Some books and some stuff

October 28^th – November 11^th

The Thursday of the 29^th the lawyer from the German women’s NGO came in to speak with my kids about her job. With it being the first presentation, I was a tad nervous about the outcome – how would it go over with my kids? To promote more participation, I said my kids had to at least ask one question for every speaker (there will be one for every week we have left in the school year).

I had to send one of my students to get the speaker, but once she showed up, my apprehension over whether or not this sort of activity would work went right out the window. This woman was in her mid-twenties, successful for a Nicaraguan, and a super dynamic speaker. This wasn’t something I was counting on, but it just made the activity that much easier. Furthermore, due to the energetic manner in which she presented herself and her career, the girls in my class were asking tons of questions, which was an effect I hadn’t anticipated. This activity was in fact fighting gender roles all by itself. My girl students were able to see that they could be independent and happy.

Over the weekend, I put a big dent in the book I was reading, as well as a book about Buddhism. Unfortunately, during this time I had a spur of breathing attacks that made it hard for me to sleep. This, coupled with the inner debate over whether to get a puppy or not just made things that sleep that much harder. As a result, I fell asleep around 3 AM every night out of pure exhaustion.

The first 3 days of the week I did a bunch of reading, celebrated Johani’s 30^th birthday, and on the 5^th, the director of a big NGO we have in town came and spoke to my classes. My public school kids didn’t really take to him because he didn’t engage them the way my first speaker did, but he interacted with my private school kids in the most successful way that I’ve ever seen. He also did an opening activity where each student would mention some things about themselves, including their favourite foods. When my turn came around, he asked my students what it was that I liked to eat – and they knew everything. I had no idea that my culinary choices were such hot gossip topics. Following his presentation, I hopped on the bus headed to Malpaisillo so I wouldn’t have to go straight to Managua the following day.

The next morning, Brie and I headed to Managua early so she could work and I could head to the dermatologist (for the first time in a while). This visit to Managua also coincided with the small business cocktail party. That being said, I intentionally planned my appointment for that day for one reason – Peace Corps would put me up in a hotel if I had another reason to be there. Doing what I can to save money.

I had my appointment at the dermatologist late – 4 PM. Her office hours start at 2 PM, which is when I’ve generally had an appointment for in the past. However, the later hour made me feel that maybe that she’d actually see me on time – and I wouldn’t have to wait. And I’d be wrong. When I arrived, I saw that all the people who had an appointment from 2 PM until 4 PM were still waiting for her. Talk about irresponsible. While I waited for her to attend to me (which finally rolled around at 5:30), I chatted with some lady who too was appalled at how late the doctor was running. She was even more appalled when I told her that she’d been late to the 5 appointments I’d had with her in the past.

My plantar warts were burned off for the millionth time (or so it seems), and I was able to catch a bus back to the PC office awfully quickly. From there, I dropped off my stuff at my hotel and chatted with my roommate a bit while I got dressed. Generally, when the warts get burned off, my foot swells up in a gigantic blister, but while it hurt and was swollen a bit, I could still fit on my shoes. So I threw them on and headed to the Holiday Inn, where the majority of the people attending the cocktail party were staying.

Having waited so long in the hospital, I was unable to grab some dinner, so I did just that when I arrived. While the Holiday Inn is a modest and average hotel in the U.S, in Nicaragua it’s the complete opposite. It has the presentation of a high-class hotel, like a Hilton. That said, while in their dining hall, I was super impressed. I felt so classy, being dressed up and whatnot, and in such a “glamorous” location. It was a nice feeling being dressed up and in a uber clean and fancy setting. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy events like that, if only to look superficially elegant.

The night was a good one that even saw me get up and dance (about as rare as seeing two moons in the sky). However, while I enjoyed it, it was disappointing to see so many people (not PC volunteers) swimming around in the pool in their clothes. I feel it compromises our reputation as being serious about striving for progress. Furthermore, how does it look to the staff of the Holiday Inn to have a bunch of people completely trashed and swimming in their pool with their clothes on? Booze happens, and so do things. Oh well.

