Two days ago when I got a message from Robyn, a volunteer in a nearby community, that she needed translators for a visiting medical brigade, it felt like the right thing to do and I knew it’d help shake me out of my recent, single-minded pursuit to complete the 242-page English manual that I’ve been working on for months. Like I said, if ever in doubt about your priorities and place in the world, take a day and give it to someone else. Who knows what new perspective you’ll be granted. In a stroke of genius (patting myself on the back with one hand as I type), it occurred to me to accept what will ever be known as “the medical translation challenge” as long as I could bring an advanced English student to “job shadow.” Robyn thought it was a great idea and we even started brainstorming how we could match future brigades with bright, young Nica English speakers to give them work experience and English practice in a professional setting. Like any great idea, we’ll see where it goes. Anyway, I called Victor, English teacher extraordinaire and my beloved teaching counterpart. He recommended I take 17-year-old Hamilton, an advanced level student from Prime English Center who graduated last year, and so I did. And now to the most fascinating (and exhausting) day I’ve had in a long, long time. Hamilton and I arrived at Hotel Café, the nicest hotel in Jinotega, at 6:45AM where I met Lou, the dentist; Max, the surgeon/anesthesiologist; Mark (Max’s twin), also a surgeon; and Gary, who is Max’s son, Lou’s son-in-law, and a jack-of-all-trades. The twin doctors were doing surgeries for hernias, gall bladders, and “lumps and bumps.” The hospital San Rafael del Norte recently acquired one of those fancy laparoscopic units that allowed doctors to perform “closed” surgeries instead of the far more evasive, dangerous, and time-intensive “open” surgeries of old, although they did a few of those, too, when circumstances called for it. The health clinic down the street where Lou the Dentist was working had just received one of 20 dental chair units distributed throughout the country by the government. It’s just like the chair I’ve sat in all my life during dental visits with slightly less functionality because some parts were installed incorrectly. More about that later . . . After “doing rounds” with the doctors at the hospital where I visited small rooms of 8 to 10 patients and learned what they had done or needed to have done—just a tad less glamorous then the scenes of “Grey’s Anatomy”—we parted ways with Max, Mark, and Gary, and made our way to the clinic where the Lou had been working all week. I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you there was a lot of vocabulary that Hamilton and I had to learn but that’s life. You don’t get to be 100% prepared for all of the situations you’re thrown into—or in our case, volunteer to be thrown into. Anyway, all of that “translator prep” was a great learning experience for Hamilton, and Lou was so kind to include him in everything. We worked in a small room with a dental chair, a large desk, a sink, a red plastic lawn chair (like I have in my living room) and a counter for materials. Additionally, there was a chair at the desk, a chair in the corner, a chair for Lou, and a chair for me. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that there were also a minimum of eight people in the room at all times: two dentists (one Nica, one American), two Nica teens who functioned as secretaries/assistants to the Nica doctor, myself, and Hamilton—oh, and the two patients. Let’s discuss this two dentists detail: Lou was using the chair because he was doing fillings and intensive cleanings. Doctora Myrna was doing tooth extractions—it’s all she’d been doing for about 16 years. Because regular dental services (the kind we know) had not been available for, well, over 15 years, people lived with whatever problems they had until the tooth was so far gone that it had to be extracted. Doctora Myrna, expert in extraction and henceforth known only by the name, La Extraccionista (The Extractionist), saw people of all ages, comforted them with kind and gentle words, injected them with the going painkiller, and then yanked their teeth out as they sat with their necks uncomfortably crinkled against the wall yet supported by the small sink. A trash can was placed nearby for spitting. She extracted at least 20 teeth, occasionally displaying the tooth to all present company if the roots were especially large or if the tooth was terribly decayed. There were some tears, some moaning, and in the end some hugging—by folks who’d been in such great discomfort. Some people came with shiny, white front teeth but had molars that had to go. Others came with three, maybe four teeth and left with one or two. In the words of Forrest Gump, “That’s all I’m going to say ‘bout that.” On a related topic—stop reading, get up and go brush your teeth, and then floss—twice. Please do it now. I’ll wait. . . . . . . . . . Let me just add that I have never felt more blessed to a) have been born in a developed country b) have had access to dental care (parents with jobs with great dental insurance and c) parents who prioritized oral hygiene and took me to probably a hundred visit to dentists and then orthodontists who gave me the no-cavity, straight, white-toothed smile that I have today. To the extent that Nicas have stopped me mid-sentence to ask how I get my teeth so white. “Oh, it’s just because I’m so tan that my teeth look so white (wink, wink).” Back to Lou though—he said the first thing was always to ask the patient what was bothering him/her. That seemed simple enough. Then he said, “If they’ve got a lot of pain and are really sensitive to hot and cold that probably means they’ll need a root canal but we don’t have the equipment to do that right now—maybe in October on the next tour.” My job then was to tell the people they needed a service the Lou couldn’t provide and then ask them if they had a smaller problem that he could fix such as a tooth that didn’t hurt quite as badly. As gifted a dentist and nice of a person as he was, I could tell that Lou felt helpless in a lot of ways because he could see the problems and see where they were headed (to La Extraccionista) but he couldn’t do anything about it. Of course, the conversations got technical—the patient had the shell of the tooth but nothing inside and so Lou made me a great drawing (See video to follow—tooth extraction to toe-stomping ranchera music. Just kidding) and we labeled it and used it to give patients a better idea what was happening. On the day, Lou saw about 10 patients and did or replaced fillings for each of them. In a couple of cases, he did just a cleaning but by hand as the suction unit did NOT suck nor did the water shoot out fast enough to knock off the 15 years of built-up tartar. Go ahead, you can go brush again if you’d like. Ultimately, I put Hamilton in the chair by Lou. Hamilton had no trouble explaining to patients what Lou wanted once he understood what Lou was saying. To non-native speakers, each of us has a different accent. In my line of work, I’ve naturally started speaking slowly and more simply just like on public radio’s “Voice of America”—a radio program that offers audio files and written transcripts using “Special English” or what they’ve deemed to be the most commonly used and therefore more important “word bank” for English language learners. Lou, for his part, had some trouble understanding Hamilton’s accent in English and so my job at that point became serving as translator between Lou and Hamilton who were both speaking English. All things said, it was a wonderful learning experience for Hamilton, and obviously for me, too. We worked from 8:30am to 1:30pm and again from 2:30 to 6:30pm. When we got back to the hospital around 6:45pm, the doctors were still in surgery. Buses had long stopped running to Jinotega plus we felt compelled to stick with the team, so we waited. We finally got home at 9PM having as graciously as possible turned down repeated dinner invites from Max and Mark. I was simply exhausted. They must have been going on pure adrenaline having performed surgeries from sun up to sun down for a solid week. It was so fascinating to work with these dedicated doctors and see exactly what happens when American medical brigades visit developing countries. Certainly, one day can’t reveal the big picture, but the glimpse I got was memorable, nauseating, and above all inspiring. I tell you, it’s almost impossible to give something to another person and get nothing in return. Inevitably, I end up thinking that I got so much more than I gave. It’s just what Gandhi said (and I’ve mentioned in my emails before), “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”

Yesterday I physically grabbed hold of a chunky, dirty street kid who was chucking rocks over the fence at some shrieking school kids. He’d be doing it for awhile, in fact, as I approached I watched him—as did about 10 Nicaraguans who were nearby selling vegetables or pirated DVDs or just walking by. At first I asked him to stop, then I told him to stop, then I grabbed his cocked-ready-to-throw arm and he still let one loose. Now the moment that the Nicas in the vicinity saw that I was having trouble, they got involved. They started yelling at the kid and ultimately I think a parent or familiar member came to get him from the other end of the block where they sat selling something or other. Haven’t figured out—culturally-speaking—why they’d intervene for me but not on behalf of the school kids inside the fence getting shelled by fist-sized rocks? This was all moments before I met a teacher for coffee and last minute agenda planning for this morning’s monthly training. We have this new system that allows for “intercapacitacion”—training done by local English teachers for local English teachers—every other month. I was asked to present this month at the first exchange, let’s call it, on the topics of Speaking and Technology—supposedly two areas that teachers had previously identified as difficult. Of course, during the opening remarks to all teachers of the municipality, the superintendent called attention to the fact that Nicas were supporting Nicas and no outside experts had been called in to give trainings. Her remarks gave me a jumping off point as I started the first session for twenty English teachers. I thanked them for asking me to participate and emphasized that I was no expert and hopefully no one saw me as an outsider but rather another teacher and a colleague. I also emphasized my hope that I stood before them as a mere facilitator of conversation and not a presenter before an audience. And with that our workshop day got underway and I do feel it was quite successful. You’d be surprised how timid teachers can be about sharing ideas—not because they don’t have any but because they are worried about being criticized or that perhaps someone will think they are being a know-it-all. And to that I say (and have said to them many a time), there is no right or wrong in teaching, there is only successful, more successful, and less successful. Everything we do falls somewhere on the spectrum. My counterpart, Victor, is a fabulous example of a gifted teacher who will not stand in front of a group to share his ideas. From what I understand, he’s had a lot of bad experiences with colleagues over the years. It’s a sore subject but I’m working on him. For the moment he says he’d be happy to present to the “humble, rural teachers” so we’ll start there, I guess. Anyway, baseball freak that he is, he went running out the high school to get to the baseball game on time. I made time for lunch and met him there in the 3rd inning. Tempted by the stadium food—bags of sliced mango with salt, peanuts, ice cream, syrupy ice cones in a cup, potato chips with vinegar, hot dogs, friend donuts with honey, beer, and soda—I finally settled on some cinnamon gum that went stale in ten minutes. Poor choice, however low calorie. A wiry, yellow dog took to the field in the 6th inning and simply would not leave. The players on defense took turns throwing their gloves at him. The team in the dugout jumped around and tried to scare him. It went on for awhile until he ran into deep left and the pitcher and umpires ignored him to get through the current batter. Finally he ran off amidst laughter. Today’s game featured las Brumas (The Mists) and Los Toros (The Bulls) from Chontales. One player from the Toros had been accused of raping a minor. When he came to bat the Jinotegan fans called him a name that meant pedophile, more or less. It’s not in my dictionary but Victor explained it to me. The Toros ended up winning by run-rule in the 7th and the local fans left unsatisfied. I spied a little girl, maybe 4 years old, walking along as the crowd flowed out of the stadium. She wasn’t holding anybody’s hand but seemed to know where she was headed. Once we got outside, I saw her stop and burst into tears upon realizing her mom wasn’t around. I spoke to her first and then a couple ladies grilling pork outside the stadium took interest. Through the snot and tears we managed to get her mother’s name and then after 10 minutes or so the mother came out of the stadium—both worried and angry. During the wait, the ladies and I made small talk—they were cooking pork and potato patties stuffed with shredded beef and rice. Again, I was tempted but I have some personal guidelines for eating “fritanga” or street food. You have to ask yourself how long it’s been there and how many flies might have landed on it. It also helps to observe the hands of the cook. Right now, given that we’re in the dry season and the lady was cooking on the side of the busiest road in the city, I decided against the road-grimed, stuffed potato—delicious as it looked (no lie). The moral of today’s story—life goes on here in Jinotega. It’s not better or worse—it’s just different. I hope I’ll always remember that notion when traveling, living abroad (again), and even when working with different kinds of people. There’s no such thing as better or worse; there’s just difference.

Please allow me a couple of corrections—if there is anything I mean to be as I write about Nicaragua and Peace Corps, it’s accurate. There are two recent things I’ve said that I want to correct: 1) We are not entering the rainy season—we’re leaving it and beginning roughly four months of summer. I think I wrote that on a rainy day without really thinking. Truly, Jinotega has more months of rain; let’s say a total of eight or nine versus the rest of the country which receives six or less. I’m told it should start raining again in May. For now, we’ve got dust and a hot daytime sun to dry my clothes. Sunset brings cooler temps and the morning, well, it’s usually breezy and cool. It’s my favorite timeJ Overall, we rarely drop below 65°F. 2) I quoted from something I’d written two years ago and in that quote I used a term that I no longer like nor really believe in: third world country. Having never been to Africa, I don’t know how it compares but across the board I suggest the term “developing world,” instead of “third world” because just like my Spanish I have to believe “we’re” always getting better and moving forward. And what’s different isn’t necessarily worse or backwards or behind. Certainly, there are examples of crushing poverty and disease as well as complex issues of food security. Still, third world says “behind” to me—behind the first world and the second world—wherever that is—so forgive me that phrase and please slide “developing world” in there instead. Thanks.

Sitting down with a bowl of chopped tomato, onion, and avocado sprinkled with salt and a splash of lime juice. Oh, I’ve also got two freshly toasted tortillas—my fourth and fifth of the day. I had this same snack at mid-day minus the cold Victoria Clasica cerveza. The avocado cost me 50 cents which is a bit high but I made up for it by buying not four tomatoes for 50 cents but four pounds of tomatoes for 50 cents. What a deal! Nothing like a dynamite, organic, locally-grown-right-down-to-the-corn-in-the-tortillas kind of snack for, what, 30 cents? I’ll never get over the availability of awesome, home-grown veggies on every corner in Nicaragua or at least in the parts where I’ve lived. It’s a year-round farmer’s market! Today’s news headline in La Prensa caught my eye so I’ve got a newspaper to read until Ugly Betty comes on: “Nicaragua Asilaría a los Gadafi” (Nicaragua Would Give Asylum to the Gadafis). I can’t believe it. It was shocking enough last week when I realized I was living in one of two countries in the world whose presidents were supporting Gadafi and had even called him on the phone to pledge support. In reading the article, I was relieved to see that a number of other Nicas had spoken out against this possibility saying that it would be a black day in history. I don’t feel at liberty to speak freely even in my emails about anything of a political nature. One of my counterparts occasionally mentions something political but always in English and like a mom talking about ice cream in front of her kids, “Boy, I could sure use some I-C-E- C-R-E-A-M but I don’t want little Jimmy eating that so close to suppertime.” If you haven’t ever, I invite you to read about our upcoming elections (November 2011). They’re gonna make international news and probably for awhile—that much I can promise. Yesterday in Managua, the president of the Nicaraguan English Teachers Association and I presented to the committee in order to receive funding support for a grant that will provide a teaching activities manual and related training to 363 teachers in 14 municipalities during the month of May. I think I mentioned that I’m coordinating the efforts of the 14 volunteers involved and will be receiving the grant money (approximately U.S. $6,000) into my bank account to manage and disperse accordingly. I’ll keep you posted—it’s a wonderful project with far-reaching benefits. That’s all my good news for today. Running in a 10K tomorrow morning—half the distance between Jinotega and San Rafael del Norte. You may recall I ran the whole distance—a half marathon—in 2009 and afterwards I said this: “What I’m learning about myself now are some things I guess I already knew. I can live in the third world country. I can sweep and clean my happy little home. I can hand wash my clothes. I can make my own food or learn to make Nica food. What I cannot do is travel great distances on the buses, unless it’s a direct route: one bus for many hours, in which, I’ll probably find a decent seat and be able to relax a bit.” It appears that the travel killed me more than the race and this year, with the travel element removed from the situation, should be a great time. Skimming over my old blog entries and emails, I realize I used to write more often and more vividly. When I think about why that is I guess I’d have to say that while I’m still delighted, affected, and challenged by so many parts of life in Nicaragua, this is where I live and this is what I do. It doesn’t occur to me to draw attention to the “difference” or the “foreign-ness” because I don’t see it so clearly anymore. I think that’s a good thing.

Sometimes it’s the hardest thing to stop, reflect, and report but I’m making myself do it now and asking you to take five minutes to do the same. I’d really like to know how you are—really. Just this week I picked up a book in the Peace Corps library called The Art of Coming Home, because at some moment this year, I do expect to “come home” and I do expect it to be something of a shock. Anyway, the book makes mention of an attitude many expatriates have—that they are the only ones leading interesting lives. I just want to be clear; I am not at all of that opinion. No matter where we live or what we do, our successes, challenges, and daily routines deserve equal air-time which is to say they’re important. I wanna know. My story is this: I facilitated 8 hours of “Coping with Stress” discussions with two new trainee groups this week. It’s a full day’s work and that’s not a comment about the session. We literally meet in the office around 8AM to get materials ready, leave at 9AM, drive an hour to another department (either Masaya or Carazo,), do two sessions in the morning, get lunch somewhere, and do two more sessions in the afternoon—each session with five or six trainees, and get back to Managua around 5PM, traffic permitting. Studies do show that having some idea of what’s ahead reduces stress so as facilitators we try to present a realistic picture of volunteer service. I assure them that they’ll learn Spanish because, hey, I did and you can accomplish things you are motivated to accomplish. We also help them understand the medical resources at their disposal as well as volunteer committees and the online tools that they have at their disposal throughout their two years of service. I’m also happy to report that the small grant proposal I was working on is in! What I pulled together over the last month was 107 pages of proposal, budgets, printing bids, trainings plans, contracts, and participant sign-up lists. I delegated some parts, practiced teamwork, and ultimately “guided” 14 other volunteers through the process of setting up trainings for teachers in their respective cities/communities and meeting all of Peace Corps and USAID’s deadlines and requirements. The proposal is for a workshop on the adaptation of materials and we’re providing the material: a teacher’s manual that was written specifically for the Nicaraguan classroom in accordance with the recent curriculum transformation set forth by the Ministry of Education. A committee of volunteers wrote the manual which provides exercises, games, readings, grammar, and strategies for grade levels 7 to 11. I participated as little as possible in the writing of the manual such that I could do the design work with a fresh pair of eyes. The manual design is underway but now that the proposal is in, it has moved to pole position on my priority list.

Yesterday I attended a meeting called “The Battle for Sixth Grade” which had as its focus the strategic plan of the departmental ministry to enroll, maintain, and graduate Nicaraguan youth from the sixth grade. As I understood it, the current average level of education in the country is fourth grade which isn’t great when you’re looking for a job in any country. Come 2015 they’ll be fighting the battle for 9th grade—raising the bar little by little until it is feasible to expect for all students to graduate high school. This year there will be two forms of enrollment—stationary and mobile. Stationary enrollment is when the parents bring the kids to school and sign them up. Mobile enrollment is when teachers, university students, governmental committee members, and other volunteers go door-to-door in both the urban and rural zones to ensure that all students have access a free education which emphasizes values such as ethics, honor, transparency, Christianity, and solidarity. Matriculation will be open from January 31 until March 31—yes, three whole months—for kids to come back to school after working or traveling with their working parents to whatever coffee farm was looking for pickers. Strikes me as especially difficult for the student who starts late (and probably departed early at the end of the last school year) and the teacher who will be receiving new students for the first three months but that is the reality of the situation. Of course many of the people present from the wide variety of educational organisms working in Jinotega inquired as to how students would be retained and promoted once we’d achieved enrolling them. The plan offered included the following: improved infrastructure and cleanliness in area schools; first day of school will be “un día festivo” or a holiday/celebration; improved didactic materials although no comment as to whether teachers would be trained to use them; more “counseling” to improve relations between students and their teachers; better and timelier snacks for all students because many only attend for the food which they do not get at home; educational passport documents to allow for easier school transfers if a student should have to transfer; strengthening the network of student monitors/leaders who often have the best insight as to why their classmates don’t attend school; and last but I pray not least, more training for teachers . . . so they’ll know how to identify students with learning disabilities or problems at home. The snack part was discussed at length. I wish more time would have been given to teacher preparation and in-service trainings which I see as key to students’ permanencia y promoción in primary school. I believe a caring, creative, and motivating teacher can make all the difference in the world. The new school year begins on February 15th—just a few weeks away though before that date arrives I’ve got a small project assistance grant proposal to complete, three workshops (for English teachers) to plan, and a leadership camp to attend and help manage logistics. In my leisure time, I am designing a 200-page teaching manual, rockin’ out to Marc Anthony, and hanging out at Victor’s English center. Hope the New Year is treating you well. No complaints here except that it’s starting to get hot and I can’t run between the hours of 10AM and 4PM. I leave you with my quote for the week: “The purpose of the work on making the future is not to decide what should be done tomorrow,

but what should be done today to have a tomorrow. “ -Peter F. Drucker

Happy New Year friends and family! Hope it was memorable and spent with loved ones. While I did surprise my parents by showing up at the house and staying for 10 days over the Christmas holiday, I was back in Jinotega for New Years and celebrated with Victor and his family. Let’s do the highpoints of both holidays starting with Hillsdale:

My Mom’s face when she saw meGetting snowed inWorking with my sister on a multi-faceted Excel spreadsheet for a project I’m directing and learning that I’m NOT financially-challenged, as I’ve always thoughtJChristmas Eve at Grandma’s with my mom’s side of the familySitting in my parents’ jacuzzi under the full moon and surrounded by snowBeer, wine, cheese, and chocolate croissants in no particular orderDoing self-assessing, career development activities from What Color is Your Parachute? with my sisterDiscovering my unknown interest in leadership styles and emotional intelligence and loading up on resources (articles and books). Ask me about it!A day in Iowa City with two close friends New Year’s in Jinotega: Becoming a Godmother to Victor’s 4-month-old son, JoshuaTeaching the kids to play Bop It! Watching “Sleepless in Seattle” (in Spanish) with Mayra, Victor’s wifeGoing to bed at 11pm :)Eating some of my favorite Nica foods (gallo pinto and tajadas)Sharing Grandma’s cookies that I brought back with me from the states A little more about the “Godmother thing” which came as something of a surprise though in hindsight it’s starting to make more sense. Victor and I became close friends instead of just colleagues. His family has taken me in from the moment of my arrival here in Jinotega. I am invited to all of their celebrations and outings but I think there was one thing in particular that swung the Godmother vote in my favor. When I went to the farm for the pig roast Mayra and I got to talking on the porch while we watched the kids play baseball. I told her that I had offered to help Victor get his son, Brandon, to baseball practice. Victor does so much for so many other kids at his English center and through his counseling work at the high school. He does so much he can’t make the time commitment so that Brandon can be on a baseball team. The only thing I could think to do was help Victor by taking Brandon at least until Victor realizes that he doesn’t have to be everything for everybody. Apparently that struck a chord with Mayra. She’d been telling Victor the same thing—she’s worried that Brandon won’t have any good childhood memories of his father. She said something like, “La luz de la calle es la oscuridad de su casa.” You can understand that in a couple of ways—either that the house is left dark when Victor gives his time and energy to the outside world or that Victor is so bright and energetic outside of the house that when he is home he is “out” and has to recharge. Mayra also asked about my parents. I told her my dad worked at a factory called John Deere. It wasn’t a glamorous job but he could almost always come to my after-school activities and weekend games. I told her my mom was a teacher and she too attended the vast majority of my extra-curricular activities not to mention the countless practices someone had to take me to before I could drive. Boy, did she love hearing that! Victor has asked me several times why I came to Nicaragua and why I stayed longer. He knows I could be pursuing opportunities and making more money elsewhere. He asked me when I’ll get back to my life, as if it’s on hold in some way. The thing is Peace Corps is only a great sacrifice if you think you’ve put your life on hold. Otherwise it is a great adventure where you make a lot of your own rules, learn to adapt, study another language, develop a tremendous range of life skills, and broaden your worldview. Ah, this is a good time for a favorite quote I came across in J. Patrick Murphy’s “Theories of Nonprofit and Organizational Leadership” (that’s my Uncle Pat, by the way):
“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” –Gandhi

There’s a lot of truth in that notion but back to my point. In hindsight, it all adds up—my work, my friendship with Victor, that conversation with Mayra, my surprise trip home for Christmas—I know why they asked me to be the Godmother. It’s because I’ve been taught to value family and to help others and it shows. Furthermore, Victor and Mayra share those values. I never anticipated being a godparent to a little boy living in a developing country. This third year sure is full of surprises.

