that because of the elections the following day, busses wouldn’t be running until Monday. Due to this, Claudia and Giulia decided they wanted to spend the next 3 days in Estelí instead of León so they hopped a bus there while I decided to wait out the election in León.

With my plans now changed, and having already seen everything León has to offer, I mostly stayed in the hostel until Tuesday rolled around. There had been a lot of violence due to the elections and supposed fraud, that Peace Corps had us on Standfast, so I didn’t know until the last minute if I was going to go to Managua for the LEC national competition or not. After I found out they were still going to have the competition, I was on the first microbus to Managua.

Once in the PC office, I helped the people on the LEC (La Empresa Creativa, the name of the course that I teach) committee with whatever they needed for most of the night. When all was said and done, my project specialist, 2 of the volunteers on the LEC committee (from the previous small business group that arrived a year before my group did), a health volunteer from Matagalpa, and me all headed to a Korean restaurant near the PC office for dinner. After sufficiently dealing with my craving for Kimchi (I blame this craving on you Phil), we headed to a coffee shop and hung out for a bit before going to our hotel.

The next day was the day all us SBD volunteers had been waiting for – the day of the national competition. The competition represents but one thing: the end of our school year. Or in other words, we can finally chill out and start our secondary projects. The setting of the competition was in the incredibly nice Intercontinental Hotel, which is about a 10-minute walk from the Peace Corps office, and the turnout was actually pretty impressive. The ambassador showed up recognized me from eating all his lunch in León, and then shook my hard accordingly. He was only at the competition for a short amount of time as the Nicaraguan press soon after the competition started, bombarded him with questions about the municipal elections held this past Sunday. Soon after these questions started, he left the hotel and took off with all his secret service guys.

Overall, everything went pretty well with few problems interfering with the quality of the competition itself. When everything was said and done, we celebrated Georgia’s (our Program Director) birthday and got ready to either head back to our sites, or for people like me, head to my hotel. However, right as we were about to leave, riots were taking place across the street at the Metrocentro mall. Not surprisingly, PC told us we couldn’t leave the hotel and went and got a bunch of vehicles to transport us all to the office. With this, we were put back on Standfast and most of the volunteers that hadn’t left yet were put up in a hotel by Peace Corps due to all the rioting that was going on around the city.

The next day, I woke up before most and headed back to site. The rainy season ended a while ago, so due to the lack of rain, they’d started repairing the highway, which made the trip exceptionally speedy. The trip from León clocked in at less than 3 hours – amazing. To make it all even better, everybody said how much they missed me. I got discounts at my favourite pulpería (the owner even gave me some beans to bring home), students in the streets were asking where I’d been and when I’d be coming back to school, and I played with some of the kids in the streets.

Friday was much of the same, dropping in to see my friends and whatnot. I also finally did the final round of the spelling bee and it went super well. After the competition though, there wasn’t much to be done. So I just went around visiting people the other day to let them know I was back in town. 

Random pictures

The rain clouds showed up in Masatepe the other day, but it never rained. It looked pretty cool though.

More Masatepe, Profe Gogs, and me going native

May 26^th

 

Due to this being our last week with our Spanish facilitator, our only task this morning was to make a calendar with everything we are going to do until Mid-July. That’s FOREVER AWAY. I can’t even decide what I’m going to plan for one day, let alone for the next 8 weeks. So as I planned it and even got so frustrated, I went into hysterics – literally. I had a laughing attack and just lost it because I just couldn’t handle it. Peace Corps is requiring it of us since we’ll be on our own for the most part the next 8 weeks. So…I made a schedule…I don’t intend to follow most of it…but at least they have a schedule now. Following the planning of my life the rest of training, I practiced my class that I was going to give later today. The morning flew by as we had barely anything to do, so I went home and got some lunch.

 

The game plan for the afternoon consisted of me teaching a class at 1:30. Usually my class is at 2, but due to exams this week, they altered the schedule. However, upon arriving, I met with the director of the school who told me that not only was it a different schedule, but it was completely different from what they had told us. She told me that my class in fact had been canceled. We tried to find out what the schedule was from some of the professors, but it appeared that nobody in the whole institute knew. So we set a tentative game plan that I would teach the same grade, but after recess – yay, after recess. Not only that, but our business program director decided that she wanted us teaching more than 6 classes. So if all goes according to plan, I’ll end up teaching 8 classes before I go to my site. The other business volunteers are only going to end up teaching 3 classes, so I should really reap the benefits of this once I start teaching full time at my site. While it’s kind of a pain to be doing now, the practice will probably pay off in the long run.

