August 10th
With me going to sleep so early (relative term), I was able to wake up at 4 AM today so I could head into León to get caught up on what’s happening in the world. The isolation from the outside world is pretty severe here, even though we have cable. Discovery and ESPN don’t talk about the world news. Nicaraguan news talks about Nicaraguan news. All in all, this renders me completely ignorant to the rest of the world – I essentially live in a bubble…but at least it’s green.
I took the bus at 5 AM with my host mom’s granddaughter, Kristen, so that helped pass time during the 3.5-hour ride. The ride was relatively unpleasant, as it always is, but we arrived safely…albeit he dropped us off at the city limits, as opposed in the bus station. There was no explanation for this, but you can’t really argue these things. There’s not really a manager to go argue with.
After parting ways with Kristen, I headed to the grocery store to stock up on my Nica staple – cereal. Since per unit price shopping just doesn’t happen here, I had to do all the calculations myself to find the best deal on cereal. Granted it comes down to a couple of cents, but when you make less than 200 dollars a month, that all adds up. I’m starting to see the wisdom in that saying “A penny saved is a penny earned.” Nevertheless, when that was coined, I doubt they were considering the 27% inflation that I have to deal with here. Maybe it should be, “A córdoba saved is 73 centavos earned.” They ended up having a “buy one, get one 50% off deal”, so I bought some 4 boxes of Corn Flakes (unfortunately, I stuck with the staple because they were cheapest) to last me the next 28 days (I’m hoping).
After getting my breakfast shopping for the month done with, I went searching for a cyber – the first time I would be using the internet in 2 weeks. There is a cyber on roughly every block, however, with it being Sunday, almost all of them were closed. Eventually I found one, only to find out the internet was out in the entire city. I took a 3 and a half hour bus ride for the internet…and it wasn’t working. That was quite possibly one of the most dejected moments I’ve had in my PC service. I had the “Man, being in a small site has it’s disadvantages” epiphany.
To ameliorate the situation, I gave Jordan a ring and met up with her for lunch. By chance, I’d run into a couple other volunteers from Nica 45 and passed time with them at a ridiculously overpriced café next to the Catedral while I waited for Jordan. Eventually she showed up and we went to an organic restaurant near her house where I had an amazing Indonesian peanut dish (it was reminiscent of Tommy’s Thai for you Denverites out there), and was a boatload of food. Just what the doctor ordered. To go with the amazing meal, I ordered a melon milkshake sealed the deal – it was the best meal I’ve had in Nicaragua.
After my ridiculously satisfying meal, we headed to the cyber, which fortunately now had internet. It was good to get out of the bubble. However, getting out of the bubble yielded a tragic discovery – Peace Corps cut our subscription to Newsweek. This is being replaced with an electronic version, which has been deemed more cost efficient. Not to complain (actually yes), but how is it cost efficient for me when I’m 3.5 hours from the nearest cyber? I work for the government, and we don’t have enough money to buy the volunteers some flipping magazines. When I’m done with my service, I’m going to sign up to be chief economist for Peace Corps. I’ll even give them a discount – they can pay me the same as a Peace Corps volunteer (relative to where I am), and I’ll do their budgets.
Since I had to return to Achuapa on the same day, I had to leave León a mere 7 hours after I got there. For those of you bad at math, I spent 7 hours round trip in a bus to spend 7 hours in León. The lack of global news got to me.
Hey BBC, want to sponsor my blog?
August 11th
Yesterday after I got home from León, I met up with my counterpart from Los Caraos. She wanted me to attend a meeting with the parents of the students to present the course and inform them about the competition that will be going on…whenever I organize it. Due to this last minute plan, I had to wake up a little earlier today so I could get over to Los Caraos (my school 7 km out of town) to spend 45 minutes there informing the parents of the class and whatnot.
While I rarely look forward to the ride to school (the road might as well be a boulder field, I have no idea how so many rocks get in a road), I was able to take a ride on my “new” bike for the first time. It’s in the process of being converted, but I’ve got the bare bones essentials going for it (even though after converting it, it will have fewer components on it). It’s the biggest bike frame I could get and is some random Chinese one called ShenXiang. If that’s not the mark of quality, god knows what is. Anyway, by the time I finally get it converted (to a fixed gear of course), I’ll have gone about 3.5 months without a bicycle. Any ideas for a name for my newest steed?
On that note, I’m incredibly excited to finally be settling in to one place. While I’ve only been here (at my site) 15 days, I’ve been able to make the connections and accomplish the initial goals I strove for. I held back in Masatepe simply because I knew I’d only be there for 3 months. But not only that, I feel Achuapa is far more suited for me than Masatepe ever was. I’ve got a huge gym, I work in a huge bike shop, I have few classes, few students, and I know so many people that I don’t know 75% of their names. I can’t walk anywhere in town (not even a block), without somebody calling out my name, or for the kids in the elementary school – asking me to play soccer. While it is quite unfortunate that I’m so flipping far away from the internet and other volunteers (an aforementioned characteristic certainly has weighed heavily on me at times), this was definitely the most tailor fit site for me out of the 20 that PC gave us, and I knew it from the beginning. So while it may totally suck some days, I’ll live.