Well, I painted my toenails and put on my other dress—I have two—and it’s a darned good thing I got all done up because for the second time in three years I was seated at the head table handing out diplomas to the graduating class of students in San José de los Remates, Boaco.

When I left Jinotega at 6AM on Thursday morning with my landlady who was heading south to Managua to buy merchandise for her store, I felt anxious. It was my first visit back since August and though San José will always feel like home, going back felt very much like going backwards. It was that feeling and the “fishbowl effect,” i.e., the minor celebrity status that I’d have for the duration of my visit that made me nervous. I’ve never liked being the center of attention and I like it even less now. That said, so much has changed already in my third year and I imagined it would feel good to share that with the people who met me when I couldn’t speak Spanish and when I wasn’t sure if I could last two years in Nicaragua. I was right. It was a blast! Highlights included seeing and talking to tons of former students; attending the graduation ceremony; lunch with the mayor and the high school teachers; the dance party in the evening after the ceremony; staying with old friends; eating tajadas and fried cheese at La Fogata with Kelvin, Celia, Jorge and Jessica (the new volunteer in San José); making güirilas (new corn tortillas) with Albertina over the wood fire; and catching up with la Profesora Daysi (my tutor). Riding through the mountains on the old school bus, the good and bad of the last two years flashed before my eyes. It started to sink in—finally—that I did it. I did Peace Corps. Obviously, I’m still a volunteer but I have a television, cable, an indoor toilet, hot water, a sink in my kitchen, and electricity 98% of the time. I ride on an “express bus” (two to three stops total) to Managua and I don’t sweat every day. For a volunteer that is called living large! I think my favorite moment was when Nelson, a member of the graduating class, upon seeing me in the street said, “Se ve mas gorda que antes.” Literally, “You look fatter than before.” I replied without hesitation, “Why thank you!” Because “mas gorda” conveys not only the notion that I'm fatter, which is a compliment, but also that I look more beautiful.

Nothing like a cool breeze, a pot o’ chili, and some Anne Murray hits to call forth the Thanksgiving spirit. Tomorrow I’m hosting 15 other volunteers at my house in Jinotega. It won’t be quite the same as being at Uncle Pat’s in Lincoln Park but we have cable TV and a few bottles of wine so we’ll make do. I hope to go to Victor’s family’s farm this weekend. He and I could both stand to kick back a bit and roast a pig or something. I don’t so much like to eat the piggy but I can appreciate a celebratory roasting at the end of another school year. Wanted to share my best moment from last week that took me back to my childhood (whole life really) on the farm: It was Sunday afternoon and I’d been in a bit of a funk. I drug myself out the door for a jog that would hopefully reset my system. I had just crossed the little river and bounced up the bank when I came across a calf running down the road. Let me tell you, cows don’t just run around for kicks. They aren’t athletic and they don’t care about fitting into a bikini. When you see a cow running it’s because someone or something is chasing it. This I learned during my enchanted childhood on the farm where every so often dad brought home a new pet (calf, sheep, goat, goose, horse, cat, or dog) and my brother and I had to take care of it. Looking back, it was a privilege to have so many animals friends and grow up this way, but when you’re 10-years-old and it’s the dead of winter, making a bottle of warm (powdered) milk for an orphan calf and going down the hill to feed him before school is not very pleasant. But I digress . . . Sure enough, as I approached the calf I could see a man in a red shirt running up behind him though still a ways away. I stopped about 15 feet from the calf out of instinct. Where I’m from you help people catch their loose animals—it’s just what you do. So I stopped in front of the calf and gave the Red Running Man a “what’s next?” gesture. He gave me the “send him back my way” signal. Ah, right. I knew what he wanted but I also knew from experience that the calf was gonna bolt to the side and try to get past me. I had him stopped just standing there with my arms out to my sides so I opted to wait and let the running man close in from behind with a lasso. The calf zigzagged back and forth and so I was forced to zig and zag, too, to keep him from advancing. Soon, Red Running Man was within lasso range though his first two attempts failed. Finally, he lassoed the calf by the hoof and fell over backwards. While he struggled to get up, I closed in on a rather alarmed calf. Red Running Man recovered fast and reeled in the calf by his left hoof like a big ol’ fish until he got his arms around him and I had hold of the rope noose. He thanked me profusely and I told him it was nothing at all and that I had a calf like that when I was a little girl. We parted ways—both smiling and me feeling like someone had indeed hit my "reset button" and the world was right again. For me the moral of this story is the unique, revitalizing experience that is possible in all of our human (and animal) interactions. This Thanksgiving I’m thankful for all of you and for my family. I’m also thankful for the Nicaragua people who have accepted me, worked side-by side with me, treated me like a neighbor they’ve known for years, and welcomed me like family such that my life is richer than ever imagined. Here’s to you and yours this Thanksgiving Day.

On Sunday at Victor’s English center I was supposed to guide a discussion during the watching of the movie “Twilight.” We planned to watch in English and use English subtitles. My plan was to stop the movie every so often and ask questions about the plot or ask for predictions about what might happen next. Sadly, the power was out and a handful of Nicaraguan youth will have to wait another seven days before meeting Edward and Bella and the love story that is "Crepuscula" (Twilight). When I arrived at the center on Sunday the students were studying a reading about getting along with your neighbors. They were learning about friendly versus extreme ways to respond, facing problems instead of avoiding problems, getting to know your neighbors, and vocabulary words such as “deliberately” and “annoy me.” After some pronunciation practice and controlled Q & A, Victor and I introduced a role-play activity: In groups of three, you have five minutes to create a role play showing how you would handle one of the following scenarios: 1) Your neighbor’s dog barks all night long.

2) Your neighbor has loud parties every night.

3) Your neighbor steals clothes from your patio. Eglis, Fatima, and Gloria selected scenario one. Fatima played the role of the dog owner, Gloria played the friendly neighbor, and Eglis was the extreme neighbor. And ACTION: (There is a knock on Fatima’s door. She opens to find her neighbor, Gloria.)

Gloria: Good Morning Fatima. How are you?

Fatima: I am fine, and you?

Gloria: I am so tired. Your dog not let me sleep.

Fatima: Oh no.

Gloria: Every night he is barking so much. He never let me sleep.

Fatima: Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I work at night.

Gloria: Yes, but I am so tired.

Fatima: Okay, I will do something.

Gloria: Thank you for hearing me. Thank you for receiving me.

Fatima: Yes, no problem. I am sorry. Bye.

(Fatima walks Gloria to the door. Eglis enters in a huff.)

Eglis: I HATE YOUR DOG! I can’t sleep. I HATE YOUR DOG! He is barking always.

Fatima: Take it easy. Sit down.

Eglis (still shouting): What are you going to do?

(Fatima speechless)

Eglis: I HATE YOUR DOG. I KILL YOUR DOG.

(Eglis storms out.) And CUT! This conversation took place in English and ever since, whenever anything goes even remotely wrong in any aspect of my day, I must suppress the urge to shout, “I HATE YOUR DOG. I KILL YOUR DOG!"

Temperatures plummeted this week in Jinotega and it’s possible that we’ll hit 10 degrees Celsius in the next week. My phone “converter” tool tells me that’s 50 degrees Fahrenheit. The fact that I sleep in sweatpants and use a horse blanket for a comforter all the while living 14 degrees from the Equator tells me something very unnatural is happening. Jinotegans are bundling up in the two weeks before “summer vacation” and also doing everything they can to prevent the spread of “leptospirosis”—our latest health scare.Leptospirosis is a bacterial disease that affects humans and animals. In humans it causes a wide range of symptoms, and some infected persons may have no symptoms at all. Symptoms include high fever, severe headache, chills, muscle aches, and vomiting, and may include jaundice (yellow skin and eyes), red eyes, abdominal pain, diarrhea, or a rash. If the disease is not treated, the patient could develop kidney damage, meningitis, liver failure, and respiratory distress. The Center for Disease Control, from whom I robbed this information says, “In rare cases death occurs,” although 17 deaths have been recorded in Nicaragua in that last month.

Outbreaks of leptospirosis are usually caused by exposure to water contaminated with the urine of infected animals (rats and mice have been blamed in Nicaragua). Humans become infected through contact with water, food, or soil containing urine from these infected animals. This may happen by swallowing contaminated food or water or through skin contact, especially with mucosal surfaces, such as the eyes or nose, or with broken skin. Leptospirosis occurs worldwide but is most common in temperate or tropical climates. It is treated with antibiotics, such as doxycycline or penicillin, which should be given early in the course of the disease. The risk of acquiring leptospirosis can be greatly reduced by not swimming or wading in water that might be contaminated with animal urine. Protective clothing or footwear should be worn at all times. Now, I get my medical advice and dosage info directly from Peace Corps and this Friday I’ll be taking my fourth and final dosage of the doxycycline prophylaxsis. My Nicaraguan friends and neighbors, however, get their medication from a very different source: 9th and 10th graders. Yesterday I was at Ruben Dario with Victor and we were just returning to our 9th grade class after recess. A kindly representative from the Ministry of Health asked for fifteen minutes of our class time to “orient” the students on wave two of the medication distribution. Victor suggested I do a lap around the neighborhood rather than be bored by “the lepto talk” but I’ll be damned if I was going to miss that action. Here’s what our 9th and 10th graders (13- to 15-year-olds) are being asked to do: 1) go door-to door and record names and ages of all people in the household 2) ask if any women are pregnant or if any people are allergic to the suggested medication3) distribute appropriate antibiotic (amoxicillin, erythromycin, or doxycycline) to pregnant women and allergic people4) distribute appropriate medication and dosage to youth ages 2-4, youth ages 5-9, and people aged 10 and up—each receives something different5) record meds and dosages given6) take names of any persons who refuse meds and report them to health worker7) tally results of all dosages given at the end of the daySome important details: A teacher and health work go with the groups but cannot be with every group of kids in every house they visit. They have to be able to perform these tasks themselves. The medication comes in pill vials or bottles—not in individual servings or dosages—which is to say that neighborhoods of people are receiving pills or liquid from the same bottle and certain hygienic precautions must be introduced. Still, going into the second distribution there was a lot of confusion and some frightening mistakes were revealed. For example, babies under six months should not receive ANY medication. Students should not be pouring out pills into their bare hands and then returning the extras to the bottle after counting out the household quantity needed. People should take pills with purified water. Kids given the liquid antibiotics should not be drinking it directly out of the bottle. Allergic people should not receive simply a lesser dose of what they’re allergic to. Kids are to take 5 or 10cc’s of the liquid and adults are to take two doxicycline pills—not the reverse. Yikes! Yet this is how medication, prevention instructions, and rat poison are distributed to the masses. I heard a teacher say recently that “the youth are the motor.” And while I appreciate that they are being mobilized to help their fellow citizens and they are learning first hand that when people working together they can make a difference, I lament the days of missed classes and the misunderstandings during the first wave of medication. I heard a young woman, rather distressed, asking if a medication she gave in error could have hurt another person. The answer, “No, it didn’t hurt them but it also didn’t protect them from Leptospirosis, which is our goal.” I personally believe in the old-fashioned way of fighting illness: eat your fruits and vegetables and get enough rest. Today I bought a bag of 15 juicy oranges for 50 cents. At the same stand I got six glorious carrots for $1. Clearly, life in a tropical, developing country has its high and low points.

(While I call this a health “scare” and it is a serious matter, let's be clear: what’s happening in Haiti—the cholera epidemic, earthquake aftermath, recent hurricane, and the incredibly poor living conditions that affect so many human beings—is far, far worse. I am reminded of something my counterpart said recently, “We don’t know what poverty is. . . .” He may be right.)

On Sunday at Victor’s English center I was supposed to guide a discussion during the watching of the movie “Twilight.” We planned to watch in English and use English subtitles. My plan was to stop the movie every so often and ask questions about the plot or ask for predictions about what might happen next. Sadly, the power was out and a handful of Nicaraguan youth will have to wait another seven days before meeting Edward and Bella and the love story that is "Crepuscula" (Twilight). When I arrived at the center on Sunday the students were studying a reading about getting along with your neighbors. They were learning about friendly versus extreme ways to respond, facing problems instead of avoiding problems, getting to know your neighbors, and vocabulary words such as “deliberately” and “annoy me.” After some pronunciation practice and controlled Q & A, Victor and I introduced a role-play activity: In groups of three, you have five minutes to create a role play showing how you would handle one of the following scenarios: 1) Your neighbor’s dog barks all night long.

2) Your neighbor has loud parties every night.

3) Your neighbor steals clothes from your patio. Eglis, Fatima, and Gloria selected scenario one. Fatima played the role of the dog owner, Gloria played the friendly neighbor, and Eglis was the extreme neighbor. And ACTION: (There is a knock on Fatima’s door. She opens to find her neighbor, Gloria.) Gloria: Good Morning Fatima. How are you?

Fatima: I am fine, and you?

Gloria: I am so tired. Your dog not let me sleep.

Fatima: Oh no.

Gloria: Every night he is barking so much. He never let me sleep.

Fatima: Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I work at night.

Gloria: Yes, but I am so tired.

Fatima: Okay, I will do something.

Gloria: Thank you for hearing me. Thank you for receiving me.

Fatima: Yes, no problem. I am sorry. Bye.

(Fatima walks Gloria to the door. Eglis enters in a huff.)

Eglis: I HATE YOUR DOG! I can’t sleep. I HATE YOUR DOG! He is barking always.

Fatima: Take it easy. Sit down.

Eglis (still shouting): What are you going to do?

(Fatima speechless)

Eglis: I HATE YOUR DOG. I KILL YOUR DOG.

(Eglis storms out.)

And CUT! This conversation took place in English and ever since, whenever anything goes even remotely wrong in any aspect of my day, I must suppress the urge to shout, “I HATE YOUR DOG. I KILL YOUR DOG!"

The thing is, there’s just so much happening all the time and it’s hard to get it all down. A few recent highlights:

(Victor, my counterpart who moonlights as the school guidance counselor, giving the 11th graders a “choosing the right career for you” chat. You may find it noteworthy that Nicaragua is, in fact, the second poorest country in the western hemisphere after Haiti.)

“You think you know what poor is? We’re not poor. We are not poor here. Walt Disney was a man who lived among trash and he made something of his life. Anything you dream, you can achieve."

____________________________________________________________________________

(Completely out of the blue, as I’m walking down the street, text messaging and paying no attention, a normally dressed though slightly “off” looking, mid-40s lady stops me. This is a wonderful example of how you "get to the point" in Nicaraguan culture. This dialogue has been translated.)

Lady: Hey, you’re not from here. Where are you from?

Me: The United States

Lady: Oh how nice. What is the name of your state?

Me: Illinois

Lady: Nois?

Me: ILLinois

Lady: That’s nice. I see you have a bag. Do you work here?

Me: Yes, I do, at Ruben Dario School.

Lady: What do you do?

Me: I work with English teachers

Lady: So you teach English?

Me: No, I work people who teach English.

Lady: So you give English classes?

Me: No, I help professors.

Lady: So you work with the professors?

Me: That is correct.

Lady: Do you live here in Barrio Carlos Rizo?

Me: No, I live in the city.

Lady: How often do you come here?

Me: A few times a week.

Lady: That’s so nice. So, are you catholic or evangelical?

Me: Catholic

Lady: How beautiful. We’re sisters in God’s eyes.

Me: You said it.

Lady: I got to church just over there. Say, do you think you could loan me $3 cordobas? I need to buy three little pieces of bread and the lady I work for wasn’t there today to pay me.

Me: Would you believe that people ask me for money quite often?

Lady: (aghast) Oh I’m not asking for money. I’m asking to borrow money.

Me: Borrow. Huh. How is that gonna work?

Lady: Oh I’ll come to the school to pay you back.

Me: Right. Listen, if I have $3 cordobas (18 cents roughly) it’s yours.

Lady: God bless you sister.

Me: Have a great day! Bye now.

Having just spent a week with a 11 trainees from my program (Teaching English as a Foreign Language/Teacher Training—in Nicaraguan High Schools), I’ve been made to reflect on my two and a half years here in country—where I started, where I am now, what I’ve learned, what I wish I knew then, and so on. As a result of a lot of volunteers giving feedback upon leaving Nicaragua, TEFL program and PC training staff started brainstorming for an all new training activity that would give trainees the most realistic teaching experience including time to observe their peers and real Nica teachers and provide feedback. It was marvelous especially considering it was the first time it had been attempted.

The basic structure was this: send 11 trainees to Jinotega for three days of intensive teaching and observing with six local English teachers. I was charged with selecting teachers, explaining the purpose of the “Practicum” and ensuring their presence and support for the week. You’ll have to take my word for it, but that was no small thing. It started with me telling them my story—even after training it took me several months to feel comfortable and effective as a teacher. I told them we had identified this delay in the effectiveness of trainees upon arrival at site and needed way to help them get authentic teaching experience—and essentially “fail faster.” I like how my boss said it best—just jump into the ice cold swimming pool head first instead of going in toe-by-toe and prolonging the discomfort. We asked the Nica teachers to give up 6 hours of their classes over a three-day period and simply observe. And what a way to learn by observing someone else! They sat, watched, reflected, processed, and gave feedback to the trainees and in turn received feedback and suggestions after their classes—which is rare. Observation or supervision by a director or a colleague is not typical here or entirely pleasant for teachers. I’m working to get to a point where I can go and observe local teachers on a regular basis to show them how invaluable a second opinion is and how useful it can be to receive feedback and problem –solve trouble spots with an interested colleague. Team-building, network-building, that’s what is going to make this project sustainable.

There were two trainees with each teacher and they taught either morning or afternoon classes. When they weren’t teaching we had group “debrief” sessions to process the experience and they were constantly providing feedback to one another and sharing ideas. In the evenings, they made plans and materials for the following day. PC Staff members and I visited schools all day long and observed classes. It was a happily exhausting week for all.

Anyway, as I said, it was such wonderful experience and on the last night we celebrated at Mi Montañita. Going around the table each person expressed something they would take from this experience. The Nicaraguan teachers carry forward the energy of the trainees, the activity ideas, the friendship and trust they’d established sharing the classroom, and lots of new expressions in English. The trainees take with them the feeling of welcome they received from the teachers, problem-solving skills, some hilarious teaching moments, and a tremendous sense of confidence that came from being throw into the deep end and finding out they could swim.

I said it once a long time ago—in this job (or in this life), you can’t be prepared for everything, you can’t have all the background information before you start—you just have to start and make your way or you’ll be waiting forever for the day you finally feel “ready.” And that has been one of my greatest lessons in Peace Corps. “Live the questions now,” as Rilke says, “Perhaps then, someday in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

In other news, at the Monday, Wednesday, Friday night class I often attend (and help out in) a boy asked me in English, “How do you feel when you speak Spanish?” I told him I often felt like I wasn’t very smart and sometimes I couldn’t express all of my ideas. And he said, “But I think you speak very good. There are people from your city, the United States, and they can’t speak. You can make the ‘R’!” Yes, yes I can, Rrrrafael, my friend. And thank you for reminding me that I’m not half bad.