 

Jordan and I had another youth group meeting this afternoon, which was kind of a downer. Our group isn’t the most motivated, and motivating them is proving to be quite a task. We aren’t getting the attendance we’d hoped for, and it’s really hampering our efforts. We’re not allowed to suggest ideas for the group to do, because if the group isn’t interested in the activity, they just won’t show up. The only group member who ever has any ideas/anything to say about the project, wasn’t too positive today. He doesn’t think our project, a “cine club”, will work, nor does he know how it will work. Hopefully we can convince him otherwise.

 

May 27^th

 

I didn’t expect today to be very noteworthy today – and it really wasn’t. The game plan for the day was to teach my first class with 9D (Ninth grade, level D), and then relax the rest of the day. However, as I have learned, things generally don’t go according to your plan. The class I was to teach is at the same time as my Monday class, but due to finals, it was canceled. So my planning for the class and what not went down the drain and will have to wait until the following week. All in all, I should be able to teach 8 classes by the time I finish my training July 18^th.

 

Peace Corps wanted a more legible copy of my calendar of events for the next 2 months, so I had to redo all of it again, albeit more compliant this time around. Yesterday I was overly peeved that I had to dedicate time to doing their schedule while I had to practice for my class (more on the result of that later). So I planned that again, but this time only allotted myself 2 hours every morning to read the newspaper as opposed to the four I had provided myself on the previous schedule. What can I say? I’m willing to read a little bit faster for Peace Corps. I even put some TV watching time into my schedule – how generous of me.

 

This was our last day with our Spanish facilitator, so we did a bunch of pencil pushing and all sorts of other formalities. Since my class was now canceled because of exams, I went from having very little to do this week, to having nothing very significant to do this week. It really is quite a radical shift from the first 2 weeks of training. I guess this is what the volunteers who were in the advanced class were referring to. The amount of running around I have to actually do now amounts to 2 youth group meetings and 2 classes to teach a week. In other words, I have 3 hours of actual work to do, and the rest of the time to fulfill Peace Corps goals for myself. Examples of these goals are as follows: integrate yourself into the community, watch TV in Spanish, read the newspaper in Spanish, speak with a family friend, ask family about formal/informal greetings, etc. As you can see, VERY intense work required of me. While, fulfilling Peace Corps tasks (except having a successful youth group) are relatively easy, I definitely have enough books to start a library. Admittedly, I haven’t exactly kept up with the reading, but I’ll have plenty of time to do so. Maybe that’s why we’re allotted so much time to get the reading done? Last time I picked up one of the books, I read a page and immediately switched to my reading for fun book. I know they want us to read it and be knowledgeable and whatnot, but aren’t books for reference? When I hit a wall in wherever I am, I can refer to these books. They could be the FAQ’s/Open here in event of emergency part of my house.

 

While I’m talking about reading material, the sheer amount of reference materials they give us has led most of us to refer to Peace Corps simply as Paper Corps.  All they stuff they print off and give to us can hardly be considered sustainable.

 

I observed Avi’s class this afternoon and got a first hand experience of what happens when a class is…less than cooperative. Avi went from smiling the first 5 minutes to not so smiley Avi (which really is a rarity) after about 5 minutes in the class. It was near impossible to get control of the class with all the commotion that was going on. To make matters worse, all the students were studying for an exam they had the next period. This effectively thwarted any plans he had for teaching today. He had a good plan, but the combination of all these adverse circumstances yielded a less than desirable outcome. Next time it’ll work out.

 

I’ve been going crazy without a gym. There’s a gym in town that costs a little more than a dollar a week, but from what Avi told me, it’s one room with some weigh equipment in it. I might spring on it one week just to see how it suits me. Mostly I’ve resorted to running about 30 minutes everyday/everyday it doesn’t rain, doing tons of pull-ups on our kitchen ceiling, tons of pushups, and yoga on the sheets that I brought. Today I went old school and got a bucket and filled it with rocks so I could add some variety to my workout. I’m trying to devise some way to get a little more resistance training into my workout. I think the next step is going to involve me buying a bucket, buying some sand and/or cement, then filling said bucket with aforementioned heavy things. Hey, it worked in the Rocky movies.

More pictures

My street (my house is the second house on the right

Walking home from class

Here´s my gym (the broken swingset)

This is what a youth group meeting looks like 5 minutes after the meeting was supposed to start – ah…Nica time. At least William helped me with the chairs.