I spent the weekend in Malpaisillo and headed back to Achuapa on Sunday where I did nothing but work on the new MINED curriculum and edit the business plan of Brie’s student group that was going to the national competition on Thursday. The week held much of the same that I did on Sunday – more editing of the business plan and the MINED curriculum for the class.

The dog I “rescued,” and contemplated naming Broken Dog (I instead named him Buddy), started walking around. I had been convinced that it was going to die and I was just making him comfortable till he finally did succumb to the adverse situations he continually encountered. Since he was healthier, I decided to deparasite him. The pill went down and came up an hour later, but hey – that’s better than nothing.

Wednesday I went to Malpaisillo where I helped Brie’s group prepare for their presentation the next day at the national competition.

The Buddha In Your Mirror - A. Buddhism looks more and more interesting after reading this book.

What is a What – B. A book about the Lost Boys of Sudan (in Darfur) and their struggle to survive and escape the country. I think what has happened to them is a tragedy, but the way the story was presented really wasn´t necessary. “You´ve never suffered what I´ve suffered.” That is the tone of the story – not something I disagree with, but I don´t feel it needs to be mentioned over and over in the 500+ pages of the book.

The return to Masatepe, Volcan Masaya, and Avi´s birthday

June 11^th

Everytime I start a post with “Well, today wasn’t anything special…” it always ends up being a sizeable post, but I don’t think that will be the case this time around.

I woke up at 5 AM this morning for whatever reason (after going to sleep at midnight), did some exercises, and ate some breakfast (which amounted to 2 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with a banana). I sat around for about an hour and packed my bag while Luis rolled out of bed and got ready so he too could go to Managua. Him being as pinche or rather economical as me, we opted to walk to the bus stop instead of paying 10 cordobas a piece to take a taxi there. Luis was going to go to a different stop in Managua, so I parted ways with him about 8:30 for the microbus ride to Managua. The ride went by a lot faster than it did on the way to Chinandega for some reason. I don’t know why exactly, it could be because I’m more accustomed to sitting around completely mindless without anything to distract me from daydreaming (since bringing anything flashy like an Ipod is a bad idea on the bus, I’ve learned how to waste hours sitting and staring). But for whatever reason it was, it was uneventful, and I even got to see a huge volcano at the northern coast of lago whatever (consult your geography books – it’s the volcano to the north of the big lake which is situated immediately to the north of Managua). I arrived into Israel bus station just as the bus to Masatepe was leaving, so my trip home was that much faster without the wait.

I got home without incident and went home to find our maid, Argentina, and only her. None of the other volunteers from my group had made it back to Masatepe yet, so I laid in the hammock for a couple hours, laid in the bed for an hour, and walked around the town mindlessly. Now that I’ve gotten over the fear (that my host mom instilled in me) of drinking Nicaraguan milk, I headed to the grocery store where I bought and drank near a liter of milk, and bought a bag of crackers. Combined price you ask? Why a mere 75 cents for the two. I don’t really understand prices here, for some goods the prices are ridiculous (Snickers for example), for other things (Rum for example) the prices are insanely cheap. How about a happy medium?

I took another nap after gallivanting around the town before Jordan came over. We briefly talked about our experiences on our volunteer visits before she decided to head back home. The rest of the night consisted of me teaching William completely useless words in English (like polyamorous), and teaching him random useless words/phrases in German and Czech. I’ve got him to the point where he can’t tell what language a word comes from. How shameful of me.

An uneventful day for once (that can be reflected in a journal entry!)

June 12^th

I slept really well last night and woke up refreshed as opposed how I normally wake up with somebody turning on the TV on taking a shower. Just to add to the stressless way to wake up, I did some exercises – what better way to start the day? I woke up relatively early (with regard to when I had to show up to Jordan’s house for a meeting), so I did exercises for around 3 hours to kill time. I’m still trying to figure out a way to kick my ass like I can in a gym. So far I’ve just resorted to cement blocks in a bucket, and lifting the bucket. I’m sure I’ll become more resourceful the longer that I’m here.

