I've been ignoring a lot of the outside world the past few weeks in order to finish work for the microeconomics class I've been taking and apply to graduate school. Econ is done, grad school apps are really just getting started, so I'll probably be MIA for a while longer.

But I wanted to finally post a bit about the research trip I took to New Mexico and Texas about a month ago. I mentioned the U.S.-Mexico Border Colonias region a while back, and that's exactly where I went to do some interviews for a report I'm working on.

First I flew into El Paso, TX and got to hang out with my cousin and her husband during my downtime - I don't have any photos of the city itself, but it's a nice place as long as you don't accidentally drive into the border crossing area to Juarez which my cousin told me is easy to do and not so easy to get out of! I drove up to Las Cruces, NM where I saw a lot of this (try to ignore the little dots in all the photos, I need to fix them):

Mountains

Feedlots

The Colonias

Subdivisions built by a local nonprofit we work with

Although most rural towns have trailer parks and neighborhoods with dilapidated housing, the colonias are entire towns made up of people living in such poor housing conditions.

After New Mexico I flew down to San Antonio, TX and drove about 100 miles towards the border. The particular county I visited has, as the county judge put it, "always been in a recession." Economic hardship is nothing new to this area - official unemployment numbers are over 15% and there are few jobs in the area. There have been some positive developments but the community is nowhere near becoming as prosperous as it once was during its agricultural peak.

The colonias in Texas are different than in New Mexico where the settlements can date back to the 1800s or earlier. In Texas many are new within the last 60 years as a result of developers illegally subdividing and selling land without infrastructure and often using the contract for deed system which allows the landowner to repossess the land after one late payment without going through the foreclosure process. Most residents are Hispanic (though not all, and most are here legally) who wanted to build their own homes and did so little by little - finding materials and adding on when they had the financial resources, so it's not uncommon to see mobile homes that were later added to, like this one.

A strange but not totally unusual site was a house like this:

next to one like this:

The local government and the office of USDA Rural Development along with local nonprofits have been working to get streets paved, and water and sewer installed. Here's a house Rural Development built, usually to replace an existing structure because it's easier to construct new rather than rehabilitate:

The going is slow and uphill to fix the problems inherent in the community - I was told that there isn't even decent housing for middle- and upper-income families which makes it difficult to attract professionals (teachers, doctors, etc) let alone new businesses.

My perspective on housing and regulations has definitely been altered from living in Nicaragua and visiting this region. Obviously it would be ideal for everyone to have a safe, healthy home. But by requiring building codes, many families cannot afford to build even a modest home and end up living in rental housing. So is it better for a family to live in a home that they are building themselves and are proud of, even if it doesn't meet code or for them to move into subsidized rental housing where they are not invested financially or emotionally? I have a story to share about that exact point but I'll leave it for another time. I guess what I'm getting at is that even issues like affordable housing are not black and white.

It's been a week since the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. I started writing my recap earlier this week but somehow didn't finish it, however, I did promise one of my aunts I'd tell her all the details so here they are:

Group shot at the rally:

The weather was beautiful, I had great companions, and the show itself was very entertaining. We were extremely lucky in that I live walking distance from the mall so we rolled onto the mall somewhere around 11am I think. At that time it was full but not crazily so and we were able to make our way up within seeing and hearing distance.

I mostly have pictures of people on the jumbo tron:

I didn't realize until I spoke to other friends and coworkers just how lucky we were. A lot of people weren't able to get within viewing distance of the jumbo trons and the speaker system wasn't strong enough to reach all the attendees (estimated at 215,000 by the same people who estimated the Glenn Beck rally in August at 87,000). The metro was also out of control, my coworker came in from one end of the Orange Line and she told me it was an hour wait just to buy a metro ticket, let alone actually get on a train. Her photos are mostly of the lines at New Carrolton!

Apparently the rally broke Metro's ridership record (from a Desert Storm rally back in 1991) with over 825,000 trips taken. Many people wondered why Metro didn't increase service for the rally any more than they did and apparently that's because the organizers told the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) that they didn't expect more than 100,000 people, which also accounts for why the video and sound couldn't reach everyone.

But enough with the numbers.

We ended up sandwiched among people who had arrived early enough to set down blankets and camp chairs. People were super nice, offering spaces to sit on their blankets and sharing snacks and sunscreen. One of the ladies nearest me lives in California but is originally from a small town about 40 minutes from where I grew up in Minnesota!

The program itself was upbeat and largely focused on the media and political world's constant name calling and fear mongering (this went both ways on Democrats & Republicans, Fox News & MSNBC – obviously the crowd slanted to the left but the rally truly was not about one side or the other). This included the awards given out by Jon Stewart to people who, when faced with situations in which most people would have thrown a fit, remained calm and reasonable. Steven Colbert, on the other hand, gave out awards to those people who incited fear through news programming and other channels (it's been a week now and I can't remember many details anymore).

Ozzy on the jumbo tron:

There was also the musical battle between the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens singing Peace Train and Ozzy Osborne singing Crazy Train with Stewart & Colbert eventually finding common ground on the Love Train. And those of us on the Mall itself got to do the wave with the Mythbuster guys so that was pretty cool too (though I don't think that part was on TV, it was part of the pre-show).

The Wave:

That's about all I can think of to recap, the whole rally is online in segments so you can go watch whichever part interests you most here (I suggest Jon Stewart's Moment of Sincerity if you want to hear more about the Why behind the rally).

Some of my favorite signs:

Lastly, Jon Stewart implored people to donate to the Trust for the National Mall and so far they've raised over $180,000. Little known fact: Congress doesn't actually allocate enough money to properly maintain the mall so the Trust was started to fund the upkeep on the monuments and grounds.

If you remember correctly (and it appears many people do because I think this is the event in my two plus years in Nicaragua that people most like to talk to me about), I was without power for more than 50 hours after a storm brought down five power towers that were weakened because people were stealing the supports to sell for scrap. If you think that kinda stuff only happens in third world countries, think again. There were major delays for Amtrak trains between DC and Baltimore recently because someone(s) stole a good 100 feet of copper signal wiring to sell for scrap, which obviously caused some problems.

Speaking of things one would assume occur in Nicaragua and not the U.S., one of the projects I'm working on right now for work is a regional analysis and case study on the area around the U.S. - Mexico border called the colonias. This area is known for poor, oftentimes rural settlements called colonias (Spanish for neighborhood) where families live in near third world conditions. Each colonia is different, but there are some that don't have running water or sewer systems which probably wouldn't make much difference anyway because many of the houses are built using whatever materials the inhabitants can get their hands on. As they say in Spanish: Que pena (how embarrassing). More on that another day.

Waaaaay back in August, pre-surgery, I went on a little cultural outing with my roommate, Emiko, her friend, and her friend's sister-in-law. Emiko and her friend were both in Peace Corps in Kazakhstan where, unlike Nicaragua, it gets really cold. They had grown to appreciate regular trips to the bath house for a good, cleansing steam and had managed to find the equivalent in the DC metro area: the Korean spa.

There's a pretty decent-sized Korean community in parts of Virginia, so we went way beyond the reach of the metro to Spa World. From the outside it looks like maybe it's the world's biggest bath supply store situated in a regular old suburban strip mall. Just from looking at it I never would have guess what was inside.

When you pay, you're given a little orange jumpsuit and a fancy little electronic, waterproof key that will open the shoe locker right in the entry way. Next men and women head to their respective locker rooms where that key opens another locker and absolutely everything you have goes in and you're left wearing your key on its little bracelet and nothing else!

In the spa they have showers for rinsing, two saunas (hot and dry), a giant pool with many jets at various positions, and a couple hot tubs. The day we went the place was full of women of all ages and colors – clearly the Korean spa was not just for Korean ladies. After a while you get used to the fact that everyone's naked and just enjoy moving from jet to jet in the pool or steaming in up in the sauna.

We paid a little extra for a full body scrub (you can get massages, facials, etc) and I think it was well worth the money. They have a group of middle-aged Korean ladies clad in black lacy undergarments who direct you to a pink plastic table and the proceed to scrub off all your dead skin from head to foot (you can actually see the gross flakes of dead skin which is gratifying to know it's now gone but disturbing to know that your skin will eventually return to that invisibly dirty state). I'm pretty sure she scrubbed off much of the tan I had left from Nicaragua.

After lounging about in the spa area, we put on our little orange jumpsuits and went to the common area where men and women mingle amongst the seven rooms of various heat. If I remember correctly the hottest room was over 150 degrees so we started there and worked our way down to the ice room which was below 50. One room was full of little clay balls!

To finish off a day of converting our bodies to mush, we enjoyed a tasty Korean lunch before pulling our clothes back on over our now smooth-as-a-baby's-bottom skin and heading back out into the not nearly as relaxing world.

Photos were borrowed from various websites...

I was working on a blog post this weekend but I got distracted. Therefore, I'm going to post the thing that I got distracted by which, quite frankly, is way cooler than the thing I was gonna write about anyway. So I give you: the nearly 3 hour breakdancing competition I watched Saturday afternoon....(it's a yearly event, I went in 2006 and 2007 too)

Luckily Katie was as excited as I was and didn't mind sitting on the pavement all afternoon:

We called this guy Pirate B-Boy, I hope you can see his amazing facial hair:

During the warm-ups this kid was hiiiilarious, I think he was up after every other person to practice and usually fall down:

I had a really awesome video to post but I'm getting error messages and just want to go to bed, so that'll have to wait for another time!

I used to really enjoy writing about Nicaragua because I felt like I was sharing new and (at least to me) interesting knowledge about something very few of my readers knew much about. Now I live in DC and a quite a few of the people who read this live here too, or used to, or probably know something about it. But I'm going to write about it anyway because I find this city fascinating and there was a lot that I didn't know about it till I lived here and I'm sure much more that I'll learn about it in the future.

That said, the primaries for the mayoral election were on Tuesday. There might as well not even be another election in November because DC is so overwhelmingly Democrat that whoever wins the Democratic primary is basically the new mayor. In fact, I don't even know if there is a Republican candidate, although I'm sure there is one, let alone his or her name. Although most people polled thought that the present mayor, Adrian Fenty, did a good job in the last four years, the challenger, Vince Gray, won the primary and Fenty has conceded.

So for some reason, Tim Pawlenty - the governor of my dear state of Minnesota & a probable 2012 Republican contender for the presidency - chose this as an issue he should weigh in on?! I was surprised to see this article this morning in the Huffington Post with T. Paw's comments on Fenty losing the primary! I do enjoy when my worlds find new and strange ways to collide, but really?? Personally I enjoyed this line: "Pawlenty has proven to be quite adept at finding the epicenter of the spotlight of hot-button policy debates."

(If you don't want to read the article, the policy debate in question is the firing of a bunch of DC public school teachers by the chancellor of schools who Fenty brought in and backed up so the teacher's unions backed Gray & probably played a role in the demise of Fenty as mayor.)

Here ends Lesson One in DC politics. Stay tuned for someday in the future when I'll inevitably rant about the fact that DC does not have a vote in either the House or the Senate and why it's a big political uphill battle the change that.

After a few hurdles, including the Department of Labor itself and getting the stupid IV in my arm, I had knee surgery on Thursday last.

My surgery was supposed to be covered by a workers compensation program which is administered by the Department of Labor (DOL). The scheduling lady who handles DOL claims at the doctor's office assured me that it usually only takes 48 hours for approval from DOL so the one week window I had before my surgery was fine. Well, I talked to her on Monday and my authorization still hadn't come though. Tuesday: same. Me: Freaking out. Wednesday I made some phone calls and got my case examiner and on her computer it said I'd been approved so she faxed a copy of that to the doctor's office and I was told I was good.

Thursday I arrived at the George Washington University Hospital (same place I went to have Betty removed) at 6am for my 7:30 surgery and was told they didn't have my authorization. Worst fear confirmed. I sat there waiting till about 6:50, slowly preparing myself to have my surgery canceled. Miraculously they got whatever they needed (some guy tried to explain it to me, but I was too busy finishing my paperwork to really pay attention) and off I went to have a resident and the head of anesthesia treat me like a pin cushion because of my tiny veins (I still have a bruise from one of three attempts to insert the IV!). At one point there were four people standing there watching and the resident said "I bet you've never had four people watch you get stuck with a needle before!" So it's not all seriousness all the time.