The crazy life I live

May 18^th

I set a new record for sleeping in – 7:15! Yea, I know, I’m working on it though. I would’ve slept longer, but my host parents (whom usually wake up at around 5:30) were still sleeping and my parrot was totally FLIPPING out and just screeching. So I woke up, killed it, and ate it for breakfast. That was the game plan, but with it being early, I just had eggs instead. The day was really nonchalant, particularly because I didn’t have to wake up for some Peace Corps nonsense for the first time in since the previous Sunday. I actually got to chill out. It was great, I woke up, read a bit, exercised for a while, then had some breakfast. I took a break afterwards by watching a soccer game which I followed with a 20 minute jog in the boiling hot zillion degree weather. I realised one thing on this jog – it’s too flipping hot to jog while the sun is out. I am far too pale for it to do me any good. Furthermore, it dehydrates you hardcore. Essentially, it’s like dowsing yourself in water and being shocked that you’re wet. It’s obvious and stupid to think that it won’t be exactly the way it always has been – a bad idea. As far as I know, the weather has been 95 degrees and above everyday I’ve been here. Jordan and I were talking last week about how it was cooler and how much nicer it was. After checking the weather report, I saw that we were just losing our minds as it was just as hot every single day (with last Tuesday being a bit hotter at 99 degrees). I’m just super grateful that it’s not as humid here as I thought it would be. It’s more humid than Colorado, but at the same time, it’s completely tolerable. Massachusetts, New York, and Florida are all a zillion times worse with regards to humidity – at least in Masatepe. With weather like this you realise how much you always took a good breeze for granted. It’s the equivalent of being handed a huge bag of gold. While using that metaphor, I’d like to point out that I’d take a breezy day over a bag of gold any day down here – it’s that hot. Fortunately it’s cooler at night so sleeping isn’t nearly as hard as it is in places like DC (which is why Virginia and Maryland were more than happy to cede that swamp to the government).

I really took a good hard look at my host dad’s bike and…realised that practically none of my tools will work on it. These bikes are built for Nicaragua (aka, they’re built like tanks). I didn’t need all these specialized bike tools (save a chain tool and tire levers), all I needed to bring were some screwdrivers and an adjustable wrench. Allen wrenches? What the hell do I need those for? The only thing they’re useful is for boasting about how I can fix bikes…in America. So bring on the screwdrivers.

I went to my host grandmother’s house this afternoon after I went to the internet café which is 3 blocks away. I showed up to find a cauldron (I wish I was overstating this) full of soap. This soup literally had full potatoes, carrots, fist-sized pieces of meat, beets, half heads of cabbages, and several other vegetables, which I’d never heard of. “They’re from the same family of the potato…” Uh…ok. Whenever I see a fruit or vegetable that I’m not familiar with (which tends to be every meal), I ask what it is and generally get an answer like “Oh, it’s like this.” Ok, that sounds good, so I’ll pretend it is that. That’s pretty much the way I’ve approached it. It’s like squash you say? Well then squash it is. I seriously didn’t know half of the food I’ve been eating existed. Not only that, I often get a variation of the vegetable I didn’t know existed the following meal. “Oh, so this is like that one vegetable that was like squash?” Ok, thanks for the squash.

While I’m on the topic of food: I didn’t know you could make drinks out of 90% of the things that I’ve had to drink. While they’re super sweet (today I had some variation of carrot and apple fresco), one glass contains enough sugar to start a candy factory. I knew they had a lot of sugar from when my host mom made a guayaba fresco, but it wasn’t until I saw a glass of a fresco poured today that I realised how much sugar there actually was. I was too full from my soup to eat/drink anymore, so I poured my fresco back into the pitcher – there was half an inch of sugar at the bottom of my cup. Talk about over saturation.

Following my massive bowl of soup (3 times the size of my head), I headed back home for a siesta that invariably turned into a sweating marathon as I opted to sleep in my jeans and clothes. Yea…in Nicaragua that just doesn’t really fly. If you want to sleep, you’re sleeping sans clothes. I met up with my group afterward to work on our town map and discuss with Jordan our next meeting with the jovenes (which is tomorrow morning at 10 am and we’re not counting on any of them to show up). I went home to find my host dad there in an ecstatic mood because the phone was actually working. He was so elated; he busted out his phone book and called the U.S. After his call, he excitedly told me that he just called Los Angeles, skimmed his book, and picked up the phone again. After his various phone calls to every number he could find, I asked him about dinner. He responded that if I wanted dinner, I’d have to go back to my abuela’s house because there was no food in the house. I checked the fridge, and he wasn’t lying. The only thing we had was half a bowl of corn flakes and no milk. I think we buy food every morning from the people that sell food from their carts in the street. I don’t know why we don’t just buy food for a couple days, particularly since we have a refrigerator.