Last week was no doubt the busiest of my Peace Corps service. I was in five departments (states) in as many days. On Sunday, I was in Jinotega at my counterpart’s private English school. We’re doing a letter/video exchange with some students in the states and the kids were finishing up their letters of introduction and recording brief video greetings. We’re not entirely sure where the project will go but we’ve got lots of fun plans. On Monday morning, I left at 6AM to travel to Managua (2.5 hours, express bus). We departed Managua at 11ish en route to Masaya for the “Site Fair” which introduces new trainees in my sector (TEFL) to the select places around Nicaragua where they may live and work. My presentation was a PowerPoint which drew attention to the pros and cons of small, medium, and large sites. I made it home to Jinotega that same evening around 7pm—after five hours on the bus and a little over an hour in cabs getting to a from the bus station. On Tuesday, I ran all over Jinotega looking for teachers and holding short meetings in preparation for the activity I’m participating in this week—a teaching practicum for the TEFL trainees. On Wednesday, I attended a Peace Corps meeting in my town before catching a ride with staff back to Managua. On Thursday, I spent the day in Carazo doing “Coping with Stress” talks with trainees from the environment sector. On Friday, I left at the crack of dawn for Matagalpa (2 hours north) in order to co-present at a regional English conference with a teacher from Jinotega. It was the first time this particular teacher had ever presented at a conference and boy was he nervous but we did well and that was the point—to have a positive experience and build confidence. I arrived back in Managua that same evening around 8pm, ate at Burger King—if you know me, you know how desperate I must have been—and then on Saturday I was back in Masaya co-presenting on the topic of “Effective Communication” with 43 trainees. Saturday evening I got home at 7pm, ate oatmeal, and went to bed. Sunday I had more video projects starting at 8AM and Monday morning the practicum got underway with teacher/trainee meetings held in my living room. This activity is still underway. I'll send some details later because it's really awesome.

Anyway, during the Effective Communication presentation I found myself acknowledging how busy I felt and how exhausted I was but instead of focusing on my need for rest, I was focusing on my need/desire to be working, contributing, and basically being really involved in Peace Corps and in the lives of the teachers in my city. That need has absolutely been met over the last couple weeks. I’m so glad I’m still here. I’m learning so much and sleeping so soundly. Hope your days are equally fulfilling y Feliz Cumpleanos a todos los miembros de mi familia que han cumplido un ano mas este mes de octubre. Felicidades! Espero que lo pasaron alegres.

Last night I played a two-hour game of “Clue” with four English

students at Prime English Center. I lost. We never actually finished.

At the end of the class, we all wrote down our “accusations” and Jeni

was the only person with two out of three correct: Miss Scarlet on

the Patio. The murder weapon was the pistol.

The class is made up of Jeni (age 11), Manuel (age 17), Javier (age

17) and Little Omar (age 11). Jeni and Little Omar are Victor’s niece

and nephew and they’ve been studying English for a few years now.

Still it amazes me to hear an 11-year-old speaking in English, “I

think the killer was Mr. Green in the Kitchen and he used the Ax.” I

guess I hadn’t realized how appropriate board games are as

“Communicative Language Activities,” which we TEFL volunteers are

really pushing to Nica teachers. Let’s look at the four

characteristics of such activities:

1. A giver of information

2. A receiver of information

3. Proof of comprehension

4. Meets established learning objective

Now it sounds like it’d be easy enough to meet the criteria but in

fact it’s very hard to design communicative activities for large

(30-50), multi-level classes. Studies show that “input we understand”

and “opportunities to participate in meaningful communication” help us

learn best but creating these authentic encounters is tough. Let’s

say, for example, that we do a Dictation where the teacher reads aloud

a warning from the National Weather Service. The students listen and

try to write exactly what the teacher says. We have a giver of

information and we have receivers of information. Check, check. Do we

have proof of comprehension? Well, they wrote it down, supposedly, but

it doesn’t mean they understood a thing. So no, there is no proof of

comprehension. What if we ask them some questions about the warning?

Where is the weather system? Is it a storm or a hurricane? When will

it hit? Now we’re getting closer to the mark but let’s say only a

handful of students (15-25%) answer those questions. I can’t really

say that as a class we met our learning objective—whatever it might

have been.

So, teaching a foreign language to high school students, some of whom

live in plastic houses, deal with family violence, are stealing to put

food on the table, or are simply dealing with teenage hormones is

quite a task. The thing is, to look at the kids, you wouldn’t know and

they’re certainly not about to complain.

But back to “Clue”—it was pretty fun. Then we got stuck at school for

an extra hour waiting out a downpour. I asked Big Omar what the people

in plastic houses do and it’s not that I haven’t wondered this before

but Jinotega gets a TON of rain. I can’t imagine how people ever get

warm or dry in those “structures.” He said that concerned him too

because he lived for two years in a plastic house—which is exactly

what it sounds like, a single room with walls and a roof made of black

plastic and any other found material (old tarp, canvas, etc.) It might

be that an entire family is living in that space. He said at night

it’s hard. Sometimes you wake and the water is pouring down on you.

And I highly doubt there are beds in that house but maybe they’ve got

cardboard or have managed to string up a hammock somehow to be up off

the ground. There’s a lot to be said for having a roof over your head

and warm bed. Only in these past couple years have I realized how

fortunate I am to have never worried about those things before. Nor

have I worried for potable water or three meals a day or shoes that

fit or a parent to ask me about my school day. Lord only knows what

would become of the developing world if these basic human needs were

met.

Well, life is good thus far and I’m going to make an effort to tell

you about it more often. It’s Wednesday and I’ve been to 10 hours of

English class so far this week at the high school with my counterpart

(and best friend) Victor Rizo. Victor is a little bit of a

fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type in that he finds it limiting and

unnecessary to spend a lot of time on thorough planning but he’s a

good teacher. Because he speaks English in class and does it so

self-assuredly, our students are naturally instilled with confidence.

They trust that the activities he asks them to do are the very same

that helped him learn English and so they do them willingly. There are

exceptions, of course, but I can tell you already that there are a lot

of good things happening at Escuela Ruben Dario. My role with Victor

will probably be to focus him a bit more on creating learning

objectives and comprehensive unit plans instead of just “one-off”

classes that don’t scaffold the students’ knowledge or trigger a

different language skill or ability (speaking, learning, reading, or

writing).

At the very least, we have a lot of fun and not only do we work

together at the high school but also at his evening and weekend

English school called Prime English Center (PEC). PEC has roughly 60

students ranging from ages seven to 45-years-old. Victor and his best

friend, Omar, another high school teacher I work with on occasion,

give class almost every night of the week plus all day Sunday. One

really cool thing Victor started was giving the advanced English

students (high school seniors or recent grads) their own level one

class to teach. There is no better way to learn than to teach someone

else, right? Victor and I are hoping to do some teaching workshops in

the near future for these young, teachers-in-training.

I’ve attached a few photos of my house. So far so good. My landlady

kind of irks me but I am hopeful that I’ll be here in this 3-bedroom

house for the whole year. The biggest, best changes are that I have a

kitchen and a kitchen sink, an indoor toilet and shower, lots of

closed closet space, and walls and a ceiling that meet! The house is a

10-minute walk from the supermarket, the medical clinic, the central

park, and two coffee shops (the only two in town:); five minutes from

the open market where I get tupperware, fruits and vegetables, pirated

movies and music; and about 25 minutes from the high school which is

on the outskirts of town and is far from most everything.

While the department of Jinotega produces roughly 80% of Nicaragua’s

coffee, I’m trying to drink less. A recently acquired chai tea recipe

brings me happiness on the chilly evenings at home. Seriously, I often

wear a coat at night when it drops into the low 60s. We’re dead in the

middle of a 6-9 month rainy season that brings us showers or downpours

a few times each afternoon/evening. The other day I wore my new rubber

boots for the first time and felt like a schoolgirl!

Okay, let’s cut to the chase. Here’s what’s happening:

I’m wrapping things up here in San Jose. Today should be my last day of co-planning with Luis and my last week of classes at the institute here. The director says there will be some sort of goodbye party with all the students but I pray it falls through. I hate parties for me. This Friday will be my last monthly planning meeting—in San Jose that is. Of course, I’ll be attending and participating in my new school(s) in Jinotega.

As for when my new job officially starts . . . my boss says I’ll start making the big bucks (ha, Peace Corps humor) on July 1. I’ve basically already started several of the projects that I’ll be working on during my third year. More than anything as of late, I’ve been hanging out and enjoying time with friends in San Jose.

I anticipate some busy and possible stressful days ahead as I plan to move to Jinotega without having a place to live. I had a great lead on a studio apartment-sized place but the local business mindset got in the way. Let me explain. I showed up and showed interest in the place. After hearing all the details (rent cost, utility payments) and discussing a basic contract, I called to say I’d take it. I promised to call again with my exact moving in date. Two weeks later, at my boss’s request, I went back to Jinotega to sign the contract so there would be no hiccups when I moved in. The owner wasn’t there, just her son. I went back five hours later. She still wasn’t there. I talked to the 30-something son about the contract. He told me his mother was considering letting some Jehovah’s Witnesses live in the apartment for the first month of my proposed contract? First problem. You should not give your word to rent a house for 13 months and agree on a moving date only to enter into negotiations with other people. When I was finally able to talk to the owner in person, she gave me her word once again. She told me first so the place was mine.

Me : “Great. Terrific, now let’s talk about the contract. We’re all in agreement on $80 right? (and we discussed other basic services) Okay, we agree then. I will send a clean version of the contract to your son’s email account or I’ll have a local volunteer deliver it. See you on July 5.”

Three hours later I get a phone call.

Her: “Fijate que . . . (wouldn’t you know) but now my son won’t let me rent you this 10ft by 25 ft studio apartment for less than $120 a month. I’m so sorry. I’m really embarrassed."

Second problem.

Me: I’m sorry, ma’am but that tiny room with a bathroom is not worth $120. I don’t believe it’s worth $80 but I’m willing to pay $80 because it’s

safe and well-located. Do you recall that we agreed on $80 just three hours ago?"

Her: “Yes, well, I’m going to have my son call you directly.”

Me: “Oh wonderful. Your son who told me yesterday that he has nothing to do with the rental of the house? Yes, please have him call me straight away.”

So the son calls and now they want just $100. At this point, I wouldn’t pay $10. What begins in chaos traditionally continues in chaos, no? I feel I can no longer trust them. So, unfortunately for this nice family—and I’m sure they’re nice—instead of having a responsible renter for 13 months, they tried to boost the price by a third and lost me entirely.

It appears as though I’ll rent a furnished room from a sweet little lady near the center of town while continuing the rental house hunt. Ideally she’ll let me share her kitchen as well. The thought of eating all meals “out” for a few weeks makes me cringe. There just aren’t that many restaurants and I’d be significantly increasing my chances of getting a bacterial infection. Pass, thanks.

The thing about finding housing here is that there are no classifieds. Most cities don’t have realtors. You just have to talk to everyone you know. For example: a taxi driver who gave me a ride recently in Managua. He’s from San Jose but his wife is from Jinotega. He gave me some numbers to call and people to talk during our 35-minute pothole dodging adventure across steamy Managua. Second contact—a woman from the Canadian Red Cross who works occasionally in the north. Met her through an American friend who lives in Managua. Third contact—the same Jehovah’s Witnesses friends who recommended the studio apartment. They used to live in Jinotega and remember well the houses other foreigners rented. Fourth contact, Don Mario—my friend in San Jose who used to be the Vice-Minister of Finance. His buddy, a former Vice-President of Nicaragua lives in Jinotega and has a big farm. Perhaps he’ll know of something. Fifth contact—a teacher from my school in San Jose who have a niece and two nephews in Jinotega. I am not accustomed to putting a lot of faith in the friend of the wife of a taxi driver or even the nephew of a teacher who is mostly an acquaintance. Yet, these are my best options for finding a decent, safe place to live.

The lesson for me in all of this is to treasure and cultivate every relationship. There are no insignificant meetings or people. Hopefully, I’ll have the chance to return the favor in the future. At the very least, I can pay it forward:)

Returned this afternoon from a two-day adventure in Jinotega with my Nicaraguan boss. I have two bosses—well, four really but two are within the English program and of those two, one is Nica and one is American. Both are under the age of 35. On this visit, we met with English teachers at four high schools as well as the directors of those schools. We tried to meet with the superintendent (delegado) of the department of Jinotega but he double-booked and wasn’t able to see us. This is incredibly common. Some other male administrator “attended” to us and in two phone calls during the meeting he made reference to the “muchachitas” from Cuerpo de Paz who were sitting in his office. I was not impressed but had to consult my boss later to ask if his tone and word choice were as condescending and “ol boy” as I thought. Yes, “I’ve got two little ladies from Peace Corps here in my office.” Not cool, dude. But on to bigger and better things . . .

We went to Jinotega to do what is known as “Site Development.” We try to meet all the key players and make sure they know who we are and what we do—exactly. We give the directors and teachers some paperwork to complete. It requires some work on their part—such as finding a family for the new volunteer to stay with for his/her first six weeks (after the first three months of training) in the city where they’ll stay for two years. The information we receive from the teachers helps my bosses make the best possible matches of volunteers to counterpart teachers and it ensures that the teachers who work with volunteers are motivated and committed to do more work. Yes, working with a volunteer takes more time, not less. Most of these strategies are new even since I’ve been in country. The TEFL (English teaching) program that I’m a part of is only four years old versus some other programs such as Environment or Community Health that have been here in Nicaragua for like 30 years. Anyway, the managers of the TEFL program I can say for certain are great at getting feedback and really using it make improvements. Lots of folks are curious about the TEFL program but that doesn’t exactly mean they’re ready to commit and work side-by-side with a PCV for two years. Our quest is to find those teachers who are motivated, committed, and open to sharing and developing better teaching strategies.

Anyway, my boss had been in touch with this woman, Josefa. Josefa responded quickly and consistently to all emails and phone calls. This is rather rare. She even offered to be our guide in and around Jinotega which might have meant she wanted to get out of work but it also meant to she was more than willing to give us any amount of her time. We met three great teachers on Wednesday morning. After that meeting I started to get excited about the possibilities! We lunched at a buffet on Calle Central and had a moment to buy a few $1 movies as we sat and waited for our plates to arrive. I got “Invicto.” Later we tried to meet with the delegado of Jinotega. He’d be the person highest up in the Ministry of Education in the department of Jinotega. They gave us a bit of the run around and told us first that he was nowhere to be find but later that we should come back in 30 minutes. Fine then. We hurried on over to Soppexcca to buy bags of Jinotega’s finest coffee. When we returned, we met briefly with the condescending guy and then we found Josefa! Woo. It took a couple of phone calls to locate her until finally we were all standing in the street talking on the phone looking for each other.

Josefa is a slight, soft-spoken, gum-chewing woman around 40, works somewhere within the Ministry of Education. Later when asked “So who is this Josefa woman?” neither my boss or I could really say. Here’s what we know: She is always available. She seems to know everyone. She works occasionally with a PC volunteer in the business sector. She arrives on time. She has bangs and straight hair just a bit above her shoulders that she pulls back on the sides. She wears knee-length black skirts and she chews gum constantly.

We took her with us to the community of La Concordia outside of Jinotega on Thursday morning. In La Concordia we met a teacher, a director, and a municipal delegado who tried to convince us that the hive of bees hanging in the entryway to his school were called, “Quita calzon.” This roughly translates to “take your underpants off.” He claims they will swarm you and get into any dark place. You basically have to strip to get them away from you. Better than a guard dog, no? This guy was a riot. We left Josefa in La Concordia and took the funny delegado to El Coyolito making a pitstop along the way at the home of his sister. She had a spare room where the new volunteer could potentially live for the first six weeks after arriving in the community. My bosses have to personally see all potential houses. In fact we did two other security checks for volunteers who had just completed the required six-week family stay and were ready to move into new places. All of the homes or rooms we rent must be inspected by a PC staffer. At the house check in La Concordia my boss asked the lady if she had pets. I found the conversation hilarious. It went like this:

Karen: “Do you have any pets?”

Doña Auxiliadora: “No. (pause) Well, a monkey. But he’s in his cage.”

Karen: (slowly, taking notes.) “Okay . . . “

Doña Auxiliadora: “And a little rabbit. It’s not a rabbit. It’s a hamster. It has a cage too.”

Karen: “Okay, hamster.”

I don’t know but that just struck me as funny. We did not see either creature. Later we visited the high school in El Coyolito. And we left the funny delegado there. We proceeded to San Rafael de Norte about 40 minutes away to do another housing check. It was at that moment that I realized that my purse was still in El Coyolito—where they have no phone signal. Bummer. My boss purchased our lunch and we headed back to Coyolito. While passing through La Concordia once again we spotted Josefa at the bus stop and she hopped in—happy as a dog with two tails. [Note: All weird Mississippi-sounding sayings I've learned from friend Anjie] We found the teachers leaving school and the crazy delegado wearing my purse in the street. A good laugh was had by all and then everyone jammed into the back of the range rover and we took them to La Concordia. I should mention that at this moment the entire country had been receiving rain for over 24 hours—continuously in some areas. My boss is a super trooper but more about that later.

After this bit of backtracking we burnt rubber with Josefa in the back seat to get to our final destination of the day—La Bastilla. La Bastilla is hands down one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen in Nicaragua. It sits about nine kilometers off the main road and has no bus or phone service. These details could pose some problems for a volunteer. Anyway, we bounced, climbed and twisted over the nine kilometers on a one lane rock path—it was hardly a road—before arriving at La Bastilla and finding that the wooden bridge had collapsed and we could go no further. A few sad-face photos later my boss was doing an 8-point turn trying to get our tank of a car pointed the right way.

It was 4:30PM when we got back to Jinotega. Josefa, as agreeable as ever, hopped out at the market and offered her services for any future “adventures.” My poor boss was already pretty tired and sore from driving the stiff manual transmission of the range rover. We stopped at a store and did some power shopping until she was mentally prepared and physically rested enough to carry on. I asked her to drop me along the Pan-American highway so I could grab a bus that would take me to my friend’s house. She quickly vetoed that idea when we found out the bridge was underwater. She was just not willing to leave me anywhere where my chances of catching a bus in the rain weren’t 110% sure plus it was almost after dark. That said, we headed toward Matagalpa, supposedly 45 minutes away, so I could stay with my buddy Anjie. My boss was still deciding if she would stay over too or drive 2+ hours back to Managua. She had to be there by 8:30AM this morning.

The drive to Matagalpa was insane. We took the most direct route that led us through some mountains and curves on a blacktop road without a single lane line which is to say we drove at night, in intense fog, on a black road with no lines whatsoever. I rolled down my window and stuck my head out and directed us—right right, okay now softly to the left, okay turn harder, harder still, yes still left. This went on for about 45 minutes. We couldn’t see a thing but we couldn’t stop or turn back. We’d have been there all night. Finally we arrived in Matagalpa and it became clear that both of us would stay and leave at 5AM which we did. My boss dropped me in San Benito this morning where I caught a reliable bus to Teustepe. I passed out for two hours on my friend’s hammock while waiting on the next bus to San Jose. Got back to San Jose and cleaned up all the bat crap and puddles in my house and passed out for another hour and a half.

The rain continues off and on. The situation on the Pacific Coast (Chinandega and Leon) is much more dire. They are such dry, hot places. When the rain comes, the ground there doesn’t know what to do. I’m not entirely clear but as I understand it, there is a hurricane in Honduras or Mexico and that’s where all this rain is coming from. In closing, it was a super fun couple of days. My boss never loses her cool. She laughs all the time, makes good conversation—in English or Spanish—and will go to whatever length to get the work done well. I learned a lot, which was the point of my going, and I’m excited to work with the teachers I met. Oh and I think I found a place to live! Size-wise it’s probably like my studio in Chicago but it’s decent. I do well in small spaces especially since it’s just me—no pets, not even a monkey.:) I really like the landlady and the house is super hidden so my stuff will be secure when I’m on the road. New address to come

Well Happy Mother’s Day to any moms who might be reading this. Today I plan to list the contents of my refrigerator. Here goes:

Bag of milk

Bowl of Pipian—it’s in the squash family

Bag of Reeses Eggs from Easter (they melt quickly outside the fridge)

Bag of Trail Mix (it has chocolate bits and also melts)

2 eggs

5 bottles of purified water

Gallo Pinto (about 4 servings left in the pot)

Cuajada (nica cheese that goes with everything)

Pineapple ($.50)

1 Guayabana (I call it the “Cloud Fruit”)

Fresh Basil

Half stick of Butter

Baking Soda

Both yesterday and today first thing in the morning, I needed something from the store. Yesterday it was milk—mine had gone bad. I blame the cat. This morning I needed oatmeal and a new jug of purified water. Honestly, I got up, pulled my hair back, put on a hat, and walked to the store. I did not wear my pajamas but I easily could have. Everyone is up and about in the morning getting corn ground at the mill, bringing fresh milk to the collection center, sweeping their patios. At this point, I’ve know the faces of the people around town and they know me. With each one there is some greeting or brief exchange, “Good Morning. How’d you wake up? Looks like rain, no? How old is your kid again? What time is the baseball game today? Your cat sure is cute. So, you’re back from Costa Rica. Hey, look at that dog. Yep, Sunday. Nice day.” We tend to state the obvious here. But compared to Chicago—a wonderful, lovely city where I could walk around for a whole day and never see a familiar face nor greet another pedestrian or neighbor—it’s nice. People smile so much more.

Today I ran faster than a moving truck . . . a dumptruck, that is, a dumptruck filled with rocks driving uphill through the mountains. Still, quite a feat if you ask me. I typically pass people on horseback and old ladies carrying bags on their heads but the truck is all new to me.

I returned to San Jose feeling dehydrated and beat up after seven hours of off and on travel from the Pacific Ocean beaches of Vista Mar in Masachapa, Managua to the mountains of San Jose de los Remates, Boaco, where I hang my hat. From Tuesday to Friday, I participated in a Project Design & Management (PDM) Workshop for volunteers and counterparts. I went in large part to observe the format and see if perhaps I could be a facilitator in the future. I was also taking a look at the materials used by the facilitators to see if I’d be able to create a couple of sets that could be used permanently by staff and borrowed by volunteers. Of course, I had to participate in the workshop to get the full benefit—and this was a three-day, all-Spanish workshop. We broke into groups during the workshop—two volunteer-counterpart pairs who talked over the projects they had in mind and then selected one to work on for the duration of the workshop. We went step-by-step beginning with “The Vision” and ending with plans for monitoring and evaluating the project. Projects can be scary like any monstrous beast, but when broken down into sizeable, workable chunks, they seem possible and even exciting! I hope to have some new sets of materials created by August when the next training takes place.