The most intriguing part of the whole surgical process for me is that every staff person asks what I'm having done and to what body part and then having the surgeon come in and write his initials on said body part so they don't screw it up. Obviously I'd prefer to repeat myself eight times than come out with the wrong leg operated on, or worse.

I think I confused the nurses or whoever was around as I was waking up afterward when I said (and I remember this vaguely) "I can't believe I fell asleep!" One of my finer moments of sleep talking.

So far so good on the recovery. They even gave me this nifty Cryo Cuff thing that I remember another medevac having after her ACL surgery:

You wrap it around your knee like so and use the cooler, which is filled with ice and water, to fill and empty the blue thing to reduce the swelling! I still don't really understand how it works, but to empty it you just connect the little hose and the water drains out, then you lift the cooler part above the brace thing and it refills it. Fancy!

I'm able to walk now, but for long distances (like to work) I crutch-walk and get funny looks from everyone along the way. I saw the physical therapist yesterday and have started some basic exercises to get the old girl working properly again in 4 to 6 weeks.

Lately I’ve been trying to approach my re-integration into US society like I approached integrating in Nicaragua. The advice I was given when I spent a couple days with a volunteer during training was to accept every invitation to dinner, birthday parties, whatever and go, regardless of how tired or freaked out I was. The past couple weeks I’ve made myself do something I’ve never enjoyed: go to gatherings where I pretty much only know the host. A lot of my friends in DC are random acquaintances so when they invite me places I used to either drag someone with me or not go. But I figured it was a good opportunity to expand my friend circle and put my small talk skills to work.

First I went to my college friend Emily’s End of Summer Barbecue. There was a possibility of other folks from our school showing up but no one did. I spent a surprising amount of time brainstorming ideas for one girl’s food truck vision (food trucks are the new lunch fad in DC, I haven’t tried one yet) for her amazing canned preservatives and other random food ideas. Later another girl and I tried to explain to a guy why asking girls out on the Metro isn’t such a good idea.

Next my old roommate Melanie organized a karaoke night so I met up with her and some of her mostly work friends early at a bar that was having trivia, but we didn’t play and instead got a lot of dirty looks and a couple comments because we were talking during the game. Beware of trivia geeks, they take that stuff seriously! I didn’t last long at karaoke itself mostly because my usual karaoke partner is in South Korea.

Lastly, I went to an iftar, which is the breaking of the fast at sundown during Ramadan. The group was almost entirely women, mostly lawyers actually, and they were fun to talk to and I didn’t feel weird being the only non-Muslim there. It also made me realize that Peace Corps has made me very practiced at being in new situations so I no longer really feel that awkward when I’m kind of the odd one.

I’ve also been packing in lots of social time because a) summer in DC is beautiful and come winter I may not want to leave my apartment and b) my knee surgery was just scheduled for this coming Thursday so I won’t be able to get out and enjoy the beautiful weather much for a little while. I’m having arthroscopic surgery to repair the meniscus (cartilage) in my left knee. I’ll have the long Labor Day weekend to recover so I should be fine to return to work the following Tuesday, hopefully without having to crutch the four blocks to my office. I’m not too nervous but any happy thoughts you feel like sending to my knee on Thursday at 7:30am EDT would be appreciated.

It really wasn't that triumphant, I flew in last week right after a pretty serious thunderstorm (got to fly through part of it, that was fun) to a welcome party of one: my now roommate Emiko. Lots of people have asked me what it feels like to be back in DC and back working at my old job (I started on Monday) and the best way I can describe it is to say that it feels like I never left, which is both comforting and creepy.

I've returned to my little office with a view of another office building to continue on as a research assistant to a rural housing nonprofit. A rural housing nonprofit in Washington, DC??? you may say... well, yes. The organization acts as an intermediary between the government and local, rural organizations. We get mostly government money to support our activities which are a revolving loan fund, technical assistance and training, and research specifically to organizations working in rural areas around the country. There are several organizations that do this but my organization is the only housing intermediary that focuses solely on rural areas.

The biggest adjustment to returning to work has been sitting .... all day ... at a desk ... staring at a computer screen. So far I've been doing the usual editing stuff I used to do, we're waiting for the research agenda to get final approval from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which is where the money comes from. The one thing I do know is that I'll be working on a big report done after each decennial census. I love the census so I'm pretty psyched about that.

I had four days before work started, during which I had originally planned to run errands and buy clothes and other stuff I'd need for work. But I had Peace Corps friends in town (can't stay away for long!) so I hung out with them instead. My friend Dianne is from Northern Virginia so she came home with her site mate, Liz, and we went to Great Falls:

Dianne's mom had warned her to be careful, and it turns out she had a point - "The river has claimed another victim, don't be its next, if you fall in you will die."

I'd always heard about Great Falls when I lived here before but since you can only get out there in a car, I never went. It's very pretty!

With Liz:

Sunday we moved into our apartment (if anyone wants the address or my phone number just let me know). My plan was to buy a bed the way I did the last time I moved out here: Craigslist! But upon arrival I learned that DC, much like New York, is experiencing a bedbug infestation so buying a used bed was very much discouraged. I ended up at Ikea on Saturday trying to figure out how to buy a decent bed for less than $500 when Emiko texted me and said that her current roommate was looking to sell her nice, Certa bed fast and for less than $500! What luck :) So I'm mostly all settled, just waiting for my boxes to arrive, and as I type there are three guys building a wall to separate my room off (we have a one bedroom so my room is technically the living room). Once all that stuff is done, I can settle myself for real.

My last news is that I got the approval to move forward on getting my knee fixed. If you remember, when I was last in DC I discovered that I have a torn meniscus but opted to return to Nicaragua in order to get part of my Perkins loan canceled (which has also been confirmed!). When I got back last month I sent in paperwork to get knee surgery as covered under a part of workers comp and I just got the approval. This morning I scheduled an appointment with the same orthopedist I saw before for a quick follow-up and then I should be able to schedule the surgery.

Once my feet hit American soil I went right back to my busy ways, visiting friends and family and trying to ignore culture shock. It really hasn’t been too bad, and a lot of things that catch my eye are things that I would notice when I visited from DC as well: really big trucks, all the space, and mullets. I haven’t seen a huge number of mullets but this is rural Minnesota, they’re around. I’ve also found myself staring at shelves in stores trying to determine which of approximately 359 different types of toothpaste I should buy. The options in this country are mind-boggling.

But overall it’s been nice to be home, I’ve run into lots of familiar faces and enjoyed the loveliness of a Minnesota summer. I got out on the Mississippi not once but twice.

And ate smores fresh from the bonfire

And enjoyed a Minnesotan potluck. I know people do potlucks all over the country, but there’s just something unique about the hot dishes and salads and bars you find at a Minnesotan get-together. Unfortunately at our family picnic/potluck the tater tot hotdish got left in the oven on a farm a good 20 minute drive away (I still think it was intentional so they could keep all that tasty hotdish to themselves), but we had plenty of food anyway.

Beautiful afternoon except for some flies

I’ve also been spending a large amount of time indoors performing round two of Throw Away All the Crap! Before I left for the Peace Corps I tossed and donated tons of stuff. When I got home I was horrified to see how much stuff I still have so I’m again removing a decent amount of things from my possession, with much more brutality than before. I’ve chucked a lot of my school assignments but I’ve uncovered a couple interesting things that I want to share with the blogosphere before I share them with the dumposphere.

Dated January 7th, 1998 - which places me smack in the middle of 8th grade - I filled out an inventory in order to determine which career path would be best for me and my result was….. Science, Professional. Sample occupations include botanist, statistician, archaeologist (which was my chosen profession at age 10), and geographer! I also chose “Being famous and known for what I do” as one of the three job aspects that would be the most important to me.

Next I have some weird collage thing that is dated May 29th, 1996 which would be the very end of 6th grade. At age 12 I wanted to visit Washington, DC (check), Washington state (not check), and see some Mayan temples (check). I also wanted to be an archaeologist (not check) and do some writing (check right now!). My pet peeves were Jonathan (my brother), Heise (Jonathan’s friend), Spam (one of Jonathan’s obsessions that I had to eat occasionally), zits (no explanation needed), and chewing loud (still drives me nuts).

I’ve been told by a few people that I should keep writing in the blog, so I’ll do that either until my readers get bored or I get bored. Whichever comes first.

I am officially an RPCV, a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer!! My official Close of Service (COS) date was yesterday, July 16th but because my flight left at 7am I finished everything up in the office on Thursday. When volunteers COS the tradition is to ring the bell in the office and the staff comes out of their offices and everyone cheers. We had three people who were flying early on Friday so we rang the bell together on Thursday afternoon:

My flights home on Friday went smoothly. I had a fellow-RPCV as a travel buddy for the first leg and I still just love his comment after we passed through customs in Houston and headed into the airport: “Let’s integrate!!” It seemed so perfect after being so focused on integrating into a foreign culture for two years we’re now back home and quite frankly, I do feel a little bit like I have to switch and re-integrate myself to American culture. And what better way to do that than to go to a big party?!

I was a little nervous about basically going straight from the plane to my cousin’s wedding reception but it was the perfect reintroduction. I got to see almost my entire family, enjoy fantastic food and drink, and danced my face off with my cousins, aunts, and even my grandma.

The fam:

Holy crap, American cake!!! (Nica cake isn’t nearly as sweet):

All the cousins minus one with my grandma:

Dancing our faces off:

Now I’m back at my parents’ house, exhausted and still adjusting to the familiar and yet strange surroundings. The plan is to move back to DC on August 4th and go back to work at my old job starting August 9th and I’d like to apply to grad school this fall for Urban Planning. So life marches on, I’ll probably keep writing in the blog as the mood hits me. I don’t think my post-Peace Corps life will be quite as interesting but we shall see about that.

Lastly, I bring you the massive list of 62 books I read throughout my Peace Corps service. Many of these were sent to me by my wonderful friends and family, but we also have a library of books at the office and much trading occurs among volunteers. My Top 10 are in italics:

Persuasion – Jane Austen

The Prophet – Khalil Gilbran

Beloved – Toni Morrison

The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

Next – Michael Crichton

The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini

No 1 Ladies Detective Agency – Alexander McCall Smith

A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway

Dreams from my Father – Barack Obama

Still the Mind – Alan Watts

Sula – Toni Morrison

Through the Arc of the Rainforest – Karen Tamashita

The Perfect Storm – Sebastian Junger

The DaVinci Code – Dan Brown

Eat Pray Love – Elizabeth Gilbert

The Mirror Crack’d – Agatha Cristie

Into the Wild – Jon Krakauer

The Other Boleyn Girl – Philippa Greggory

Love Me – Garrison Keillor

My Horizontal Life – Chelsea Handler

Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez

The Audacity of Hope – Barack Obama

The Celestine Prophecy – James Redfield

The Devil in the White City – Erik Larson

Life of Pi – Yann Martel

Instinct for Freedom – Alan Clements

A Case of Exploding Mangoes – Mohammed Hanif

Bonk – Mary Roach

Speak Peace in a World of Conflict – Marshall Rosenberg

Timeline - Michael Crichton

And Then There Were None – Agatha Cristie

Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts

The Penguin Book of International Women’s Stories

Deception Point – Dan Brown

Before You Know Kindness – Chris Bohjalian

The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

The Tipping Point – Malcom Gladwell

13 Clues for Miss Marple – Agatha Cristie

Tears of the Giraffe – Alexander McCall Smith

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay – Michael Chabon

Forever Ours – Janis Amatuzio

Middle Passage – Charles Johnson

Murder in Mesopotamia – Agatha Cristie

The Tao of Equus – Linda Kohanov

The Power of Now – Eckhart Tolle

Veronika Decide Morir – Paulo Coelho

Diary – Chuck Palahniuk

Twelve by Twelve – William Powers

Nine Stories – J.D. Salinger

The Zahir – Paulo Coelho

Collapse – Jared Diamond

Running with Scissors – Augusten Burrows

The Moving Finger – Agatha Cristie

A Caribbean Mystery – Agatha Cristie

Lamb – Christopher Moore

Three Act Tragedy – Agatha Cristie

The Murder on the Links – Agatha Cristie

Cards on the Table – Agatha Cristie

They Came to Baghdad – Agatha Cristie

Spider’s Web – Agatha Cristie

Caramelo – Sandra Cisneros

The Country Under My Skin – Gioconda Belli

I had a fantastic, and exhausting, last weekend in Nicaragua. Friday night I spent in Managua with a couple volunteers and two Nica friends who live in Managua. There was an artist at the bar who drew portraits for my friend Kat and me:

Saturday my friend Vera had a cookout at her house, she’s Nicaraguan but has residency in the U.S. and has been back for about a month to visit. When she’s in Nicaragua I get to see how the other half lives: her family has a nice house with a pool, we ride around in her Land Cruiser, and go out to some of the nicer places in Managua. Almost all of the people at the barbecue spoke perfect English to the point that I almost forgot I was in Nicaragua.