He told me I could use his bike, so my reluctance to go seek out dinner plummeted. I was on the bike and out the front gate before he could finish what he was saying. His bike is a…well…not really a bike. I’d compare it more to a tank. Literally. I know there’s always a comparison like that about how people have indestructible this and that, but this truly is. Back home, I have steel bikes, and they’re hardcore bikes – but they’ve got nothing on this bike. I think the bike is made of steel rods as the bike must weigh 40 lbs. If you ran over this bike you would just damage (obliterate the undercarriage of) your car. The last time I was on my bike was May 2^nd, and wow did I miss my bike. Bikes here go for around 100 dollars if I want a brand new road bike. But since I live on a dirt road, and I’d have to worry about running into wayward bulls (like the one that stumbled in front of our PC bus the other day that we came inches from hitting), I think a mountain bike is the way to go. I had such a good time on the bike, I think I’m going to buy one (a mountain bike is super cheap, with used bikes being even cheaper (in the 30 dollar range)), just for my 3 months here in Masatepe. The city is 6 by 13 blocks, which makes it a flipping hoot and a half to ride through. Especially when you consider you’re avoiding the mototaxis and peole.

While the dinner wasn’t the healthiest (probably the most unhealthy of my life), it was super tasty. With a meal of fried plantains, fried cheese, coleslaw like salad the size of a quarter, and a sugar infused fresco, you’re just asking for a heart attack, diabetic coma, or for good measure, both. But I just can’t say no to those fried plantains. They’re like potato chips, and absolutely amazing. I tell myself that since it’s a fruit, it’s definitely good for me.

Well, at least I rode the bike home.

May 19^th

With our first classes approaching, everybody made a plan for their classes over the weekend. We did some quick practice before Jordan and I had to leave for our 10 AM meeting with our group of jovenes. Ha. I wish. Our group of jovenes turned out to be just one joven – Javier, a kid who I go jogging. Nobody showed up, so Javier busted out his chess set and we had a battle right there in the middle of the shaded area near the broken soccer swing set in our barrio. I killed him during the first game, and he obliterated me during the second game. He’ a good kid – and a good chess player. I think we’re going to make a chess game a weekly/daily thing. So after Javier and I played a couple of games, he went back to his house while Jordan and I established the basics regarding our classes that we’re going to teach. This week we’re both going to teach a class on Thursday, then I have my second class to teach on Monday. Coincidentally, Javier is in my class that I’ll be teaching; it will be good to have an aficionado to help me win over the class.

My game plan for the class is to do an ice breaker where the kids change 5 things about themselves, then have them do it again. The whole point of it is to point out how you have to be creative and innovative to change 5 things about your appearance the second or third time around. I’m only going to have the kids change twice since Javier informed me there are 45 kids in the class. After that, I’m going to have them make a life plan. The activity is called “My life in ten years.” Thinking outside the box is something that most youths are accustomed to, and considering that most of them end up working for a family business and/or starting their own, teaching them to be creative is essential. The activity is something the kids really aren’t accustomed to as most professors just have them copy entire paragraphs for work. I think it will be a good exercise, and it will help me find out more about the kids and how they’ll be as a class to work with.

Following our planning session it was lunchtime. I finally cracked open my book that I broke for fun (‘Stories I Stole’ if any of you are curious), and that was really relaxing. At times this whole experience can be overwhelming, particularly because Peace Corps bombards us with work due to our higher Spanish level. As long as it’s not all for naught, I won’t b*tch about it, not that much anyway. I’m pretty excited for the first class, but really have to think about what I’m going to do in the 5 other classes I’m going to teach. They all have to be in the intro to La Empresa Creativa, which is what I’ll be teaching when I’m at my site in August.

Our group went to meet a group of jovenes that was organized by Luis Aleman (the Sandinista group leader we met last week). We got there (at the Masatepe Intercultural House)…and…he wasn’t there…nor was his group…nor had anybody working there been advised that any group was going to show up. Oh Nicaragua.