Moments before being hustled out of Vista Mar (more about that later) I was bitten by something. I thought it was an ant but now I see it was a bee. I’m allergic to bees and two days later I’m still having an allergic reaction. I was bitten on the underside of my left bicep—not unlike that time I was bitten by a llama at a drive-thru petting zoo in Missouri. Anyone in my immediate family can corroborate this story. At any rate, I was feeling super drained and had a headache when I got home on Friday evening. I figured it was due to the travel and heat. However, when I woke Saturday morning my eyes were also swollen and my arm presented a swollen, red, itchy welt. I hit the Benadryl knowing that I’d likely pass out while hand-washing clothes but I had to take some steps to control the reaction. Hours later I did have to lie down and take a nap. My eyes are less puffy today though the welt on my arm seems bigger.

As I was saying, we were hustled out of Vista Mar because the roads were already being blocked off in Managua for the Labor Day celebration here in Nicaragua. The president was planning to speak in the afternoon and many workers were going to be released at 3PM from work. It is not uncommon for disturbances, sometimes violent, to occur after presidential addresses. Peace Corps is really on top of this stuff so we were knew at 7AM that the schedule would have to be modified and participants at the workshop would be divided into groups by bus station. At 11:30 the first “microbus” departed the beach and arrived two hours later at Mercado Mayoreo where the vast majority of us made our way to buses headed north (Somoto, Jinotega, Matagalpa) and east (Boaco, Juigalpa.)

In hindsight, I really enjoyed the three-day PDM conference. It’s a great opportunity to learn something new, practice Spanish, make new Nica and American friends, trade music with other volunteers (or episodes of GLEE!), and get inspired.

Last night I went to La Gallera with my buddy Kelvin for a beer or two and tajadas--fried plantains and fried cheese. It’s become so natural for me to go to “the bar” and play with doggies and kitties and whatever other critter wanders through. Last night a mama cat laid down in the center of the back seating area and began nursing two kittens. It took me awhile to realize that though it’s nothing out of this world, it’s a bit atypical for a bar/restaurant.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it will be like to be home again even though I’m staying another year. I suppose I’m thinking about leaving my home here in San Jose and being home for a whole month (around August, most likely). It’s both exciting and scary. I had kind of a moment Monday morning with my 5th year class. We are studying human rights and equality. In class we listened to Phil Collins’s “Another Day in Paradise.” It was interesting to revisit that song and try to explain to Nicaraguans why it was written to begin with. Many people here think that there is no poverty or homelessness in the United States. I suppose they get that from the media or from hearing over and over about the richest, most powerful country in the world. Anyway, there we were listening to the song. The kids were sort of mumbling the words behind me as I stood looking out the window at 7th graders jump over an outstretched rope in gym class. They were leaping and laughing without a care in the world and so I started thinking about “paradise”—what it is and where it is. You might not think it’d be in the “third world” but it could be. There was a song on the Dumb and Dumber soundtrack called “Where I Find My Heaven.” In that moment I knew I’d found a bit of my heaven here in San Jose de los Remates, Boaco, Nicaragua.

The beloved and infamous TEFL Manual for Nicaraguan English teachers is being revised! After a year of using our one and only “teacher textbook” material we’ve seen areas for improvement and we’re taking advantage of these last few months before the few remaining original authors (from TEFL 47) leave the country to pass the torch to the new group of English volunteers (TEFL 51). Last Friday we had a tedious 6-hour meeting to discuss structural/format changes, additions to the appendices, making activities more communicative, and giving better instructions for all activities. Because I am so serious and orderly, I always assume the role of “scribe.” I prefer scribe to secretary though I’ll also accept “Keeper of the Flame.” At any rate, I take notes, clean them up, and send them out to participants and relevant staff. My role in all of this will be to revise and refresh the design of the manual with whatever new activities and exercises my colleagues create plus some new graphics ideally. It’s so funny how one job leads you to another. The tasks I was doing yesterday to copy all the text out of InDesign into Microsoft Word for my colleagues would have been impossible had I not worked at IPG. I don’t think I would have known where to begin but because of my production experience at IPG, I threaded text boxes, applied paragraph and character styles, and copied and pasted ALL DAY LONG. At first, it was thrilling and I remembered why I was drawn to design. Put on some trance music or anything really, because I literally go into a trance and cannot be pulled away from the computer. That said, six hours later, I remember why I joined Peace Corps. Had to step away from the mouse, the shortcuts, and the back aches!

And some stuff that cracks me up. I was sitting on the patio gossiping with Dona Sonia when she heard a friend call out from the street or the front of the house—hard to be sure. She lets out a high-pitched “WHOO!” to let her know she’s home. I’ve got to start doing that.

“Hola Erin?!”

(from within) “WHOOO!”

On her way to answer the door she complained that her youngest son’s girlfriend is just “a little girl.” She can’t wash the clothes well—the armpits are all dark. I mean, what else would you want in a wife?

I started reading Matthew Kelly’s The Dream Manager today after having recommended it to numerous people simply because I liked the idea of it. The idea being that when management takes an interest in the dreams of their employees they see far less turnover and overall business improves as the lives of the employees improve. It matters to us greatly—whether we care to admit it or not—that our bosses or managers recognize us as people and care that we reach our dreams even if that means using one job as a stepping stone to another. It’s no crime to have dreams and the desire to achieve them at any cost. So, I started reading the book thinking I might be inspired by the ideas but what inspired me was realizing how much of it I already know—how much of it I’ve already done. Sometimes it does take a manager or a boss to give us a leg up. Sometimes it’s a life, sports, or financial coach or a sports coach who helps us realize our dream. However, sometimes it comes from within. We are responsible for our choices. My sister says “We are our choices” which is just another way of saying, “If you’re not happy, it’s up to you to change something.”

I spent last weekend on the beach at my Peace Corps group’s COS (close of service). It was my first time visiting the Pacific Coast beach (or any beach) here in Nicaragua and I very much enjoyed it. I shared a sweet little bungalow with two other English volunteers. We opened our 2nd floor deck door to a spacious deck and water as far as we could see. The conference itself was a bit anticlimactic seeing as how I’m not leaving Nicaragua but in many ways I am finishing my “service” before starting some new projects in a new city in an ever cooler (climate) part of Nicaragua. We can only hope it’s as cool (state of awesomeness) as life in San Jose de los Remates. There were several feedback sessions and some fascinating career development information that I’ll try to remember for next year at this time! One detail I’d like to share with you right now though: 85% of jobs are not advertised. Need I repeat? 85% of jobs are not advertised! So let’s go ahead and emphasize the importance of networking, folks, and building and maintaining solid relationships among colleagues and other business professionals. I’m already pursuing an informational interview with the father of a PC volunteer who works in education for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Can’t wait to find out what his day-to-day is like.

Anyway, living here I realize how blessed we are to have been taught not only to dream but to realize those dreams. In the last two years I’ve spent about 7 weeks total in the United States. You can tell me anything you want about unemployment but I will only respond with Nicaragua’s own figures: over 50% unemployment and it’s been that way for awhile now. So while I find great satisfaction in the type of work I do here teaching methods and as much as possible connecting with the students, I know that many things have to change in this country for a young person to even feel allowed to dream—instead of memorizing and spewing out the dreams of some historical person they were forced to read about in class.

What else can I tell you? In the morning I drink coffee from the Italian press. In the afternoon I have a second cup from the French Press. The Nica press is a pan of hot water and coffee grounds brought to a near boil. The grounds are given a few moments to descend to the bottom of the pan and the coffee is scooped shallowly from the top. I only drink Nicaraguan coffee and I prefer that from Jinotega or Matagalpa. All of this in contrast to the American way: Starbucks or whatever your brand of choice. Well, that or some sophisticated coffeemaker—the kind I was unable to operate during my last visit home.

Recently the director of my school asked me if, in English, a female dog was called a bitch or a slut. He does speak English pretty well but couldn’t remember the terminology. Kind of depends on the dog, no? I guess I could have answered both but I said “bitch” to be clear about it.

Luis and I spent about an hour explaining verb tenses to each other based upon the following sentence: I would have made lemonade if I had cold water. Hubiera hecho limonada si tuviera agua helada. We are helping each other to understand this complex grammatical construction in the opposite language. From there we practiced, “I could have made lemonade but I made coffee instead. I should have made lemonade but I didn’t have cold water. AND I wanted to make lemonade but I didn’t have cold water.” All of this on our hour-long walk through the countryside for classes in Cumaica Sur. Sounds simply enough but in everyday speech it’s not the simplest to drop into conversation. Luis lately has been asking me about the word “mean.” Does it apply to both dogs and humans? Yes, yes it does, though when we say it about humans we do not presume that they bite. When we say it about dogs, yes, we assume that the dog bites. Luis is anything but mean. He’s a person who I hope I will know for the rest of my life. And so is my friend Celia who at 10:30am this morning offered me some red, pineapple-flavored spiked punch. Shame on her. Oh and my tortilla lady, Doña Gloria encountered a coral snake (most likely poisonous) in her kitchen on the way to brush her teeth last evening. It was killed shortly thereafter with a machete. I think that’s all the town gossip for today:)

It’s nice to be home! Monday I was in Malacatoya all day at a swimming hole for lack of a better word though the vast majority of Nicas don’t know how to swim. Of the fifteen 11th graders I was with, I’d say about a third could swim well enough to confidently enter “the deep end.” We had some brief swimming lessons where a few guys and gals first practiced the dog paddle and leg kicks. There were two small waterfalls falling from a 15 foot cliff which the boys took turns diving off of. I’m still really peeved that I forgot my camera mostly because one of my male students wore a girls’ swim suit all day long. Actually, twice he traded outfits with other boys he’d convinced to wear the suit—a lovely red, black, and purple Speedo style suit. The girls shrieked when asked to try it on as if it were a string bikini or something. Must be something cultural that I’m missing. I personally wore a tank top, sports bra, underwear, and shorts—as instructed—even though I have a perfectly good ladies’ swim suit in my house. The water was freezing but the sun was scorching hot. We spent the day passing from cold water to hot sun. There was some Frisbee throwing and napping too. We left on the 7AM bus, walked 15 minutes from the road to the swimming hole, and returned home around 4:30PM.

Tuesday morning at 5AM I took a direct bus to Managua in order to take another express bus to Jinotega, a lush, mountainous department in the north. The thing about express buses is that they will stop to let people off but not to pick folks up along the way. If you want on, you have to get to the bus station, buy a ticket in advance, and get on the bus in number order. When I got to Managua there was an “expreso” leaving in 15 minutes but it was standing room only. No thanks. I don’t know if I was ever very clear about how terrified I used to be to travel in Managua. I never used to travel alone to or in Managua. I think most new volunteers pass through this stage and it’s very healthy to follow all rules until you know what’s safe, normal, expected, et al. Nowadays, I like to think I have it all figured outJ So, once I became aware that I would have to wait two hours in the stifling heat of Managua before my next bus I quickly fashioned a new plan. First I talked to the taxi drivers inside the terminal which are “safer” but slower and more expensive. From them I got the name of the closest air-conditioned grocery store and a price for taking me there. Then I told that guy they charged way too much and marched away to find a cab driver right outside the bus station. I wasn’t able to get that much better of a deal outside but I did find a cab waiting for just one more body to fill the packed back seat. The cabbies like to fit at least four adults into a compact car to make it worth their while. It sucks but it’s life. Anyway, I got dropped off at the closest grocery store where I ate some yogurt, charged my iPod, and used the servicio. And yes, I had the foresight to purchase my bus ticket when I first arrived in Managua so I returned to Mayoreo Bus Station around 9:40AM to await boarding of the 10AM express bus. We arrived in Jinotega around 12:40PM after climbing up and up and up into the central mountains of Nicaragua one kilometer above sea level.

Jinotega has a great coffee cooperative called Soppexcca. Small producers from all over Jinotega, the second largest “state” in Nicaragua, bring their coffee crop to the capital city where I believe it is toasted. There are other steps and processes before the toasting (wet mill, dry mill), but I don’t really understand them . . . yet. Anyway, they say Jinotega produces about 80% of the coffee in Nicaragua. At Soppexcca the coffee is called “Flor de Jinotega.” It is shade-grown at an average altitude of 1100 meters. A bag costs $3 and if you ask me, it’s phenomenal. Anyway, after coffee I decided I deserved to stay in the nicest hotel in town, Hotel Café. For $45 a night, I got a single room (full-size bed), air-conditioning which isn’t even needed in Jinotega, one of the coolest parts of The Nic, cable TV, internet access, a hot shower, and breakfast. Other perks included an evening birthday party in the restaurant in the hotel and two hours of mariachi music.

I did get an excellent night’s sleep, did an hour hike on Wednesday morning and then walked around town for about an hour and half. Again, I went to the bus station to by my ticket in the morning to make sure I’d get a seat. I returned a half hour early for my bus, bought a gray Polo baseball cap for $3, and a CD for $1. I also got my boots shined for a quarter. Man, I get such a kick out of that. The bus was packed but at least I was sitting down. I should have realized what a bad sign this was but I had no choice but to travel on Wednesday afternoon. Transportation stops from Thursday to Sunday so that buses can take people to bathe in the river. It’s what everyone is doing. I’m just glad I got my bathing out of the way on Monday before the waters got too murkyJ Anyway, I paid for the express bus but got off about 40 minutes outside of Managua at San Benito to await a passing bus headed to the east. Finally, I was able to jump into the back of what I’m calling a mosh pit on wheels. I’ve never seen anything like it. I didn’t even have to hold on to anything to steady myself as the bus stopped and started. There was simply no place for my body to go. More people tried to get on and finally we ended up driving down the road with the emergency exit open and people hanging out the back. I rode for an hour this way and finally fought my way out. I proceeded immediately to my final bus which was parked at the entrance to the town of Teustepe, 25 km from my town. I really intended to drink a diet coke but when she didn’t have any I decided beer was my best bet and I downed one fast. Needless to say, I was feeling slightly frazzled and preparing myself to sit through a 90-minute off-road trek into the mountains in a school bus. I don’t know how this all sounds to you but this is what I’ve come to know as “life.” That last bus was packed too. I had a seat, used it for 45 minutes or so, gave it up for lady with two small children, stood for 10 minutes, and then a guy gave up his seat for me. Must have been my gross hair, sweaty shirt, and swampy jeans. We got to San Jose around 7PM and I was in bed by 9PM I think. I found myself wide awake from 1AM to 4AM so I finished a book and wondered from where my anxiety was emanating. It could be from the following detail which is exciting but carries with it some hurdles like finding a new place to live and moving. Moving always makes me nuts.

That said, this seems as good a time as any to announce that I’m staying for another year in Nicaragua. And NO, that is not an April Fools’ joke but it’d be a real good one wouldn’t it? I still have to do some paperwork and go through medical exams to make sure “I’m fit” to stay but let’s say I’m 98% sure I’m sticking around for year three. Peace Corps celebrates its 50th Anniversary next fall and with our big budget increase, it’s a great time to be involved with Peace Corps. I’ll be a part of our growth here in Nicaragua as I continue working within the TEFL and help train yet another group of new trainees to do what I do: coplan and coteach with Nicaraguan English teachers, make materials for class, and sing lots and lots of solos! The rest of my work plan is under construction but I’ll keep you postedJ

After almost two years working with Marvin, my more “difficult” counterpart, I’m starting to see some good things. For starters, I asked him who he’d like me to work with—which classes—and I told him who I’d like to work with. He wants me to be with the younger groups which is fine by me. Teenagers can be really awful. I’d prefer to be with 7th and 8th graders over 9th and 10th graders any day. And once they get to 11th grade, well, then we can be friends and they can invite me to the swimming hole during Semana Santa like they did. We’re going on Monday. Plan is to meet at Profesora Mirtha’s house around 7AM, hop on the bus, and ride out to Malacatoya. Everyone is supposed to bring their own food for the day. We’ll come back around 4PM. I asked if I should wear a bathing suit and got a lot of snickers and giggles. Then Prof Mirtha said they’d faint if I wore a bikini—which I was NOT planning to wear. Guess I’ll do the shorts and a t-shirt thing like we did back in the 80s?

About Marvin though. I can’t tell him anything directly. I have to hint at ideas and things we might change. He did an utterly absurd oral exam today in 7th grade. To his credit he told the kids what they should study for: What’s your name? How do you spell your name? and How old are you? But the way he did the test was horrific. Thirty-five kids squirming in their seats waiting to see what he’d was going to say next. His primary strategy seemed to be to keep people off-balance and terrified—not what I’d deem an ideal environment for test-taking. At least no one cried. Of course, I was not consulted about anything prior to this test—it was all Marvin. Some months ago this would have sent me over the edge but now I just sort of take it in and try to help the kids as I can. Then, during the break, I casually suggest a better way we could do oral evaluations. Marvin listens and shakes his head in agreement but I don’t always see improvements.

On the upside, he mimicked something I modeled in class. It’s not often enough that we get the students talking to one another and asking each other questions but really, that’s the best kind of activity we can do. I started out asking people questions and letting them answer me. Then I’d try to get them to tell me what they were hearing or what they know about forming questions. How do you ask someone about their age? How do you ask something where they are from? And then we’d all practice the questions together. Then I’d ask a student a question and when he answered me I’d ask him to “make the question to someone else.” And pretty soon, I was out of the mix and they were asking questions and giving responses with occasional correction from me regarding pronunciation. In the afternoon class, Marvin did it too! He started by asking questions but after a few examples he asked the student to ask another student what their name was and how they spelled it. And so it went.

In a recent culinary experiment, I sautéed in butter some granola, a few pecans from an amazing Archer Farms trail mix that my sister brought me, and ginger. This mixture was the filling for a smallish butternut squash that I bought in Masaya yesterday. I also added some sugar cane honey like I do to everything I eat. It’s just so delicious. Anyway, it turned out pretty well. I’m trying to branch out and make some different vegetable dishes. Of course, I eat beans and rice at least once a day and tortillas and oatmeal for breakfast. Recently I was introduced to the best fruit in the world—the guanabana. It’s like eating a juicy, sweet cloud with just a few largish brown seeds. I have no idea what this fruit would be called in the U.S. or if it could even be found but take my word for it, it’s amazing .

I just finished reading my Uncle Pat’s journal. He’s a Fulbright scholar to the graduate program in the business school at the Pontifical Catholic University of Parana in Brazil. It’s not his first time visiting but I believe it’s his first extended stay and first opportunity to settle in and start seeing the country as home—if only for some months. I realize now from reading his journal how fun it can be to learn about another country, their practices, restaurants, traffic, transportation, churches, and more—the similarities and the grand differences. I’ve been reporting on Nicaragua, less frequently as of late, for almost 2 years now. And it’s not that I’ve become bored with it, I think it’s just normal at this point. This is where I live. This is what I do.

That said, I’ve been in total “Now I’m near” mode this past month—up close and analyzing every detail. It wasn’t until my sister, Kelli, and her two friends visited that I was able to zoom out and look with better perspective at the big picture. And in the big picture I have a great life here in the third world—including friends, a comfortable though rustic home, electricity, water, and access to vegetables and clean water. As an added bonus, my town is beautiful, the weather is mostly very agreeable, and my work is by and large quite fulfilling.

I also realized in talking to Kelli that I’m a bit removed from American culture and that I don’t mind it one bit. I hear the health care reform passed. That’s pretty huge news. I’ll try to find some good news articles about that. The Peace Corps received a 400 million dollar budget increase and all volunteers will be receiving more per month towards their readjustment (return home) allowance. Also exciting news. Being so far removed isn’t so bad. I seek what I want to know and absorb little bits instead of being constantly pounded by the advertisements, commercials, sales pitches, et al. Here, our political ads are spray painted on trees or houses. Obituaries are announced over a loud speaker by a guy in beat-up brown Toyota truck. Of course there’s radio and television but neither falls into the category of what I need to live and so I’m able to avoid quite easily the media frenzy. What we have here is a semi-reliable gossip network which brings people closer together instead of locked up in the living room watching cable. And it all seems entirely normal to me. I dare say I’m culturally adapted.

As I walked the streets of San Jose sucking frozen milk flavored with cocoa from a plastic sandwich bag, I thought about the future. What’s to come after my Nica life?

In terms of meeting the goals of the TEFL project in Nicaragua, I’d say I’ve had moderate success. I’m one for two anyway. Luis and I have accomplished a lot. We meet for two hours every Sunday at my house and I try to get to his classes in Kumaica one day every week. Today was one of those days. After walking in the equatorial sun for an hour and a half we got picked up by a “Pepsi Truck—just so you get the idea. It was actually a Salva Cola truck, the national cola brand of Nicaragua. For the record, the people of Salva Cola have given me more rides (as have total strangers) than the damned Ministry of Education in the town where I live and work with over 200 students. Moving on, today was just so-so. Luis has been trying to improve his classroom management and he actually made signs for each room with rules. The problem is that he doesn’t enforce the rules well and none of the other teachers have any rules whatsoever. I grew so tired of the students’ constant chattering, shouting questions, interrupting the teacher, leaving the classroom, play fighting, and so on that I had to leave the room. This was NOT during English class because I don’t tolerate that behavior and the kids know it. But Luis is so nice and he just says, “Alright now, please let me explain.” At any rate, he’s made great strides in his own English fluency and he does try fun activities and games with the kids.