After breakfast, I headed over to Jordan’s to discuss with one of the language facilitators how my volunteer visit went. We all drew pictures to describe how our experience went – and my visit was completely different from everybody else’s. Everybody was worried about me visiting the guy in Chinandega, because nobody likes him. He knows this, I knew it, but we got along great. But back to topic à everybody drew pictures of all the beautiful things they saw and experienced, you know – the kind of Peace Corps stuff you read about. Me on the other hand…what did I draw you ask? Well, I drew pictures of all the food I ate, cable television, high speed internet, cheap prices, the supermarket, but then I doodled the discipline problems in the school I observed. Everybody enjoyed their visit in our group with the exception being Avi who spent most of his trip sick from some bad tomatoes. Don’t worry, he’s alive and well now.

After that meeting, I was kind of left disenchanted with the Peace Corps experience. We all discussed all the bad things that had gone on during our visits (in addition to the great points), but for some reason I had a low point. This revolves around my uncertaintly regarding my ability to teach high school students a topic I am still learning, and maintaining discipline in a class that doesn’t care. Additionally, I’m worried about being able to stay motivated and positive when my students are continually disinterested in what I have to talk about. That being said, I’m really looking forward to the opportunities I’ll have working in the community as oppose to in the classes. Outside of the class, people are more interested and engaged, if only because it’s not mandatory and there are no grades. Furthermore, I’m not restricted to teaching the curriculum, and will be able to branch out and do things I’m interested in. That being said, I’ve reached a crossroads. I’m unsure whether or not I’d prefer a city or a smaller community.

If I live in a city:

I’ll have a lot of the amenities that I had in the U.S., it will be more like life in the U.S. and less like a stereotypical ‘Peace Corps experience’. Nevertheless, there are more opportunities in cities (at least this is my perception), because there are more people, more youths, and more organizations to work with. However, therein lies the disadvantage to living in a city – more people. With more people, you lose your sense of community; you won’t have a close relationship with all the people in your community because life is more hectic and city-like. If you live in an apartment like the volunteer I visited did, you have no neighbors. I can definitely see some me encountering some obstacles integrating in the community where there are so many people.

If I live in a smaller community:

I’ll be able to meet many people in the community (if not all of them), and this will directly affect tons of related aspects of my next two years. Knowing all the people will yield free meals, better safety in the town, better trust among the community members, and everybody always says ‘hi’ to everybody in the streets. This is an aspect that is totally absent in a city. However, life in a small town brings several disadvantages. With a smaller community where most people know each other, I’ll be more prone to gossip. If I feel like going out to a bar a night and having a beer, people could see me there and I could be labeled a drunk. In turn, I’d lose trust with the community. Additionally, there are less people to work with, and potentially fewer opportunities to do something I’m really interested in with the community members/youths.

I just can’t decide. Initially, I was completely convinced that a city was for me, but now I’m not so sure. I have my program interview next week (my last interview before my site placement), and right now, I think I’m leaning towards telling our program director that I think I’d be better off in a city (even though I’m convinced they’ve already decided where I’m going). Basically what it boils down to is that I’d like to go somewhere where my work revolves around working more with the community as oppose to teaching. But hey, PC will tell me what I’m going to do, and that will be that. As strange as it is to say, I’m pretty sure they know me better than I do when it comes to deciding where they’re going to place me. They’re aware of my interests, strengths, weaknesses, counterparts, and also know what all the potential sites are.

Moving on…

The rest of the day, I just organized my life (it fits in a binder!), and headed over to the bank where I waited in a 47-person line to withdraw money. I still haven’t received my pin number for my debit card, so I had to resort to this method. I must have waited in line for an hour and 15 minutes since they only had 2 tellers working. When I finally got up there, I told her I wanted to withdraw money, and after a bunch of formalities, she asked me where I lived. Fortunately, I’ve become versed with how directions are given. So I told her my neighborhood, which number street I live on (first, second, third, etc), and then how many varas (this translates as ‘sticks’) that I live from the corner. It’s a totally different way of giving directions, but I strangely didn’t bat an eye and rattled out my paragraph-long address to her.