So following that less than optimal outcome, Jordan and I headed back to our barrio to track down the youths that didn’t show up to the meeting. It was a real candid and informal approach, which was great – no convincing was needed. They all committed to showing up tomorrow (since they didn’t show up today), so we’ll see how it goes.

All this was followed by my regular nighttime run with Javier followed by my makeshift exercises on the broken swing set with the kids in the neighborhood.

Afterwards, I ate and hung out with William for a couple of hours. He’s over every night and we talk a lot – about everything really. He has become the best guy friend I have in Nicaragua. It’s kind of strange because I can only speak to him in Spanish, but I don’t know, we always seem to be on the same page. We’re similar in many ways, but he doesn’t really rival my energy level nor my enthusiasm when telling stories/speaking (but who really does?).

So far so good – and I still haven’t gotten sick! *knock on wood*

A few more pictures…

La alcaldia (mayor´s office)

Police Station

The big Catholic Church in town. This is where the sermon dance party was when I arrived.

Masatepe…masatepness?

May 14^th

Today I slept the longest since I’ve been in Nicaragua! I woke up at 6:15!

Today was the first day that we really didn’t have much going on, which I welcomed with open arms. We only had 2 hours of Spanish class before we had to go to a PC training session for the business aspirantes in a town about 20 minutes away. It was really nice because we all got to see each other again (all the business volunteers, we all miss the TEFL volunteers) and exchange stories about our families, getting sick, and how our Spanish is going. Training consisted of a rundown of the basics regarding the requirements of the business volunteers (what they expect us to do, how many people they anticipate we’ll reach, etc.). On top of that, they broke down our youth projects for us, and what they expect us to do with them (our groups). What I learned today is that the advanced group (my group) is required to have two youth groups whereas the other Spanish levels are only required to have one group among 4 people. So that’s twice as much work to do for the youth group to go along with twice as many classes we have to teach. I know it’s good practice, but it seems like we’re getting the short end of the stick on this one. Training is sometimes overwhelming as we’re just slammed with work that we have to do. We get home and are just completely exhausted (even if we slept 12 hours the night before), and this is exacerbated by it being super sunny the whole day coupled with 95-degree weather.

The PC business training session was from about 10 to 3, so it was the earliest we ever got done with the day (apparently the days are supposed to end at 3 anyway, but we always go until 4, 5, or even 6 PM. It was nice to get out early…but we really weren’t done at all. Jordan and I went to the internet café after we got out (and got totally lost, good thing the city is 6 by 13 blocks – small), where I paid for the internet I wasn’t charged for 2 days ago (confianza is everything here). However, while Jordan and I thought we were done, we really still had tons of work to do. Since we’re doing our youth group together, we had to find a group of kids to do it with. The past few days, we’d been talking to kids in our neighborhood (between the ages of 15 and 20) to gauge their interest in such a group. We got verbal committals from 18 people, so we made formal invitations (increases the chances that people will actually go), and went to each house in the neighborhood to pass our the invitations and explain to the family’s what it was that we were doing. I had to do all the explaining since I have no artistic talent (aka I wasn’t allowed to make the invitations due to my chicken scratch handwriting), and it was really satisfying to see how my Spanish worked in real life situations where I just had to go for it. I was really quite pleased with how I did. Some of the people were a lot more apprehensive about talking to us about the group we were doing. One lady hid behind her door on the complete opposite side of the compound while I explained what we were doing through her front gate. Another guy, who incidentally is a professor kept asking us if we were Anglicans or if we worked with the church. “No, no, no. Somos aspirantes de el Cuerpo de Paz.” But eventually he understood what we were doing and what our intentions were. Some people were super receptive – like the mom of the kids that always go running with me at night. Translated literally, she said, “Oh yea, they’ll be there.” So hey, how bout that? I spoke with our family friend William who told me that a big need in the neighborhood (we live in an area called Villa Venecia), are English classes. I think it’s a great idea and hope we can do something to work with it. Time will tell where we go with it.

Jordan and I found a potential meeting place for our youth group after we handed out all the invitations. It was like stepping into a National Geographic magazine, which was awesome. Then we found a covered basketball court that would perfectly serve as a meeting place for our group. On the way home though, we saw one of the most beautiful sunsets ever over the Masaya volcano. All I could think was, “Wow, so I guess this is one of those ‘highs’ that former volunteers talk about.

Tomorrow I have to make a presentation with the rest of my group to a class of kids in the high school tomorrow. I have the ‘honor’ of being able to explain the Peace Corps and why we are there doing…whatever it is we do. We’re also going to choose our classes to teach for the next 3 months.

