Achuapa, Leon!

Images of Achuapa (Click the second picture to see the full photo)

June 27th

After 5 different dreams of how we got our sites, I finally woke up at 6:30. It was the only thing I was thinking about the night before, and it was the only thing on my mind the entire night as was evident from the dreams I had. I was flipping out, not because I was scared about what site I was getting, but because I just wanted to know. I was completely mentally and physically exhausted from speculating.

Jordan (who was surprisingly ready on time today) and I caught the bus to Olla de Barro at around 7:45, to go and learn our fates. On top of learning our sites, I was looking forward to seeing the TEFL volunteers, as I have a lot of good friends amongst the group. Nevertheless, upon our arrival, we discovered that the TEFL volunteers weren’t showing up until the afternoon for the site assignments, and that we had a whole morning full of charlas that we wouldn’t pay attention to.

Thc charlas themselves weren’t that bad. The training group from Nandasmo did a survey on bakeries in Nandasmo, and strangely enough, there is a bakery for every 8 people in the city – aka, it might be hard to establish a niche in the market there. Fortunately, I was still awake following their presentation and made it to the second charla that was planned for the morning. The second charla was about how to plan with a counterpart (deja vú?), and was completely in Spanish (thank god I’m in the advanced group). Nevertheless, I took away a lot from it – at least I hope I did. I’m not too sure since I was distracted with the whole site assignment looming over my head.

They finally turned us loose for lunch where I hopped around from table to table before setting down to talk with Katie Earle, Lindsay, and David. We had a good convo and got pretty mentally prepared for the process itself. Ultimately we knew the time had come upon us when all the TEFL volunteers rolled up in the Peace Corps party bus. We all greeted each other in a sort of “Oh, it’s so great to see you, but holy crap I’m terrified,” type of way, but it was still good to be together. Some people were more nervous to others, and as I commented to some of the other people – it was good to see everybody acting the way I do on a daily basis.

We all got situated in the presentation room at Olla, and were really screwing around for a bit while all the PC staff set up all the maps and everything so we could all see where we were going. To drive home the importance and scariness (?), Peace Corps had hired some 3-person band with guitars and maracas to play Nicaraguan music while we waited. I was hoping that upon calling our name, they would play some sort of ridiculous music while we walked up to the front to accept out assignment – but sadly this did not happen.

Out of Masatepe, we all got sites we were pretty satisfied with. Avi is getting sent to Granada, Granada; Jordan to León, León; Owen to Yalí, Jinotega, and I’m going to…Achuapa, León. That’s right. I called it. From the very beginning I knew that it fit me the best out of all the available sites, I made my spreadsheet, I had my interview and it was the only site my APCD talked about. I told everyone that I was definitely getting sent there, and just hoped it wouldn’t be that site just so I could be surprised. But I got the site that was the best fit from me, so that’s good. It’s pretty centrally with regards to the sites in the country. If I want to go to León, it’s a 3 hour bus ride, if I want to go to Estelí, it’s a 2 hour bus ride (and also the location of the other Peace Corps office).

My good friend Dianne also got put in Granada, so now I’ll have 2 people to visit when I decide to go on vacation. Also, one girl I really get along with, Kat, is in Estelí. My town doesn’t have a bank, so I need to go to Estelí if I want to take out money. As a result, I’ll be seeing her quite often, which is great because she’s great to be around. There is one other SBD volunteer in my site – Bobby. He was the only other person who actually wanted Achuapa aside from me, but he got placed a lot closer to León, in the town of Telíca, León.

After receiving my site assignment, we got a packet full of all the stats of our site – population, site characteristics, how much we pay to rent a place (I’m paying 800 cords for 6 weeks without food), what our work schedule is, as well as information about side projects we can do. I have the least amount of students to teach of any of the 19 SBD volunteers with 113 volunteers in 4 classes. I teach in 3 schools, 1 of which is 5 km outside of Achuapa. I work with an NGO, Cuenta Reto del Milenium, 4 hours a day Monday through Thursday, and had all of Friday open except one planning period in the morning. As for side projects, I have the opportunity to run a ping pong club (seriously!?), advise 2 community members who harvest grapes (awesome, grape juice!), as well as assist a women’s group with quality control of tea that they are hoping to sell in other parts of the country (super cool). There are not really many facilities in the city as apparently there is only one working computer (therefore no internet, so I won’t be updating as frequently at my site). Not only that, but there appears to only be 8 busses that leave the city the entire day. Six of these buses go to León, and 2 go to Estelí. So…if you want to visit me, you better time it correctly. On top of all that luxury, I’m the most isolated volunteer out of all the volunteers. I’m an hour north of the closest volunteers in El Sauce. However, since I have to work in El Sauce (as my schedule indicates) 4 times a week, I don’t really see this being an issue.

