Ladies and Gentlmen of the Jury, I´ve finished my Peace Corps service and proud of it. I finished technically on July 16, 2010. I stayed another month to host 6 of my high school friends who came to celebrate a successful service, and organize an economic study of Nicaragua with 8 students and Professor MacLeod from Ohio Wesleyan University.

I´m currently in Lima, Peru looking for a job, and as soon as I get one, I´ll have a moment to sit down and reflect more fully. Until then, thanks for keeping an eye out for me, and I hope you liked my experiences vicariously as much as I did in person. Love and Peace.

After an unintentionally extended absence, I feel I should add something before the arrival of the parental duet. being absolutely swamped lately has been great. One of my teams won our regional business competitions and represented two departments in Managua. Two of my students were interviewed on national television, with their well spoken North American Professor (me). I was also interviewed in La Prensa, the widest circulated Nicaraguan daily.

As my second Holiday Season in Nicaragua arrives, I've got to reflect. I've pushed myself emotionally in ways I never thought I could, (in some cases too far) but learning from every step of the way. I have been getting worn down lately, to the point of thinking about returning even though I desperately want to stick around and finish my work. I think I've done good sustainable projects with my community, and I've got more lined up.

I'm starting to rebuild a school room in a town two hours north of me, a project which will include weekly environmental lectures. I'll be working in two schools next year with four teachers, and I'm studying for my GMATs. I still have seven months left to prove to myself and my community that I am as self-motivated and effective Peace Corps employee as I think I am.

After almost a year teaching business classes in rural Yalí, Nicaragua, I´ve found an emotional payoff. Each group of public school fourth and fifth year students spent the last couple of months organizing a creative business plan and presentation. The Institute and I organized a town fair for the competition. All students had to present their business to a panel of judges which passed around from booth to booth. There were hours of dancing, food, music and prizes. It was widely considered a success by the town, all of the NGOs, and government organizations were there to encourage the students daring efforts into the competitive world of business. Unfortunately, none of the students or parents were pleased with the competition and was forced to leave for the night to let everything cool down. I thought it went well.

Our three best groups went on to compete in the regional competitions. A honey acopio, coffee packers, and a group of painters presented their business plan in front of a judge of primarily Peace Corps volunteer judges. The painters won it all! They are the one group chosen to represent the two-department regional competition. I thought my work with the business class was winding down, but it looks like it might just be getting started. They are phenominal artists, especially considering the meager resources, and scarce encouragement.

I´ve also decided to study for my GMATs, which my parents have been so kind as to finance. While hitching a ride down to pick up my books this morning, my driver and I ran across a man who had just falled from his motorcycle. We carried him and his bike to the side of the road, to let increasing traffic pass. We got him in the back of the truck, and rushed him to the hospital. His wounds weren´t bad, but his leg was absolutely shattered, twisted in a devilish angle. Turned out the post office was closed anyway, and I spent the rest of the morning getting back to Yalí. Adventurous morning, no?

I´m currently watching some of my fifth year students reenacting some of Nicaraguan folklore in our computer lab/auditorium/biggest room we have. The kids are speaking really campesino (farmer) and have chickens and dogs. This has got to be one of the funniest specticals I´ve seen, which is good.

I´ve realized that I´m getting really sick of my host family. I´ve never lived in an environment that was so negative. If I were to write a book about them, it would be called, La Quinta Perdida. They live in their cumulative losses, and can´t seem to recover. I´m too poor to move out (which would necesitate a bed, posibly a fridge and a stove). I now know what its like to be poor and stuck. It´s like having a bad lease, a job that doesn´t pay, and a bad roommate all at the same time. I was hoping I would never do this, but countdown: ten months.

I finally finished my proposal for a project I´ve been working on for about three months. The Mayor´s Office, and a small community two hours north of my town and I are working to rebuild a once-dirt floored, open aired class room. The walls, and most of the corrugated zinc roof is up. Still, there is no floor, gaping holes in the corrugation, no windows, doors, or floors, much less chalk boards. Hopefully USAID will help us out with paying for all the rest.

Between getting that application in and working towards the first annual business competition, I´ve been quite busy. This October 2nd, all of my four classes of high school students will gather in the park to compete for the best business innovation and planificaiton. They have spent the better part of the year working on creative businesses that fill specific needs pertaining to the community. We´ve spent the last month writing the business plans. I´m actually quite proud of the majority, and can´t wait for the regional competition.

This week was also Central America´s 188th year of liberty from Spain (September 15th). There were a lot of college age kids and recent grads around hanging out at the pool, and staying out until all hours of the night. Except for the fact that I live with small children and have to be extremely quite entering at early hours of the morning, I almost felt like I too was back in college. Except that my host brother playfully pointed a gun to my face the following morning interacting what would have gone down had I not been me. The gun fight in the mountains last night that kept me up until 5 in the morning didn´t help to calm my nerves. No one else has mentioned it, but it was the first time I had ever heard anything like that. Ever.