One epic grille out:

We watched the World Cup 3rd place game between Uruguay and Germany (Germany won):

And went swimming:

After the BBQ I returned to my recent home of Granada for one last fiesta. As our group likes to say, we danced our faces off:

“Jump on it”

And lastly, I dragged myself back up to Managua on Sunday noontime for the uber fancy Champagne Brunch at the Hotel Intercontinental. It’s pricey but worth every cordoba.

Salud!

The World Cup final between Spain and the Netherlands, pretty much everyone I know here was going for Spain so everyone in the restaurant cheered when they won in overtime:

I’m hoping to finalize more of my post-Peace Corps plans before I actually fly out on Friday. I know that I’m moving back to DC sometime in probably August, I have an apartment lined up with a friend from college and am waiting to hear about going back to work at my old organization as a researcher, which I should know shortly. If that doesn’t pan out then I’ll continue sending out resumes and bugging everyone I know about job openings. After the weekend I just had I’m definitely sad to be leaving my friends, but I’m still pretty psyched to see everyone at home.

My instituto did get their act together and organized a despedida for me and also for a teacher who's retiring, Profesor Oswaldo. They had a short presentation with dancing and everything:

and then we had lunch:

and cake "Thank you Oswaldo and Jennifer for your labor":

With Profesor Celso in the middle and Profesor Oswaldo:

I have also made peace with my former landlady and her cousin, we've hung out a couple times and thankfully any discussion of the attempted break-in was amiable. Turns out one of the guys who tried to break in was the son of the owner of the sketchy bar that was down the street from my house. I actually saw him being arrested by police for breaking into houses nearby about a year ago probably, so it wasn't just me. And he's back in jail because he attacked his uncle. Awesome.

So here I am with Claudia & Linda when we said our goodbyes:

After one last trip on Sunday I'm pretty sure I won't be going back to San Rafael before I leave Nicaragua in about TEN DAYS!!

Despedida is another word in Spanish that I prefer to its translation in English, which is a farewell or going away pary. My despedidas have officially begun in my site, on Friday I said goodbye to the English teachers from the municipality at our monthly planning workshop. Most volunteers hate these workshops and many don't even go but I hate missing them because I just love hanging out with this group of teachers. After the workshop was over they took me out for lunch and gave me a couple recuerdos (memories, presents). Not everyone was able to come but here's the group:

After that I went to CEDRU, my friendly neighborhood NGO, and had cake and coke and they gave me a really nice ring as a going away gift which miraculously fits me (they often don't). I also presented the ones who participated in my English class with their certificates for 18 months of participation. Wow.

My seriously awesome cake:

With my class plus one of the German volunteers who's still around:

Handing out certificates:

I spent Saturday and Sunday at a beach near the city of Leon with the English and Business volunteers for our Nica 47 despedida. It was a pretty chill weekend, which is normal for our group. I think the high points of Saturday night were a couple games of Twister played on a homemade board and when the hostel randomly put the instrumental of the national anthem on the stereo and we all stopped what we were doing, saluted, and sang the whole song, much to the shock of the staff and other patrons!

The high point of Sunday was definitely the lobster lunch a few of us indulged in. I've never really eaten lobster and here it cost less than $15 for this:

Everyone was veeeeery happy after that meal:

These several days of despedidas were bookended by celebrations for Teacher's Day, which is actually June 29th but the mayor's office threw a big party for the teachers last Thursday, Monday we celebrated at school, and Tuesday we had the day off again for the actual day. Some photos from Thursday's celebration:

With some teachers from the instituto:

With Joe, the volunteer who lives closest to me & apparently looks like we're related:

And with my friend Blanca who teaches preschool:

On Thursday both of my schools told me I had to be at their Teacher's Day celebrations on Monday, when I really wasn't planning on going to class because I'd still be at the beach. But whatevs, I got up early and made my way down. I actually ended up missing the majority of the festivities at both schools because one started literally three hours late and the other an hour and a half. Sad news. Hopefully I'll have a despedida still at my instituto but I'm getting a sneaking suspicion that they're gonna schedule it for my very last week in-country when I will be living far away and won't be able to make it. I guess we'll see.

I spent the weekend running around the countryside like I tend to do. Friday I went to Granada and helped my friends paint their house:

Saturday I got up early to go up to Managua and meet up with some friends for a trip to a farm in the central region of Chontales. The trip out took a lot longer than we were expecting but the drive through the mountains was gorgeous:

Even on the main highway it's common to see cows being herded to pasture:

Chontales, along with the rest of the central region, is basically known as cowboy country and a place to get really good cuajada which is white cheese that I can't figure out how to best explain but they make it fresh on the farm everyday and I just couldn't get enough.

Although it ended up being a short weekend, I think we all loved it. We got to ride horses, milk cows, swim in a little lagoon that was seriously amazing, and just chill out.

With my friend Coco:

A little boy who lives on the farm:

Handmade tortillas cooking on the fire:

The lagoon:

My friend Vera & me:

I've been enjoying living in Diriamba with my friend Maria, taking the bus over to San Rafael and back three days this week was less fun but not terrible. Actually living with Maria has enabled me to stay up to date on the World Cup which would have been totally lost on me if I'd still been living where I was at. In case the World Cup is lost on you, so far the U.S. has tied England and Slovenia! Not great but not so bad either. Nicaragua didn't make it to South Africa but Honduras did and so far they're not doing great either. Most people I know are going for Spain or Brazil.

Today I had the joy of judging the English Song Festival at Maria's school for the second year in a row. Neither of my schools is really organized enough to do this (actually one might be disbanded if they can't get the discipline problems under control!) but I think it's super awesome to see these kids get all dressed up and even choreograph a little bit. This year the winners were a group of boys in their final year singing "And I Love Her" by the Beatles. Clearly the girls went wild.

They even had a kid playing the bongos!

Eighth graders supporting their singer:

They dedicated the festival to Maria, awwwww:

In a complicated and unfortunate turn of events, I had to spontaneously move out of my site yesterday. Sunday night I was staying with friends elsewhere and was woken up at 3:30am by a phone call from my landlady, Claudia, telling me that two men had come to break into my house and fought with the caretaker guy who I pay to stay on the back patio while I'm gone (on the insistence of the Claudia). The positive was that the men had been arrested, but I still couldn't get back to sleep that night.

I was supposed to be doing my close of service medical review which meant 3 days in Managua (visit the dentist, have a physical, poo in a cup three days in a row - not kidding) Monday through Wednesday. So I did that and was in contact with Claudia, who made it clear that she thought it only happened because the streetlamp in front of my house was out so it was pitch black and that I should've left the outside lights on (I was gone for 5 days so I didn't think that was a great idea before I left).

So Wednesday rolled around and I wasn't excited to go back, but I was planning to move in with Claudia and her cousin Linda this weekend and the men were in prison (one was even a neighbor, it always happens like that) so I felt like it would be ok. Well, Claudia called and said the police screwed up and had to let the would-be thieves out which made me have a nervous breakdown. Peace Corps was very awesome and said I could stay another night in Managua and I ended up deciding to just move my stuff out and stay with a volunteer friend nearby because when I spoke to Linda she yelled at me and told me it was all my fault and so clearly I knew I couldn't stay with them.

I went down yesterday afternoon with a PC driver and my friend Allison, got everything out of the house and had a very sad and angry (on their part) goodbye with Claudia and Linda who would not get off the fact that it was my fault and I had to just walk away because they wouldn't listen to any of my apologies. Really, I was very lucky to have not suffered harm myself or to have lost anything, but losing friends who have been extremely generous and kind to me in the past is something completely different. At the same time, as I've seen with more than one person here, the same person who is kind and generous one moment can change into a mean, hateful being in the next and that will never cease to completely confuse me.

I'm going back on Monday with the Safety and Security Coordinator to check out the situation with the police and for now I'll be staying with my friend Maria in Diriamba and traveling for class. Peace Corps also appears to have some work I could do to occupy myself.

To not end on a depressing note, on Sunday I did a zipline canopy tour with my friend Dianne and her mom. It was awesome:

The power outage of last week lasted about 50 odd hours, it came back on Friday morning while I was at a workshop with the teachers and a little cry of joy went up when the lights came on :) The sun even came out on Friday so life is pretty much back to normal with clean clothes, cold water, and 3am serenades for Mothers Day….. wait, what??

Sunday was Mother’s Day here in Nicaragua, and it is a BIG deal. The stores all offer sales (which aren’t that common), everyone buys a cake, there are signs all over the place thanking all the Nicaraguan moms, and apparently it is not rude or poor form to wake up your mother (and half the neighborhood) by hiring a mariachi band to play for her at 3:00 in the morning!!!! I heard two such serenades before 4am at which point I put in my earplugs and went back to sleep.

*****

Since the rains started up this year my house has become infested with mosquitoes like never before. Now I do work on my bed (inside my mosquito net) to avoid being bitten and every time I look up I feel like I’m in a mosquito horror movie because I can see them perched on the net and buzzing around trying to find a way inside. It’s really creepy.

*****

The week before last I was invited to the birthday party for my friend’s nephew’s 4th birthday, and also the 1 month birthday of her very brand new niece. So I put some toys in a bag and walked over at the appointed time expecting to see a piñata and kids running around. Instead I found a bunch of adults and children seated in the yard and a bunch of speakers and a band! Strange, I thought to myself, but as I got closer I realized what it was: an evangelical church service. If I was four and my birthday party was actually church, I would be pretty disappointed but Sebastian didn’t seem to mind.

Here he is with his mom and sister:

And the band:

I had a nice little blog post planned for this week about the various birthdays that happened last week, but this week's just been so weird I can't help but write about it. So Sunday night I got back from a lovely weekend out and went to bed early and woke up with major stomach pains! I guess that fried chicken (it's always chicken isn't it) wasn't agreeing with me and was looking for every possible escape route - I'll say no more. Around midnight I was able to get to sleep.

I lucked out on Monday that it was rainy and cool and laid around the house attempting to rehydrate and eat a bit, Tuesday I still didn't go to class and enjoyed another cool rainy day, by Wednesday I felt almost normal and the rain was getting a little old especially because the power went out at 5am which means there's no water either and I had a pile of dirty clothes that wouldn't dry even if I could wash them. I ventured out to tell my NGO friends that we wouldn't have class because the power still hadn't come on at 5pm and they informed me that there was something wrong with some towers and we'd be without light for three days! They also told me to get some candles.

Being without power isn't so bad if it's not hot, I actually slept fine last night because the rain kept the house cool but of course my cell phone battery was low so I decided that the best use of my time today would be to come to the office in Managua and charge my phone, run some errands, etc. As it turns out, our fit of rain isn't an official tropical storm but it's causing major flooding in Leon, which is the department north of me. I looked up one of the national newspapers and found out what's causing our power outage: 5 towers fell down!!! Why did 5 freaking towers fall down?? Because people have been stealing the lower supports to sell for money which obviously left them weakened and I'm sure the storm and winds were the final blow to bring them down. I can't get the images to copy so just go look at this article. Scroll down to see the awesome graphic of the tower actually falling over.

The article says that power was rerouted for many of the affected communities but my town, of course, is hit the hardest because the towers are actually in my municipality and it's the only power line so we just have to wait until they can reinforce those things with concrete. Apparently the parts stolen are really expensive and have to be imported so they're reinforcing them with concrete until they can get the parts. Damages are estimated as up to half a million dollars. Eek!