Technically, my site is considered a new site, but this is only partially truthful. Apparently in the last business group, Nica 44, there was a volunteer that got placed in my site who as the guy I visited in Chinandega told me, ‘was a legend’. Apparently he was out of his site 90% of the time and I’m guessing he Early Terminated his service. I’m not quite sure of the circumstances concerning the ending of his service. Nevertheless, in addition to providing me with information about the past volunteer, Luis (the guy from Chinandega,) told me that apparently Achuapa has a really cool bike shop. So there you have it, I’ve got a cool bike shop in Achuapa. Who knows if I’ll ever leave Nicaragua now?

Most people were super excited about the site assignments, and most of the SBD volunteers all met up in Masatepe afterwards and we went straight to the bar for a couple of hours. This was followed by a trip to the comedor that my buddy Oliver’s parents own. A great day overall.

However, as if the day wasn’t good enough – I received 4 packages from Heather, my boss from Westfall. Thanks for all the Clif bars Heather! It filled up my backpack! Totally awesome! I don’t know where you got the Jesus stickers, but the packaging was absolutely brilliant. If you want to keep sending packages, I will obligingly accept them. Thanks again!

The site assignment looming over my head…

June 26th

Today I slept way late for Nicaraguan Richard – 7:30! It was pretty awesome, but I overslept my breakfast, and ended up stumbling into the kitchen as a complete zombie. It was awesome. Generally I’m bouncing off the walls 2 seconds after I wake up, but I was finally lethargic and not ready for the day. Man, I’m becoming more and more ready for the Nicaraguan lifestyle of ‘slow and steady wins the race’ every day!

I headed over to Jordan’s house at around 9:30 to get my translated resume checked over before I sent it in. I spoke with the teacher for a while about my motivations behind studying languages, and how I intend to learn as many languages possible before I die. She thought it was great, and was really pleased with the quality of my Spanish in the resume that I translated. It was really difficult before there are some terms that you just cant translate into Spanish – examples being foreclosure, loss mitigation, and payoffs processor. They end up being an extremely verbose way of saying something, but since there’s not a word for the terms, I’m not left with much of a choice.

After getting my resume checked, I enlightened Jordan’s movie world with some of the foreign movies that I brought with me and gave some to her. Then I headed over to ‘my’ cousin’s shop to give her a more intensive interview so I can advise her business. The interview took around 15 minutes, but then I chatted with her for about 30 minutes about Peace Corps, the business world in Nicaragua, and how absolutely anxious I was to find out my site tomorrow. I don’t know why I’m so anxious, because I really don’t care where I go. So it’s not that I’m worried, but I’m just excited to find out who is going to be around me, and where I’m going to be living the next 2 years. Tomorrow I’ll finally be able to start mentally preparing myself for the transition to my permanent site. Furthermore, I’ll know who I need to hang out with a lot before training is over, you know, just to get my fill of people before I leave.

I came home and watched a movie, took a short nap, then headed to the grocery store. I grabbed a yoghurt drink and went and sat in the park and just thought for 2 hours. A man who always sits in the park and wears a bobcat cub scouts hat that I see all the time, showed up about 30 minutes after I’d been sitting there. We exchanged some small talk for a bit, mainly about how I’m ready to find out my fate, and then I took off and headed back home.

After hanging around home, Oliver showed up and we chatted for a bit. The whole idea of him showing up is for him to practice his English with me, but we always end up speaking in Spanish (which is fine since I could use the practice in Spanish anyway). It’s great speaking with him because his Spanish is really clear and his Spanish tends to rub off on me. Generally by the end of our conversations, I’m speaking super fast, and with few errors. Really the confidence level is all you need, and the Spanish comes with it – I wish I’d known that back when I was studying Spanish in school.

After eating dinner, I found that I just couldn’t remain stationary. Even though it was 8 PM, I headed out and down the highway to Avi’s house. He wasn’t home, so I continued meandering over to Owen’s house. There was no point to this trip but to kill time and get my mind off the site assignments (which didn’t really work), but I figured mixing in a couple of visits certainly wouldn’t hurt.

Upon arriving at Owen’s house, I found the family all watching TV. After chatting with them a bit, learning that we’re forever Masetepinos, and watching some of the news, we decided we needed to loosen up – so we headed to the bar. We were there for a couple of hours and just unwound/passed the time. It was really what we needed, but at the same time didn’t relieve any of the stress associated with the site assignments. Whatever.