I was sporting quite an interesting ensemble as I was wearing khakis, a golf shirt, a bright yellow cycling hat, and sandals, but when have I fit into a crowd – I’m just expressing that inner Goggins. This yielded me being gawked at during my stroll through town today, but whatever; I’m a celebrity here anyway. With there being 5 white guys in the whole town, I kind of stand out anyway.

Jordan and I had a youth group meeting this afternoon that ended up being a youth-less group. So…we’ll have to do something about that in the future. Aside from all that, I had major nostalgia for my bikes. I was going so crazy that I hopped on his broken, barely standing bike and just sat on it while supporting myself on a wall. I just needed SOME feeling of a bicycle, something that my body would recognize to get my bicycle fix. Some day’s I’m just dying without a bike, but this too will pass (God I hope so).

June 13^th

I woke up wicked early this morning (5:20 – gross) to get to Managua for training at 7:30 this morning. I had a hearty breakfast of huevos rancheros, bread, and my daily glass of milk, and then headed to the Jordan’s house so we could go catch the bus to Managua. We were walking to the stop as the bus came roaring down the street, and fortunately we were able to hop on. As luck would have it, Avi and Owen were on the bus that pulled up, so at least we were all together on our almost now habitual journey to Managua.

We were some of the first people to show up, so we were able to relax in the volunteer office and read/steal the Newsweek magazines that we get for free. Also we were able to use the volunteer computers/exploit the high speed internet that is absent in all our our training sites (the cyber’s in our towns are pretty mediocre). The office also has an ENORMOUS library with books that volunteers have already read available for free. It’s not even a book exchange! It’s like a free bookstore! I ended up grabbing the book Into The Wild (you might have seen the movie), and stealing around 7 Newsweek magazines. Last time I stole a bunch of Newsweek’s they all disappeared or I threw them away and never ended up reading them. But hey, I’m trying to stay on top of things. At least I’m world news savvy anyway. In fact, I just heard that they invented running water! Finally, the world can rid themselves of bucket baths.

Our training session involved an assessment of everybody’s volunteer visit to discuss things that went well, and things we took away from the visit. I already laid out in yesterday’s entry how I feel about the placement process now and won’t elaborate any further. Now I’m just sitting back and letting things happen. I’m resourceful and adaptive; I’ll make it work no matter where I am.

Since we were in the PC headquarters for our training sessions (this is a first), we needed to go somewhere to eat. However, PC just told us to bring money (75 cordobas) to buy lunch. Now, of course you all know what happened – economist Richard kicked in. Like hell I was going to spend 75 cords on lunch (even though they apparently gave us money for this). So what did ‘pinche’ Richard do? That’s right, I bought food at the store last night. Not just that – I bought wheat bread (100% integral! Whatever that means), and honey to go along with my peanut butter that I bought while I was in Chinandega. I’m an eating machine, so I made myself three amazing PB and Honey sandwiches and packed 4 bananas. PC brought us to this huge shopping mall in Managua that was like a ritzier version of Cherry Creek mall – it was disgusting. It was full of Americans too, fat ones, eating their McDonalds/Quiznos/Pizza Hut– even more disgusting. Most people spent a boatload for their meals, but not me! My whole decision to bring my lunch was subject to severe scrutiny from my host mom due to my cheapness. This in turn resulted in me getting in a huge argument about how me bringing my lunch was a million times better than eating the crappy food in the food court (if you’re wondering what food court is in Spanish, it’s ‘food court’), not to mention a whole lot cheaper.

(No transition) But back to the main theme for today – training. In addition to reflecting about our volunteer visit, we had a presentation about how to work with small businesses. Then in the afternoon, a small business from volunteer from Nica 41 (who has to be a just a little younger than you Gram), gave us a presentation about how to teach La Empresa Creativa to people outside of a school setting. They gave us a bunch of scenarios and how we intended to teach the given group, when we would teach them, what methods we would use, how gender roles could affect things, etc. This is basically what training breaks down every time we go. It’s generally the same thing with a slight variation/twist to keep things interesting/give us the idea that everything they’re telling us is new and different. Either way, we pushed through for another ‘successful’ (what an ambiguous term) training session.