Thus ends A Very Peace Corps Week.

On Saturday I went to visit my friend Maria for some Gringa Time as I like to call it. Shortly after I got to her place, which sits behind her landlady’s house in kind of a closed-in compound area, the landlady’s boyfriend and his friend started hacking down a perfectly good avocado tree with machetes. We asked them why they were cutting it down and so, as men of few words, they put it very eloquently: “Because.”

After a few more minutes we discovered it was in order to build a wall. A wall for what?? For a house. Huh??? So thankfully the landlady, explained that it’s a wall that will initially be used to hide the grossness of the backyard for her impending wedding to said boyfriend, or I guess, fiancée. Then they’ll add onto it and make a little covered spot for sitting, which we call a ranchón and I can’t think of a good translation in English. It took most of the morning to figure that out.

The other fun part of this whole tree cutting process was that the tree was also the home to a little family of owls who were thusly made homeless. I don’t think I’d ever seen an owl in person before, they’re funny looking little guys:

This is just after this baby owl freed himself from being stuck under the fallen branches:

And now he’s got his head completely turned around backward:

Yes, they cut the tree down with the cars right next to it, dropping at least one large branch on the white one:

To get the little guy out of harm’s way, the friend picked him up in a saco and found him a new home away from falling objects:

Later, when the action had quieted down a bit, the mother and father owls, who had taken refuge in a tree that the babies could fly up to, took to dive-bombing the guy who was hacking the tree into smaller pieces. Quite the Saturday!

On May 7th, 2008 I woke up while it was still dark outside and went to Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC where I boarded a plane to Miami and then caught my connecting flight to Managua. On May 7th, 2010 I did the exact same thing!! Last Friday was my two year anniversary of arriving in Nicaragua and I got to celebrate by repeating my very same itinerary.

Overall, though, it was a pretty anticlimactic day. I got to Managua around noon and went straight to the Peace Corps office to lighten my load by dropping off my really thick medical file (the day I picked up my file from my nurse in DC she told me she’d been collecting a novel on me, and that was only part of it) but I didn’t run into a lot of familiar faces. I got back to my casita safe and sound and honestly felt as if I’d never left.

Monday was a whole other story, though, when I went back to school and realized that I may have left my patience somewhere in DC. I think having had that little taste of my former life and knowing that I will have it again so very soon and for as long as I want it, my tolerance for the screaming and disorder of my school was just very low. It was good to see everyone though, and a number of my students said they’d missed me so that was nice.

My landlord greeted me with the news that she’s hopefully found her next tenant – a Canadian Jehovah’s Witness (of which there are now 4 or 5 I think – including my doppelgangers, the blonde twins who I thought had left but apparently haven’t and I still can’t figure out why anyone would think they’re me or I’m them because whenever I see them they’re always together and I generally am the only one of me walking down the street). The lady wanted more light and air in the house (it’s a little oven in the daytime) so Monday a couple guys came down and banged a hole in my kitchen and one in my living room:

The mason standing on my kitchen counter:

I have my plane ticket booked and all my approvals ready to return to Nicaragua on Friday! As it turns out, I have a high-grade (read: bad) tear in the meniscus in my knee which will require surgery in the future. However, they’re letting me go back and finish my service and do the surgery when I’m done in July. I have several reasons for being so gungho about returning, one of which is an uncompleted project and another of which is the 15% I’ll get forgiven off one of my student loans if I can make it to July 16th. Soooo, it’s worth it, the doctor says I just have to “be careful.”

I spent the lovely weekend in New York City bouncing between various friends. It made me realize how much I rely on walking and how annoying it will be when I can’t. Now I’m back in DC continuing to make the rounds among friends here. Despite the obnoxious health issues, I’ve enjoyed having the time to catch up with lots of friends, family, and former co-workers. I’ve been too lazy to post photos, so here are a few (I haven’t taken very many either):

The beautiful flowers my parents sent me in the hospital:

Next to a finger painting (seriously) at the National Gallery of Art:

My friend Julia in New York and the biggest cat I’ve seen in two years:

The new Nationals stadium that they were building right before I left DC:

That’s right, Betty was a fibroadenoma!! Happiness all around.

I don’t remember if I posted previously about my knee, but it’s been bugging me for a couple months and I finally got to the orthopedist in Nicaragua just before I left for DC. Well, he told me to get an MRI because he thought I have a torn meniscus so when I got to DC I mentioned it to my Peace Corps nurse and she said I should see an orthopedist here and get the MRI so I did that yesterday. Regardless of what the MRI says I’ll still be going back to Nicaragua early next week because it isn’t causing me major problems, it’s just annoying. If I just need physical therapy then I can do that in Managua and if it’s arthoscopy then I’ll do it after I COS.

Sooo, I’m just waiting for the MRI report and to talk to the orthopedist. It’s been nice being in DC and seeing tons of people and calling a few more but I think I’m ready to get back to Nicaragua and finish up. Next week is my two year anniversary!! Weee.

Surgery yesterday went well, the procedure is usually outpatient but Peace Corps had me stay the night so I’d be taken care of and some friends came by after they got off work to keep me company and my parents sent me flowers so I was pretty content. Today I’m feeling good, chilling in the hotel, doing laundry (holy crap do I love washers and dryers) and making plans with friends. I’ll go in for a follow-up on Wednesday to see what the biopsy says but I was told that Betty looked just like a fibroadenoma (aka benign) so I’m optimistic. In the meanwhile I’ve already starting my rounds of dinners and happy hours with my DC friends and it appears that I will keep myself good and occupied through next week. I do have a prepaid T-mobile cell phone so I can talk to anyone on T-mobile for free and anyone anyone after 7pm for free so email me for the number if you wanna chat.

On a completely unrelated note, I just ordered Chinese food (because I CAN!) and this was my fortune: “You have an unusual equipment for success, use it properly.”

Perhaps it’s the fact that I’m so close to actually moving back to this country or maybe it’s because I’m not just running around with friends all the time, but being in DC is a lot stranger than it was when I visited last June. I feel like I’m just kinda floating around. It’s hard to describe. It’s like part culture shock and part out of body experience.

But all the Peace Corps people are nice and I went to see the doc today. He thinks that Betty remains a fibroadenoma and completely harmless, and she’s coming out on Thursday! I haven’t met all the medevacs, but the ones I have met seem to mostly be from Africa (my roommate is serving in Togo, I also heard Zambia and Lesotho among others). There is one other girl from Nicaragua and a guy who’s serving on a tiny Caribbean island. The hotel runs a shuttle to Peace Corps headquarters each day and on the way in we were sharing fun transportation stories. One girl said that the only van that goes to her site has non-functional brakes so they have to jump out and try to drag it to a stop. Or about taxis with seven people in them and then the driver started putting people in the trunk. It’s funny to see how Peace Corps volunteers from all over the world can bond over the same kind of craziness.

I again find that the hardest adjustment is to the long hours of sunlight. This happened in June when I came home and the opposite happened when I came home from studying in India and found myself in a cloudy, dark place after experiencing sunny days for almost four months straight. I was also frustrated by my inability to randomly toss Spanish into my sentences and still be understood, Spanglish is far more awesome than either of the languages alone (in my opinion). But the best part is the variety of food, tonight I had dinner with my friend Melanie and we enjoyed Thai and sushi. Mmmmmm….

Although my travel plans were supposedly set on Monday, something happened and I got a phone call yesterday afternoon that I'm not flying out until Monday (one person says it came from Washington, one person tells me it was the travel agency here, so I'm not sure). Frustrating to say the least, but after eating a large bowl of popcorn, taking my frustrations out on handwashing some laundry (the water came on for more than an hour! a little miracle in my life) and now hanging out with some friends in Managua, I'm feeling better :) I'm gonna use my extra days to relax since I have everything pretty much ready and enjoy the fiestas patronales (patron saint festival) in my town this weekend.

I had quite the eventful week last week. Tuesday we had our first training for that HIV/AIDs project I have and it went pretty well. We had 27 teens show up (we were expecting 30) and the only thing that went badly was that the power went out about halfway through which made our fans die and everyone was pretty sweaty by the end.

Wednesday I went to Managua for my final language exam (still don’t know my results!) and then Thursday we came back down my way to a nice hotel on the beach for the Close of Service Conference. It was a lot of talking about what we did here and giving feedback on the first day. The second day was all job search techniques, applying to grad school, interview advice, and that kind of thing.

Here we are visualizing:

Luckily Friday night we had a big beach party and were able to relax a bit and enjoy the fact that our two groups were together again:

My old training town friends:

Lining up to play games:

It was a fantastic time but my mind was about only part there because I was pondering the news I received on Wednesday which is that I’m being medically evacuated… again. This time I’m going to DC to remove what I like to call Betty the Breast Lump. Betty’s been around for about three years but was determined to be a fibroadenoma (aka benign). The reason she’s coming out now is growth and a little pain but the technician who did my recent ultrasound told me that it doesn’t look like Betty’s changed into anything bad, she’s just kinda big. Obviously the timing’s kinda weird considering that I only have three months left and I could be spending one of those in DC. I fly out on Thursday and once I get there and have the operation and such things I’ll be able to say how long I’ll be sticking around the U.S. So, DC friends, expect emails when I know more and anyone with Skype who wants to chat, just let me know.

Para mis amigos latinos: Lo que pasa es que tengo una pelota en el seno (la puse el nombre de Betty para hacerlo mas facil hablar de ella). Hace tres años hice la biopsia y me dijeron que estuvo benino. Ahorita esta creciendo del tamaño y me duele un poquito entonces tengo que irme a Washington, DC para que la saquen. El tecnico que hizo el ultrasonido hace un mes me dijo que no parece que ha cambiado a algo malo, pero ya esta bastante grande y es mejor quitarla. Podré communicarme en Skype durante mi tiempo en Washington si alguien quiere platicar, seria bueno para que no olvide el español!

A while back when I was bored I counted back 100 days from my Close of Service (COS) date of July 16th and that day is today! To make it even extra special, today is my final language exam. We had three of these exams when I first got to country to measure our proficiency and then to measure our improvement throughout training. This last one is to give us a final measure so that I can put on my resume “XX-level Spanish oral proficiency.” Tomorrow all of us Nica 47 volunteers from English and Small Business will head off to a two-day COS conference where I guess we’ll get lots of information and be given a long list of stuff to do in our remaining three months.

The rest of my Semana Santa (Holy Week) last week was pretty chill, but only in my state of being because the weather itself was unbelievable hot. Like laying-in-my-hammock-in-the-shade-and-still-sweating-and-somehow-getting-sunburnt­-as-well hot.