Down to the hours that I find out my site assignment now. Nuts. El tiempo vuela.

Stress, sleep, and waiting for my site assignment

June 24th

I’ve kind of learned to sleep in, so today I laid in bed until around 7 before rolling out to do some reading for an ‘exam’ I had. However, not only that, I had to do some last minute preparation for my interview with our program director regarding our site assignment.

Jordan and I showed up at around 9 to find that our program director was going to show up 30 minutes late (Surprised? No.), and that the other program specialist was going to show up around that time to give us our quiz on the book we’re reading. So I hooked up to the wireless internet signal that we can get from Owen’s porch and surfed the internet. I’m still kind of dumbfounded that it’s possible, but it’s something I’ve grown to love as I save 50 cents (almost a third of my daily salary!) every time I don’t use the internet at the cyber café. That’ll buy a box of milk and 2 piping-hot corn tortillas! A penny saved is literally a penny earned here.

I was the second one to get interviewed, and I jumped in there with my excel spreadsheet (I opted to not go with the powerpoint presentation). Georgia (our program director) asked me about my volunteer visit, my fears (none), what would prevent me from completing my service (nothing), and what I didn’t like about my job (students aren’t that motivated). Then, out of left field, she threw me a curve ball. She said there was something about my behaviour that “disturbed”. She said that whenever I’m talking I’m always all over the place, and she was wondering why. She didn’t know whether it was because I was anxious to get things done with, whether it was because I was nervous, or just had a lot of energy. I reassured her that it was just because I’m an animated person, and not to worry. I get excited about things and lose track of my thoughts. She said this could be a problem in a smaller area with relations. This I countered by saying that I can’t think nearly as fast in Spanish as I can in English, so I really haven’t had that problem. Furthermore, I haven’t had any problem making friends with everybody, so I’m not concerned with interactions with people and being misinterpreted. After having dealt with that, she asked to see my excel spreadsheet. I presented my arguments for my preferred sites (I think they’re 14 out of the 20), as well as gave her my reasoning for not liking other sites. I just mentioned Achuapa as one of the sites I ranked highest, and that’s where the conversation was focused for the rest of the interview – Achuapa, the counterparts in Achuapa, the working experience in Achuapa, etc. So…I think that might be the site I go to (at least that’s the feeling I got from talking with her). It’s the most isolated site out of all the selections, doesn’t have a site mate, and is one hour from the nearest volunteer. On top of that, there are only 4 buses that leave the town everyday. However, I’m not going to jump the gun and start speculating just yet. I still have 3 days until my fate is decided.

After that, I had to go home to finish preparing a class, and eat before I had to give a class to my 9th graders. The theme was their lives in 10 years, but I started late due to the bell that seems to ring sporadically as opposed to on some sort of set schedule.  I had a lot of behavioural issues today as well, but for the most part I felt I dealt with them pretty effectively. I did reach a point today that totally thwarted what I was trying to do – I had a student that wouldn’t participate, wouldn’t talk to me, and wouldn’t look at me. I called on him and told him to go to the front of the class to present his life in 10 years. He said NOTHING, and sat in his chair as I stood there asking him for 5 minutes why he wouldn’t present what he wrote. He wouldn’t even acknowledge me; he just stared as his desk. I couldn’t do anything with that, and definitely couldn’t spend more time trying to get him to say something. But after that – nobody would participate because they all saw that he didn’t have to participate. I did thwart one student’s attempt to do the same thing by effectively chasing her to the front of the room, and when she tried to go down another aisle to her chair, I cut her off. She ran out of the classroom and tried to go in the backdoor, but I cut her off at the door. Eventually she presented and it was great, and very thorough. I don’t understand why she didn’t just present in the first place.

After the class, I had 2 hours of downtime before I had to head back over to Owen’s house to work on our powerpoint presentation on the survey of the pulperias that we made yesterday. We have to present our findings tomorrow at our training session, and had to finish the presentation/decide what we’d discuss.

I got home, and in the midst of writing my journal, my host mom asked me if I could help one of her friends with church with her English. She told me she wanted a translation, so that was what I thought I would be doing. She arrived about 3 minutes after I found out she wanted a translation, and she started speaking English with me immediately. She was applying to be a liaison between the Interdevelopment Bank of America and the Nicaraguan government. She has an interview with the company and wants me to help her with her English (particularly technical words), and give her interview questions so she can practice. She’s going to come back tomorrow night and I’m going to give her suggestions on how to improve her pronunciation and grammar. Her interview is with 6 American big wigs, and she’s just flipping out. Coincidentally, I just taught my 10th grade class about interviewing yesterday. So I busted out my business book and I went over it with her, and gave her tips about how to present herself, and convey positive, convincing characteristics about her that would give her a better chance of being offered the position. Pretty cool.