I hadn´t remembered for a while how different here is from there until I saw some of my sister´s reactions to Nicaragua. She took pictures of things I consider normal here, and somethings that weren´t shocking in a good or bad way. But even the roadside stands are of particular interest, and the bare-dirt floors, and the weak hand shakes. I´ll try better next time to warn and prepare. But to any visitors, expect things to be different.

I am really happy, though, that there is now one person who can prove that I was here, that I do work, that I really live in Nicaragua. Excuse my desire for validation. I´m not sure so many people remember I exist, including myself. And there is certaily no one but myself and my boss, and one or two other volunteers who know exaclty what I do. My host family doesn´t even care to ask.

After a marvellous visit by the Bean (whose bank account we drained--sorry!) I found myself drowning in responsibility. Living with the paranoia that things won´t be done the way I want them to be done, I find it hard to delegate. This means that if I´m not around, nothing gets done. When I got back, my director was angry, my classes were behind, and I had missed my deadline for my grant through USAID. I forgot to mention that I had a mysterious illness the week before the Bean arrived, and was incapable of getting anything done; there went my month.

Since then, I haven´t had reason to leave Yalí. I´m trying to get everything back on track before I have to justify it to my bosses during an in-service-training this weekend. That doesn´t mean I haven´t had time to enjoy myself, though. This weekend, the boys and I built a mini-mini-golf course in the front patio. We made flags and everything, and used a baseball and bat. There were more than a few hole-in-ones. Afterwards we all sat down to listen to Vivaldi´s Four Seasons and I read East of the Sun and West of the Moon--all thanks to Lena and her intellectual goody bag.

I never did extrapolate on my adventure to Colombia, an inability I attribute to extreme culture shock. Imagine if I had gone back home. My trip was great and even more meaningful because I got to see Rabe and because it will be my only out of country vacation for my two years in the Peace Corps. On arrival, there were some initial errands that had to be attended to , my favorite of which involved being pinched, pricked, and winked in a two minutes flat. I had to convince the Red Cross at the airport to give me a free yellow fever shot AND change the date to a week before. Thank God they were all girls, and I could charm them with my passable though accented Spanish, oh yeah, and blue eyes. Although to keep quiet in front of the boss, one of the ladies did pinch me, shortly before giving me the shot.

After said incident we were free to wander the streets of Bogotá. We site-saw during the day and hung out at Chris´s apartment listening to salsa music with his girlfriend Lorena at night. It is a beautiful city of 8-10 million people. Latin American cities have a knack for being ¨Big, but to an Uncertain Degree.¨ The huge metropolitan plain at 2640 meters above sea level bunches up into a cluster of skyscrapers before slamming headlong into impecably forested moutains which dwarf the city. The cordillera is gently crowned by a monastery on one side and a Mother Mary on the other.

Perhaps after being in Nicaragua for a year, any city could have brought me to tears. Saying that, the city is World Class, with restaurants of every style, ornate parks competing for space with Blackberry festooned suits, and enough museums that we had to cut not a few visits short. My next trip there will theoretically not be so rushed. It may be slightly more dangerous than Nicaragua, but it is a city; Jekel and Hyde in full gear.

Still enamored by both sides, I made the return trip. I had bought a flight out of San Jose, Costa Rica for half the price as a Managua ticket. Although, my lack of fine-tuned planning nearly put me on the streets on my way there and back. Leaving Nicaragua I hadn´t thought about where I was going to stay until I was on the bus to San Jose. I wandered the rainy streets long past sunset looking for any hostel with room. My return trip was marginally smoother, despite the fact that I hadn´t anticipated staying there another night. To my chagrin (though not surprise) the bus I intended taking home doesn´t run this year. Sorry.

This amongst other hang ups made my return trip lonely, sad, and inspiration for my last blog post. Bogotá is a beautiful, metropolitan hub, finely cultured, and stacked with gorgeous people. My flight to San Jose reminded me I was going back to Central America by sitting me next to an older lady who kept staring at me and invited me several times to stay the night at her house through sparsely teethed cackles. Crossing into Nicaragua was worse. Everyone seemed to have poorly capped teeth, words were increasingly swallowed, women stopped shaving there legs, people were generally less hygenic and in worse shape for their age, and trash was indsicriminantly tossed from any window.

But I suppose that is why I´m here. Less to shave peoples´ legs than to help plant the seeds of wealth building, and global integration (to a point). In a backwater country, breaking cultural barriers to market entry might be difficult, but that´s why I took this job in the first place.