Wow, now that was a tangent.
Right, the school and the parent meeting! Anyway, I showed up, and only one parent had showed up for the presentation. Due to the poor showing (does one person even qualify as a ‘poor showing’?), we had to reschedule the presentation for Wednesday. Furthermore, in the free time we had, I went over the local competition with the students, and discussed all the judging criteria. I have a total of three groups in this school, but one of them has done absolutely nothing. The unfortunate thing is that I hung out with a couple of the students from the lazy group at the music festival, and they really understand what is going on, they just don’t do the work. I talked with one of them for about 2 hours during the festival, and he was really excited. However, come class time, they’d still done nothing – and they probably won’t do anything. One of the group members said that they just won’t go to the competition, and maintained this idea after I told them they’d fail the class if they didn’t go. I definitely feel disadvantaged since I haven’t been able to work with the groups since the beginning of the school year, but hey, that’s what this is for – practice. Next year I’ll be around for a full year, and hopefully will be able to instill the drive necessary to follow through in the class. Step by step.
After the failed meeting, I got back on the bike for the 20-30 minute (depending if you talk to people) ride back to Achuapa. I had a meeting with one of my counterparts at 9:30 to discuss some suggestions I had for the class, so I was in quite a hurry (even though nobody is on time in Nicaragua). The meeting with my counterpart was basically to reestablish my expectations of her for my service and to remind her that I am there to help her. Her nor my other counterpart we’re quite clear on the last class theme we taught, and this could have been avoided if they had merely asked questions. She was a lot more receptive to my suggestions that my other counterpart was. My other one approached it in a way I expected her to, by joking. She just mentioned how she didn’t realise that having a PC counterpart who wasn’t timid (like the last was one) meant more work for her. Regardless, I got through to her and we worked things out.
After my meeting there, I headed home to prepare for my first class that I’d be giving at San Sebastian, my school that won’t be participating in the competition. My counterpart and I are always on the same page, so I have high hopes for this school in next year. Unfortunately, when I arrived at the school, lesson plan in hand, all the students (roughly 300) were outside raking, burning garbage, and running around with machetes cutting the grass. The Director of the school decided to make it a cleaning day, so the classes were canceled.
Back home I went.
I made my daily stop at the bike shop to chat with the owner for a bit, and teach him a bunch of random English words before I headed to the gym. This was the first time I’d been to the gym and seen a lot of people there. I’m considering organizing some sort of health activity (a competition) at the gym and/or the bike shop to increase health awareness. My ideas come in the form of a bike race around Achuapa (in the form of an Alley Cat race), or a weightlifting competition. Nicaraguans love to compete, so what better way to address my interests and provide an educational opportunity for people than with an exercising competition.
After a couple hours in the gym, a tropical depression swept in and engulfed Achuapa (you could see it coming over the mountains towards my house, it was like something from a movie). It knocked out the TV and the lights frequently before dumping an enormous amount of rain of the town. This ended my plans to watch the Discovery channel for most of the night, so I had to resort to eating dinner and watching a movie (The Lives of Others – great movie if you’re looking for something new to watch).
August 12th
Since I’m not observing classes in one of my institute (because they class has ended), I had no formal schooling to do today, but I had a few errands to run. I was a bit slow getting up, but finally made it out the door by 10 AM to go to the MINED office to talk with the delegada about the LEC competition that I have organize. Unfortunately, she was at a meeting, so I decided I’d come back later.
I went home and decided I’d teach myself a real skill – how to wash my clothes on a pila (the concrete washboard). Little did I know that I had to soak my clothes for an hour before I could even do anything. I’d been stockpiling my dirty clothes (coincidentally, I had nightmares about all dirty clothes and the pila, and that I went back to Denver and had to wash my clothes on a pila, but not enough time to do so), so I had to wait a total of 2 hours since all my clothes wouldn’t fit in the first soak session. By the time 2 hours passed, I was super motivated to finally start the learning process. I started by washing a T-shirt, and…I did it completely wrong. I washed it for 10 minutes and it was still smelly and no cleaner than when I started washing it 2 hours ago. Round two was washing a pair of boxers – I figured that if I messed up, it’d be good to mess up on something that nobody would see anyway. This too was a failure as it took around 10 minutes of scrubbing against the washboard to wash them.
And that was the end of my pila experience. That’s a specialized labour skill I just don’t have. So I called over our empleada and just told her I’d pay her to wash my clothes. It would take me hours to wash my clothes if I was doing that, and frankly, PC sent me here for other things. I applaud all these Nicaraguans that wash their clothes on a pila, because I’m sure as hell not going to waste my time doing it. I’ll never gain enough proficiency at it to warrant the decades it will take for me to learn.