June 25th

Today really didn’t hold much for any of us, but it was full of stuff we needed to do. This week has been extremely busy for all of us in Masatepe, simply because we’ve actually had work to do. We’ve all had classes to teach, give a survey of pulperias to do, make an analysis of the survey results, and make a presentation of our results, interviews, and exams. While this has yielded very busy days for us all it has all been just a nuisance to us. We’re all just thinking about one thing – the site assignments on Friday.

But to give a summary:

We met up at Jordan’s house at 11 today to prepare the final bits of our presentation about our findings from our survey of the pulperias in Masatepe. We weren’t overly concerned with it as our Spanish is pretty good, and we all knew how to do a survey anyway. This was one activity of the business training that wasn’t particularly difficult and one we approached rather casually. We got done after about an hour, and headed back home. It’s Amanda’s birthday today, and I wanted to get her a present. I asked Doña Argentina, our maid/employee/family friend what I should get for her, and she suggested anything that wasn’t sweet – Amanda hates sweets (only child I’ve ever met in my life that didn’t like them). So I went and got her some Johnson’s baby shampoo (smells like apple!) and brought it home to find that she was taking a nap. Unfortunately I couldn’t give her her present until after my training session, so I ate my lunch (which I later found out was chicken giblets mixed with carrots and peas), gallo pinto, and a gigantic platano, and then headed to the casa cultural de Masatepe for our training session.

Today’s session was about how to work with counterparts, and effective strategies that we can use to do so. Furthermore, they gave us ideas for how to do training workshops with groups of teachers. None of us knew that it was something that we would be doing, so it was interesting to learn about to say the least. Following that training charla, our group gave our presentation about our survey results. Everything flowed pretty well, and we had a great theme, so the presentation was definitely successful. We definitely have an advantage being in the highest Spanish level, but hey, whatever. It makes training/being a Peace Corps volunteer that much easier, and it’s certainly something that I appreciate being competent in.

Following the training session, I hung out with a couple volunteers for a bit then headed back home. Amanda was at my host grandma’s house, so I dropped her gift off to her there when I headed to the supermarket to buy my loaf of enriched 100% wheat bread (my new vice). I owed my buddy Oliver money for recharging my phone, so being Nicaraguan, he showed up 20 minutes late (and called me when he was 10 minutes late to ask where I was – “I’m where I said I’d meet you, where are you?). After talking with him for a bit, I headed back home, ate dinner (same thing I had for lunch, thank god I take vitamins), then headed to my host grandma’s house for Amanda’s birthday cake. The cake itself was gorgeous and cost 250 cordobas (~19.3 cordobas = $1). Not only that, it was absolutely delicious, and probably was one of the best cakes I’d ever had in my life. I was so stunned, that I had to tell my host mom what a great value that was. I could only thing of a crappy store cake with their crappy store cake frosting, crappy store cake batter, and crappy store cake price. That’s what a 250-cordoba cake would be like in the United States.

After eating cake, I headed over to Avi’s house where we talked a bit about how we just wanted to find out our sites. Owen showed up and we discussed the issue further. I’m pretty sure we’ve come to the conclusion that we’re all going to have a couple of shots before we find out the sites – to as to relax ourselves. That way, if we get an absolutely horrible site we didn’t want, we’ll be laid back enough that it won’t be as bad. But we all agreed that whatever the site is, we want to be in a mood where we can just give a fist pump and a ‘hell yea!’ Friday is SO close.

And now for a tangent – more completely unconventional happenings in Nicaragua that I’m totally used to now – giant speakers on trucks that drive around the town telling the news. There are a couple of these trucks, which are generally small pick up trucks, with gigantic loud speakers on them that announce the news for the town. They drive up and down every street in town and tell people who died that day (even if it was a couple hours ago), what’s going on in politics, and other important city issues. The sound is always a thousand times louder than loud, and the time somebody dies is never late enough for the news to be announced. Last night at around 2 in the morning, a truck drove around announcing the death of some lady. When you wake up in the morning, if you don’t already know the news, you too much be dead as anybody within a 2 mile radius of the truck can hear what happened.

Oh Nicaragua.

I just want to find out my site.