After training, Peace Corps dumped us in front of UCA (a university in Managua) and told us to go home. However, little did we know that we couldn’t actually go directly home from where they left us. After much discussion and confusion, we found that we could make our way home via this other city that is near where we live (I’m making Peace Corps give me a 5 cord (about 25 cents) refund since I had to take an extra bus to get home.

However, we took a tiny break in San Marcos (the city we were left off in), and a group of us all hung out in the central park there and just relaxed/reflected on how training is going. It’s not that what we do during training is particularly difficult, but all of it combined with your entire world being in another language is just mentally exhausting. I’d say everyday I spend time reflecting about what I’m doing with my life, and I’m still trying to convince myself that I’m here.

No matter how vivid of a picture I try to paint, I can never quite convey how Peace Corps makes you feel at the end of a day – it’s something I’ve never felt before. It’s not that it’s bad – I love it. You really can’t go a day without working on something, be it Spanish (you’re always working on this), a project, a youth group, preparing a class, or doing some reading, you’ve always got something going on. It’s definitely a good experience for someone who can’t sit still.

June 14^th

Today everybody was excited as we got to see the TEFL volunteers, and we got a ‘diversity charla’ at Volcan Masaya. Unfortunately, Peace Corps fooled us and made us undergo a formal-like charla (albeit in informal dress) before heading to the volcano, but that’s something I can live with. It was your standard diversity charla with the ‘who has done this’-type questions, but it was relatively painless.

After the charla though, we all headed to the volcano in our Peace Corps party bus. Douglas, the driver of the party bus, appeased us with his traditional blasting music which we enjoyed on the hour long ride to the volcano. Just to keep things Nicaraguan, we crammed almost every volunteer on the bus that was made for 20 (there are 37 of us). It made things a lot closer, helped us bond, and just helped us adapt to the Nicaraguan bus riding experiences. We’re just practicing – this is training after all.

We arrived in the park and took a brief tour of the museum (which included all the exhibits that you were never interested in when you were a child). They gave us 20 minutes for the exhibit, which was more than enough. After another break (and handing out of Oreos – a Peace Corps Nicaragua standard), we all piled in the bus for the ever-so-slow trip up to the top of the volcano.

Upon our arrival I was disappointed to find out that you can’t actually look into the volcano. It’s not super steep, so you can’t just look into the volcano and see lava like I was hoping. There is just a huge sulfur cloud that billows out of the volcano indefinitely – and it shows up in every picture. We all palled around for the next 2 hours, took picture of the huge hole in the mountain, and found a point on the volcano (windy point) where we all just sat around an talked for an hour. The land surrounding the volcano is lush and green, which provided a nice backdrop for our day to just hang out.

Peace Corps, being the generous folk they are, told us they’d drive us back to our training sites. So we all piled back into the van and headed back to our respective cities. Unfortunately for all of us, we were stuck behind a school bus most of the way that was carrying just about every object you could imagine on top of it (including the front of a school bus). To make matters worse, terrible Nicaraguan drivers continually cut us off, which are all too common on the roads here. While it took a tad longer to get home, it provided us with more time to socialize with each other – particularly the TEFL volunteers, which we rarely see (well, as much as we want to see).

After chilling out at home for a bit, eating lunch (at 3 PM), I did some exercises then headed over to the house of Perry, a TEFL volunteer in Masatepe. My initial game plan was to hang around for 3 hours…but as I have learned time and time again in Nicaragua, plans are worthless. We all had a good time (roughly 24 of us showed up), and I definitely got home at 11:30 PM. The time was extended a bit as I felt obliged to walk a group of my friends to the bus stop so they could get back to their respective cities. Everybody was worried about me, but I’d rather be responsible for myself getting the crap beat our of me as oppose to having somebody get assaulted as a result of my neglect/laziness. Fortunately (but not surprisingly), I got home without incident, and have to get to sleep soon as I’m waking up early tomorrow.

Oh the life of the Peace Corps.

Two more days of training (or rather…sauntering about?)

June 4^th

Today training didn’t start until later (which was great since I was sick the previous day/most of the night), so I didn’t have to stumble over to the bus stop to go to Olla de Barro until 10 AM.