After my pila experience (and what an experience!), I headed over to the MINED office again to meet with the delegada to schedule a date for my LEC competition. We set a date for the 8th of September, and discussed some places where we could host around 70 people. She mentioned one place, the cooperativa building, as a place that would be appropriate. Fortunately, I am good amigos with the boss of the cooperativa, as well as most of the employees that work there (thank you international music festival). I headed over to the cooperativa office, but the woman I needed to speak with wasn’t there. I’ll head back Thursday, and hopefully have the location of the competition all wrapped up.
I had plans to help an English teacher at one of my schools with her pronunciation, but after arriving and waiting a bit, she never arrived. Since I live a mere 30 seconds from the school, I wasn’t too crushed. I headed home and started doing some yoga, only to have her show up 15 minutes later – so I did end up helping her out after all. She pretty much needs help with pronunciation, which is really all I’m qualified to teach. It went pretty well, and we decided that I’d help her out on at least a weekly basis, with our next meeting being tomorrow.
I was to meet with my counterpart from Los Caraos at 5 PM, but it rained for a good 3 hours (hardcore rain), so that meant I wouldn’t be leaving the house. Now I finally understood why nobody shows up when it rains – because it rains hardcore. So we have a class tomorrow at 7:45, and we still have yet to plan the class…so we’ll see how that goes.
August 13th
I’ve really started to dread the ride to my school in Los Caraos – particularly after hurricane like rains the night before. Nevertheless, it’s my job to go, so I woke up this morning and did just that. The ride was atrocious, and my bike spent more time in the water than it did on dry land. I even rode through one lake in the middle of the road that was too much for my trusty steed and I had to put my feet down and immediately sunk into 2 feet of mud. Since I still have yet to get to the school, I had to do something about the mud. My only option was the go to the next river and wade through it to get the massive amounts of mud off of me – fortunately it worked (also, thank god I wore sandals).
I arrived at the school to find that my counterpart didn’t show up, so I had to give the class, and then have a reunion with the parents (I didn’t even know what I was suppose to talk to them about). Luckily, I had read the theme for the class once over the night before, so I had a vague idea what I was talking about. However, pulling a lesson plan out of my ass isn’t quite my style. Hopefully I’ll have more time the next time. While I wasn’t pleased with the way things went, I did drive the theme into my students heads. After they realised they couldn’t just sit there and nod, they really became active listeners. Right on. The meeting with the parents was pretty worthless since my counterpart had all the materials, videos, etc. So I gave a short (real short) presentation about the class, the competition we’re going to be doing, and to just tell them to support their kids with the projects because…it’s important. That’s all I came up with. It did get a receptive response though.
Two unplanned hours later, I was out of there and headed back to Achuapa. First I dropped off my crummy geared bike at the bike shop and told my buddy Rene that I didn’t want to see the bike again until it had one gear. Then I hurried home, dropped off my stuff, and headed to another one of my institute’s. Due to the rain yesterday, we didn’t have a planning session, which meant there was no formal lesson plan for tomorrow. So I had to plan that into my schedule, cancel my English class with the English professor there, and then I went home to relax for a few hours.
I taught a class in my other institute (San Sebastian) where I found out how incredibly competitive Nicaraguans are, then I hit up the gym for around 45 minutes before coming home to find that we actually had two showers. This one is a room outside with no roof and a pipe that just shoots out water. It’s more than what we have in the bathroom, so I figured I’d take advantage of the bucket-less bathing by taking a nice shower – in the sun no less!
I had other “maybe I’ll do that” plans for the day, but I was so beat from running around all day, I just watched the Olympics for the rest of the day. This was mixed in with a Red Sox game (I see more Sox games here than I do in Denver), and a dubbed Jet Li movie. I’m really taking a liking to the dubbed movies because they tend to speak clearer, so I can pick up most of the words. Even though I hate dubbed movies, it’s good practice at least.
This week is really flying by. When I fill my schedule, it just all goes by so quickly – good.
August 14th
I initially planned to sleep in later today, but for some reason I’ve been having semi-nightmares. As a result, I woke up at 5 AM and just started the routine earlier than usual. Since I didn’t have to report to my institute until 7:45, I was left with a sizeable chunk of time to kill, so I watched some more of the Olympics. It’s kind of ridiculous that I can keep track of all the latest sporting events, but I still have absolutely no idea what’s actually going on in world news.
This was the first class I was actually helping out my counterpart at ISJ, so I was a little nervous, yet confident that she’d pull things together. We had the sub-directora (a woman who met me at counterpart day in Managua. She also has told all the other teachers in the institute that I don’t screw around with teaching – hahaha) observe our class, so that kept the discipline good. Overall, the class went super well – good discipline, good material retention. Did have a student ask me to translate something into Spanish for her though – The Filth and the Fury. She wanted to know what it meant because she had seen it on a T-shirt – I had/have no idea.
Following class, I dropped some stuff off at my house and headed over to the CAFI cooperativa to talk them into lending me a huge complex to use for my LEC competition. The lady in charge is somebody I’ve worked with a couple times now, and all she wanted to know was the time and date I’d need it, and that was that. If only things worked that easily in the U.S.! Furthermore, we talked about their youth group, as well as the business advising opportunities they have available for me. These all yielded the same answer – come back Saturday. So that’s what I’ll do.