This really is a lot of work to do, but pretty satisfying when you get the ball rolling. My type of work for sure. As if it wasn’t hard enough to do projects like this in English, I have to do it in Spanish – and on top of that I have to gain the trust of my students, or I’m toast.

Hard work, but damn gratifying.

May 15th

While I did mention yesterday that hard work was gratifying, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t piss me off now and again.

Today we started the day with a trip to the mayor’s office to talk to him about youth groups. We got there at 10 till 8 in the morning and there were two groups in front of us. By 9 o’clock, we still hadn’t met him, so we left. It wasn’t as important that we met him because we already have youth groups set up, so we can just meet him later. We also had to practice our presentations for the instituto. We gave it a once over to make sure everything was clear on what we were going to do then went back home for a quick lunch.

At around 12:15, we met at the instituto where we were began our presentations. We basically told the classes (4 tenth grade classes) who we were, where we were from, what the Peace Corps is/does, where we live in the neighborhood, and what we’re going to be doing in Masatepe. After the presentations we each got to observe a 10^th grade class. I observed grade 10 A – the youngest class. The class was pretty good and even had a kid from my barrio in it. However, there was one noisy group of kids that threw fireworks (bombas) on the roof of the building when the teacher left the room for a bit. I’m going to teach them 6 classes from LEC (La empresa creative) plan in the next 3 months. They just gave us the book yesterday so…I still know nothing about it. I will teach classes on Mondays, but luckily this upcoming Monday there’s no class. So I’ll have a week to solidify my teaching plan. Our Spanish facilitator told us we should have 5 rules like “raise your hand”, “be quiet”, etc. Thus far, I have one rule – call me Profe Gogs. I’ll get it down I’m sure.

After observing the classes, the other two people in our training group had their meeting with their youths (the school arranged all the youths for them – jealous). Their meeting went really well and the youth were really receptive to everything they said and it seemed like the meeting went well (despite the screaming and yelling coming from the other side of the library where they met). After their meeting, we met the leader of a Sandinista youth group at the instituto. He was a real cool guy and we even share the same favourite soccer team – AC Milan. He told us he had about 400 organized youth that we could work with, and we’re going to meet up with him next Monday to try to organize something with him. We only need 15 people in a group, so what’s 15 kids from one Sandinista to an aspirante (del Cuerpo de Paz)?

Jordan and I had our group meeting at 5 PM, so we headed to the market to buy cookies and soda for our kids and went home to rest before our meeting. When 5 rolled around…nobody else did. We set up 20 chairs for the 18 people who said they’d show up…and…15 minutes passed without anybody showing up. Oh Nica time. Eventually 3 people showed up, but we waits about 30 minutes for anybody else to show up. Ok, I take that back. I didn’t wait. I walked to every house in the neighborhood and looked for the kids/asked where they were and if they were going to our meeting. I even told them we had sobornos (bribes) in the form of cookies and soda. How could they turn that down? In the end we had 10 people show up (Thank god), which apparently is pretty good for a first meeting. As far as I’m concerned it’s amazing because there are just random kids I play soccer with and run around the neighborhood with. Also, nobody even took our bribes. It’s one thing to have cookies and soda sitting on a table, but if nobody hands them out, nobody touches them. I guess that’s a cultural difference – when PC put Oreos on the table during our meeting yesterday, I grabbed 3 packs of them (for those of you that didn’t get any Oreos yesterday…somebody else ate your Oreos). All in all, our group turned from a total disaster to a relatively decent outcome.

Today was also another prime example of those highs and lows. Everything sucked this morning because we had so much to do, but once we got the presentation and youth group done with, things were looking up again. All I can do is laugh at it because nothing is in my control. Just gotta go with the flow…or maybe I should BE the flow. Watch out Nicaragua, the Goggins is coming.

Oh yea, hay una bici en el Rosario, and I’m getting tons of crap about it.

I know this might not sound like my typical journal writing – I have to censor my writing according to PC policy regarding blogs. God knows somebody reading this might miscontrue a revolutionary tirade as something serious.