Marvin is another story. Today I saw him on the bus headed to Boaco where he is caring for his daughter who recently had surgery. He somehow got two weeks permission to help her during her recovery. It’s day 13 roughly and she’s still in the hospital. As I understand it, a typical room may have six women or six men—give or take. I don’t believe they have private rooms except in private hospitals. Get this fun fact I learned just today: in Nicaragua, men are not allowed to enter “la sala de mujeres.” Women can enter the room where male patients are recovering but men cannot enter the female patients’ ward. I’m sorry, but what on God’s green Earth has Marvin been doing for the past two weeks seeing as how his daughter is still in the hospital and he cannot go into her room? I’m dying over here. This takes the cake.

So like I said, as far as meeting project goals, I’ve done what I can. I’ll leave behind some materials with each of my teachers too. The “what’s next” is hard to figure. The truth is, I could stay here and extend my service by one year. I’m thinking of applying for a Volunteer Coordinator position. Or I could finish my two years, come home, and enjoy fall in the Midwest in the company of family and friends. You can only imagine how appealing that idea is. Still, I want to make sure I’m done with this “phase” of my life and I don’t know how to be sure. How do you know when it’s time to move forward? Nicas don’t have so many work/life options. They do what they have to do and they do it with a smile. It’s just how they are. The world seems wide open to me and all I can feel is overwhelmed. What to do? Oddly enough, searching for a phone number in an old address book this evening, I came across this quote from Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet (I believe):

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answers.

I don’t know how many times I’ve read that quote or said/sent it to other people as they searched for answers. I’ve been in quite a state looking for answers—trying to make decisions. This makes me feel slightly better, just slightly. Also for dinner I ate a serving of steamed squash, two tortillas, two smallish tomatoes, and half of a monster avocado (with lime and salt; cost me 75 cents). Good food is important.

I realize I should write more often and not worry about writing so much. I think that tactic would appeal to readers too, no? The latest news is that I’m doing all Marvin’s classes with someone checking in on me or sitting in the room with me to help deal with discipline while Marvin takes care of his 24-year-old daughter who had surgery last week. No. No one asked me if I’d do it, if I wouldn’t mind doing it, if I’d bend Peace Corps policy just in this special circumstance. Somehow they figured out that I care about the kids and the quality of the classes and I’m not going to sit at home just because Marvin managed to get a special dispensation from the superintendent. It might help that he’s also the head of the teacher’s union. I have a feeling that affords him a few favors. Whatever. It’s about the kids who at times I want to strangle but I don’t think that makes me any different from other teachers. Marvin has been decent enough to come over for coplanning. I humor him and then give the class I want—in accord with the MinEd curriculum—that’s what I’m getting out of this arrangement. I do whatever I please with the students. Today, in 7th grade (in my sixth hour of class) after we’d all sweated through our clothes, we played a wicked round a Bingo with classroom objects, colors, and classroom commands. Everyone played, and everyone talked at least once because I made them draw the words out of a bag and read them aloud. Tomorrow I have to take prizes for the winners: Eddys (2 times), Ana Maria, Tamara, Leopoldo, and Mario Jose.

Today was really exciting—for me. I’m quite sure none of the Nicaraguan folks were as interested or mesmerized by the process of making honey from sugar cane. Here’s how it all went. Celia and Jorge started walking to the farm at 5AM to get a headstart on fumigating and fertilizing the passion fruit patch. I took the 7AM bus with the kids (Jorgito and Hilary) and we arrived around 7:45AM. After collecting a few tools and saying hello to Celia’s family who live on the farm, we headed down the passion fruit and then to the sugar cane. The process is really not that complex but it’s amazing to see, if you ask me. After walking down a long path lined with sugar cane twice as tall as me, we arrived at a dirt patch where two oxen were tied to a post and made to walk in a circle by a 10-year old who followed behind smacking them in the butt and shouting stuff. The kid’s dad was in the middle feeding stalks of sugar cane through two metal wheels (turned by the movement of the oxen). The wheels squeezed liquid out of the sugar cane and into a 5-gallon bucket. When the bucket filled it was carried to a huge wooden trough with a metal bottom sitting atop a wood-fired stove dug into the ground. I have photos, don’t worry. They filled about 20 buckets in a six-hour period. Over this six-hour period, someone is stirring the liquid sugar and siphoning off foam. People from the area seem to know what is up and they start arriving to this area in the middle of the sugar cane field with Tupperware containers around 1PM. Around 1:30 the liquid has boiled long enough and the guys start filling tupperwares and setting them off to the side to cool and thicken. One guy makes “cucarachas” (cockroaches) by taking a small paddle, dipping it into the boiling honey, and immediately submerging the stick in coldwater. Moments later he produces a dripping, stringy, chuck of honey which is eaten or sucked on for awhile. The remaining honey continues to boil until it’s time to pour it into square molds to create “dulce” or something very similar to brown sugar (in a block form). People in town will buy that from Celia’s dad’s house or maybe at the store.

If you lived here long enough, you’d just know when it was time for certain products to be available. I’m still not really tuned into the growing, picking, or processing of lots of things but going to the store continues to be a favorite hobby of mine. There are two main stores in my town where everything under the sun is sold: bras, tomatoes, backpacks, serving plates, deodorant, coffee, homemade pineapple jelly, pasta, beer, bed sheets, and more. If they don’t have what you want they will sell you something else—no arguments. If the vegetable or fruit you want isn’t there it’s because it ran out but for sure they’ll have more tomorrow—definitely tomorrow. I’ve learned where to find what I want and I continue to take great pleasure in the fact that it came from someone’s farm near or in San Jose. If they don’t have it then maybe it’s just not the season for it, you know? We’re not eating apples from Washington or any other fruit/vegetable preserved by some chemical process and shipped thousands of miles. We eat what we have. That’s that. Today I got tomatoes, limes, bananas, oranges (from the trees at the farm), a few types of homemade bread, and a bottle of honey. I also got a headache—I think I overdosed on honey.

Por fin! I finally got to try “Baho,” a traditional beef and plantain stew. My friend Jessenia made a gigantic, cast-iron pot full—layers and layers of beef chunks, tomato, onion, plantain and yucca. She cooked it all night long over a wood-fire and this morning, after mass, she was selling it like hot cakes right outta the pot. $1 a plate and there must have been enough for at least 100 plates! That’s a good little haul for a Sunday morning in San Jose. It is very much like stew served with cabbage and spicy vinegar chile sauce on top. Bah-ow!

Recently I attended a workshop (3 hours) given by a fellow volunteer on the topic of classroom management. It all started with my reading The First Days of School by Harry Wong and realizing how important discipline and routine is in the classroom or order to be able to teach—anything at all. The workshop made me think hard about a number of topics and when I got back to San Jose I got busy creating what I knew my counterparts would never create but what may very well be the key to our success in the classroom. I wrote a long evaluation/reflection the workshop, some of which I’m pasting here:

“I have no trouble identifying problem areas, routines that need to be built in, consistent disciplinary tactics that should be implemented. I identified most of these things in my work environment before ever seeing a copy of The First Days of School. But knowing a problem exists doesn’t mean you have any idea how to tackle it. Given the fact that our time as PCVs is limited, we fall into the trap of wanting to start those communicative activities right away. Let me change here from “we” to “I” because I can really only speak to my experience. When I arrived at my site and at the beginning of last year, I came on day one ready to try new activities. I came ready to show my counterparts the kinds of new methods that would get students interested in English and improve their fluency. Yet, day after day, the classroom environment was so out of control and difficult. The idea of trying anything new made me cringe. More chaos than this? Okay, I’ll try. And when things didn’t go swimmingly, well, I halfway celebrated simply having tried a new technique, but I felt failure in the sense that I knew my counterpart was unlikely to do it again. I hadn’t successfully sold him on a communicative activity that was sure to work. The lack of procedures and routines in the classroom environment was clearly at the root of the problem yet I felt this was something my counterparts should be handling. I separated the task of classroom management and discipline from my role as an English volunteer. It just wasn’t something I felt comfortable sticking my nose in. Instead, I kept focusing on giving better, clearer instructions any time we did something new. Sometimes we achieved a small measure of success—it really depended on the group, the day, and how chaotic the start of class was. It has taken me a long time to “get” how a set of classroom procedures and a discipline plan could make MY life so much easier, not to mention that of my counterparts and the students. The confidence and enjoyment I wish for my counterparts each time they step in the classroom may very well be born not of any real change in their English fluency but from the installation of procedures and consistent discipline such that they can actually teach or play a game with interested students. The learning, joy, and understanding of personal responsibility that I wish for my students might also take place in an organized classroom where expectations are clear and discipline is consistent. But this groundwork must be laid before new methods and activities can be introduced. And now I know and I understand the “why,” and I see that this is part of my work too—it’s one of the most crucial things that we can do as volunteers in order to have the greatest possible impact during our service. And I firmly believe that once our counterparts grasp the concepts and start installing routines and plans, they will have found a classroom approach that will serve them for the rest of their teaching careers.”

For the past two days—the first two days of class—I’ve been sharing this notion of a discipline plan with my colleagues. In class with Marvin, he’s been talking about “values” and the importance of education and then I talk about rules and why they matter. Some of my favorite concepts related to this classroom management approach:

1. It is not the teacher’s personality that allows him/her to create a secure, predictable, consistent classroom environment. It’s through preparation, explanation, practice, and reinforcement that ANY teacher can install a discipline plan or a set of procedures to make her classroom environment healthy for students and effective for learning.

2. We don’t discipline to make students suffer. We have a discipline plan to help us be consistent and to prevent disruptions in the learning environment. The consistent and predictable environment that we create in our classroom may be the only one that a child encounters in his/her day-to-day.

3. Perhaps the most important thing a teacher and student can gain from rules, consequences, and procedures is a sense of personal responsibility. Students learn that to break a rule is to make a choice that brings with it a consequence. Related to procedures, professors who are clear about assignments, expectations, and objectives place the responsibility of completing assignments and meeting expectations in the students’ hands—where they should be.

I don’t like being the ogre in class or as we say, La Dictadora. I’m more likely to be La Amiga de todos, which is also very ineffective. But now I see that my personality doesn’t matter. I can be as pleasant and charming as ever, never raise my voice, never get angry, but simply re-explain the rules and apply the consequences. Tomorrow we have a PTA meeting of sorts and afterward I think the faculty (8 teachers) will discuss the possibility of implementing a school-wide discipline plan. It’d be awesome.

So far, Marvin and I have been doing pretty well with it. I find myself feeling far more useful in class and as expected the students look to me BECAUSE I’m consistent and predictable—and I like being that way. Marvin talks about how we have rules but he hasn’t really put them to use yet. It’s new and will take time, no doubt. Not sure how my other counterpart is doing with this same stuff in Cumaica. We’ll find out next week when I visit.

All in all, life is good. I feel like I fit in here. The mayor asked me yesterday to design an invitation. My student group from last year asked when we can start up again. I am hoping to start a conversation class to take advantage of the four native English speakers that live in San Jose (me, the husband of a Nica woman who just retired here, and two Jehovah’s Witnesses) and the number of people from San Jose who have lived in the U.S. at some time in their lives but are slowly losing their English skills because there is so little opportunity for practice. Obviously they could all be talking to each other or me but they don’t. It will take me facilitating a group to get the process underway--um, ideally.

So I went to the library today for the first time since being back and some of the teachers from the community were there. It turns out that the mayor got a guy to teach “internet” classes. Remember how I had this whole plan to do an intro to computers class with area teachers? I wrote the proposal. I showed it to all the important people. Right. Well, there was a line in my proposal about how key it would be for me to have a counterpart so that when I left the project didn’t just stop—it could be sustained by another person. I don’t know what happened in the time I was home but Dona Marta sent around a memo and ten teachers came today. When students from San Jose get scholarships from the mayor’s office to go to the university they are required to do a “social service.” Marlon, the guy who is teaching the class, is completing his social service. After my initial shock, I felt very pleased. I mean, of course, I take full credit for recognizing the utter lack of computer proficiency among teachers and bringing the issue to the attention of the MinEd delegate and the mayor—and now they’re basically collaborating on the class. The MinEd delegate communicates with the teachers and the mayor offers the free computer time for the class. I said to Marlon, “Hey, I’m here. I wanted to do this project but I’d be thrilled to be your assistant so count on me to be here for each class.” Now, I knew I couldn’t be present for each class and that was another big reason I asked for a counterpart in my initial proposal. At any rate, I’ve attended a third of the classes, more or less, and really enjoyed them. Nicaraguans have such a good sense of humor about themselves. I love to watch the teachers laugh at themselves or at one another. Usually they work in pairs with one trying her best to move the mouse smoothly and the other cackling with laughter right next to her. In the couple weeks of classes they’ve learned to use Google to search for something on the internet, highlight and copy text, open Word and paste the copied text, save to a folder, save to a thumb drive, and make a table (for their attendance lists) in Microsoft Word. I sent them cookies on the last day because I had to be in Leon working on a recording project.

Remember how I always do those voice recordings for my counterpart Luis? And remember how we have that brand-spanking new TEFL Manual for Nicaraguan English teachers? Well, after bouncing around ideas for awhile the volunteers in Leon enlisted the help of a teacher who has a band and recording equipment. Six of us spent a day selecting readings and dialogues from the manual and then making recordings of said dialogues, readings, and even songs. I did a sweet duet of “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” that brought the house down and will, no doubt, live in infamy in Nicaraguan high schools for years to come. It was a great project to be involved with and something we think will aid teachers as they give class and practice pronunciation at home.

While I was in Leon, I did a really dumb thing. Well, it happened as the result of a very smart habit that I have. Okay, I was taking out money in an ATM booth near the largest cathedral in Central America. I took out 400 cordobas ($20) and stashed it in a hidden pouch in a secret pocket of my purse. It’s good to distribute your dough in case you get robbed. Unfortunately, I walked out of the ATM booth and left my billfold on the machine ledge. Twenty minutes later I realized it and went truckin’ back to the bank to see if it was found and turned in to a guard. No such luck and not really a big surprise. There are stories of people losing their cards and within minutes having their account liquidated by a person who goes to the grocery store and swipes the card in a debit payment. I knew I had no time to lose. I returned to my friends’ house and started making phone calls to cancel everything. I called Peace Corps to get the number for Bancentro to cancel my Nica ATM card. And I called my dad to ask him to cancel two credit cards. Then I had a beer to drown my sorrows. Mostly I was angry that I’d been so careless. In the grand scheme I’d only lost 210 cordobas, ($10) a thumb drive, and a cute green wallet. I still had my cellphone, my passport, my Nica ID card, and more money stashed in my purse. But wouldn’t you know, one hour later, as soon as everything was cancelled, I received a phone call from the Peace Corps country director. Someone found my wallet, called the U.S. embassy who in turn called Peace Corps, and he was calling me to give me the guy’s contact info. Moments later I was back in front of the cathedral waiting for Don Juan Trujillo to bring my wallet. He gave me wallet with everything, down to the last shred of paper, still in it. He tried to say no to a small reward but I forced him to take half of what was in my wallet ($5)—and I thanked him a lot. This was a truly remarkable occurrence. There are good Samaritans everywhere.

Other than a bit of work-related travel, I’ve been enjoying some semi-leisurely days. A few students have come to me for tutoring—the one who wants to get ahead and the other who is so far behind she has “reparar” (repair) her English grade by taking a make-up final exam. If she passes, she graduates though the graduation ceremony has come and gone. I have high hopes for her. We’ve been making good progress. Another of my former students is studying English at the university in Managua. Right now she’s on break and as part of her social service she’s giving an “Intro to English” class for students who will enter 7th grade in February when school starts. It’s kind of amazing how so many people are taking advantage of the month of January. She was over last week to get some activity ideas. I try to talk teaching methodology with her whenever I can do she understands that in addition to being enjoyable for students, all activities have a greater purpose.

Well, what better time to return to blogging than the start of the new year? I safely returned to Nicaragua on December 31, after 27 really enjoyable days at home in the Midwest. After a few hours of cleaning and unpacking I headed over to Celia’s house to see what was cooking—literally. Of course, I also wanted to see her and her family as they are the closest thing to family that I have here. The whole bunch was camped outside the house just chatting as they do. I got a round of hugs but found myself feeling a bit sad to be so far from home once again. I passed on a shot of rum but accepted when Jorge opened a bottle of white wine. We got as many glasses as possible and everyone had at least a sip while we were catching up. Celia’s niece, Noemi, got married on December 18. Most brides enjoy talking about their weddings or so I thought so I asked her to tell me about it. She said, “It was nice.” Wow, okay. So I said, “What’d you do afterwards?” Noemi turned red and Jorge started laughing his head off and then everyone else jumped in the gutter with him. I had to clarify, “No, I mean did you have a dinner or a celebration?” Geez. Eventually half the group went to church and Celia went to take money at a fiesta in the rec center. I was in bed by 11PM and slept soundly into the New Year.

My landlady’s son, Miguel, also got married. I brought him a set of knives. Doña Sonia praised the Lord when she saw the knives—she’d be wracking her brain wondering who’d give the new couple knives. My second day back I did laps to and from the clothesline with little Norma, Miguel’s wife. And then I went for an awesome hike/run/walk. The weather is really amazing right now--a constant cool breeze with bright blue skies and some afternoon rains.

To be honest, it did feel a lot like coming home. I was worried that my Spanish would totally suck but it doesn’t. I’ve been catching up with everyone I see including people I rarely even talked to before. It’s like people are genuinely interested and happy to see me. It’s not so much small town hospitality as it is Nicaraguan hospitality. Celia and Doña Sonia keep feeding me or giving me food to go. Jorgito keeps coming over to play my new portable Nintendo. Kelvin, my best guy friend, stopped over to share music and drink tea. I even had a nice chat with my neighbor, the Sandinista party leader.

On an incredibly low note, there was a terrible accident here in San Jose just days after I left. December is a month full of religious celebrations—La Purísima, La Santísima, La Navidad, et al. There are loads of fireworks and processions and 5AM masses with bells starting at 4:30AM. On December 7 at 7PM, they were shooting off the big gunpowder fireworks out of a metal tube on the steps of the Catholic Church. One of the fireworks exploded inside the metal tube and shards went flying everywhere. They tell me it was something you could only see in the movies. There were people everywhere for the procession. Several went flying through the air, some passed out, anyone close was blanketed with char and debris. Of the people at a distance, some went running away and some went running into the smoke to help. A third-year student named Franklin was killed. The metal struck him in the abdomen. He was transported immediately to Boaco but did not survive the night. Another man’s leg was very badly damaged. And there were many others still with smaller injuries.

Well, today Celia, Jorge, and the kids were going to the farm to cut old vines and clear away dead leaves in the passion fruit field. I jumped on the bus with them at 7AM and we worked until about 11AM. The passion fruit grows like a small tree about 5-6 foot in height. The entire field has a “roof” of criss-crossed wires. The trees grow up to the wires and the vines are laid out on top of them. In order for the new fruits to grow and drop down into view the dried-up vines collect as well as dead leaves must be cleared. I have to duck my head to walk under the thick ceiling of wires and vines where fruits dangle before me. When ripe the fruits are fist-sized and yellow. It was enjoyable for me because I like to work outside and with my hands. So much of my Peace Corps “work” is just thinking and planning. I can get into manual labor and let my mind wander. Plus, I think it’s really important to have first-hand experience in the kind of work folks do here to make ends meet. I hope to have a student/friend take me to cut coffee one day during break so I can understand that job too. After our morning of work we went to wait for a passing milk truck but it never came so we set off on foot. I’d estimate we were about 14 km from San Jose. After about 30 or 40 minutes walking we got picked up by a passing Toyota. In the bed there were a couple little piggies going to market. We five—one man, me, two petite ladies, and a boy—jumped in and rode standing up between the pigs and the rails of the cage in the truck bed. Every time we hit a bump the pigs squealed and then the kids squealed and then we all laughed. I’ve already got bruises to show for the ride but it got us home faster and we were starving! I think I’m almost back in the swing of things. Maybe next week I’ll crack a book and start planning our next teacher workshop but right now the weather is too beautiful to work.

Today is going to go down as one of those “typical” days to remember about Peace Corps Nicaragua. Got up at 5:30AM—oatmeal, coffee, all that. Went to class at 7AM. For the last week of class, Marvin had programmed some really important content-based teaching about HIV/AIDS with our 8th graders. It should come as no surprise that I had no idea and we did not plan how we were going to give the class. Luckily we had the TEFL Manual with some solid info and activity suggestions. I started with an activity where each student was given a card with an “X,” a “C,” or a black dot but told NOT to look at the card. Each student was asked to shake hands with three other students. Afterwards they looked at their cards and I asked that students with an “X” stand up. Once they stood up I said, “I’m sorry. You’ve been infected with HIV.” Then I asked that anyone who had shaken hands with these students also stand up. Each time I said, “I’m sorry. You’ve been infected with HIV.” I said it all in Spanish without cracking a smile so that the students would (hopefully) gather from my words and demeanor the seriousness of the subject matter. Believe me, I was the only person not goofing off. Then we introduced some related vocabulary and started some True/False exercises, for example, “T or F—There are no AIDS cases in Nicaragua.” “T or F—People who are HIV positive look different.” Marvin and I took turns translating the ideas. I was very conscious of making sure that students understood that you cannot get HIV by shaking hands with an infected person (like we simulated in the activity). They seemed very clear on that concept. Marvin, for whatever reason, felt it was necessary to try to explain anal sex to the students and why promiscuous homosexual men are in a high risk category. I was listening really close to make sure he wasn’t one of those people who are ignorant enough to say that AIDS is a “gay” disease. And he never said that but he did say some really over the top, graphic stuff that left me “con la boca abierta,” or dumbfounded. Only once did I get super angry. He also allowed a student to ask a question using the Spanish word for “fag.” I waited until her second or maybe third use of the word to interrupt and explain that “fag” was NOT an acceptable term and most definitely NOT at school. I’m still not sure if Marvin was going to handle that or not. In the grand scheme, I’d say the students understood more than I expected and it was a decent class.