I had a good 5 hours to kill, so I headed back home and threw on the Olympics again. While stumbling through my kitchen, a label with tons of vitamins and minerals caught my eye – oatmeal. With a handful of time, I went on a mission in search of this bag of oatmeal in any of the pulperias in town. I ended up finding one in the pulperia/hardware store across the street from the cooperativa for a mere 18 cordobas! How awesome is that? Ten normal person servings (4-5 Richard servings) for less than a dollar! After ‘indulging’, I made some lunch and then killed time before a 3 PM meeting I had with an English teacher at ISJ.
While I’ve never been incredibly fond of teaching, nor have I been particularly talented at tutoring (“NO, IT’S DONE LIKE THIS!” – my style in the past), I’ve found it to be relatively doable. I’m teaching this teacher how to pronounce words – she needs a linguist professor to help her with the problems she has, but all she has is Profe Goggins. She’s got tons of motivation though and I’ve seen improvement//growth at the end of both the sessions we’ve had thus far. I wish I’d been that dedicated when I’d first started studying Spanish. I’m slowly finding myself more and more capable of doing this whole teaching/tutoring thing. If you were to tell high school Richard that I’d be a teacher – I’d laugh. Furthermore, if you told high school Richard that I’d be the sort of teacher I am (demeanor, style, etc.) I would’ve called you a liar. All I know is that Profe Richard Goggins would’ve kicked the crap out of 9/10 grade Richard Goggins. Oh man U.S. public school students – watch out if I decide to keep teaching.
Following a short meeting with my counterpart to discuss the lesson plan for our class tomorrow (the lesson plan is that we’re not going), I headed over to Ervin’s house to discuss his business plan for his hotel. We sat around and drafted up the first few steps we needed to do to improve his vision for his hotel, and he showed me a project that the town is doing to get water 24 hours a day. I never thought I’d be dealing with an issue like this – but hot damn am I excited.
August 15th
Slow day. That’s really all I have to say really. I didn’t have anything until a meeting at 2 with one of my counterparts, so I sat around and watched the Olympics.
Oh yea, and Harvest Moon has helped me kill LOTS of time recently. Phil – you know exactly what I’m referring to.
All I did was some yoga (it’s amazing the effect doing yoga has on my mood – I become overwhelmingly positive), paid a visit to the pulperia for my 5 cent banana, took a shower, and that was it.
The reunion with my counterpart rolled around at 2 o’clock…but I forgot the location of it. I thought it was to be at our institute, but upon arrival, he was not there, and I had no idea where else to go. So I went home before heading to the gym for a bit. My counterpart showed up at the gym, poked his head in, somebody called his name, then he was off on his motorcycle just as quickly as he showed up. Weird.
i came home and had pretty much the same to look forward to as before I left, so I headed to the store to pick up some powdered milk. I figured drinking regular milk just isn’t worth it anymore. I can only get ‘leche entera’ here (3% milk with close to nothing removed), and at 8 cords for a half litre (or rather 473 ml, those bastards), I spend around 12 cords just for the milk for my cereal every morning. That’s just too high for my daily budget, gotta cut costs somewhere – so I’m switching to powdered/soy milk. I ended up buying some Delisoya (reluctantly), but after one glass of it, I was convinced – it’s amazing. I can’t wait to put it on some cereal.
Tomorrow I’m going to meet up with people from the cooperativa so I can finally get information about work opportunities with them (as well as info about the youth group they have).
Genial!
August 16th
Being Saturday, I had another day of rest ahead of me – genial! Rest is a relative term in this case though. I had a meeting with Claudia, one of the head bosses at the cooperativa to talk with her about work I could do with the cooperativa. Furthermore, I was to meet a Juan Bravo (awesome name) to discuss the aforementioned information. Additionally, Claudia mentioned that he could be a good person to be a judge in my local LEC competition. I’m looking for business savvy people, and he mentioned him as a good candidate – great.
I showed up punctually (I still have yet to figure out why I continue to do this), and Claudia told me I just had to wait a bit for him to get out of a meeting. He got out after 5 minutes, but then she told me to just wait a little bit so he could talk to some lady. Some 45 minutes later, she told me to come back in 30 minutes because the meeting was taking longer than they anticipated.
I appreciated the green light to go enjoy the sunshine, so I walked on back home to wait around there for a bit. My counterpart at Los Caraos called me while on my way home to ask if she could borrow my camera because he grandma had died this morning. She needed it immediately – there goes my free time.
I got back to the cooperativa on time (WHY?!?!) where I waited for 15 minutes before i could finally meet with this Juan Bravo guy. He had no problem with being a judge right off the bat, but I had to give him the whole Peace Corps schpeal – why I was there, what I’m doing, etc. He basically broke down all the operations of the cooperativa for me among other things. I was under the impression that they needed some help marketing sesame seed oil, but that is just not the case. The Body Shop bought paid for them to have a laboratory to maintain the quality of their sesame seed oil, and they ship it to 13 different countries. It’s 100% organic! So if you need sesame seed oil…I get a good price – a real good price.