Wednesday I went to the river with my favorite NGO people:

The ladies made soup with these “chotes” we got out of the river:

Seriously beautiful, and we had it all to ourselves:

Friday I trucked over to Diriamba to go to a beach there with Maria. Since it was Good Friday, on the way I saw little processions in each town commemorating the crucifixion. This one went right past Maria’s house:

People decorating their house:

Then we went to La Boquita, as did many other people:

I went to a fiesta that night but I hate carrying my camera to those things so there are no pictures. I hope everyone had a happy Easter!! And I finally got some mail that I think was waiting for a long time at the post office, so thanks for the birthday mail, just a little late but that’s my fault :)

On Saturday morning, bright and early, Dianne & I arrived at the dock in Bluefields to get on a panga (boat) bound for Pearl Lagoon. “Welcome! So different and in Nicaragua. The Caribbean Coast is waiting for you.” Since I couldn’t quite figure out how to get us out to Corn Island during this trip, I figured it’d be faster and easier and cheaper to visit the town of Pearl Lagoon on the body of water called Pearl Lagoon. The panga ride out was beautiful: Mangroves: Dianne: Slightly rundown but still lovely town of Pearl Lagoon: That afternoon, despite a little trouble finding transportation, we went to the beach in Awas, a miskito community not far from Pearl Lagoon: Awas is a tiny little town of maybe 15 houses, some of which are built with reeds and palm thatch roofs: While we lounged in the water a crazy guy wandered up and offered to buy to Dianne. I kindly informed him that she was mine and I wasn’t going to sell her. Dianne often gets extra attention because she’s Korean-American, usually people call her “chinita” (little Chinese girl) but since so many people speak English we started hearing “China girl” instead. Dianne decided she prefers China girl. When we were done at the beach the sun had gone down sufficiently that we could walk back without baking. Lots of houses are built on stilts to avoid inevitable flooding that comes from living so close to the water: Marshes: The Blue Energy turbine in Pearl Lagoon (see previous post), if I remember correctly it powers the school: Because the world is insanely small, that evening we walked into the nice restaurant in town and found another PCV, Katie, sitting at the bar. As it turns out she’d spent the whole week there with friends who happened to own that restaurant. This is Katie the next day pumping water: On Sunday Dianne and I made up for not going to Corn Island by visiting the Pearl Cays which, according to Katie who has been to both, are way better and I would agree. The Pearl Cays are 18 little islands out in the Caribbean and any one of them literally could be that island that Jack Sparrow is marooned on in Pirates of the Caribbean (In fact, Italian Survivor was filming on the island next to ours but we weren’t allowed to go over and say hi. Bummer.). Paradise on earth I tell you: Arriving: Our ride:

We basically had the whole island to ourselves, plus Augusto, the guy who got us out there, and the two guys who guard/take care of the place, Hector and Leon. The island also has a half-finished two story monster of a house that belongs to the North American owner. However, construction has ceased on all the islands from what I understand because ownership is contested. Basically the islands were supposed to be reserved as communal lands for the indigenous community and yet several were sold to private owners. The issue has not yet been resolved. Luckily that wasn’t a problem for us, so we went snorkeling and saw some cool fishies and crabs and starfish as big as my head. After that we spent most of the rest of the day lounging in the shallows and sitting on the beach chatting with the caretakers. Both are mestzos and both moved at some point in their past from the Pacific side to the Atlantic side. I was talking to Leon about Bluefields to see what the mestizo perspective was, which turned out to be pretty much what I expected. He said that it’s not that the blacks are discriminated against but that they don’t want to work. I chose not to argue with him. Leon: Hector cut down coconuts for us so Dianne and I got to enjoy some agua de coco (coconut water): And for lunch Augusto went fishing and came back with red snapper, which he promptly fried up. Can’t get much fresher than this: This is the island dog, Duende. Duendes are basically elves that, according to Nicaraguan legend, will steal children who are outside too late at night: The island behind me is where they’re shooting Italian Survivor, you can see the broadcast tower: Two very happy travelers:

I decided to split the trip into two posts partly because one would just be really long and partly because it just makes sense. So I start with Bluefields itself, which I don’t think I can convey perfectly just how much I learned but here goes. First of all, it was made particularly meaningful and also educational thanks to the three boys I knew from the English Summer Camp back in January who live in Bluefields: Jonathan & Abraham (brothers) and Kiefer. Jonathan and his father, Jaime, were kind enough to pick up my travel buddy, Dianne, and me from the airport in Bluefields.

I think the plane could fit like 12 people:

Then Jonathan showed us around town a little bit on foot:

Jonathan at the boys’ high school (Jonathan graduated last year but Abraham & Kiefer still go there):

The Moravian Church:

One of the oldest houses in Bluefields:

Later Jaime picked us up again & he showed us around some more and gave us more of a rundown on race politics in Bluefields. He told us that before the revolution in the 80s there were 8 neighborhoods that were mostly all black, now there are 16 and the other 8 are populated by mestizos (mixed Spanish and indigenous origin, aka people from the Pacific side). The city is very segregated and the indigenous and afro-descendant communities are now very much in the minority. Jaime told us that most of the downtown businesses are owned by mestizos and it has become very difficult for blacks to find work in Bluefields.

A street downtown, not all that different from many towns on the Pacific side:

This statue in the central park depicts 6 men representing the 6 ethnic groups in the area - the Creoles, Garifuna, Miskito, Suma/Mayagna, Rama, and mestizos:

We also went to visit the boys’ mothers who work together in a government office focused on the Creole community – I didn’t catch the exact name. They gave us an even more detailed explanation about the challenges facing the black community. In particular, at the moment they are fighting for the demarcation of communal lands for the Creole community. A law was recently passed and communal lands were given to the other four indigenous groups but so far there has been a battle over whether the Creoles deserve communal lands as well.

Dolene, Kiefer’s mom, and Nora, Jonathan & Abraham’s mom:

There are also still disputes over treaties between the Atlantic Coast peoples and the central government in Managua. What the ladies told us, and what I think is obvious to anyway flying over the terrain, is that the Atlantic Coast is very rich in terms of natural resources and has huge tourist potential. However, it is often misrepresented or not represented at all in terms of increasing development and encouraging tourism. Much of what I read about the area before arriving was negative - that Bluefields is really dirty and dangerous when I found it to be at about the same level of both (or possibly better) than many cities on the Pacific side (and not anywhere as bad on either measure as Managua), and even what I mentioned in my previous post about being hit by hurricanes isn’t true! A sentiment that I’ve heard before that was echoed on this trip is that the Atlantic Coast provides resources without receiving any of the benefits (investment is truly lacking in the area, they don’t even have a movie theater and despite having the major advantage of a large and potentially larger English-speaking population, call centers that pay a decent wage are all located in Managua).

Kiefer & me – Kiefer is definitely more badass in Bluefields than he was at summer camp, but he´s still a good boy:

Clearly the city as a whole and the black community in particular have many obstacles ahead of them, however I still saw many positives in Bluefields. For one thing our hostel was extremely comfortable, quite frankly air conditioning and cable TV is a vacation in itself. We also thoroughly enjoyed lounging around the park in the late afternoon and watching a group of boys practice break dancing moves there in the evenings. There were generally people out in the streets till about 9pm so I didn’t feel unsafe walking around the streets and cabs cost 10 cordobas anywhere in the city so there’s no haggling! We ate some good seafood and even a pretty decent pizza. Since it lacks a beach right near town, Bluefields may never be much more than a stopover point to other destinations in the area, but the travel forums I read literally said it was no place anyone should want to go and I totally disagree.

One of the incredibly old and huge trees in the park:

The other cool thing we did in Bluefields was to visit an NGO called Blue Energy that builds wind turbines in and around Bluefields. Back in January when I was staying in a hostel in Managua I met a guy who had just arrived to volunteer at this NGO and since I knew I wanted to visit Bluefields I got his email address and we were able to meet up. The staff is made up of about 20 international volunteers (American, Australian, Argentinean, Israeli, more I can’t remember I’m sure) and about 20 local paid staff. Dianne and I stopped by the office on Friday and then that evening we were invited to eat pizza and hang out with some of the volunteers. It was interesting chatting with them, they live together in several houses and have most of their housing and food costs covered in exchange for their work. Some are techs who work on the turbines but the guy I knew is actually an accountant and works on the financial administration of the organization.

Thus ends part one. Part two is the more vacationy part of the trip to Pearl Lagoon and surrounding environs.

On Thursday I’m going to visit Bluefields on the east coast of Nicaragua! The Caribbean or Atlantic coast is largely cut off from the rest of the country and has a culture and history apart from the Pacific side. It was actually first settled by the British, not the Spanish, who landed from their other colonies in the Caribbean. They brought African slaves as well, and so the population today includes many people of African descent (in fact, Nicas often assume that the African American girl in our group is from the coast) and although most people speak Spanish, Creole is also spoken. The area is also home to some of the only remaining indigenous communities in Nicaragua the largest of which are the Miskito. I’ve even read about an ancient cannibalistic tribe called the Kukra that lived near Bluefields long ago. Most of the history I know about the Atlantic coast comes from my Moon Handbook for Nicaragua from 2005. Basically, the region was occupied by the British for many years until it was integrated into the rest of Nicaragua in 1894. Prior to its forced integration and for a while afterwards, Bluefields was a capital of commerce for American timber and banana companies. However, the area’s resources were depleted and the companies left, leaving poverty and corruption in their wake. The coast was largely left alone until the Sandinista revolution in 1979. Indigenous leaders formed a political group with the intention of working with the new government but ended up fighting against them for increased autonomy and supported the Contra resistance. In 1981, the Sandinista government relocated entire communities to refugee camps and burned their villages, particularly in the north near the border with Honduras where the Contras were operating from. In 1985, the Miskito people agreed to put down their arms in exchange for returning to their villages. Today the Atlantic region is divided into two parts: the North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN) and the South Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAS). They enjoy a certain degree of autonomy and self-reign that I’m not entirely clear on. I’ll be visiting Bluefields, the capital of RAAS. There are few roads in either RAAN or RAAS and Bluefields is only accessible by boat or plane (we will be flying). The area is constantly hit by hurricanes (don’t worry, it’s not hurricane season) and is generally considered off the beaten track in terms of tourists destinations. More popular are the Corn Islands just off the coast where you can scuba dive and snorkel around coral reefs and spend long days on the classic, white sand beaches staring out at the turquoise blue waters of the Caribbean. I wish I had time to do both but that is not looking like it’s the case. When I get back it’ll be Semana Santa (Holy Week) which is when everyone goes to the beach and there are massive parties all over the country. The week after that I go to my Close of Service conference, which will mark 100 days left in my service. How the time does fly.

Awhile back I finally got a bunch of videos uploaded to YouTube so I thought I would share. I think the only non-camp video I’ve uploaded so far is my friend’s dad playing his guitar and singing Nicaragua Nicaragüita which really should be the national anthem. This is quintessential Nicaraguan music.

The summer camp stuff includes the boys dancing to Soulja Boy and my little reggaeton ballet from the talent show (the only time I can remember falling during a performance is captured on that video, but I recovered so it’s all good). There are two videos from the digital scavenger hunt in Granada, one where the boys interview a guy and then sing him a song. In the other one they’re birds. There are also several from the advanced English class, which I didn’t take and actually don’t really know what’s on them! One. Two. Three. Four. Lastly, there are just a couple random ones, goofing around on the bus and singing one day before going to lunch. And now, some pictures from the past couple weeks:

At the end of February I was official photographer for my friend Maria’s niece’s 7th birthday party. Here’s Nataly, the birthday girl, swinging at the piñata: And blowing out the candles on her cake:

Last weekend I went to watch my friend Lesbia dance folklore dance at the inauguration of a public works project. Here she is in her pretty dress:

This week the Ministry of Health (MINSA) came and fumigated my house. This is part of the work they do to prevent malaria & dengue, going house to house fumigating every so often. They also go house to house distributing this powder called abate (ah-bah-tay) to put in standing water to prevent mosquitoes from laying eggs. This is the first time they fumigated my house, it looked really creepy:

Since I’m talking about MINSA, I finally got the money for the HIV/AIDs project I’ve been planning with the health center since forever! Yay! We’re going to train 30 youth health promoters on the topics of HIV/AIDs and STDs in general, as well as self-esteem and gender issues and then they’ll go give little presentations at their schools. And we’re going to print some informational pamphlets on the same topics. I just bought a bunch of materials for the trainings which will be in April. I’m really glad this is finally coming together!

At 3:34 am on February 27th, an earthquake measuring 8.8 on the Richter scale struck Chile. It was one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded. The earthquake itself and the resulting tsunami killed hundreds of people and devastated the country, particularly the city of Concepcion where my good friend Paula lives.

Paula was a volunteer here for a year in 2008, and we overlapped for a couple months at the beginning of my service. Thankfully, she and her family are ok. This week Paula sent a short story she wrote the day after the quake as well as some photos, and with her permission I’d like to share them with you. It makes the reality of this tragedy seem much more real, and perhaps will motivate you to contribute in whatever way you can to the victims of this and future natural disasters. I translated the story but I’ll put the original Spanish version Paula wrote below for my Spanish-speaking friends.

The Day of Silence

Anguish, horror, fear, the worst that accompany this feeling of solitude in the middle of everything, in the middle of nothing.

The silence abounds in the streets, our faces exchange looks, undressing the panic that surrounds us.

The long and eternal wait for the sunrise, the search for our families, and of not knowing….

The hugs, tears, and happiness of reuniting, a light in the distance gives us hope and keeps us alive, trying to see the lighter side in order to forget the present.

The energy from the bottom of the Earth wants to remain, coming and going as it pleases.