After class I went to a community development meeting with an NGO from Managua that has been helping our tourism group. We’re developing a communication strategy to boost tourism opportunities in San José de los Remates, among other things. I am a liaison to the web developer at the NGO. I’ve also been working on a logo for the municipality of San José de los Remates. Today I think we settled on a logo design though the mayor hasn’t seen it yet. The web developer left with over 200 photos I’ve taken in the past 18 months and it looks like we may have a website yet this year! There’s a bit more information to collect and organize but we’ve got a small, dedicated community group working together.

After the meeting, I rushed home for lunch, washed some clothes, hung them out to dry, and toasted some cacao beans in order to remove the “shell.” Popped a blood vessel in the palm of my hand in shell-removal process and then showered up in order to go to the cyber and email some files to Peace Corps for next week’s all-volunteer conference. I left the cyber at 4PM because a student was coming over to get some help translating a song for her weekend English class. We worked for 1.5 hours on the translation and pronunciation of The Bangles’ “Eternal Flame.” And it’s hard to translate lyrics—sometimes you just have to focus on the main ideas. We did okay with “Close your eyes, give me your hand, darlin’,” but the, “I believe, it’s meant to be, I watch you when you are sleeping, you belong with me.” Well, the “meant to be” and “belong to me” were harder concepts to translate. I get the basic ideas right but then I always have to ask, “Okay, now does that make sense in Spanish?” Word for word translation just doesn’t fly but a native speaker should know what makes sense. Afterwards we practiced pronunciation. She wrote down everything phonetically—“Es thes bourning en iiternol fleim?” Gud kwestyon.

Okay so then I started making dinner and seeing lots of big ants on my floor. I hate bugs in my house. Third world, first world, I don’t care. I don’t like ants nor ant bites. I had two theories. A) It’s going to rain tonight or tomorrow. B) There was a “drive-by” fumigation this evening. Every so often, especially when there are lots of cases of dengue fever or malaria the local Ministry of Health will go door-to-door fumigating. Tonight, this truck with three or four motorized tanks in the bed started driving up and down the streets spewing smoke out of a tube pointed toward the houses. And since so many people live with doors and windows wide open ALL THE TIME the fumigation takes care of houses, areas of stagnant water, latrines—you name it. So my second theory is that the ants “got wind” literally of the fumigation and were trying to hide out.

As a final task of the day, well, among final tasks, I packed my day bag for tomorrow’s final hike to my rural school—last of this year anyway. I had plans to go to Esteli tomorrow to order another pair of hand-made cowboy boots. Let’s be honest—one pair just isn’t enough! Unfortunately, Peace Corps Nicaragua has issued a regional standfast which means we cannot leave our departments until Monday next week. There is a massive march being held on Saturday in Managua. Get this, two opposing political parties, same place, same time, same day. It’s hard to even think about. Why the national government would allow this to happen is beyond me. Just one more thing to add to the list of what’s “beyond me.”

A follow-up to the Managua March—it turned out well. Trucks full of people from San Jose departed around 5AM to get to Managua. Later that morning, the national government intervened and rescheduled the march of the FSLN (party in power) to the afternoon. Haven’t seen the papers but there was a nice headline this morning that read, “Civismo contra dictadura,” or “Community Spirit against Dictatorship.” It was an important event that many citizens attended even though they fully expected there could be violence.

It’s a lovely morning here. The laundry is soaking; I’m drinking a milk, banana, cacao shake; in my tank top I’m actually a bit chilled; and I’ve already gotten a great start on a couple presentations that are coming up. Another volunteer and I are planning a workshop for January that will focus on The Monthly Unit Plan in terms of a) elaborating the monthly plan, b) scaffolding learning objectives, c) varying in-class activities to reach all types of learners, AND d) using a corresponding evaluation method. Yes, our workshop topic is more than ample. I like to think of it this way, “No tienen que invitar el circo a su clase.” (You don’t have to invite the circus to your class.) You just have to stick to the basics and vary the types of activities that you do so that the kids who learn by speaking (or singing) get their chance and the kids who hate singing but love drawing also get to excel in class. Is this easy for a new teacher or a teacher who never really studied teaching? NO. And so I drew from my design background and made this super cool chart that teachers can fill in with objectives, activity ideas, and corresponding evaluation methods. It’s for a one-month period. In a single glance, teachers will be able to see if they have done enough activities for visual learners or for auditory learners. Also, teachers can see if their activities are geared more toward speaking, listening, reading, or writing. Teachers here rely heavily on reading and writing exercises because they’re easier to come up with, teachers don’t have to speak the target language (English), and such translation-type activities keep the kids busy. And this is why my students know lots of words but don’t understand them when I speak them aloud nor can they form sentences on their own.

I’m not sure if I mentioned that this was the last week of classes. Today Marvin was at school for the first 45 minutes and then we had to go to a meeting so I finished 9th grade without him and did 90 minutes with 7th grade alone too. Sad that he missed the last day of English with two groups of students. Anyway, in 7th grade we made mini-books, which I collected, brought home, and made an evaluation rubric to show Marvin. It’s proof that unless a kid does not “do a task” he cannot be given a zero. And it also demonstrates that certain students who do not excel on certain types of exams that Marvin is famous for can do very well when some of their other intelligences are activated through drawing, making lists, following a model to create new sentences, et al. Rubrics are fabulous. I thank Peace Corps Nicaragua for introducing me—I’ll use them forever.

I went for what was supposed to be a 45 minute run/walk today toward the Millennium Cross on the hill. Along the way I passed the cheese-making place and there were some workers out there—mostly men. I got the standard, “Adioooossssss, Amor.” And I mumbled a few rude comebacks as I continued running. It’s just not something I’ll ever get used to. I went as far as I felt like and on the way back I felt the hills beckoning me so I took a new route. Where I live, no one seems to mind if you cut through their fields as long as you don’t do any damage to the crops. I found a few cow trails and a dirt road and then the creek but ultimately couldn’t find a through way to get me back to the main road to town. I wasn’t lost but I didn’t know how best to get back. So my 45 minute trip turned into an hour and a half culminating with me doing high knees through an uncomfortably tall grass field—the kind of grass where creatures hide out and the kind of high knees that scare things away. By the time I reached the road I had blood running down my thigh from some thorn bush I tangled with and I was just kinda itchy all over. I rinsed off good in the creek and made my way back to town.

Just finished a lunch of homemade refried beans—locally-beans blended with green pepper, onion, garlic, and a touch of salt. Now I’m drinking fresh-squeezed orange juice—oranges from some trees just a few miles outside of town. As I’ve said before, I’m really going to miss knowing the origin of almost every food I eat. The tortillas are made with corn from San Jose. The cuajada is made with milk that came from the cow maybe as recently as this morning. Last week I started going to the store in the early morning hours to get a liter of milk for about 10 cents. I bring it home and boil it for a bit and then keep it in the fridge all week long. It’s so good with coffee or hot chocolate or tea. And it’s good for growing kittens. This last kitten—the one I got in the surprise, leg-cream exchange—I’m trying to grow as big as a Rottweiler and as ferocious looking so no one will walk off with her. She’s in a chunky phase right now, but I’m sure she’ll triple in size very soon.

In other raw food news, I started thinking a lot today about cacao, which is produced in Nicaragua, in fact in the department of Matagalpa just north of my department of Boaco. While I was at the internets, I did some google searches about cacao—various types, health benefits, recipes, et al. You may already know that ALL chocolate is made from the raw cacao bean. Cacao is the seed of a fruit of an Amazonian tree that was brought to Central America during or before the time of the Olmecs. Cacao beans were so revered by the Mayans and Aztecs that they used them as money. (Yes, this is copied and pasted from some website) In 1753 Carl von Linnaeus, the 18th-century Swedish scientist, thought that cacao was so important that he named the genus and species of this tree himself. He named this tree: Theobroma cacao, which literally means "cacao, the food of the gods." Here’s why our friend Carl was so devoted to cacao:

1) Cacao is the richest food source of magnesium of any common food. Magnesium balances brain chemistry, builds strong bones, combats depression, and is the number one mineral that assists and supports healthy heart functioning.

2) Cacao seems to diminish appetite, probably due to MAO inhibitors. These rare MAO inhibitors actually produce favorable results when consumed by allowing more serotonin and other neurotransmitters to circulate in the brain. MAO inhibitors facilitate youth regeneration and rejuvenation and encourage natural weight loss.

3) Dark chocolate has been touted as a source of antioxidants, but this raw chocolate (cacao) is way beyond that. Dutch researchers indicate that dark chocolate contains four times the amount of catechin antioxidants than black tea, which is suspected of having a protective effect against heart disease and possibly cancer, due to its antioxidant properties. With raw cacao it would be 14 times more than Red Wine and 21 times more than Green Tea.

4) Doctors at Harvard found that antioxidant compounds called Flavonols in chocolate help the body to produce nitric oxide, a compound essential for proper heart function. Nitric oxide is also believed by pro bodybuilders to help increase muscularity and aid in recovery.

Pretty amazing stuff huh? I’ll give you a second. Go ahead and Google “raw cacao” and see what you find for prices ($15 a pound?). I just bought a pound here at the local store for 80 cents. It’s definitely raw. The lady told me I’ll have to toast it a little and then let it cool a bit in order to crackle off the skin with my bare hands. It has a paper-thin “shell” much like a peanut or a clove of garlic. I’m starting experiments this afternoon and will keep you posted. Could make a great stocking stuffer!

As if all of that cacao business wasn’t exciting enough, this morning I spotted four monkeys. Seriously. It is the first time I’ve seen “congos” here and the first time I’ve ever seen such creatures outside of a zoo. I did not have my camera with me but at least now I’ll know how to spot ‘em and where this family in particular likes to hang out.

The contents of this blog are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps.Another Saturday night. Hmm. It might seem like I don’t have much of a life but I do. For example, yesterday I went on a long distance bar crawl of sorts. After the monthly TEPCE meeting, which I found really promising, I took off on the afternoon bus to Teustepe (25 km—1 hour). Analea, the Environment volunteer in San Diego is finishing her service and leaving Nicaragua next week. We had to squeeze in one last round of beers and Elotitos (bbq flavored-corn niblets, chips essentially). So we met at 3PM and were back on the bus to our respective sites at 5:30PM. I arrived at 6:40PM in my site and had plans to meet my Nica friend, Arlen, at 7:30PM at La Gallera—the neighborhood bar that used to host cock-fighting on the weekends. They have great tajadas. So it was me, Arlen, Arlen’s friend Sagrario, and this guy Don Mario who used to work for Banco Mundial (World Bank) or some such craziness. This is the fourth time that the four of us have ended up together randomly and shared a few beers. Don Mario and Arlen enjoy practicing their English so we always go back and forth between languages. Last night, Don Mario started telling jokes and I decided to try a Knock Knock joke in Spanish—the interrupting cow joke. It’s not going to turn out well if I type it but here goes:“Knock, Knock” “Toc Toc”

“Who’s there?” “Quien es?”

“Interrupting Cow” “La Vaca Interrumpiendo”

“Interrupting C--“ “La Vaca Interrump----

““MOOOOO!” “MOOOO!”Get it? Okay I explained the form of the joke and then tried it in Spanish. It flopped big time. I kept having to tell them what to say and then I’d try to interrupt myself to show how the joke worked. Still not funny. Finally, I said, “Maybe the joke wasn’t very good.” And that got a big laugh. Anyway, between 3PM and 9PM I had five “light” beers and felt kind gross this morning when I got up at 5:45AM to catch the bus to Esquipulas (12km north) to go to the bank. I had plans to meet up with fellow TEFL volunteer, Stephanie, who lives in Esquipulas. I arrived at her house to find that she had some sort of flea infestation and after washing everything, she was still getting bites. Well, we had some egg sandwiches for breakfast and I took off for the bank. While in line at the bank I found two mysterious new bites on my wrist and decided I’d rather not return to the house. Instead I hit the cyber and caught up on some very disconcerting current events. I’m really behind on current events. I know that Iowa football is having a stellar season because all my Iowa buddies are “virtually” high-fiving, chest-bumping, and doing end-zone dances via Facebook. What I didn’t know is that recently President Ortega and “staff” changed an aspect of the Nicaraguan constitution to allow Ortega to be eligible for reelection. Robert Callahan, U.S. Ambassador, made a statement “against” this maneuver stating essentially that the public had no voice in the matter. On Thursday, last week, thousands of protestors (supporters of President Ortega) showed up outside the U.S. Embassy in Managua and protested violently (against the infrastructure more than anything), i.e., broke stuff, graffitied “Yankee Go Home” messages, and launched some mortars (threw big rocks?). I understand it was mostly cleaned up by the next day. Ambassador Callahan appeared at an event at the biggest university in Managua the following day and had to be rushed away by bodyguards. While I am perfectly safe in San Jose and have no plans to go to Managua anytime soon, my concern is we’ll have a repeat of the Bolivia situation here. The U.S. Ambassador was kicked out and so went the Peace Corps with him. Thus far, President Ortega has not asked Ambassador Callahan to leave.

I do not speak of politics here in Nicaragua beyond asking, “What is happening?” and even that I only ask to someone I know and trust. Today, I asked Celia and Jorge if they were aware of all of this “news” and they were, but they are exceptional people—active in the community and aware of on-goings nationally as well. I think the vast majority of people are not so well-informed. Today Celia said, “We’re poor. It’s okay. We’re used to it. We’ll keep living.” I didn’t know what to say to that. I guess it made me feel a little sad to hear that statement because I want for all people to have opportunities like we have in America. It isn’t resignation on Celia’s part, its resilience (and faith in God) that eventually things will change for the better here in Nicaragua, but where will such resilience get her or any Nicaraguan if their voices are never recognized in the political process? Not even after the botched vote in Florida a few years back did I feel so strongly that every person deserves not only the right to vote but to have their vote counted in a fair election. On a lighter note, I’ve realized that watching little chubby kids dance should be a Sunday night, family-hour program--especially if the chubby kids are three-year-old boys in silky pants with headbands who are trying to do “foot-fire” and shake their butts. It’s also funny if their dance partner is a larger, more developed five-year-old girl. Oh don’t you worry, I’m working a Nica dance video. In fact, it might be two minutes of only this little Gary Coleman look-alike (“Whatchoo talkin’ bout Willis?”) back when Gary Coleman was cute and drug-free.

Well, it’s Saturday night. I like to get the party started with some blogging followed by tea and crackers and maybe a Dove Promise before brushing my teeth, tucking in the mosquito net and reading until I fall asleep—around 9:30 or 10PM. So let’s cut to the chase . . .

The “Coping with Stress” talks (2) went off without a hitch. The Peace Corps doctors had their own little packet prepared with information about depression, physical symptoms of stress, and a survey for trainees to check off things that were stressing them out on that particular day. All fine and well but what about the coping part? Stress management strategies? It’s a good thing I went prepared with a list of eight. They went a little something like this: 1) Circle of Control: draw a circle, inside it write all the things you can control. Try not to get too worked up about the things that fall outside your circle; focus on the one thing that you control—the one thing in your circle: YOU. 2) The Grover Approach: “Now I’m near! Now I’m far!” When a problem seems overwhelming or too big tackle, it helps to get up close and identify some bite-size pieces you can break off and sink your teeth into. But when things get too hairy up close, it helps to take a big step back and see how little certain details matter OR how well things are going in the big picture. 3) Exercise: even a brisk walk can take the edge off. 4) Message in a Bottle: Send a letter or an email home but only when you are able to write in an intelligent, informed way about whatever is bugging you. Shooting off a scathing email isn’t going to make you or the recipient feel any better. 5) Fake it ‘til You Make It: Fake whatever emotion it is that you’re lacking—confidence, security, optimism—until you really start feeling it. 6) Pre-plan: sit down and write out/act out/plan out whatever meeting, event, or conversation you have coming up that has you stressed out. Plan the successful outcome that you seek. (Thank you Iowa Softball for numbers 1, 5, and 6.) 7) Reward System: Reward yourself after a good day or take a break after a bad day. Be kind to yourself as you would to any friend. 8) Nonviolent Communication: look within, identify what you’re feeling and what need of yours is not being met—which leads to negative feelings. Find a way to meet that need keeping in mind that there is always more than one strategy available to you.Yeah, so I made a point to talk at length about stress management strategies. Volunteers undergo a lot of changes in the first three months and have to start building the support systems that will sustain them through service. And with that, I’ll get right into the presentation that Allison (fellow volunteer) and I did yesterday on Nonviolent Communication.We’ve presented NVC in both English and Spanish to mixed audiences—volunteers and counterparts, a high school faculty, and groups of Nica English teachers. By far the easiest and probably the best presentation was yesterday’s. We only had one day to adapt and grow our presentation to fit the 2-hour block we were given and to address the needs of our specific audience, TEFL 51, the newest group of volunteer trainees in my program. We knew they would catch onto the concepts really quickly so we built in more difficult activities and some discussion questions in the form of “Coffee Talk.” Remember Linda Richmond from Saturday Night Live? “The peanut is neither a pea nor a nut. Discuss.” We had four topics, for example, “You suck! Vs. You didn’t come to my house last evening to coplan.” Discuss the merits of these statements. How would feel if either was said to you? With this question, trainees noted the importance of stating facts instead of name-calling. They said that hearing the first statement would make a person very defensive and probably ruin any chance of having a reasonable discussion afterwards. (Even thinking, but not saying, the first statement is going create an enemy image in the mind of the person who got stood up. See how important it is to refrain from making judgments! We’ve already identified a trainee/future volunteer who is interested in picking up the NVC torch when Allison and I depart. I feel really pleased and hopeful that NVC concepts are being so well-received by the TEFL program staff in Nicaragua.If I may, I’d like to give you a play-by-play of the whole day of the NVC talk: 5:30AM Get up, shower, and leave hotel in Managua6:30 Review notes for presentation 7AM Depart office with my boss, two volunteers, and two trainees 8AM Arrive in San Marcos, Carazo at Ave Maria College 8-10 Nonviolent Communication with TEFL 51 Trainee Group 10:30 Depart San Marcos in a Mini-bus 11:30 Arrive at Las Galerias, a shopping mall in Managua 11:45 Drink Iced Coffee 12PM Get sushi with Allison to celebrate our successful presentation 1:00 Get a taxi to Peace Corps Office 1:30 Fill out travel reimbursement forms and change clothes for the ride home 2:30 Get cab to El Mercado Mayoreo, the bus terminal for travel north and east 3:35 Depart Mayoreo on bus to Teustepe, Boaco 5PM Arrive at the entrance of Teustepe in time to jump on the last bus to San Jose de los Remates 6PM San Jose bus breaks down 5km from Teustepe 7PM New bus from San Jose arrives to collect stranded passengers 8:15 Arrive in San Jose de los Remates 8:45 Go to the bus driver’s house to collect the bags of cooked beans I left on the bus 9PM Dinner of beans and a fried egg sandwich 9:20 BED“My mama said there’d be days like this . . .” About that bus breakdown: I always wondered what would happen in this situation because my town is pretty far off the beaten path. There is no telephone signal for a stretch of about 24 kilometers. First, the menfolk got off the bus, circled up, and started repairs on the bus. After 20 minutes or so it looked like we were going to get back on the road, but the first time the driver tried to shift, it became obvious that we weren’t. It’s amazing how stranded you feel when you’re stranded in Nicaragua. We don’t have 911. We don’t have Triple A. I’m not even sure we have duct tape. We just have whatever off the cuff solution someone comes up with. Last night it was a guy who stood on top of the bus, held his phone up to the heavens, and got a signal! He put his cell phone on speakerphone, shouted our breakdown situation, and help was on the way. Oddly enough, both of my counterparts, Marvin and Luis, were on the bus. Luis is such a kind man. He stood with me outside the bus and practiced his English. When a truck came and people starting hitching rides, he asked me if I wanted to go. Then he said, “Wait me, please,” and went to ask if we could both have a ride. Thankfully, the bus owner thought to send a second bus to collect us in case the first couldn’t be fixed. Luis carried my bags when we transferred overJ We arrived two hours late but were very happy to be home.

I came back from Managua with a ton of dirty laundry (literally, not the Don Henley kind) but just as I was getting jazzed to hand-wash all day, Doña Sonia’s son asked me if I wanted to go to the family farm. And I’ve been wanting to go so I dropped the soap and we hit the road. The farm was so quiet and peaceful. Doña Sonia was there and excited to see me. Her other son, Moises, gave me a tour of the farm and get this, I saw petroglyphs! I tried to help shuck some corn after lunch just because sitting around doing nothing seemed silly. And the work reminded me of being at home when mom and grandma were canning tomatoes. After about 30 minutes, Doña Sonia called me out to the front porch to relax in the hammock. Apparently shucking corn is not for ladies or guests. My thumb was getting kind of raw anyway but, boy, did they have a lot of work to do! The corn will get stored in a mini-silo in the house and over the next year it will be used for tortillas, tamales, and various other Nica dishes or drinks. Nicaraguans do A LOT with corn but don’t give quite so much of it to the cows NOR do we use that awful High Fructose Corn Syrup in our Coca-Cola products. No ma’am. We have real sugar in our Coca-Colas albeit 17 spoonfuls per can. (That 17 spoonfuls part I heard on TV. I don’t really know) Anyway, Nicaraguan cows walk around and eat grass. Pretty novel idea, huh? By the time I got back to the ranch, my ranch in San Jose, I had quite the craving for my staple dish: gallo pinto (beans and rice). Doña Sonia gave me some eggs and a cuajada seca (smoked Nica cheese). I had my own little feast of farm-fresh items. I’ll miss knowing exactly where my food comes from. I will not miss sweating through all my clothes on a daily basis and sometimes twice. At the end of the day, I was able to find time to change my mosquito net—those things collect a lot of dust over time—and I washed my ropas interiors (underroos). Now that tea time has also ended, I’m off to teeth-brushing and Bedfordshire.