He showed me around the facility where I got to see their first sesame seed press, storage areas, and all the new equipment and buildings they were constructing that body shop had funded. Not only that, but he also showed me a bunch of other experiments they were doing – namely, sesame seed wine…yes wine.
After the grand tour, I chatted with him about the state of the world economy, the fall of the U.S. Empire, who will take our place, etc. I found out that he didn’t even have a college education, but he was the president of the cooperativa, as well as the president of the entire organization – which includes 14 other cooperativas across the country. The business is the 3rd largest exporter in all of Nicaragua, and he’s the president of it – as well as a judge for my LEC competition! He also gave me his number and to give him a call whenever I’m in León, for whatever reason. I also found out that my host mom is his aunt – talk about good contacts!
After that, the day slowed down a whole lot. It rained a lot, so I ended up doing some yoga, watching a movie, and watching a couple of soccer games. After another round of the aforementioned, I watched the entire women’s Olympic marathon. Why? I have no idea.
I’m totally hooked on this powder soymilk stuff, now I am REALLY going to be a cheapo when I get back to the U.S.
August 18th through August 25th
I’m piling all these last 8 days into one entry for two reasons. One: I didn’t have my computer for 8 days, and two: it was incredibly boring and not journal worthy.
It all started on Sunday the 18th when I woke up after sleeping pretty well. I ate some breakfast – my usual or corn flakes, soymilk, and a cup of oatmeal and water. However, immediately after finishing my breakfast, I felt substantial pain in my lower abdomen. Attributing it to my breakfast, I shrugged it off and went along with my Friday. I did a couple of errands before I came home for lunch and to catch up on the Olympic games. I made myself a bowl of pasta for lunch, finished it, and that was the end of me.
I felt absolutely HORRIBLE after eating and was rendered unable to walk or breathe. I had immense pain down the entire right side of my torso, and was forced to lay in my bed to wait for the pain to go away…which it didn’t. I laid in bed for about 4 and a half hours, only moving when I decided to buy a box of juice of the pulperia, waiting for the pain to go away. I ended up getting a little worried when I got a fever of 102 around 6:30 at night, and decided I’d call the PC doctors.
The doctor told me I needed to go to my health center because she was worried I had appendicitis. My response to this diagnosis was, “Well, can I just eat something and come to the PC office in the morning?” which she answered with, “No, if you have appendicitis, you’ll die.”
So I headed to the health center on my bike with my host mom’s grandson and was almost incapacitated due to the pain. I couldn’t ride the bike without my stomach hurting. A quick exam in the health center yielded the same diagnosis that the PC doctors had for me – appendicitis, and I needed to get to the nearest hospital ASAP. The last bus had left Achuapa hours ago, so I was to be ambulanced to León, and then PC would pick me up there and transfer me to a hospital in Managua.
The ambulance had left for León already, and had to turn around and come pick me up (taking an hour to get back to Achuapa). There were 7 people in the ambulance – 1 lady on a stretcher throwing up, some guy sitting next to me throwing up, and a handful of other people. I had an IV in my hand to hydrate me because I was potentially having surgery as soon as I got to Managua. The ride was ridiculously bumpy because the road is unpaved, which caused incredible pain for my stomach (I felt like just rolling out of the ambulance and dying it hurt so badly), and my hand as well since the IV tube was flying all around the cab of the ambulance.
Magically, I survived the trip (the next time I just want to die in route) and met up with the PC medical officer in the León hospital and got in a car and hauled ass to the private hospital in Managua. I had no time to grab anything, so I just had a bag with a couple shirts and a pair of pants for my stay in the hospital. I thought I’d be there a couple of days, so I wasn’t too worried about what our employee threw together for me.
it was 11 PM by the time we got to the hospital in Managua, and I immediately had a huge gigantic needle put in my arm (where it’d remain the next 3 days), was administered a bunch of blood tests, and had my bladder filled so I could get an ultrasound. They also gave me an amazing painkiller, which came in the form of a bottle-sized syringe filled with relief.
The ultrasound took forever because they couldn’t find anything. Then the blood tests came back completely normal as well. Due to my immense pain, they gave me a CAT scan of my stomach to figure out what was wrong. Unfortunately, the CAT scan revealed a huge black mark in the area where they needed to see – so they couldn’t find out what was wrong with me.
I got to bed around 3 AM and was told we’d be conducting more tests in the morning. The day began at 5 AM with another blood test, and then they gave me a pitcher of horribly tasting medicine that I had to drink for another ultrasound. The second ultrasound came up negative again, as did 2 more CAT scans.
I laid in the hospital bed the rest of the day waiting for an answer – the doctor told me we’d try again in the morning.
That’s pretty much how my 6 days in the hospital went – tons of tests, no answers. On top of all that, I was confined to my hospital bed with an IV in my arm. But oh man did I become up to date on current events – all I did was watch TV for 6 days.