The sunrise comes and with it the silence continues… the calm after the storm, we leave to find food and water, but there is nothing, only abandoned streets and rubble filling the spaces. Is it a nightmare or a horror movie? This is the escape… the belief that it is a parallel world and that we’re not really living this moment.

We are comforted knowing that our family is ok and that no one was hurt, the hours pass as we try to stay calm and think about the coming arrival of help… meanwhile rationing the food and water that we have.

To think that the only method of communication we have with the outside world is my grandfather’s portable radio, thanks to this little machine we learn what is happening around us. But the news that comes to our ears isn’t good, it’s sad and devastating, better to not hear it as sometimes the anguish returns.

We feel powerless, unable to communicate with our friends, I want to believe that they are ok and with their families. The phone battery is dead and there isn’t signal to hear the voices of the people we long for.

A new kind of waiting… the most horrific, dusk arrives. Outside a beautiful sky welcomes us, but inside the memory of the previous night returns, the strength of nature that arrived without being invited, improvised, and changing our lives forever… the fear returns, making sleep impossible, but in the end the soul yields to exhaustion.

The energy continues to dance, at times it is subtle and at other times stronger, waking us occasionally…

Finally, another sunrise, another day with a bitter taste, without expectations, without future plans, only to live the present, it seems as though time has stopped, everything continues the same….

* * * * *

El Día del Silencio

Angustia, horror, miedo, son lo peor que acompaña esta sensación de soledad en medio del todo, en medio de la nada.

El silencio abunda en las calles, en nuestros rostros las miradas se cruzan desnudando el pánico que nos rodea.

La espera larga y eterna para que llegue el amanecer, la búsqueda de nuestras familias y el no saber…

Abrazos, lágrimas y alegría al reencontrarnos, una luz a lo lejos nos da esperanza y nos mantiene vivos, tratamos de verle el lado gracioso para olvidar el momento.

La energía del fondo de la tierra quiere quedarse con nosotros, aparece y se retira cuando lo desea.

Llega el amanecer y con él se prolonga el silencio…la calma después del caos, salimos a buscar alimentos y agua, no hay nada, solo caminos abandonados y escombros inundando ciertos espacios, es una pesadilla o una película de terror? Ese es el escape…creer que es un mundo paralelo y que no estamos viviendo este momento.

Nos reconforta saber que nuestra familia esta bien y que nadie salio afectado, pasan las horas, tratamos de mantener tranquilidad y pensamos que pronto llegara la ayuda…mientras racionamos el alimento y agua que nos queda.

Pensar que la única comunicación con el mundo es la radio portátil de mi abuelo, gracias a ese pequeño aparato nos enteramos de lo que esta sucediendo a nuestro alrededor, pero las noticias que llegan a nuestros oídos no son las mejores, son tristes y desoladoras, mejor no escuchar por que la angustia reaparece a ratos.

Da impotencia no poder comunicarnos con nuestros amigos, quiero creer que están bien y con sus familias…se agota la batería y no hay señal para escuchar las voces de aquellas personas que queremos.

Nueva espera…, la más horrorosa, llega el atardecer, afuera un cielo hermoso nos acoge, pero adentro retorna el recuerdo de la noche anterior, esa fuerza de la naturaleza que llegó sin ser invitada, de improviso y cambio nuestras vidas para siempre…vuelve el miedo, dormir se hace imposible, pero al final cede el alma ante el cansancio.

La energía sigue danzando a veces mas sutil, otras con mas fuerza, despertamos a ratos…

Por fin otro amanecer mas, otro día mas con sabor amargo, sin expectativas, sin planes futuros, solo vivir el ahora, pareciera que el tiempo se detuvo, todo sigue igual…

I used to live in DC and still have many friends there, so I was rather amused by the huge snowfall that hit the east coast a couple weeks ago. The Washington metro area cannot handle any weather out of the ordinary, it would rain and suddenly everyone forgot how to drive, they even preemptively delay school openings for even a forecast of snow. As a Minnesotan I always chided my friends and coworkers for not being able to function in an inch or two of snow. They always retorted that DC didn’t have a fleet of plows to deal with the snowfall to which I quickly told them that in many parts of Minnesota the plows don’t come out till there are up to four inches of snow on the ground.

Why am I publicly poking fun at DC’s snowphobia other than for my own personal entertainment?? Because that giant snowstorm even had effects down to Nicaragua, or at least Peace Corps Nicaragua & I imagine Peace Corps posts all around the world. For reasons I do not know, all the operating money we receive from Washington has to be physically sent in the form of a check through the mail. Therefore, when snowpocalypse hit and no one could get into their office for however long, those checks didn’t get sent out on time and we volunteers were alerted on Thursday that we would not be paid our monthly living stipend on Friday as scheduled! Luckily I live in a smaller site and have reserves every month but for the volunteers who live in larger sites or who spend all their money were left to work with our scrambling office to figure out how to get some money. We’ve been paid now apparently, but that’s my own snowpocalypse story, even if I don’t live in DC anymore :)

As mentioned last week, the art of drinking a beverage out of a plastic bag. I figure the bag option is popular here because it’s probably cheap. Compare the cost of paying for that plastic bottle or aluminum can with a little plastic bag. Therefore, my favorite Eskimo (eskeeeeeeemo) brand grape juice in a bag only costs 2 cordobas, or 10 cents:

The technique for drinking this little bundle of happiness (a cold bag of juice after a hot afternoon of teaching is oh so refreshing) is as follows:

Rip a corner off the bag with your teeth, being careful not to squeeze the bag too much while doing so or else the contents will spray out (this is of much more concern with the little 1 cordoba bags of water they sell at school and on the bus which are filled up good and full). Spit out the little piece of plastic for effect. Then enjoy your beverage, squeezing the contents up to the top as you go. Really it’s not all that tricky, just different.

This photo was actually taken after I got home from a long, hot walk, hence the shininess:

At many pulperias (little general stores) where they sell soda in returnable glass bottles (also a cheaper option) instead of waiting for the bottle to come back, they simply take a regular little baggie & pour the soda in, tie a knot, and the buyer just bites off a corner & enjoys their beverage. This might be one of those things I import back to the US with me. One technique I have yet to learn is how the refresco ladies are able to tie a straw into a regular old baggie which makes the whole deal much easier.

A couple of my 10th graders modeling the straw-in-bag option:

So I had a nice little post about drinking juice out of plastic bags that will just have to wait for a later date because last night I felt my first tremor! I was chilling in bed watching a DVD on my laptop when my bed starting wobbling back and forth. I live next to the highway and large trucks routinely shake the house, but this was not the same kind of shake. It only lasted maybe 10 seconds, but scared the crap out me as I laid there convinced a bigger tremor was to follow. Thankfully nothing did, though I didn't sleep well.

So today I mentioned to my counterpart Axel that I had felt a tremor last night, he said he didn't feel anything. Then I went online and found this. Apparently it was a 5.9 on the Richter scale out in the ocean off San Juan del Sur. No injuries or damage have been reported, but tremors were felt up and down the Pacific Coast.

I'm glad that I'm cleared of being crazy, because I was feeling a little nuts not having my experience collaborated. Now I can check Earthquake off my things to experience in life, and quite frankly I'd prefer not to repeat it ever again!

Monday I turned 26, so I spent the weekend in Granada with a bunch of volunteers taking advantage of the tasty food and night life that the city has to offer. We made a no bake cheesecake mix my friend Laura sent me a while back and we each ate a slice veeeeeery slooooooowly to savor the amazingness. My friend Liz’s birthday is this week as well so they made us hold candles and sang to us:

I decided to make Saturday my birthday since Monday is clearly not a good day for a birthday. My friend Dianne bought me an amazing birthday present: my very first professional massage! So I did that, ate a giant hamburger, and we made guacamole and fried tortilla chips:

The best guac ever:

As if that wasn’t enough, we made the whole package of Chips Ahoy my friend Melanie sent me disappear in under a minute. Needless to say, we were happy campers. That night we got all dressed up and hit the town. Since some of us don’t get to go out very often, we went all out and my friends did my hair and makeup:

Dianne, my makeup artist:

Liz straightened my hair and I barely recognized myself:

The whole group:

We sang some karaoke and then went to a Chinese New Year/Valentine’s Day dance party at some hotel and, as we like to say here, danced our faces off.

Monday itself was very tranquilo, I was planning with one of my counterparts and mentioned it was my birthday so he and another teacher were joking that they were gonna go find some eggs. See, in Nicaragua the tradition is to egg the birthday person and then throw flour on them! I told them to forget I said anything and thankfully they didn’t follow through on that one :)

And to top it all off, my NGO English class had cake waiting for me at class on Wednesday. They sang the Nicaraguan birthday song Las Mañanitas which is much longer and more awkward to sit through than the Happy Birthday song, but also much prettier.

Overall, another successful Nica birthday. And thanks for all the birthday messages and phone calls!

School started last week. Here’s how it went:

Tuesday: first official day of class. I went to the instituto, got presented during the first day of school “acto” (which is still a word I can’t figure out the best English translation to. Lyceum maybe?) but the class schedule wasn’t ready and all the students went off with their sort of homeroom teacher so I left.

Wednesday: I went to my country school, they didn’t have the schedule ready yet so I caught up with my counterpart and other teachers, hung out with my students, and left on the 2:00 bus.

(You may be wondering, how the class schedule was not ready before classes!? Well, first of all students enrolled for class two weeks before the start of classes so they didn’t have all summer to prepare , then it’s the case at most schools that they are figuring out the schedule by hand. It does help that the students all stay together and receive the same classes, but it’s still complicated. It is not unheard of that making the schedule can take a week or more out of classes, and even then problems occur and changes have to be made. They’ve already changed the schedule once at my country school.)

Thursday: Final site visit! My boss came down and we went to both of my schools so she could talk to my counterparts and the principals. Everyone was positive & sad to hear of my imminent departure in July. I got a general idea of schedules from my counterparts and told them both I would see them this week because a) I’ve decided not to work Fridays this year because I think I missed every Friday class for like two months at the end of last year and b) we hadn’t planned anything anyway.

This week it’s been back to planning with my counterparts, back to class, back to routine.

On Sunday I knew that it was an anniversary of having arrived in Nicaragua, but I literally had lost track of the months! I had to count on my fingers and realized that it was my 21 month anniversary. I’ve lived in Nicaragua longer than I lived in DC (just over a year and a half). And much like my final months in DC, I’m kinda starting to check out mentally. I’ve been spending a lot more time at home, putzing around the house and reading instead of kicking my lazy butt out the door to talk to people and integrate. I do still hang out with my usual friends, and all that but I keep catching my mind wandering towards the mythical end of my service. What I’ll do, where I’ll go, and most of all, what I’ll eat :) I’ve lost a bunch of weight here but I’m pretty sure the junk food binge I’ll go on when I get home (mmmm, onion rings…) will put me right back where I was when I left.

I swear I’ll have a more exciting post next week, I’m celebrating my birthday early with my PCV friends this weekend during some festival in Granada so that’s sure to produce something blog-worthy.

When my parents came in December I asked my dad to bring me a copy of the book What Color Is Your Parachute? I assume most people have heard of it, but in case you haven’t, it gives job search tips and has exercises to help people figure out what career is right for them. Now that I have less than six months left, I figure I should start putting together some sort of a plan. I’ve gone through most all of the exercises and now I’m going to enlist the help of my faithful blog readers in two things.

The first, is where would be a good place for me to live?? The book says to make a list of traits you want in your home and then ask people if they can think of a place that has most or all of those traits. I’m generally open to anything in terms of size, small cities up to major ones are fine and region isn’t too important but I’m thinking more Midwest and west coast this time around. Unfortunately some of the traits I came up with are a little difficult to see on the ground, but here’s my list anyway and let me know if it reminds you of a place you know (btw, San Francisco, Chicago, & New York are already on my list):

1. A sense of community (yes, I know, that’s hard to see or feel in a place – but I came to this one in response to living in DC where half the population is only there for a year or less so people come and go a lot and don’t make it their home very often)

2. Walkable – as in, I can walk to the grocery store

3. Bikeable – as in, bike lanes or at least space to bike in

4. Arts & culture events – preferably a dance studio, or at least a yoga class

5. Safe – within reason, not hearing gunfire at night is a plus

6. Mild climate – somewhere between Minnesota (really cold) and Nicaragua (really hot), but this isn’t a deal breaker

7. Educated, down to earth population – hard to quantify, not rednecks and not hoity toity DC socialites either, or hipsters

8. Public transportation – if at all possible, not a deal breaker either

9. Single, young people –the old ladies in Nicaragua have pardoned me for not being married yet, but I have been told that I must get on that when I go home

10. Nightlife – a salsa club would be fantastic

11. I’m adding one more that I just thought of: a sizeable latino population which would make it easier for me to use my Spanish, hopefully in my job

(I would just like to note that as I’m writing this, the wind is throwing untold amounts of dust into my house and attempting to rip off my roof. I hate February in Nicaragua.)