The bus ride was uneventful if anything, and we arrived without incident. Training itself consisted of a charla concerning a bunch of stuff everybody already knew. It lasted about an hour and a half, and I’m not sure there was anybody that was particularly interested in anything that was said. That being said, the execution of the presentation could’ve been better, but hey, it’s training. Following lunch at the restaurant in Olla de Barro (where we all learned about Coburn’s multiple Nicaraguan lovers), we started the afternoon session. This session was more of a ‘get-to-know-you’ session where we were able to share some more intimate details of our lives with a select number of individuals. Coincidentally, I always seem to get put in a group with my friend Kristen, who I sat on the plane next to going to Miami, and going to Managua. The session consisted of learning about the types of situations we would be facing through the next 8 weeks of training, as well as evaluating the last 4 weeks (with regards to our mood). I was doing great until yesterday, and my chart reflected just that. Additionally, they gave us a little information about our volunteer visits that will be occurring next Sunday. They’ll be sending all of us to all parts of Nicaragua to stay with a volunteer and observe how they live for 4 days. After the visit, we’ll do an evaluation of what we thought about the visit, what went well, what didn’t, and what we thought about the site. All of this will be taken into consideration when deciding what our sites will be for the next 2 years. The day I find out my site is actually rapidly approaching – in 23 days, I’ll know where I’ll be living for the next 2 years. It’s kind of exciting to have training flying by and being that much closer to being out there on my own Gogginizing the country.

After the training session ended at 4, one of the PC staff offered to give us Masatepean folk a ride back, which was awesome with me being pinche (cheap) and all. However, wouldn’t you know it? I lost 5 cordobas while I was seated in the car, so it ended up costing me 25% more getting a ride with Peace Corps than if I’d taken the bus. Yet another example where I’ve found it doesn’t pay to be pinche.

A bunch of people headed to the bank to withdraw money (I still haven’t activated my debit card nor taken any money out of my account in 3 weeks), so I headed back home. William was there and I spoke with him for about an hour about…well, about nothing really. William never really has much to say. I headed off to the internet café for an hour and then headed back home for dinner.

I was passing time in the hammock (this happens a lot), just sitting there thinking (this has become another one of my favourite pastimes), when my host dad asked if I’d go with him to the cyber café to help him send his C.V. to a couple companies in Honduras. Apparently the economic situation in Nicaragua right now is absolutely terrible so he’s applying to an international organization in Honduras that strives to provide potable water to everybody in the country. It’d be a more financially stable job (which are very hard to come by here in Nicaragua), as they are hard to come by in Nicaragua. He said that the only thing he cares about is the well-being of the family and is therefore following up on every job opportunity he has heard about.

We walked around to a couple internet café’s that were all full before we finally found one that had an open computer over by where Owen (a guy in my group) lives. There I ended up talking with a bunch of guys who were sitting on the corner whom were friend’s of my host dad. The conversation immediately started with the question of how many girlfriend’s I had. “Um…none.” They found this hard to believe, which I then countered with the fact that I’d only been in Masatepe for 29 days. This apparently did not seem to matter. So to switch the conversation, I just reverted to the trailed and true method of saying, “Pues, soy pinche” (Well, I’m cheap). They then lectured me about how I’d never get a Nicaraguan girlfriend if I insisted on being pinche. Whatever. Ultimately, after talking with me about the mayor about how they were going to party when he finally left office (I didn’t care to inquire further), somehow the topic of girlfriends came back up. “¿Cuantás novias tenés en los Estados Unidos?” I misunderstood this as I thought they were asking me how many I’d had in total in my life. So I said 3, which yielded the response of “Oy! Bandito!” I again had to change the topic as they then asked why I still didn’t have 3 girlfriends, and suggested that I keep 3 girlfriends in the U.S. while having 3 girlfriends in Masatepe. However, at that time, my host dad finished sending his C.V., and all the guys I’d been talking to told me to call him “Kimba”. So I told him that I just learned that he’s ‘Kimba’ which put the men in hysterics. Maybe I should look that word up…

What a cultural experience.