The weekend was pretty much the same thing except in a hotel room. They told me to rest, and I was still in pain so it really wasn’t much of an option. Friday I hung out in the PC office and watched TV and sat on the internet all day. Saturday, my friends Jenn and Dianne came and visited me in the PC office for the day (talk about fun, hanging out in the boring office). I had a hotel room to myself (without a window – a room without a view), and hung out there after I got kicked out of the office at 8 PM (apparently the streets are dangerous at that time so they want you to leave before then – wimps).
Sunday I had more of nothing to do, so I decided to go to Granada. Before I got sick, it was my plan to go to there to spend the weekend, so it was nice that I was able to see it even though I got sick. It’s just a 40-minute bus ride from Managua, so it made the perfect day trip. I met up with Liz, Avi, Katie Earle, and Dianne and we hung out for 4ish hours. I was the only one that was going to eat lunch, so we headed to a place where I could get a great hamburger. While we were there, we met a guy who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana in 1999, and a Peace Corps recruiter afterwards. He was just visiting Nicaragua and told us he was going to buy us whatever we wanted, because he remembered how poor he was during his service. He bought us all around 5 beers each, bought my hamburger, and everybody else a hotdog, cheese fries, and nachos. It was really awesome, and just what I needed, particularly since I can’t drink in my site.
The night was boring once again as I just watched TV (but on a positive note, I watched almost every single televised Olympic match that there was), and went to sleep early since I had to go to the hospital the next morning for another blood test.
I took another blood test this morning which came back completely normal (surprise surprise), got a refund for all my expenses (I saved a TON of money being in the hospital for a week on the taxpayer dollar), and headed back to Achuapa.
Unfortunately, the bus from Managua to León took 30 minutes longer than it usually does, and the bus from León to Achuapa took an hour and a half longer than it usually does. As a result, I was on a bus from 1:30 till 8 PM – gross.
I got back to Achuapa where it was raining and completely pitch black, but managed to stumble my way to my house and into my room. Finally.
August 26th
I still feel kinda sick, so today I was pretty much bedridden.
The day started at 8:30 after what I thought was a good night’s rest. I was going to run a bunch of errands (i.e. catch up on everything since I was out of site for 8 days), but when I walk around my stomach starts to hurt. I met up with a couple of people who said they’d been asking all around town about me because they hadn’t seen me. Many other people knew I’d gone to the hospital and asked how I was doing.
I was left to my own devices due to my pain that won’t go away, or rather I was forced to sit around and read. When I was in Managua, I raided the Peace Corps library and grabbed the longest books I could find, so I had plenty of material. Additionally, my boss from CSU sent me a hundred billion newspapers, so I was able to keep myself occupied, and my mind sharp.
Word apparently made it’s way around the Peace Corps grape vine, and I got a call from 4 different people in the same house. The first call came from my buddy David who is out in Quilalí, Nueva Segovia. I’d talked to him for around an hour over the weekend about things, and we’ve been going through the same highs and lows, so it was nice to have somebody to relate to. He called to just see how I’d doing following my 8 days in Managua. Immediately after getting off the phone with him, I got a call from Oliver – my buddy from Masatepe. Next came a call from Kat in Estelí, then Dianne – everybody wondering how I was doing. I was also inundated with text messages inquiring my current status from people I hadn’t spoken with since training. Later that night, I even got a phone call from Sam out in Somotillo. Was good to get an update on people again.
Aside from the phone calls, I spent most of the day reading some book about the Galveston hurricane of 1900. It’s interesting how I went from being a kid who hated reading to being somebody who dies to get their hands on any sort of reading material.
I got a haircut and shave today for a dollar! I think the lady who cut my hair (she cuts hair and runs a hardware store – odd combination) is going to be a judge in my business competition.
A lazy day, but I’m left without much of a choice since I’m sick.
August 27th
I woke up at midnight from a phone call, and couldn’t really get to sleep the rest of the night. I think it’s a combination between being sick, and having all this free time to think about things. This is a blessing but also a curse. Too much thinking leads to excessive worry over whether or not I can make it 23 more months (I got to site exactly one month ago today). Furthermore, I think the pills I’m taking for my parasite (which I may or may not have) are messing with my thoughts/my head. I didn’t initially realise, but my irritability has skyrocketed since I started taking the pills. I was unaware of the severity of this unpleasant characteristic until I went to San Sebastian for my first class since I left.
After a quick phone call with Erick, our project specialist, I headed to the school the best I could (AKA, I was still feeling sick/not normal). I’m not as sociable as I normally am, which I attribute to my mystery illness and all around frustration with not being 100%. I got to the school to teach the class and ended up completely taking over the class because I wasn’t in the mood to improvise and jump in when my counterpart wanted me to. I ended up teaching the entire course (my life in 10 years) and was a complete and absolute jerk to my students. No, I’ll restate that – I was a complete @$$hole to my students that were screwing around. One of my students I completely tore apart because he wasn’t paying attention and wasn’t doing his work. I surprised everybody in the class (including myself) by tearing him apart. Like I said, it’s gotta be this medicine I’m taking.
I went home afterwards and started a new book (about the Mayflower – kind of dull) to kill time before I was to meet my counterpart at her house to help one of the business groups with their plan de negocio. However, when I showed up at her house, her daughter told me that she was at some teaching workshop…so I guess it was canceled.