Pictures

Dianne and Kristen

Kat, Sonia, Dianne

Me and Dianne

Our Spanish classroom for the next 3 weeks

The back of our classroom

Masatepe experiences continued…

May 12th continued…

After coming home from the cyber cafe (which I realised upon leaving that I hadn’t paid as the guy hadn’t asked me nor yelled at me to come back after I said goodbye a couple of times), I hung out with my host brother and mom and showed them my Ipod and speaker system. My host mom started asking me about my favourite singers, so I just busted out the music and enlightened them to my awesome musical tastes. We did that for a good while before I decided that I was going to go for a jog. I’ve found that running around the block is roughly an eighth of a mile. It’s like running around on a track since I just run in the road anyway. Things got choppy as soon as I started though. When I got to the end of the block (2 houses from mine), this little yippy dog popped out of a driveway and started to chase me. All I wanted to do was kick this little thing as far as possible, but since it was within view of the dog’s owners, I refrained. This process was repeated about 5 times more as I passed before the dog grew weary of chasing me as he realised that I wasn’t anything interesting and that I could outrun him anyway. I noticed after about 5 times around, I started gaining spectators. At first, it was just my host brother watching me. Then some other random kid was watching me on the other block. Then some other kid started watching. Then my host brother was watching with somebody. Then before I knew it, I had people running with me. First it was Armando, then it was some other kid who was sixteen, then it was some other kid who was 14. I don’t know why they decided to run, but they ran with me for a good 15-20 minutes before I decided to call it a night. It was a pretty cool experience that definitely wouldn’t have happened in the states.

But the highlight of the run was definitely towards the beginning. I was on my 4^th lap of the block when I saw a kid starting to watch me. When I got to the end of the block, something huge hit my ear. The first thing that I thought was “Holy crap, they’re throwing sh*t at me.” However, that thought went right out the window when I saw that it was not a rock or other object, but a hummingbird that flew into my ear at 7 trillion miles per hour.

I finished off the night by enlightening my host brother and family friend, William, with my incredible taste in music. It turned into a real cultural exchange. After I illuminated their minds, I came to realise that I was speaking Spanish super super fast for a couple of hours. I figured out that when it comes to things I really like, like music and health, my Spanish is amazing. Another example was when I insisted my host mom give me tomatoes with lime on them so I could get my vitamins. She brought up how eggs have tons of cholesterol in them, which I countered with everything I learned in my fitness and nutrition class – all in Spanish. Man, if only I enjoyed everything as much as I do those two aforementioned things.

May 13^th

Today I realised why past volunteers said Peace Corps were full of the highest highs and the lowest lows you’ll ever experience. Today was the lowest low thus far, but I lived. The morning went fine – we had class like normal and assessed our learning styles. I’m much more of a hands on type person when it comes to learning. Who’d have thought? We also discussed a youth group we’re supposed to get together. Jordan had a lot more luck than I did when it came to finding kids for the group. She ‘found’ 13 kids for the group, however we weren’t sure how many would bail on us, I found 2 yesterday and got another one today. PC wants us to have 15 youths, but we really have to keep them motivated to complete the project (whatever we decide it will be) successfully. Basically what it breaks down to is we have to find a group of 15 kids, and motivate them to do something creative. The 3 people I’ve spoken with want to some something involving sports. Jordan on the other hand spoke with the kids and her host family and thought teaching native Nicaraguan dances would be a good idea. However, this all varies depending on what the youth want to do, and if the girls want to join the group.

We also had a meeting with one of the heads of Peace Corps Nicaragua. She briefed us on all the rules (there are millions it seems) that Peace Corps has. This ranged from describing what happens in an emergency (we’re in standfast right now, if things escalate we go into consolidation mode where PC will pick us up in their vehicles (you can really tell it’s a US operation when they show up with their “ready to ford a river” SUVs). But yea, it’s intense.

After Carol gave us the basics, we had some more class and Jordan and I headed back to our barrio.

In the afternoon, since we’re in the advanced Spanish class, we went to observe a Peace Corps business volunteer teach her class. It really made us feel a lot better about things as we were particularly concerned about some things, but her composure and ideas for encouraging participation really was encouraging.