Ok, second order of business. What should I do?? I like the nonprofit sector, am interested in government, but I’m not sure exactly what kind of job I want to do for the rest of my life (I’ve entertained urban planner, program manager, public administrator, teacher or principal, and a whole host of other careers) and of course, whether I need a masters and what I should study. I plan to do some informational interviews and talk to lots of people when I return stateside but to ease some of my frustration with the fact that I will have to wait till I get home to do the majority of that research, I’m asking you all. Again, taking some exercises from the book:

1. Field: I’m interested in community development in general, I hope to use my Spanish, and have enjoyed designing and implementing projects for my Peace Corps work.

2. Environment: I cannot sit in an office for 40 hours a week again. First of all, it absolutely killed my back and second of all, being on a computer all the time makes me feel like a potato. I want a balance of working with people and working alone.

3. Skills: some skills I’d like to use include creating professional relationships, researching and sharing information, and working on budgets, managing the different facets of projects.

So there you go. There is, of course, the possibility that I won’t come home right after Nicaragua since there are a couple Peace Corps opportunities I’m looking at as well as just looking for a job abroad again. Luckily tomorrow I’ll have something to take my mind off all of this as I start classes again and have to relearn a couple hundred names.

I say I had a very Peace Corps week because it was literally a rollercoaster of emotions and frustrations that I think is particular to Peace Corps work not only in Nicaragua but probably all over the world. Saturday I came back from the summer camp tired and drained of all energy, and also sad after such a fun week. Sunday I woke up still sad, but picked myself up and prepared for what I knew would be a good amount of work to do my second teacher workshop on Thursday the 28th.

Monday rolled around and my first point of order was to secure the manuals I needed. In all the madness of the past week I had forgotten one key step: check with the embassy to make sure they could bring down the manuals & do their program presentation that they require if you receive manuals from them. Cool. No problem. Except that when I finally was put in touch with the right lady I found out that any day would work except for Thursday.

That hurt. I briefly entertained the idea of Wednesday (because Friday was already out of the question) but realized that it would be nearly impossible. So then I thought of moving it to next week, but school would be in session & it’s hard to get teachers out of class. Then I called my boss at Peace Corps and she was able to scrounge up some manuals for me. Score. After all that I had a 3pm appointment to finalize details with the head honcho lady of education, except she had already left when I arrived which forced me to call her which I hate doing because I never understand people well on the phone. With a little difficulty I got things straightened out & the rollercoaster stopped for the day.

Tuesday was a good day, I went to Managua & called to invite all the teachers, talked to my contacts in the other two municipalities to make sure their teachers knew, made copies of the handouts, and was back in San Rafael in time for a meeting with some health folks who are thiiiiiis close to turning in the funding application we’ve been working on for way too long. Again I’ll say it: good day.

Wednesday was going fine until I went by my landlord’s place where she lives with her cousin, Linda. Some of my readers have met these two and thankfully they’ve always been in a good mood, but this day Linda was all worked up over something from the moment I arrived and to keep this short, she started yelling about something to do with my house which I didn’t appreciate since she’s not even the landlord and I ended up leaving because I was already stressed out as it was and she wouldn’t calm down. My landlord did call later and we got things kinda straightened out, but that was it for Wednesday. Bad day.

So Thursday arrived, and I was hoping the pattern would hold: Monday was bad, Tuesday was good, Wednesday was bad so Thursday = good?? Well, my day started when I was woken up before 5am to a marching band and the welcome ceremony for a brigade of Cuban doctors who were in town. It’s been awhile since I’ve been woken up so early by a marching band, but it does happen.

In describing the workshop to a friend back home, I gave it a B. I had good turnout, I expected a maximum of 25 teachers and I had 19 from all three municipalities I’d been working with. I give it a B because some of the subject material (writing unit plans, creating evaluation techniques and writing associated rubrics) was kinda tough for my audience to grasp in the short time we had. Although the evaluations were all positive, I know some of them walked out of there going “whaaaaaa??”

My counterpart, Axel, lead a couple games including hot potato (which here is called “cabbage”):

My more or less sitemate, Joe, helping one of the groups during his presentation on lesson planning:

Now I intend to take a couple days to truly rest before classes start anew on Tuesday. And have I mentioned that I have less than 6 months left?? Absolutely ridiculous if you ask me.

As promised in my last post, I have lots of stories from my week at Intensive English Summer Camp with 80 kids from 12 to 19 years old from all over the country, including the Atlantic coast. It was a fantastic week with a truly great group of students. They learned a lot, made tons of new friends, and had an experience that almost no kids in Nicaragua get to have (the idea of “summer camp” doesn’t really exist here).

Although a total of six students from my two schools were originally accepted into the camp, only two were able to attend:

But I didn’t really see much of either of them all week.

We had a staff of 11 adults: one English Language Fellow (Misty) who was the coordinator, 4 Nicaraguan teachers who taught the actual English classes in the mornings (they were great!), 5 Peace Corps Volunteers, and a friend of Misty’s (Fatima).

PCVs:

Misty & Fatima:

Some of the Nica teachers:

All of us, minus Misty, had groups of about 7 to 9 students who we ate with and did a lot of the activities with. I was the leader of Crimson Cross, named for a cartoon army apparently, of 8 guys who were in the advanced class and spoke really well when they arrived and amazingly by the time they left. There were 3 from Managua, 2 from Bluefields on the Atlantic coast, one from Granada, one from Jinotepe, and one from Esteli (up north):

From left to right: Carlos, Gustavo, Christian, Jonathan, Mario, Emilio, Lonny, and Kiefer on the ground, where he could usually be found:

(This one has an extra kid in it, he snuck into all the group photos we took the last day!)

I seriously couldn’t have asked for a better group, these guys had no qualms about doing the goofy camp songs we taught them, almost always spoke in English, and had the best manners I’ve ever seen in teenaged boys (they carried my dishes for me at lunch, were friends with everyone, and I only had to yell at them in the morning because they usually arrived last for breakfast :)

So our week went something like this: the students arrived in Managua on Sunday afternoon

and we all bussed down to a retreat center near Granada where we got settled in and played some games to get to know each other.

The students were supposed to be in their rooms at 9pm and lights out at 9:30pm every night because breakfast was early at 6:30am. As leaders, we all made rounds to check on the kids and then met each night after lights out to talk about the day and discuss details for the following day which meant we generally got less sleep than the kids. The first morning I was completely confused to wake up at around 5am to the boys in my hall talking and listening to music! Turns out some of the kids got up as early as 4am!! We actually had to chastise them and tell them to SLEEP IN, or if they are awake early to be more quiet. I’ve never seen teenagers have to be told to sleep in. My boys had no problems with this and when I wandered down to wake them up at 5:45am every morning all the other kids were up except for them :)

Every day started with English class in the morning, we assisted in the classes but also used the time to rest and prepare other activities.

I assisted one of the beginning classes:

The PCVs taught a one hour “culture class” each day about holidays (Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, and MLK Day since it was this week).

I had Christmas, we learned about the Nutcracker & made little Christmas trees:

The trees were a little tricky but at least they were good about it:

After lunch the schedule changed a bit each day, on Monday we had a bunch of activities prepared (I taught ballet again):

And we had field trips three days of week:

Tuesday we did a digital scavenger hunt in Granada (which we won, btw).

A “small” group photo:

Wednesday we visited the American Corner in the national (?) library & the Nicaraguan-Northamerican Cultural Center (CCNN).

At the library:

Group photo at CCNN:

Thursday we went to a TV news channel and one of the national newspapers, El Nuevo Diario.

Jonathan & Kiefer with the anchor at the TV station:

Trying to stay awake at El Nuevo Diario (they were really tired by this point):

Otherwise we used free time prepare presentations for the closing ceremony,

Important people came to see what the kids had learned, hopefully we convinced them that the camp should be an annual event:

Since we were named for an army, in our presentation I was a drill sergeant and they told me all their reasons for coming to “Basic Training English Camp”

practice for the talent show on Friday night,

Lots of singing:

And dancing (the guys and a few more doing Soulja Boy):

Maria & I did a ballet (we were roommates again, so we basically spent the last 3 weeks together. Good times):

The ensuing dance party:

or just rest. Needless to say, we were really busy all week. I got home yesterday and slept 11 hours last night. This morning when I woke up alone in my house, I actually kinda missed the sound of giggling and gangsta rap that the boys played outside my door at 6am. This post is definitely long enough and I need to get on to other things but maybe I’ll post more of the fun stories from the week later.

San Marcos La Laguna:

So I guess I left off at Lago Atitlan. Sunday we left our beautiful lakeside paradise so Nitivia could make it back to work on Monday and Maria and I could do our kamikaze mission to see the Mayan ruins at the ancient city of Tikal, which is very far north, almost to Belize. We hoped to only have to do one overnight on the bus but it quickly turned into two because the only bus line that answered the phone on Sunday only did overnight trips.

We caught our bus out of Guate at 9pm and arrived to Flores at a very brisk and dark 4:30am. There was only one guy who was waiting with a van to take tourists to Tikal and although he charged us a lot, there wasn’t much to be done. It worked out well though because we made it to Tikal shortly alter the 6am opening time and ended up in a group tour with what appeared to be mostly South Americans (there was an English group as well but there were lots of them and few Spanish speakers and since we said we could do either one, we went with the Spanish group).

In the main square:

Fun fact: I used to want to be an archaeologist when I was like 10 and I read books and was fascinated by the Mayan Indians. Hence my strong desire to travel an obscene amount for a day of touring.

The view from the highest temple:

Our tour was informative, but it’s hard to absorb much after not that many hours of sleep. Tikal was one of the biggest cities the Maya built, and one number I do remember is that only about 15% of the structures from the city are currently visible. We did a lot of climbing up and down pyramids which absolutely killed my legs (I was surprised at my out-of-shapeness until I realized that I live in a country with no stairs). It’s definitely amazing to see what was built by these people hundreds of years ago and really only increases my curiosity to see more :)

That evening we ate dinner and hung out till our second 9pm bus, which again arrived at 4:30am. Thankfully this time we were able to go back to Nitivia’s and sleep for a couple more hours. When I did get up again, I discovered another volunteer friend online and in Antigua, so of course he berated me to wake up Maria and get down there since it’s not far from Guate. So we did.

Antigua is similar to Granada in Nicaragua, but much more developed (they have a McDonalds!) and tons of gringos!! Very pretty though, and all we really did was eat nachos and walk around.

After a lovely afternoon, we made the trip back to Guate, made dinner, and slept a couple hours until another 4am wake-up for our Ticabus ride to San Salvador. Although we generally had fantastic luck on this trip, our only bad luck came in trying to get to the Ticabus station in both Managua and Guate. Both times the taxis we called did not show up, leaving us either desperately calling taxis or standing on the side of roads at the crack of dawn hoping one would stop. But we made the bus both times so no worries.

Back in San Salvador, we went to an anthropological museum which was interesting because we don’t hear a lot about the indigenous groups that were in Nicaragua but it looked like many of those that were in El Salvador also made their way to Nicaragua.

Maria and I calculated that we spent almost 60 hours on the bus during this 10 day trip (240 hours), ergo we spent about one quarter of the trip on a bus. So I’m back in hot and windy Nicaragua (I won’t even describe the amount of dust I found upon returning home!). I’m busy preparing to leave yet again, this time to work at a student summer English camp for a week. Should be fun and interesting, and I’ll definitely have some good stories to share when I get back.

It's my last full day in Guatemala - it's been a great trip but I was seriously not prepared for the much cooler temps in this country!!! During the day it's comfortable, but evening is chilly! Hence, all the scarves.