Here’s to the monthly blog update, eh? Well, whenever “people” promise to write me or write more often and then don’t, I always give them the benefit of the doubt. I say it’s fine. I completely understand—“Life gets in the way.” And that notion I stole from a Clint Black song, “No matter how hard we try life gets away from us all.” I modified it a bit but you get the point. Believe it or not, things can be wildly busy here too.Okay, so what’s the what? Well, I haven’t reported on the TEFL Manual Talleres that we’ve been doing. Here’s the jist—the Teaching English as a Foreign Language program (TEFL), which is my Peace Corps sector, has only been in country for a few years. I am in the third group. Groups 1, 2, and 3 collaborated, formed a committee, solicited lesson plans, and created a textbook for use by Nicaraguan English teachers. The Ministry of Education put their stamp of approval on it. Washington, DC, gave us some money for materials development and training and now we’ve got a product. As it so happened, the “training” monies came very late in the fiscal year such that volunteers were asked to pull together department-wide (state-wide) training sessions in their capital cities in a matter of days/weeks. It was pure insanity. There, I guess that’s why I’ve been so busy. These workshops we did in teams of 3 or 4. I played banker in each case reimbursing transportation to and from and lunch for each participant. Two weeks after the Boaco workshop for 24 area teachers we did a Matagalpa workshop for 34 teachers. But let’s talk about the contents of the TEFL Manual and our workshops. The manual contains brief essays about classroom management, evaluation techniques, and creating daily lesson plans. There is an appendix of communicative activities for classroom adaptation. And the big deal—and this is a huge deal—the book addresses every “content” programmed by the Nicaraguan Ministry of Education for each of the five high school grade levels. Finally teachers have a “text” that supports their curriculum. Each “content,” for example, “Plural Nouns,” is broken down into “Target Vocabulary,” “Target Grammar,” and some activity ideas or written examples for classroom use. It’s really a beautiful thing. In the workshops, we teach teachers about the manual BUT more importantly how to use it. We strongly discourage copying daily lesson plans from the book. Each class of students is different and learns differently. We teach the notion of “Scaffolding,” as in determining what needs to be accomplished in class that day and then planning the small steps that will help the class meet that goal. You wouldn’t believe how foreign a concept that is—that young people need to be taught each step of a process and that they need to repeat it several times using the different skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) to grasp it. September truly was the month of workshops and trainings and travel! Exhausting I tell you but simultaneously rewarding. I work directly with two Nicaraguan teachers in San Jose. Luis and I are a good team. We have never missed a planning session. Marvin does not meet with me. The end. Therefore, I am doing sustainable work with one teacher. In our training sessions, we come into contact with so many more teachers (24or 34 in one day) and we identify the tools and techniques they need to be successful. That is sustainable development. I would like to add that many teachers are already doing a wonderful job and when they come to the trainings they share their ideas and successes. It’s a very positive environment for everyone present. And then we get lunch.This week I travel to Managua to help out in a “Coping with Stress” charla (talk) for the new group of volunteer-trainees. Next week I’ll be in Managua again at a booth in the “La Feria de Sitios.” Site Fair is when trainee groups learn about the possible open sites—one of which will be their home for the next 2 years. I will be presenting on another municipality in my department. Right after Site Fair, we’re presenting again on Nonviolent Communication for the trainees. I think it’s fair to say that October is pretty busy too. I suppose it’s the perfect time to talk to others about managing stress.Recently, in a very unfair trade, I gave a lady some cream for her leg and she gave me a kitten. Anyone who knows me knows that I adore cats, I really do, but I’ve had a series of very bad animal experiences here. I don’t want a kitten. I’m perfectly happy making friends with strays here and there but having no real attachments. Ugh. Anyway, I named her La Gitana after the Beyonce/Alejandro Fernandez song “Amor Gitano” or “Gypsy Love.” She’s a real screamer and she may yet get taken out to my landlady’s farm but for now she’s here shrieking and scaring the mice away whether she means to or not.And now I wrap up my day of rest. My goal for today was to do as little as possible—I needed a day like today. I also tried to eat the contents of my fridge so I could turn it off tomorrow when I leave town for a couple days. That said, I ate 2 large beets, half a large squash, homemade refried beans (so good), cream, cuajada, two plantains, and a smallish tomato. Well, some of it I’ll be finishing in the dinner hour. It’s about that time:)

Remember that scene in Bridget Jones’ Diary when she’s shagged her boss and is out on the job hunt? One of her interviews is with a kids’ science education television program—the exact name escapes me. The interviewer asks Bridget what she thinks of El Niño and she replies something to the effect of, “It’s glib. I think Latin music is on its way out . . .” I used to think of that scene whenever I heard “El Niño” but now I just think of sitting in my house in mid-September sweating my buns off. We are experiencing near-record high temperatures and NO wind. We’re talking 88 to 91 degrees during the day and not much of a break at night—and I live in the mountains. I soaked through a pair of jeans on a three hour bus ride the other day. Oh yeah, I’m well aware how gross that is. It’s hot all over and the people in the south and on the coasts have it all-year-round, but with a bit of a break during the rainy season. Question is, where’s the rain? Well, as I understand it, the El Niño phenomenon originates with the heating of the surface of the Pacific Ocean and this in turn affects the atmosphere and prevents clouds from forming, but I’m not much of a scientist. I just know that it’s abnormally hot and we need rain and the mosquitoes need to find somewhere else to live.

In recent weeks, I’ve spent a good deal of time in Managua. I was asked to be one of four greeters for two new groups of volunteers (English and Environment). Just like when I arrived, they got here and stayed for a couple days of orientation meetings somewhere in Managua before being delivered to the host families they’d stay with for the next three months. When I came, we stayed in a hotel with a sweet pool but that was because there was a transportation strike and it was almost unsafe to be out on the roads. This time around, the trainees (as we call them), stayed at a conference center with decent food and air-conditioned meeting rooms but incredibly stark accommodations with zero amenities. Anyway, as greeters our jobs are to answer questions in a realistic manner and present reasonable expectations for PC service. We sit in all of the trainee sessions, make friends, and keep an eye out for people who seem really homesick or quiet or what have you. I, of course, had to double-check with my boss when she asked me to do it. I had to be sure there was no “cheerleading” involved—that doesn’t suit me. Anyway, it was a lot of fun and then just a short week later we reconnected with all of the trainees at NicaTESOL, the 17th annual conference of Nicaraguan English teachers, also held in Managua.

Okay, so NicaTESOL: there were 1000 attendees, the vast majority Nicaraguan English teachers at the high school or university level. All TEFL 47 volunteers (that’s my group of 19) were required to present on the topic of our choice. We’re still riding the Nonviolent Communication train though we titled our talk “Effective Communication in the Nicaraguan Classroom.” We did two sessions with 40 participants in each one. Let’s face it, it’s an abstract topic. We didn’t present any games or activities—we talked about giving clear instructions, clarifying objectives, addressing superiors with regard to your classroom needs, and so on. All presentations at NicaTESOL are in English though some people use Spanish to clarify ideas, etc. Anyway, that makes four times that we’ve presented on this topic—each time a bit different hopefully better.

One of our afternoons in Managua was spent in a “future planning” session with our Assistant Country Director, a former college career counselor. Though people have been asking me since I signed up for the Peace Corps what I’ll do when I come back, it’s only now that I am really starting to think about it. She gave us some great advice about doing “Informational Interviews” with persons who have jobs we think we might like to have. A lot of volunteers start looking at graduate programs and GRE testing. Boo. Well, boo to the GRE. I haven’t made up my mind about graduate school. I went once before, it was cool though I wish I would have spent some time in the real world beforehand. I guess it’s useful to look back over your life—jobs, education, extracurriculars—and identify the things that were most satisfying. And then identify what those things have in common and where they present themselves in the job world. I’ve never read “What Color is My Parachute?” but I’d guess that mine is puse. Not puss. Puse—that reddish, mud color that you get when you mix a bunch of colors together. I like lots of stuff. I’m right down the middle in that right brain/left brain business. Anyway, things to think about over the next 10 months:)

Sitting here with a muffin-type thing and a cup of tea. The muffin costs 2 cordobas which is about a dime. It vaguely reminds me of my mom’s “Grapenut Muffins” and it is quite filling. I also bought some tortillas. This is an activity I’ll never repeat in the states. The lady lives about a block away. I walk over there and say, “Hello, Are there tortillas?” And usually they say, “Come on back.” In the back of the house there are always several ladies performing some step of the process unless of course the power is out and then the answer to “Are there tortillas?” is NO. They can’t grind up the corn at the mill if we don’t have power. Anyway, tortillas cost 1 cordoba each. I could buy 20 for a dollar but there’s no way I could eat 20 before they got stale. Anyway, you’re supposed to take a towel or a baggie but I always forget so I just walk home with my handful of tortillas. It’s like that scene in “The Wedding Singer” when the old lady wants to give Adam Sandler some meatballs but doesn’t have any tupperwares. “Just put out your hands!” You know how it goes. Tortillas are obviously less mess and they are the “real thing.” That’s pretty cool.

So, it’s about five in the afternoon and my legs are still tired from the hike I went on this morning. I’ve talked about hiking to the first waterfall or the second or the third, but this time I just kept on going. It was just like “The Sound of Music” really except that I’m way more stylish than Julie Andrews. The hills were alive and they kept tempting me to go just a bit further to see what was next. I think I hiked over the mountain because I started going downhill again and that plus hunger convinced me to turn back. Dios mio, it was breathtaking though.

Overall, this was a busy, busy week that included a Nonviolent Communication presentation in Esquipulas, Matagalpa, a trip to Managua, regular classes, student group, and a Friday afternoon meeting—aren’t those outlawed?

The NVC thing in Esquipulas was pretty cool. We had to do it all in Spanish because it was for the entire faculty (15) of the high school. They’ve had two strikes and lots of missed school and now they’ve decided they’d like to learn some new communication strategies. And boy are we happy to help! We began by stating that we were NOT there to talk about the past. Instead we wanted to share a new way of communicating that helps conflicting parties find shared strategies and solutions. Our presentation always begins with a group activity related to Evaluation and Observation. We ask them to form groups of three or four and then we pass out some statements. The groups attempt to distinguish between evaluations/ judgments and observations. For example, “Gloria is a gossip.” The group thought that was pure observation along with “Kevin is lazy” and “Prof. Milton always complains.” So we have to try to explain why all of these statements are judgments. And why judgments should be avoided. For me, it was a great success because a few short months ago, I really couldn’t speak in more than one verb tense. But for the teachers, it seems it was helpful too. The feedback we received after the session proved that at least some really enjoyed the new ideas and intended to put them into practice.

In Managua I was returning to the oral surgeon guy who had made a nighttime mouthguard for me. There was this one day not so long ago when everything I ate caused my jaw to spasm as if I’d just eaten three bags of sour patch kid candy. Not pleasant. I guess my jaws are out of whack or I grind them in my sleep. It can be related to stress, too. So I leave at 6AM on the bus, get to the PC office around 9:45AM and then go to my appointment at 11AM. They told me the doctor wasn’t there and I should come back in the afternoon. So I go back to the office and wait three more hours knowing that I’m going to miss my afternoon bus and won’t get back to my site that day. I go back at 2PM and wait for another hour. Of course, by this time, I’m furious and trying really hard not to take it out on the receptionist. I make a plan to express my “feelings” and “needs” to the doctor himself. Finally, I see him and the stupid mouthguard doesn’t fit. They have to make another and I will have to return. Wow. But I say what I came to say. “Doctor, when I come here and you aren’t here or you arrive an hour late, I feel very frustrated. I’ve spent a lot of time and money (albeit the American Government’s money) to be here. I also need to maintain my work schedule and get certain projects done. Would you be willing to call me or the PC offices to tell me when you aren’t going to be here?” And at that point he laughed and told me the truth—which he should have done from the start: The Peace corps medical receptionist had misinformed his office. He knew he was going to see a PCV but he didn’t know it was me. So while he was in the office that morning, the mouthguard wasn’t ready. Not his fault, as it turns out so I’m glad I didn’t rip into him. But as a result of being really honest about my feelings and needs, I got the truth; I didn’t feel guilty afterward for not speaking up about something that really bothered me (his tardiness); I didn’t feel like a jerk for losing my temper with the receptionist who really has no control over anything; and I no longer have a negative image in my mind of this doctor. You see, good communication can make all the difference:)

Some days just feel good and today is one of them. We’re preparing to present on Effective/Nonviolent Communication in a neighboring town this Wednesday. And in this presentation there will be no falling back on English—we’re talking to the entire faculty (17) of a high school that weathered a strike to get rid of the director, some months of chaos and indecision, then the same woman was put back into the directorship (by the superintendent who did not consult the faculty nor the PTA), and then there was another strike plus a whole bunch of side-taking and gossiping for good measure. So, I’m really excited to meet this group and at the very least try to present some new ways of viewing and handling conflict. Definitely will let you know how it turns out.

I can’t believe August is coming to an end already! My adult English class is starting up again on Friday nights. I know, I was reticent, but by this time these people are my friends and who else do you spend Friday nights with but friends? I think I’ll feel more relaxed doing the class at the end of the week. We’ll treat it like a nice little social event in which we use English as much as possible and laugh a lot too.

Doña Marta and I continue to meet when we are able. Her plate is really full. And what she doesn’t have in scheduled meetings for past, existing, or potential projects with possible funding sources or outside groups, she’s got in people who’ve walked 5 miles to get to her office to talk about getting a latrine or something. It’s insane. I really respect her dedication to practice English at least 2 hours a week with me. Today we talked about some common words that she fears using in conversation: “sheet” (of zinc, for example) and “focus,” to name two. She asked me a lot of questions today about what the local government and the tourism committee of San Jose can do to create a concrete plan that will attract visitors to our little pueblo. And, I think it really depends on the tourist. Those who want to feel adventurous will navigate the buses, hit the local watering holes, stay with a family, bathe in ice water, try the new foods, and fall into bed at night under the cover of mosquitero. Here’s to ya. I had to come around to those things. Other types of tourists probably aren’t cut out for this “vacation.” We’re not offering Cinco Estrellas (5 stars) but for sure an unforgettable experience of sights, sounds, smells, and cultural difference. I recommend it anyway.

Last week my student group did a really fun activity called Shopping List. There were just four of us but we each had a store: NewsAgency, Greengrocer, Butcher, and Bakery. And we all sold certain items. And we all had a shopping list to manage. One by one we’d go from store to store to ask if they sold pencils or lemons or beef. And then we’d ask “How much,” and they’d ask us “How many,” and there were some short but authentic exchanges where the kids experimented with the language. That stuff makes me really happy. Sweet little Matilde, every time someone came to her store and said, “Do you have oranges?” she’d interrupt and say, “HELLLOO!” As in, how dare you be so rude in my store. It was great. I hope to try the same activity in my adult class this week.

I made the trip to Kumaica today with Ada Ninet, a worker from the Ministry of Education. We walked into the little community and some 5-year-old told us to “F*%$ off.” Ada had no idea what was said but it sure did catch my attention. I gave him the Nicaraguan “No, no, no,” finger wave and said very curtly, “No, those words, no.” The kids usually don’t know what they’re saying but it sure catches me off guard. I never know if I should tell them why they shouldn’t repeat things or just leave it at “No,” and give a very stern glare. I have a feeling that they’d use the word with even greater frequency if they knew it was vulgar. Anyway, I took it as a we’re-excited-to-see-a-new-person-in-our-pueblo remark and we continued on. At the institute, the older kids don’t get all that excited by my presence but the 7th graders do as does Professor Luis, my counterpart. Usually he says, “Did you bring something? Or didn’t you bring something?” I’m really trying to turn over the reins to him and follow along—helping as much as possible—with his planned lessons. He’d still rather that I take over, as in, I walked all that way, shouldn’t I get my money’s worth and do all the teaching too? Um, no. The classes were okay considering that 10th grade wouldn’t talk at all and getting 7th grade to do anything is like herding cats. Dios mio. The highlight of the day was going around the circle saying the months of the year and the days of the week and numbers up to 60! There were two students, Roger and Urañia, who clearly had been studying English—which is saying something. I said to Urañia, “My you’ve been studying, haven’t you,” and I say her go over to Luis and say, “She said that I’ve been studying!” It was pretty cute. And Roger is this tall, fair-skinned kid straight off the farm. He wears rubber boots and blue jeans to class—it’s a surprise to me that he comes at all because he’s probably needed pretty badly at home but there he is spouting off the months of the year.

Ada told me that a number of kids have left the Kumaica area recently with their families to go to Costa Rica and cut coffee. I’m so glad my parents didn’t make me have a really laborious seasonal job when I was 8. I suppose this is as close as I’ve been to child labor. It’s sad and eye-opening. As I always say, the better my Spanish gets, the more aware I become of the things that aren’t so obvious in my quiet little corner of Central Nicaragua.

I’ve found myself trying to explain to friends (teachers or coaches in America) about this feeling I have as of late. In the past, I have found that one year on the job is generally enough time to feel “in the know” and very able to do the work. One year teaching here, jumping through the hoops, missing planning sessions with my counterparts, recording small victories, getting to know the kids—all of it—and it’s still tough. Every day in the institute in San Jose tries my patience. As much as I try to focus on the kids and their enjoyment of school, I can’t help but curse under my breath at the missed opportunities with my counterpart, Marvin. But I always have hope for the next class. To steal one from Emily Dickinson: “Hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.”

Perhaps you remember me talking about our new mayor—the first female mayor in the history of San Jose? She was elected last November. She’s the person who always corrects my Spanish because learning to speak really well is my “reward” for living in Nicaragua these two years. Doña Marta is her name and she’s my newest English student. Now, normally I wouldn’t do “private” tutoring but in her case, well, it’s nice. She approached me because a) she’s super-motivated b) she’s always telling people to take advantage of my classes while I’m here and 3) she might be invited to a conference in Washington and she’d like to be prepared. We are meeting twice a week for one to two hours and let’s face it, I’d be happy to give either of my English teacher counterparts that amount of my time and I do, with Luis, but Marvin doesn’t have time so I’m happy to spend it with her. The first day I took a couple different magazines because I really wasn’t sure what her level was. Let me tell you, she’s one smart cookie. Like all non-native English speakers, the pronunciation gives her trouble sometimes but she’s quick to adapt and has a very good grasp of grammar already. As the mayor of our small town, I have a great deal of respect for her and the goals she’s working toward while in office. Most recently, a new office was opened within the mayor’s office where the public can come and solicit information about projects, public moneys, etc. It’s all a part of her mission to be as transparent as possible—something that hasn’t been true of many governments here, especially the national governmet. Anyway, today she impressed me again by telling me of her appreciation for our President Obama. She says she only understands about 50% of what he says during his speeches but she watches how he talks and has learned a lot about body language. Specifically she referred to his Martin Luther King, Jr. speech and the remarkably different way he spoke to the African-American community. Well, I didn’t see it (though have since downloaded a transcript) but was happy to hear her version. She said she once attended a training here in Nicaragua about “Resistencia Pasiva” and heard all about Dr. King and Gandhi. We are focusing on Business English and will also spend some time on Nicaraguan history and current events because she’ll probably have to speak about her country and her interests. Today we were looking over some business vocabulary and came across Deming’s 14 Points—yeah, I had no idea—but she proceeded to tell me what she knew about Deming and quality control and management philosophies. Like I said, she is one smart lady.

Wow, I just heard a rain cloud move in or maybe it was the footsteps of the people in the street who saw the thing and started running—yes, old ladies too—for shelter. When it rains it pours! I’ve got to put on jeans and a sweatshirt and close up some windows. Adios.

Oh you won’t believe this: last night I woke up around 1AM because I had to go to the bathroom. I guess that’s not so hard to believe. Anyway, I switch on the light and look first on the table, then in the box, and lastly to the bookshelves to see if my new kitty (a friendly stray) has come in through the pet door to sleep over. What I saw when I looked to the bookshelves was a gross, skinny, greasy tail that I knew did NOT belong to a cat. I was so disgusted. My heart started pounding. I went outside to the bathroom—because that’s where it is—and I tried to come up with a plan. Normally, I’d get Miguel, my landlady’s son. He killed that spider the size of my face not so long ago but I didn’t want to wake him. I grabbed some brooms, put on my cowboy boots, and went back in—alone. I’m a wuss though. I could not bear to imagine the face of that critter under my bookshelves. I stood frozen for awhile and then, though this may seem absurd, I decided to go back to bed. I felt pretty confident that the critter wouldn’t come into my room and I prayed that it would leave in the night. It took me forever to fall asleep even with the pleasantly loud hum of the fan in my room. At 5:45AM this morning, I put on boots and jeans immediately and went outside to see if Doña Sonia was awake. She was and I told her the story. The critter no doubt entered through my homemade “pet door” so yes, it’s my fault. Thankfully, it also left through the pet door sometime in the night and I’ve since boarded it back up. Even after poking all of my books and boxes with a broom to see if I might rouse some gross animal thing I still didn’t feel relaxed. I went out front to see if I could borrow my neighbor’s dog. She said I could but let’s face it, if there’s a damned possum in your house during the daylight hours don’t you think you’d know? I mean, really, it’s not like it curled up to read a book and nodded off. It’s a wild animal! Lorena, my neighbor, explained to me the difference between the “zorro” or fox and this other animal with the slippery tail: the possum. I can’t remember the Spanish word. I guess her nephews killed one in the house about two weeks ago. So gross. Kind of an anticlimactic ending there—the initial horror was the worst of it, gracias a Dios.