In the afternoon though, we hit our low. So the game plan was that on Wednesday we were going to go to the mayor’s office to find out what youth groups there were in the town, then on Saturday we were going to introduce ourselves to a class in the instituto (a high school). We went to the instituto today and I discovered that my “grandma,” Doña Cecilia, works there as a secretary. We spoke with the Principal, or whoever she was – some head honchess maybe. But she told us about classes that we could teach in during the next 3 months. There were a lot of scheduling issues, but we ultimately figured out some classes that would work. We’ll all teaching 6 classes in a 10^th grade class. We’ll observe the classes Thursday, then decide which ones work for us. The 10^th grade is split up into letters, with 10 A, 10 B, 10 F, and 10 G available for us. The letters indicate the age of the students; meaning G has the oldest 10^th grade students (around 19 years old). However, upon returning to our ‘class’ on the front porch of Avi’s house, we had some hardcore language barriers among other things. We just couldn’t understand what we needed to do. We have to do some kind of dinamica, or icebreaker with the class, as well as introduce the Peace Corps to them. However, I think we’re supposed to do this with our youth group as well. Everything was just a jumbled mess, and though we’re not allowed to speak in English (even to each other), we just had to since we were 20 minutes into an explanation about what was going on, and still had no idea what we were doing. So we explained it to each other in English (our Spanish teacher speaks no English), and cleared things up. But the problem is I still have no idea what the hell we’re doing. I’m just going to improvise since nobody can explain it to me. On top of being frustrated with it, and screwing up my Spanish I just dropped a string of expletives and gave up trying to understand. Made me feel better anyway.

We ultimately decided to go to the mayor’s office after class to talk with him about the classes. When we arrived and spoke with a lady at the front desk and she told us we can’t make an appointment with him because he’s busy tomorrow. But we could show up at 7 AM on Thursday (so guess what we’re doing Thursday morning). The vice mayor was there so we went to his office and discussed what we were doing there and that we wanted to work with youths. Basically what it broke down to was that there were established groups, but they were already working with organizations. Furthermore, he said retention of youths in the groups was super difficult. So we will speak with the mayor on Thursday and hope he has some good leads on groups (even though Jordan and I potentially already have a group set up.

We got our of the mayor’s office and decided that we needed to all sit down together and talk since we hadn’t since we arrived. So the 4 of us went across the street to the park where immediately upon sitting down a group of 6 kids moved right next to us immediately. This wasn’t subtle. Think of a situation where a man made out of a magnet sits next to kids made of metal. That’s exactly how it was. They literally flew to our friend Avi’s arm faster than you could blink your eye. They covered a good 10 feet in less than a second. Amazing. They were fun kids, but we were all super stressed out so we went looking for a bar…at 4 in the afternoon. We found one down the street where we informally decided to have our Tuesday happy hour. It really helped calm our nerves. We got the gringo price for the beers, but DAMN, were they cold and satisfying on a day when it was 95 degrees without a cloud in the sky (for the 7^th day in a row).

After parting ways and going home, I ate, jogged, took pictures/videos of Amanda (I think she likes having her picture taken more than eating candy), then decided to sit down and chill out. That’s enough for one day.

Oh, and I learned a great new saying today: “Está claro como el agua en Managua” or “It’s as clear as the water in Managua.” The water in Managua is like chocolate.

May 14^th

Today I slept the longest since I’ve been in Nicaragua! I woke up at 6:15!

For the record, I´m going to past my past days whenever I post. So since I don´t have time to write about today, I´ll have info about it in my next post.

Spanish level and my training site!

So today was a super exciting day. Today was the day that we all found out what Spanish level we tested at and what our site was along with who our host family was. I was one of 9 people to test into the advanced level of Spanish which I was really proud of. To be competent in Spanish for Peace Corps, you have to test at the intermediate level. So in other words, I’m already done. There are only 4 people in the small business development program that tested at the advanced level, so we’re all in the same training group. Coincidentally, one of the people in my group is the girl I met up in Boulder before I arrived.

Tomorrow morning at 8:30 we’re all going to be moving to Masatepe. Masatepe is the biggest city near Masaya and is the biggest training town for all the Peace Corps trainees, so we’re all pretty excited. We’re the most advanced Spanish level out of the volunteers, so we’re at a huge advantage. Because of this, we’ll get about 3 weeks of Spanish training and then jump straight into teaching our classes. So this will give us more technical training which I’m excited about, because I’m worried learning business and teaching.

As for my family, I have a host mom, host dad, and 11 year old host brother, a 3 year old host sister, as well as a 47 year old maid named Argentina. Totally awesome. Our Spanish classes were canceled for tomorrow because of the transportation strike that is going on. We’re on “standfast” right now, so we’re not allowed to leave our sites unless we’re with our host family. Looking forward to it big time. On top of all this awesomeness, Masatepe has it’s patron saint festival this weekend. Everybody was super jealous. What this means is that the whole city is going to shut down and I’ll go with my host family to a gigantic party that the whole city will be at. This will be the first day I’m in the city, so the first time the city will experience the Goggins gringo in me. What a good experience to gain the confianza of the community!