These are the new classrooms of the school, built through the partnership of the Ministry of Education and the largest coffee farm in the area. The biological control lab occupies one half of one of the classrooms.

This is the greenhouse where cabbage and other plants will be started. The sides are of a fine mesh, allowing air flow, while the roof is of plastic sheeting. Starting plants in the greenhouse protects them from wind and rain and helps insure that they enter the lab pest-free.

The healthy cabbage plants are then placed in the boxes (above) and the pest, the diamondback moth, is introduced. The female moths lay eggs from which the caterpillars hatch and begin to devour the leaves of the plant. Once the caterpillars reach a certain size, the parasitic wasp is introduced into the box. The female wasps lay their eggs inside the bodies of the live caterpillars. Once the eggs hatch, the wasp larvae begin eating the caterpillars from the inside out. They form a cocoon very similar to the pest's cocoon, with one big difference: instead of another moth coming out, out comes a brand new wasp. In this way a large number of wasps can be produced. Then when there is a moth infestation in a cabbage field--which is almost always--the wasps can be released. The females again go to work destroying the cabbage-eating caterpillars (and producing more wasps). In this way a farmer using the technique of biological control can reduce or eliminate the use of certain chemicals from cabbage cultivation.

The school bus, a converted East German troop transport from the 1980s

Coffee interspersed with corn and beans (see if you can spot the houses)

Visit from the pa

Visit from the national bird, the guardabarranco

(look closely in the center)

Chiquita: the MovieMeet Chiquita, my horse, in a short video shot in her pasture

Picking Coffee: A Family AffairA 30-second video of the coffee harvest.

Pancho the Pirate loses his head

(look at this one sideways)

Coffee ripening

Host mom and dad with drying coffee beans

New neighbors with Pancho the Pirate

Nica 42 Agriculture swears in! And we make the news doing it. Click here to read (in Spanish)

Downtown Granada, Nicaragua

The old hospital of Granada(Closed)

Some pictures from the last couple months...

The vulgar family parrot, Teresita, eating a mango

In a mountain cave on a hike with some neighborhood kids

A tree nursery training project

The coffee grove where I´ll be living

This is my Peace Corps blog. Here's I'll post pictures, hilarious mishaps in the Spanish language, and recipes for cooking beans and rice.

"Disclaimer: The contents of this Web site are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. Government or the Peace Corps."

Peace Corps has given us our sites. This is me pointing to mine, a small town called Jigüina in the central highlands.

I know a few things about the place: it's cool, rainy coffee country by the side of Nicaragua's biggest man-made lake. The town started as a settlement in the 1980s but has grown since then. It´s still small (about 600 people) and is just a few kilometers away from mid-sized city of Jinotega.

The little dots on the map are other agriculture volunteers, scattered around the northern departments in little clusters. I´ll be just 10 km from the nearest aggie, close enough to ride a horse to.

Less than a month till the real fun starts...