I headed back home where I mixed in reading with some siestas (I’m constantly exhausted – can I attribute that to the drugs too?) before I headed back over to her house at 5 PM – when she was supposed to be there. She wasn’t there, so I just did a short planning session with another one of my counterparts, and headed home.
Tonight I found out that we got a new kitten. We originally had a cat named Garfield who died in between my site visit and when I came back, so I’d been having cat withdrawal. The cat is around 2 months old and extremely attention craving, which is a quality pretty much unseen in Nicaraguan cats. So instead of just lounging around, I decided to lounge around with the cat, which still has no name. It kinda reminds me of my cat Em in the States. The result? Markedly lower stress levels – noted.
I wish this stomach issue would resolve itself already.
August 28th
Today was the first day I was actually able to get back into my “routine”, if you can call it that.
I woke up around 6, way earlier than I wanted to, because of the flipping cows and their incessant mooing. My host mom’s grandson has around 10 cows, and there are in this grass plot that is adjacent to out house. As a result, I had 10 cows all within 15 feet from my window in a frenzy over some nonsense. Whatever their issue was, they wouldn’t shut up. For some reason, I never foresaw cows being a problem with sleep. I thought I’d heard it all – fireworks, roosters, chickens, dogs, people…but for some reason I’d never bothered to think that cows too could be yet another obstacle to the wonderful world of sleep. Oh how much I’ve learned.
Fortunately, I actually had my day start earlier since I had to teach a class at the institute near my house. I was less irritable today, which was good for a number of reasons. I wasn’t as much of a jackass to my students, and I could actually focus. Hell, after the class, I felt like I was back in the string of things and was actually starting to enjoy myself again, a feeling that has evaded me for the roughly the past 10 days (what with the mysterious sickness and all).
Following the class, I went looking for that last judge for my competition. I had a couple of people in mind for the last judge – the owner of the hair salon/hardware store, and the owner of the mini-super. Unfortunately, neither of them are available on the 8th, and I was referred to a Doctor Bonilla, a woman who owns the pharmacy in town, and is also the daughter of the owner of the mini-super. I’d never been to her business before, but after a short introduction of who I was, and my ‘objective’, she was on board and just told me to bring the information to her sometime in the upcoming week – sweet deal!
On the way back home, I got a call from Lucia, a woman who works in the MINED office, as well as my delegada. They both called to find out what my health status was. It was nice to see that so many people knew about what was going on and was concerned. I got a lot of “Gracias a dios!” and “I’m so happy you’re well!” That’s nice.
It appears my stomach pain has finally been beat into submission, so I decided it was finally time to head over to the bike shop to finish the conversion of my bike (which is still nameless). I hung out and talked with Rene for a little bit before we buckled down and tore it apart and turned it into a fixed gear. While I may have pretty crummy components, and a completely makeshift ‘track cog’, it does the job. It was really nice to get my type of bike back. It’s just one more of those things that makes Achuapa feel more like home, which some days, is exactly what is needed to simply make it through the day. The grand total of the bike came out to 950 cordobas, or roughly 49 dollars. Not too bad for completely redoing a bike. To bring it to an even 1000, I threw in a lock (to say it pales in comparison to my bike lock I have in the States is an overstatement, I could probably cut this lock with a butter knife), and 3 boxes of apple juice (you’d be surprised the random array of goods you can buy at any shop).
Overly pleased, and full of vitamin C, I headed home to catch up on some of those newspapers that Heather sent me. She sent me all these the daily Fort Collins Now newspapers, and the more I read them, the more of LOVE Fort Collins. I guess it’s one of those things where you never realise what you have until you don’t have it anymore. I always thought Fort Collins was incredibly boring and totally isolated. Well, I’m still pissed that there isn’t a bus that goes there from Denver, but other than that – I’ve fallen in love with it. Living in Achuapa has opened my eyes to all the things there are to do in Fort Collins. I’ve become so used to there not being anything to do, I’ve had to sit back and just enjoy what there is around me, lest I go insane. Now that I’ve been put in a situation like this, living in Fort Collins is a total cakewalk. It’s got everything I could ask for (minus the transportation to Denver). However, after a lot of consideration, I think I’m going to go back to CSU for grad school at the new School for Global Environmental Sustainability, or get an MA in environmental economics (the specialty of the CSU econ department). After working for a development organization, I realised that economic development is not a field I want to get into. Some way to incorporate my love for economics with environmental sustainability seems like an area that fits me like a glove, and would suit me perfectly if I were to return to Colorado/Fort Collins/Denver, perhaps the most beautiful places in the U.S.! Heather, keep the office chair warm – I’m going to need a job!