I left Managua with my friend Maria early last Monday morning, we crossed into Honduras and then into El Salvador, where we stayed the night because we couldn't cross the last border after 5pm. We stayed in a nice part of San Salvador (the capital of El Salvador) which blew us both away, as did the nice parts of Guatemala City (Guate) where we arrived on Tuesday midday. Both had large malls, name brand international stores, Mercedes Benz dealerships, sky scrapers, the works. Managua is all messed up in terms of urban planning and development due to the earthquake in the 70s and because of that continued threat throughout Nicaragua it is rare to find buildings above one or maybe two floors.

Guate:

Our plan was to meet up with Maria's friend, Nitivia, who lives and works in Guate and make a plan from there. Maria and Nitivia met in Peace Corps Georgia (yes, Maria is serving in two countries) so Nitivia prepared a Georgian supra, this consists of lots of food and wine. One person is basically chosen as toastmaster, in this case Nitivia, so she would toast something (peace, family, music, friends were a couple) and then we went around the circle and each person said a little something on each subject. It was really fun and we had a great group of people who got pretty insightful.

We spent the rest of the week at Lago Atitlan in San Marcos, which is seriously a hippie's paradise- lots of meditation centers, massage, holistic stuff, beautiful lake though! We spent a lot of time walking around, taking boats to other towns around the lake, eating really good food, and meeting crazy people.

Ok, I'll get to Part II: Tikal later.

To say goodbye to 2009, I spent NYE running around town visiting friends, dancing, but unfortunately not burning a doll at midnight like last year. My friend Maria didn't have the materials and since we waited till the 31st to make it we had to scrap the plans we made last year.

On New Years Day I spent the day at the beach mostly with a bunch of people I didn't know but that never seems to matter here - they fed me a ridiculous amount, we swam, we talked, we watched like 5 little kids topple over one of their rather rotund uncles. Good times.

Part of me is still surprised to find myself in the mythical 2010 which seemed so far away when I started this Peace Corps business in 2008. We have just a little bit over 6 months left and I think at this point I've lived in Nicaragua for longer than I lived in DC. People keep commenting on my departure this year & how I'm going to forget all of them and Nicaragua. I don't know why people assume that I'm going to completely forget this place that I'll have spent over two years in by the time I go. Mostly it makes me sad to think about saying goodbye to everyone here, but it's not time to wallow in sadness yet. I do still have those 6 months left.

And I clearly can't get caught up in these sad 2010 thoughts because tomorrow I'm leaving for Guatemala!!!!! I'm going with another volunteer and we're gonna stay with her friend who's been working in Guatemala for the past year. It's gonna take a day and a half on the bus to get there, but it's been a while since I've really just traveled so I'm excited. I don't know when I'll be posting again because right after I get back from Guatmala I will go work at an English camp for students from across Nicaragua for a week. So I hope everyone has a wonderful start to 2010!!

I had a super tranquila Christmas because I had a nasty cold all of last week, but that meant I got caught up on my hammock sitting/reading time and went through like 3 books. Here in Nicaragua Navidad refers to the 24th instead of Christmas Day on the 25th. It’s funny actually, when we were talking about holidays in class this past year and I asked the kids what day was Christmas half said the 24th and half said the 25th.

The Christmas tree that sits between the central park and the catholic church:

Overall Christmas is a much smaller deal here than in the States, there are some present exchanges and some people put up small trees and a few lights but nothing over the top. I’m used to Christmas being a holiday spent with close family and the whole world shuts down outside. Here some families have dinner together or make something special and some don’t do anything at all. And of course there are parties - house parties, bar parties, parties in the street and at midnight (which is apparently the exact time baby Jesus was born) people set off fireworks & hardcore catholics have their dinner. With such a different atmosphere than the one I associate with Christmas (umm, snow??) it really felt like a normal day, except a lot noisier in the night.

I did get out of my hammock a little bit on the 24th though so I could see some friends and do what we always do, sit around and talk. I brought my camera but the only picture I took was of my landlord’s niece’s daughter who’s adorable and has finally decided that she isn’t completely terrified of me so we played and she tries to say my name but it comes out Issimer instead of Jennifer. We’re gonna keep working on that one.

Just to make it feel a little more like Christmas I bought some goodies and stuck them in my stocking, which included an apple like, ahem, Santa always left in my stocking at home. It is an unfortunate fact that apples are seriously expensive in Nicaragua. Why? Because they import the suckers from the US, the climate isn’t exactly prime for growing apples around here. So the standard, cheap fruit of my previous life suddenly became a rare treat when I moved here. I accept that because previously rare treats such as mangos & avocados are so plentiful and cheap in Nica. And of course, I took a picture of me and my apple:

One friend did comment something about who knows where I’ll be next year on the 24th. Usually when people speculate about where I’ll be in a year I laugh because I really have no idea, but I told him “I imagine I’ll be in Minnesota with my family next year on the 24th.”

Last weekend I finally went to see the infamous waterfall in a nearby pueblo (I say infamous because the town is named for it) and to wander around on a finca (farm) as I love to do. Photos:

Little bitty plantain plants:

Tomates:

Cows:

Sorghum

Dried up corn:

Perty flowers:

Really big plantains:

Climbing a tree:

Waterfall!

Me in the waterfall:

On Friday I went to the beach with my local NGO for their Christmas party which included all the Nicaraguan staff as well as the remaining German volunteers. At one point we decided there were more Germans than Nicas (and clearly I was waaaay outnumbered):

Perfect swimming spot:

Look at all those cheles (white people)!

My two favorite ladies:

And cute kids:

And just to make my tranquilo life here a little more interesting, I came home on Friday night to find this on my bathroom wall:

It’s only the second scorpion I’ve had in my house in the year that I’ve lived here and the other one was out of reach to kill & left on its own. Luckily this time I had my handy can of Raid so I grabbed a flip flop as back-up, carefully opened the door that goes outside from the bathroom so I could hide behind it and escape in case of Very Angry Scorpion, and sprayed the sucker. Thankfully it fell off the wall and tried to escape but fell over so I smashed him with the sandal & kicked him into the backyard. The end.

After coming back from vacation with my parents I didn’t have a lot of time to rest before jumping back into my random little projects and commitments. On Thursday I accompanied my friendly neighborhood NGO to do a Dia de Accion (Action Day!) with a group of primary school kids and their parents in a little community that’s technically in the municipality to the northwest.

We drove a ways on a dirt road though sugar cane fields that I never realized extended that far out. The caña is ready for harvest so it was huge and some areas were really pretty with the silky flowers blowing in the wind (sidenote: I would say hands down the favored liquor in Nicaragua is rum, and that rum generally is of the Flor de Caña variety, which refers to these pretty silky flowers).

But the harvest also means that giant, and oftentimes overloaded, trucks hauling caña go flying down these little dirt roads:

Truck:

Aftermath:

It’s not totally obvious in that photo, but the trucks kick up massive plumes of dust which get blown into the houses and the school which is located right on the road. I was coughing just from having spent the morning there so I can’t imagine what havoc that must wreak on the respiratory systems of long-time residents.

The NGO is building a new school for this community, the old one you can see to the left in the above pictures. Here’s what they have so far of the new one:

It’s pretty close to being done, just missing the zinc roof, the floor, and a coat of paint. We gathered the kids and adults outside for the morning underneath a giant chilamate tree:

The day’s activities included two piñatas and some presentations on family planning, some of which were more age appropriate than others in my opinion but that’s neither here nor there. The whole piñata thing here is just slightly different than how we do it in the States – throw in some energetic music and make the kids dance in between swings and you’ve got the Nica piñata:

And ensuing chaos:

And here's my Facebook album from mom and dad's visit.

Despite the obvious attempts of that big snowstorm to make my parents turn right around and return to Managua, they did in fact make it safely home. Overall, everything went really well – they enjoyed their foray into international travel, I didn’t have an anxiety attack, and no one got hurt. Now that’s what I call a successful vacation! I realized that I can’t think of a time in my conscious memory during which I spent every waking hour of an entire week with both my parents so I think it at least partially made up for my long absences over past few years. But what am I going on and on about? Pictures!

Mom and dad helped some of my friends/colleagues practice their English:

But work didn’t last long before we went to the schwankiest resort in Nicaragua, Barcelo Montelimar:

Mom loved the ocean:

Dad wore a fancy hat:

We swam in the biggest pool in Central America:

And watched the sunset over the ocean (I believe that was a first for them both):

Next we went to Granada where I ate tasty food to my heart’s content and we tried to negotiate their love of coolness with my now ridiculous sensitivity to cold as we programmed the AC. Mom and I went shopping in Masaya, we walked around town a lot, saw the lake, and a little bit of the Purisima (the celebration of the conception of the Virgin Mary). But the definite highlight was Volcan Mombacho, which now every member of my immediate family has seen since I first ventured there with my brother back in May.

A crazy guy who claimed to be Daniel Ortega’s brother kept hitting on me, which evoked the complete opposite reaction in my dad than I expected (he thought it was hilarious!) but at least the guy can take a decent picture:

Mom and dad on the trail:

This is the truck that drives up and down the volcano while you hold on for dear life:

We were pretty active in the morning and evening but we mostly chilled around the hotel in the heat of the afternoon - either in the pool or reading (my mom took one of me so I just had to return the favor):

I'll upload more of my photos on Facebook and link it here, but my computer is being finnicky so that will have to happen later.

So far so good on the parental visit. They arrived safely on Tuesday night and I ran them pretty hard on Wednesday, we traveled from Managua down to my town, practiced English with some advanced speakers as well as a couple beginners and walked around town a lot. I don`t think they were quite prepared for the heat coming from chilly Minnesota! But Wednesday was the only night they`ve had to spend without AC because Thursday we headed off to a schwanky resort on the Pacific coast and then yesterday we trekked our way over to Granada where we`re staying in a cute little colonial hotel. I will post pictures as soon as I`m back in site, but I thought I would alert the rest of the family that mom and dad are in one piece and enjoying their vacation, though they`ll probably be a lot more comfortable when they`re back in the house they keep at 65 degrees all year round in the ´sota.

Photo highlights from my Thanksgiving spent at the house of a USAID guy – let’s just say we were all ready to work for USAID after seeing his crazy nice house. I would also like to note that his co-host for our dinner (since there were 20 of us who went to eat at his house!) actually imported some ingredients to make this dinner.

First, the food:

Despite both hosts being vegetarians they did get us a turkey too, as well as REAL cranberry sauce, a lentil stuffing that was impressive, mashed potatoes, veggies, and really really good cornbread – there was more food but I was stuffed:

I wish I would’ve had space in my stomach for seconds on dessert – they had cheesecake with frozen blueberries, apple pies, and gringo ice cream (as opposed to the Eskimo ice cream we get here, that’s pronounced eskeeeemo):

Aside from the food, the digs were insanely comfortable. Here are my friends Liz & Dianne enjoying a couch which may not seem like such a big deal but trust me, it is:

And here I am, reclining – also a big deal:

Definitely a great Thanksgiving for us volunteers. Now I’m back in my little casita preparing for the imminent arrival of my parents on Tuesday night. I may not get a post in this week so don’t yell at me (yes, I have once been chastised for not posting soon enough).

We just finished a two day All Volunteer Conference (AVC) in Managua. All 180 volunteers in Nicaragua came down to discuss the conference's theme of Food Security, do some training sessions on various topics, and attend some professional development info sessions. It's events like this that make me realize how few volunteers I really do know, mostly because there are very few volunteers in my department/immediate area and we're all basically from one or two sectors anyway. And since I'm leaving in 8 months my group was pretty meh about making new friends since we are inching slowly out the door.

The Nica 51 volunteers swore in on Monday as well so we officially have two groups of TEFL volunteers in-country again and means that I have new a semi-site mate and three more volunteers within about two hours of me.

For Thanksgiving, PC coordinates with the embassy to send interested volunteers to spend the holiday with folks who work at the embassy so I'm still at the hotel waiting to be picked up to go with a group of volunteers to hopefully enjoy a real gringo-style Thanksgiving dinner at a schwanky embassy house.

I was going to make a list of things I'm thankful for, but I won't. I'm just thankful in general.