June 5^th

Today I thought I was pretty sure I had a lot planned, I just had no idea what it was. I figured I’d just take it one step at a time. So the first step – wake up. It poured as soon as I turned off my light last night, so the rain drowned out all the other nonstop noise that usually keeps me up. This yielded me waking up at 5 AM – this meant it was time to do some yoga. I’d only done some moderate stretching since I got down here, so I decided a brief 20-minute yoga session would be good. I browsed through the yoga PDF files I have and chose one I thought would be perfect – Detox Yoga. I figured since I’d been sick recently, what better way to get my body back into equilibrium than something like Detox Yoga? Well, long story short – I kicked my ass. So my first lesson of the day – yoga level 3 (out of 5 levels) is actually hard. I felt great afterward, but after it was over, I was sweating like crazy (but I was totally limber and ready to roll). So I did some quiet reflection, and then hopped in the shower. It was really a great way to start the morning – you just kind of have the feeling that you’re floating around.

After a huge breakfast (that included watermelon, not that terrifying mine shaped fruit), Jordan and I headed over to the alcaldia in hopes of finally meeting the mayor. Avi was sick, or something, so he didn’t show up, and Owen was 20 minutes late. Oh Nica time. We finally started waiting, and after 40 minutes we were informed that he went to Managua. At first they told us he would see us in 5 minutes, but then all of a sudden he went to Managua. I’m not quite sure how that works, but I’m not all too interested in meeting with him now. This is the second time we’ve tried to meet him and been unsuccessful – at least it’s only a formality as opposed to something that is crucial to what we’re doing during training.

We headed back to our neighborhood afterward to grab a camera, and I grabbed my debit cards, as I had to activate my Nicaraguan Bancentro card and also withdraw 200 dollars because I’m an idiot. But…as things tend to go, we wandered around and ended up on Owen’s porch and sat in rocking chairs for an hour. On an interesting note, Peace Corps mentioned Wednesday how hard we’re working during training. My friend Liz and I then noted how we get paid to sit in rocking chairs and hammocks for about 12 hours a day. But I digress, I had errands to do! After…working…on Owen’s front porch, I headed to the bank to find out where I could get US Dollars and also to activate my card. I don’t know how, or why now, but my Spanish has been absolutely amazing the last 2 days. I went to the bank and not once had to ask what they were asking me, or anything. Everything went as smooth as a hot knife through butter. However, they did tell me that I’d have to go to San Marcos in order to withdraw dollars. So home I went where I grabbed my host dad to accompany me so I wouldn’t get robbed of all my debit cards/peace of mind on a trip to San Marcos. Also, I didn’t have any money for the bus. We went to the bus station where one of his friends with a car pulled up and we hopped in and got an express ride to San Marcos. He wanted to practice his English, so I agreed reluctantly. He couldn’t believe I moved here at age 22, and he also couldn’t believe I’d been to 16 countries. However, he did point out that out of all Latin America, I couldn’t have gotten any better than Nicaragua, and I tend to agree.

I got to theother bank where they told me I needed a passport to withdraw money, so I went up to my host dad, told him ‘bohuzel’ and we went outside where I withdrew dollars from an ATM. I didn’t even need to deal with the bank. Screw them and their ‘policies’! Mr. ATM didn’t care who I was, as long as I could hook him up with his magnetic strip vice.

After stopping by a Claro stop to recharge my cell phone (my number is +505.924.9465 if you want to call me), we caught the bus to Pio 12 to pick up my host dad’s truck that was being repaired. The school bus that pulled up looked like it came straight out of a 3-year-olds colouring book. It was a huge mix of fuchsia and bright aquamarine with bright red ribbons in the windows. Just to top it off, we had a huge speaker blaring some crazy music. I wish the school bus had been this fun in high school.

My host dad’s truck was broken, but the guy who fixed his car was exceedingly nice (and I noticed all his 5 front teeth were molars), but alas, it wasn’t ready. So we headed home where I…slept for 3 hours. What can I say, it was hot. Aside from that, our youth group was a total failure…cause it rained…so…bohuzel.

But whatever!