I headed to the gym for the first time in around 2 weeks where I ran into a couple of my students, and helped a couple of guys with their weight training techniques. After heading home and taking a shower (and coming out to see roughly half the girls that attend one of my institutes in my yard (AWKWARD, or in Spanish, INCOMODO), I got a phone call from my buddy David, surprisingly for the 3rd time this week. Unfortunately, he decided to Early Terminate his service and will be heading back to the U.S. sometime at the beginning of the week. Aside from myself, he was the last person I thought wouldn’t finish their service, but after getting over the initial shock, I understood why he was going. Peace Corps is definitely not for everybody, but service does help you open your eyes to what you do need, and what you do appreciate. Originally, I was planning on meeting up with David and a couple other friends in León next weekend, but that is getting expedited to this weekend since he’s taking off. At least I’ll be able to see him before he takes off.
The rest of the night was full of tons of rain (Tons as in we have sandbags in front our gate to keep the water out of the yard), and I hung out with our little kitty again (it’s named Cathy apparently). I’ve got a teaching workshop tomorrow so class is canceled (again – I haven’t gone to school on a Friday in a month), but at least that means I don’t have to take the bike ride along the ridiculously inundated road that goes to Los Caraos.
It’s easier to count how many weeks are left, just a pointer for those considering this career path (or rather, this 2 year plan).
August 29th
Today, with class canceled, I was fortunate enough to avoid the long bike ride to Los Caraos yet again. It’s not that I don’t like riding my bike, but the rock strewn road, combined with the insane amount of rain we’ve gotten just would make the ride unpleasant and well…dirty.
I did however have a workshop to attend, which I was bummed about. After spending an hour listening to the delegada for MINED speak about a literacy campaign, I found my counterpart who informed me that I didn’t need to be there because the workshop wasn’t applicable to the class I was teaching. Dammit. At least I was able to get out and enjoy the fresh air.
Before I went back home, my counterpart gave me the business plan of one of the groups at Los Caraos. I told all the groups that I’d be more than happy to look over their business plans before our competition (which is the 8th), so I was ecstatic to see that they’d done a draft that I could check. However, upon reading it, I saw how much work we really needed to do. They just don’t understand the math part of the business plan. This is my best group, so I was left with no other choice but to cancel the competition and change the date. I’d just gotten all my judges, tables, and everything. Then BAM! That hits me in the face. Not ready at all. Well, hopefully I’ll be able to get them back on track.
The next few hours of the day were spent running around town telling people that the date of the competition would be changed. It was the first hardcore riding I’d done on the fixed gear bike since I built it up yesterday – and it felt awesome! I’m becoming me again!
After my ‘errands’, I had a planning session with my professor from San Sebastian, which was lengthened due to a freak hurricane that showed up. Nevertheless, we planned 2 classes in a relatively effective manner. By effective, I mean that he understood everything. I’m finding it easy to plan with him because we’re roughly the same age. We also have a more ambiguous task to do with our 4th year students. They’ve already learned the material that we were going to teach them, so we have to create our own curriculum out of the LEC material. They aren’t going to be making their own business groups, nor will they be competing in the competition, so the whole point to the course is gone. On top of those difficulties, we’re not allowed to give any grades for the course. I need not explain how a class with no grades can create some substantial problems. However, after some brainstorming, we came up with a pretty innovative way to keep the students motivated and teach them the material at the same time. We’ll see how it goes.
Following my planning session, I just hung out with the guy who is going to open the hotel. We talked about some steps he needs to take to create his business plan, then they invited me for dinner (I saved a buck!). I also caught up on some of the news – namely John McCain picking the former Alaskan governor as his running mate. The only response I have to that – NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
That effectively ended my night.
Heather – I heard I got a package in my new mailbox. I’m guessing it’s from you. So thanks for that.
Phil – Good news. I’m hooked on Modest Mouse. I told you, it was just like Fiery Furnaces.
August 30th
Today I spent half the day simply killing time – because I was going to Leon. I was destined for bigger and better things!
That being said, the morning was spent reading newspapers until noon rolled around so I could catch the bus to Leon. I headed over to the CAFI headquarters to find out when I could reschedule my LEC competition, and to meet with one of my judges, Juan Bravo. Well, Juan Bravo had yet to arrive, and with rain coming over the mountains (in the form of terrifying clouds that seemed to crawl over the treetops), I got back on my bike (such a good feeling!) and headed back to my house. Not surprisingly, I had to wait out an epic flash hurricane-like storm…so I went back to reading the newspapers and magazines (Thanks Heather!).
Finally I caught the bus at noon and took the seemingly endless trip into Leon. Four hours later (30 minutes late), I arrived to meet up with Lindsay and Jordan where we spent the afternoon relaxing in our hostel. Once again, it was good to sit down and actually talk with fellow volunteers, particularly those that are in my same group. We got up to date on all the ongoings on our sites, our feelings about being in Peace Corps, and just any other news we had about other volunteers. Afterwards, we met up with the TEFL couple in Leon, Adam and Lara for dinner tonight and continued chatting about the aforementioned issues – but now we had new sources of information!
Overall, it was a low key day, which was just what I needed. Tomorrow we´ll meet with David one last time before he heads back to the U.S. after officially early terminating his Peace Corps service.
Phil – Two of my arrow keys broke, completely ending my Harvest Moon career. Sad day.
Posted by thegoggins 