It’s breezy and cool and sprinkling rain right now. I love it. This is my second time experiencing “winter” I the tropics. Sometimes the wind blows so strongly and the zinc roof tops lift off the houses. Sometimes the rain pounds so hard on the zinc/tin that I can’t hear anything inside the house and sometimes it’s just sunny and warm. Every hour brings something new. It really breaks up the day: when it’s sunny we wash and hang out clothes. When it’s rainy, no one leaves the house, i.e., no one comes to my house. When the power goes out as it did last night, most people just go to bed, I think. I go to bed with a good book. I like the changes though—they’re something I’ve come to count on here whether it’s the weather, class, student interest, extracurricular activities, friendships, et al.

There are some professors visiting from Spain right now. They are participants in a program that annually sends professors from Spain to Nicaragua or Guatemala for one month. They come, stay with a local family, visit the communities, take in the culture and sights, and at the end, give a two-day conference for teachers. They also give money to the schools. We planned a hike to the waterfalls yesterday and I decided to invite my student English group. Here’s how it worked out: Eros, a 7th grade boy, had no trouble getting permission and arrived on time. Sandy, an 8th grade boy, got permission from the woman he boards with during the week but she made sure to tell me that I was responsible for him since his parents live way out in the country. Matilde, an 8th grade girl, got permission from her grandma pretty easily. Oswaldiñia, the poor thing (and not just because of her name), her father wasn’t home to ask permission and while her mother was there I guess she didn’t have the authority to do so. We all went to her house to ask if she could come and it looked like she’d been crying. She said she couldn’t come without her father’s permission or he’d hit her. So much for being the smartest kid in 7th grade—doesn’t exactly afford her any privileges. Anyway, we picked up one more 8th grade girl, Adamaris, who wore a hat and tennis shoes--very sporty vs. little Matilde who wore her penny loafers. Ouch! My friend Danya came too. She’s 19 and therefore took over as Assistant Brownie Leader. I, of course, was the Head Brownie and at times I did feel nervous knowing all those parents were relying on me to get the kiddies home safely. Overall, it was a great experience to do something different and active with the students. They all get along so well and are NEVER mouthy or rude to adults. We visited a waterfall that I’d never been to before, ate mangoes and cookies (everyone brought stuff and shared), and the Spanish professor took lots of photos. [Oh yeah! I just got three avocados for fifty cents from a lady selling door to door.] Many of my students live in this beautiful, mountainous pueblo but have never seen the sights: the waterfalls or the canyon, which I just found out is known as “El infierno.” “Oye chicos, vamos al infierno la proxima vez!” (Hey kids, let’s go to Hell next time!)

I don’t know why I am writing so infrequently these days. I have been busy and sometimes I’m just tired of hearing myself talk. Anyway, how about an update on our recent conference in Matagalpa and our first presentation on Nonviolent Communication (NVC)? It went well! We arrived thinking it had to be all in Spanish—and that was definitely a source a stress for me—but then we noticed that lots of other speakers were using more English or only English so our presentation turned bilingual. We still wanted to use Spanish to make sure our Nicaraguan audience—half of the group of 45--understood this new style of communication. What we learned is that we needed more time. One hour is not enough to discuss the differences between an evaluation (You’re a bad student!) vs. observation (You forgot your English notebook twice this week.) plus how to express our feelings and needs, and finally how to make a clear request of another person. And that’s only half of it! After “expressing” our information we also want to “receive” information from the other party. Well, we did our best and some great conversation was sparked about using humiliation or embarrassment to punish or motivate students. NVC says NO! This is violent! But it’s often the way we’ve been taught or what we’ve heard from other people. It looks like we’ll be presenting on this same topic at “NicaTESOL,” a yearly conference for all Nicaraguan English teachers, not just those working with PCVs at this moment. If you’re at all interested, I highly recommend the books Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life and Speak Peace in a World of Conflict. For teachers, I recommend, The Compassionate Classroom and Life-Enriching Education.

So I had this coach who used to say “Take care of the little things and everything else will take care of itself.” Good thinking, huh? It fits well with my improved approach to teaching here in The Nic: support the students, maintain a positive attitude, make class fun simply by smiling and laughing more with the students, et al.

And some more little things: I asked a teacher friend of mine to help me with my Spanish studies. She happens to be in my adult English class so it’s a nice trade-off. I try to remember the questions that I have in my day-to-day conversations because while people seem to get my point, I know I am saying things incorrectly. Profesora Daysi clarifies things and looks over anything I’ve written. Already I am feeling more confident about my ability to communicate.

Doña Sonia and I split the cost of a dustpan this week—something we will both use for sure! She sweeps the back patio almost daily and I take over when she goes to the farm. It cost $2.00. In other domestic news, I recently played the “girl card” when I saw a spider the size of my hand in my house. I took a good long look at that spider, stood up, walked out my door and over to her house, and said, “Help!” She called to her son Miguel who grabbed for his machete thinking I had a snake problem. As if! I told him it was just a spider the size of my head. He smashed it with his flip-flop and swept it out the door leaving a trail of guts—that’s how big it was. Ugh. I don’t even think that type of spider is particularly dangerous, but I couldn’t go on with it just sitting there looking ominous on my wall.

Overall, I’m surprised at how quickly I’ve readjusted to life here in San Jose after my vacation in the midwest. I say again that it’s the little things. My student group continues to meet on Tuesdays and by golly, they’re improving! I took cookies to my favorite class (8th grade) last week. We had just finished a food unit so it was well-timed. I happened to mention that my birthday was coming though we wouldn’t have school on the actual day. That sure got the kids going. They proceeded to sing me the birthday song and they applauded three different times--first for my birthday, second for the cookies (Oreos, Chips Ahoy, and Nutter Butters), and lastly for how tasty the cookies were. Easy to see why they’re my favorite class.

Next week, Prof Luis (at my rural school in Kumaica) is coming to Matagalpa with me for the Peace Corps’ second In-Service Training for TEFL volunteers. As you may recall, Marvin attended the last IST we had. Anyway, having not seen Luis in action for over two months, I felt compelled to get back to Kumaica last week regardless of whether I had to travel alone or not. I made sure people knew that I was going and when I’d be back. As luck would have it, I got off the bus with a woman about my age. When I asked she said that she too was walking to Kumaica. I said, “What luck. Now we can go together!” She agreed and off we went. Well, about 15 minutes into the walk a guy came on a motorcycle to take her to Kumaica—that had been her plan all along. However, and this is something special about the Nicaraguan culture: they always stick together; accompanied is always better. She gave the guy on the motorcycle her bag and said, “We got off the bus together and now we must stay together until we arrive.” And so we did. It turns out that her oldest brother married a former Peace Corps volunteer. At the upcoming IST, I’ll be presenting on the topic of Nonviolent Communication with another volunteer. We are really excited and hopeful that it will be well-received by PCVs and Nicaraguan teachers.

Well, it’s been quite awhile since I last wrote. Let me tell you why . . . I didn’t really have anything nice to say and I make an effort to not complain or whine when I blog. I try to tell the truth though sometimes I have to wait to tell it so that I can do so in a non-judgmental fashion. So let me give you the facts, briefly, before I move on to the breakthrough that I had today. Okay, two days after my white kitty (La Blanquita) was poisoned, I happened upon a kitten who’d been squatting in my friend’s shower while she was out of town. If you read signs the way that I do, it seemed obvious that this little furball was destined to be my new kitty. I named him Bubbles, that’s Burbujas in Spanish (Boor-Boo-Has) and took him right home. He loved me like all cats love me—I dare anyone to dispute this fact—and for two weeks we coexisted peacefully in my house. I made a kitty door that allowed Bubbles outdoor access while I was at class or wherever. I broke with Nica traditions of tying kittens to large furniture for several days until they learn their new home. I simple took care of him and hoped for the best—what kitten would leave the comforts of food, shelter, and companionship? Well, long story short, Bubbles did wander into the backyard—best I can tell—and after two weeks he was simply gone. Someone saw him and up and carried him away. And that’s all I have to say about that. Maybe one day Animal Planet TV will address the great disparities between cultures in terms of treatment of and respect for animals. I could use some insight.

In addition to losing my kitten I guess I also was losing motivation and hope. Lucky that I had a trip planned to the great U.S. of A. While my vacation lasted a mere seven days, I saw many friends and family members and got recharged a bit. What mountains and nature are to my town in Nicaragua, concrete and skyscrapers are to Chicago—such different environments to make a life. That said, I feel pretty at home in both places. I hadn’t exactly forgotten how lucky we Americans are what with our fancy restaurants, transportation, shopping, fully-stocked grocery stores, et al., it had just been awhile (15 months) since I was able to take full advantage of it all. Man, do we have options. I say that as a good thing, but I know sometimes it’s the opposite and we’d like to simplify life. Grass is always greener.

So I came back with better perspective about my place in the world and in Nicaragua. My former employer, Independent Publishers Group, graciously donated some books that I requested on the topic of Nonviolent Communication. Last night I read a booklet called Teaching Children Compassionately. And today I started school with a new attitude—and this is my “breakthrough.” I have said to different people that in the Peace Corps you must change all previously-held notions of success. I say it but I realized I wasn’t doing a very good job of letting go of my American ideas. Today I stopped looking for results in the classroom. I went to school to support the students, to enjoy myself, to improve the classroom environment. I’m still teaching but what I’m thinking about is the students’ enjoyment and motivation NOT their success or accomplishment. The same goes for my counterpart Marvin: instead of thinking of the Peace Corps goals that we aren’t meeting, I’m focusing on how I can support him in class. I find that after just one day, I’m a far more understanding person and a better teacher.

So my boss gave me permission to change my work schedule and look for the other types of projects to “make my life wonderful.” I think we’re all clear on the fact that I didn’t come here to sit on my hands, but sometimes “life” gets in the way. As it turns out, my seasonal allergies didn’t just evaporate with the scorching sun, they settled in my head and chest and I found myself back in Managua for three days this week. This morning I read the list of symptoms for the swine flu which has recently made its way to Nicaragua (around 56 confirmed cases, mostly in Managua) and I found that I had many of the symptoms: headache, cough with phlegm, sore throat, sinus problems. I really appreciate that the PC doctors never brought up the flu though. They played it really cool and kept checking for the major symptoms: fever, chest pain, and cough with blood. So I never really felt alarmed and there was no reason—just a mild bronchial infection. But I will tell you, with so many people using public transportation: students, workers, tourists, travelers, families of four all in one bus seat—sure does seem ripe for the passing of a virus. I did the usual with my time in Managua—ate different food. I had two Quiznos subs, two McFlurry Twix sundaes, three iced coffees, and some pepperoni pizza. We get 125 cordobas for per diem when we have to be in Managua. That’s about $6 to eat three meals. I filled out a questionnaire recently about how much I typically spend in Managua on food and it’s closer to 250 or 300 cordobas. I go to the closest and usually the healthiest places and it costs money to live “safe” in Managua.

Before I ran off to Managua I had a talk with Marvin where I tried to use some Nonviolent Communication. I don’t know if I did it very well. Marvin’s wife has lupus. My friend Shannon had lupus. She died at age 27. I told Marvin these things because I do understand the difficulty and the questions and to some extent the changing face of the disease. I asked him if perhaps he felt he needed to take care of his wife and wanted more time at home. I agree that life is bigger than work and family is more important than a job. I expressed to him my feelings as well. I feel overwhelmed and frustrated when we don’t plan. I have a need for organization, creativity, and a job well done. And then I tried to name some ways that both of our needs could be met: he could have time with his wife and I could prepare for class in a more thorough manner. He started listing off the umbrella themes for next week’s classes and it became obvious that there would be no co-planning for at least another couple weeks.

It was just yesterday that I returned to San Jose—dirty and exhausted from the three hour bus trip. I’d no more than stepped off the bus and crossed the street when some lady approached me and asked if I had a white cat with a red collar. I said yes. She said my cat was dead in the street yesterday. I asked what happened. She said she didn’t know. And I walked away unsure because sometimes the gossip here has no basis in truth. I hoped that would be the case. And in since no other strangers or neighbors approached to say the same thing in the block and half that I walked to my house, I hoped that lady was just crazy. The cat wasn’t there on the patio waiting for me like usual. My landlady (Doña Sonia) came over about 30 minutes later and said we’d had some bad news. The cat was dead. And she was taken away by the street cleaners before anyone had the chance to strip off her new flea collar—it’s worth $1, you know. I was just disgusted. But she couldn’t leave it at that. You see, she claimed that “other people” would ask her what the cat ate and she would always say the cat ate only Pedigree and that it was Erin’s cat. Then she presented me with this whole long conspiracy about how the cat had been poisoned. Somebody went out and bought Pedigree cat food and put the rat poison in it to kill our cat. And she saw the cat had vomited Pedigree in the patio before making her way to the street where she was found. And they did it because they knew I wasn’t home—I had put a sign on my door to let some of my students know that our student group couldn’t meet for a few days. And I just stood there and listened to all of her BS which actually kept me from crying because it was just getting more and more absurd by the moment. And yet I sit here now wondering which neighbor went so far out of his way to murder a scrawny little white cat with a jingle on her collar. Doña Sonia said we’ll get another cat, a boy cat, and we’ll get him fixed so he won’t wander and we won’t put any signs on the door when I’m not home. Now, that comment, just so you know, was not her way to make me think it was my fault. That comment was so I’d know that it was in no way HER FAULT. Got it? FYI, if you ever know a person from another country and culture whose cat dies, don’t tell them that some mean-spirited local purposefully poisoned their cat when they were out of town. It’s just not a good way to improve cultural relations.

I sit here in a state of disbelief. Here’s why: I was in Managua for the last two days doing my year-service medical checkups. I told Marvin, my counterpart, well in advance and as we parted ways on Tuesday after two decent and PLANNED classes, he said in English, “I don’t know if you can, but maybe you will come on Friday afternoon?” And I thought, why not, I’m missing some teaching hours this week, I can totally come on Friday afternoon and work with Marvin. He’s got 7th and 8th grade. The afternoon students are a bit behind the morning students so whatever lesson we do will be something that Marvin and I had done before. And I haven’t visited these classes this year. All of my teaching hours are in the morning. Okay, so I go to class only to find that Marvin is not there. The sub-director says he’s not coming. And I was just blown away by surprise. My boss has been in my town twice in the last month to observe class and talk about our project goals (first visit) and then to ask him if he really is interested in continuing with this Peace Corps program because his behavior suggests otherwise (second time which was just last week). Culturally speaking, there is no way I could have asked Marvin those same questions. He would have lied through is teeth to save face and not risk offending me. It was quite necessary that my boss come and talk to him one on one. She left after explaining to me the entirety of their conversation and said, “Okay, make your life wonderful.” So I know I have her complete support to reduce hours dramatically with Marvin and start other projects. Still, and right now I hope today was a misunderstanding and that Marvin thought he was going to be present, but everyone else seemed to know that he was planning to be in Boaco at the doctor with his wife today and apparently yesterday. So here’s how it unfolded. I arrived. Said hello to the sub-director and started looking for Marvin—remember, I’ve never attended these afternoon classes nor have I introduced myself to these 60 students. I found out that Marvin hadn’t arrived and then that he wasn’t coming. Then the sub-director and a MinEd representative proceeded to try to convince me to teach the classes anyway and so I reiterated for the 20th time that 1) I am not a substitute teacher 2) I don’t teach without plans and 3) my program has goals, none of which are met if I continually cover for Marvin. Their advice: “Well, it’s simple, you just give the kids a reading and some dictionaries and they translate. That’s the class.” Now at that point, I was just deciding how much anger and frustration I should display before I walked away. So I went over the reasons “why not” once again. And I stated how shocked I was that Marvin would “throw me under the bus” in this manner, which is to say, invite me special to Friday afternoon’s classes and leave me to work in two classrooms that I’ve never even visited before. This one almost takes the cake. Almost.

On the medical front—no cavities, allergies are improving, I’ve lost a few pounds but overall have been healthy here in The Nic. Then he read a short list of the illnesses I’ve had in one year: bacterial infection, sinus infection, bacterial infection and parasite, possible viral infection, bacterial infection, seasonal allergies, rash. I think that about covers it. I find it comical that that list of illnesses in one year is considered healthy for Nicaraguan volunteers. If you’ve seen the news, you may know that the first cases of the swine flu have been reported in Nicaragua. Coincidentally, there is also word on the street that someone arrived in San Jose yesterday with the swine flu. I don’t really believe it. It’s all too predictable in the pattern of Nicaraguan gossip. Or let’s just say that I’ve heard some tall tales here and I’m going to need to get this information from a reliable medical source. Still, lots of careful handwashing.

While in Managua, I did enjoy some amenities like the pool at my hotel, air conditioning, wi-fi, and cable TV. With some other volunteers, I went to a tasty burrito joint, a cute little coffee shop, a pizza place, and a good sushi restaurant—there were some good 2 for 1 deals in there. Though, as you might expect, 2 for 1 has different meanings here and every time we tried to get a 2 for 1 deal we were surprised with what arrived at the table. Still, good times.

I might have mentioned the Nonviolent Communication books that I’ve been reading. It was another volunteer who turned me on to the topic and has loaned me her books too—Speak Peace and Nonviolent Communication. Without going to much into detail about the theories, I will just say that I am quite taken with them. I spoke at great length with a couple other volunteers about how we might implement some of these ideas into our work and how we might share them with Nicaraguans too. Among the things that I like the most about NVC, it gives me permission to have feelings about my work and my colleagues. Women are often criticized for feeling too much on the job or for expressing their feelings in a work environment. NVC is based on the notions of shared feelings and needs among all human beings. It’s when we recognize the humanness of others—their needs and their feelings when their needs are met or unmet—that we can build a better society or what have you. We don’t have to work in tense environments. We have the right and we owe it to ourselves to find what makes us alive—and it’s often other people that make us feel alive because of what they “give” us of themselves and how it meets a need that we have . That’s certainly not all NVC offers but that’s where I’ll leave you today.

I’m not going to say it’s an ordinary night but it’s certainly not out of the ordinary that I should sit here eating vegetable soup and fried, salty cheese by the light of my headlamp and some milk jugs lanterns. There is a vigil taking place in the street in front of the house next door. My house is filled with not only the singing, clapping, and keyboard music from this event but also sounds from another Evangelical service somewhere in the distance. I was up this morning at 4:45AM because that’s when the little boys (10 and 14) next door woke up. I guess sometimes they stay in the house alone—their aunt lives next door. But the mom is sometimes working. She’s the Sandinista Party leader in these parts. So when mom isn’t around the radio is especially loud, the nights often late, and the mornings early. It’s a constant frustration for me and more so since the 14-year-old got his hands on an Eminem CD. Will the Real Slim Shady please get the h-e-l-l out of this country? I was explaining to someone that my neighbor had come across some really offensive music. And she said, “Oh, right. They’re Sandinistas. Is the music against your country?” I guess that would have been a normal thing. I was like, “Well, no, that’s not it at all. The music is FROM my country and I despise it. It’s offensive to all people of difference and I can’t tune it out—because it’s in English!” Spanish music I can tune out because if I’m not concentrating I don’t understand anything, but English music is another story.

Overall, today was productive. I decided to take the bull by the horns and start a youth English Club even though I’m not sure exactly how it’ll go or where we’ll meet or if I’ll have enough time. The advice I gave to myself—something I’ve been working on for awhile now—“Don’t wait until you have everything completely planned out because that day may never come. Just dive in there and let it shake out how it will.” I used our unplanned, unstructured class time to talk with some students that I know are really interested in English. I invited them over to my house to discuss the possibilities. We decided to focus on using English instead of just copying down new words or doing translation activities (blah.) For our first meeting, we played a rousing game of Old Maid—card game supplied by a family friendJ It was so fun. First we talked about all the people on the cards: witches, pirates, gardeners, ballerinas, etc. I mean, when you’re learning a language, it’s basically imperative that you learn about witches and pirates early on. In the discussion about “witches” we also had to talk about the word “with” and also “which” so in the process of playing there were so many learning/teaching opportunities. I wrote out some key card-playing phrases such as, “My turn, your turn, his turn, her turn, I won, You lost, I have a pair, I don’t have a pair,” etc. And as we played the kids really did use the phrases. I don’t think I could have hoped for more.

Later in the day, my friend’s 10-year-old came over—we’ve been watching the Planet Earth documentaries on my computer. He’s really a bright kid. Planet Earth is in English but has Spanish subtitles. We eat popcorn and he reads along. Due to the power outage we couldn’t use the computer. Instead we played Go Fish! and he whipped up on me! By the end he was speaking the English names of the “animalitos:” whale, snail, tropical fish, sea horse, and more. It was a pretty good day, until the religious fervor of the evening hours anyway. The vigil lasted over 5 hours until after midnight. The dogs started barking at 3:30AM.

If I could change any two things about this developing country, I would demand the noise ordinance be enforced and I’d put into effect some sort of leash law for dogs and perhaps pigs, cows, and horses. Individual freedom is very important, obviously. But when the practice of your individual freedoms, religious or otherwise, completely disrupts the work, sleep, and daily functioning of half the town—that’s not okay. Practice what you wish, but have some respect for others you know? Get up at 4AM and start grinding corn, go for it, but keep your dog in the house if he’s going to bark for 3 hours straight. It’s not too hard to be respectful when you think about it—but you have to think about it.