I didn't realize what a shit hole Nicaragua was until I left it. As I write this there are students staring, and I think they might have understood the last sentence I wrote.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY USA!!!

In Niacaragua, where ¨There is more time than life,¨ I still manage to find myself wishing for more of it. Without my admition that it may be my essence to scramble for time, I emplore you all to lengthen both the day and the week. 36 hours. 9 days. Please. I ran out of an entire month to write a proposal for Peace Corps money to fix up a school in my municipality. My high school business classes are farther behind than any one else in my group.

Instead of working diligently to rectify the situations at hand, I´m instead on vacation. I´m preparing for my first and probably last time out of Nicaragua in my service. I will be in León srfing by this afternoon, and leaving for Costa Rica tomorrow. From San José, I´ll be flying to Bogotá, Colombia for the week to visit Rabe. I´m exciting about visiting my old college buddy, it´s been a long time and I can´t wait to see what kind of shenannigan´s have been undertaken. I also need to see some museums, galleries, culture, etc. Niacaragua, although beautiful, is lacking in certain fields of interest.

Even before this vacation, though, i´ve been on mini-vacation here in Managua. I have been helping with some of the new business volunteers´ training--although I almost missed it completely despite having them switch the entire training schedule to accomodate my trip to Colombia. No harm, no foul.

Back in Granada, I always seem to find a slow moment and free internet access: required ingredients for written word. The hot humid "winter" months (so named for the rains) have recently set the pace for work. Sticky. Slow. Exasperating. Fortunately, my breezy mountains are slightly cooler than Dante's Nicaragua. Sitting near sea level, I'm not sure how volunteers--or anyone for that matter--gets anything done.

Despite my relative climactic mollification, each one of my projects hangs by a thread. My business classes are a month behind at best. We have a parent/teacher meeting planned for this Monday. Perhaps together we can mitigate the homework strikes. At least I'll have a volunteer from the next small business development group in Yali to offer a hand. Most of my counterparts are less than interested in the prospect of more homework to grade, but I kept mixing it up and disorganizing the little organization we had. My job is not to teach the class, just to make sure it's technically sound. The necessity for a four section parent/teacher should be indicative of the level of impassability we've reached.

My secondary coffee project is once again on hold due to a pending change in counterparts. This will be my third. I've also taken so long working with my mayor's office, that I'm not sure we can get anything done before the end of my service next year.

At the same time, I'm completing my first year here in Nicaragua. I've been "In-Country" over a year and in Yali for over ten months. This tends to be the time most volunteers requestion their commitment. I didn't have any initial doubts, so I'm double loaded this time. I'm positive I want to stay here until the end of my service. I just wonder if I'm doing any good.

My first year in Nicaragua has now officially come and gone. I´ve had my official One-Year medical visit with nothing to report other than a wart that had to be brutally burnt off. My palm is still sporting an inch long whole, the depth of which I´ve never had on my body.

I´m currently typing in my Institute where I give class. We have a great set of computers where the internet has recently been reinstalled. The first year (7th grade class) is doing work, but not even pretending to behave by our standards. They are screaming, fighting, yelling, but somehow getting their assignment done. Our sence of workspace solitude does not exist here. I´ve just given an Excel class to teach all my classes to write professional surveys and market studies. Some of my sixteen year old students did not know how to click and drag. There is a huge gap between those who grew up in town and those who did not.

As I was walking from a planning session the other day, the lights went out. This is nothing out of the ordinary, and my cell phone is always enough to light the path. I quickly realized though that my cell phone drowned out a cacophony of flashing lights. There were thousands, no, millions of fireflies exploding sporatically their eerie greenish light. It looked like the grandstands of the olympics but without another light around. Occassionaly lightening in the background would drown out th stadium sensation, only to return it within seconds. Besutiful.

Simultaneously knocking on hard wood to evade the dreaded jinx, I whole-heartedly claim things are stellar. I have spent half of April out of Yalí. After a fantastic vacation, and two weeks of trainings and meetings, I´m finally ready to get back to work. I´m just not sure I´m needed. Empty Nesters around the world, I feel your paigns to care for and reprimand self-sufficient children realizing all too late that they were quite capable of solo success for some time. My business class miraculously went on in my absence. I´ve returned to hear some fantastically creative ideas for entrepreneurship here. I´ve come to the realization that after three months of not working with the coffee exporter, I don´t have a place. They simply hired a technician who outshines the old Starsky and Hutch of my counterpart and me.

I am happy to get back into the institute with newly invigorated teachers and students. The competitions for the students entreprenurial projects is arriving, and we´re all getting excited. Even my first english class to my coffee cooperatives in over a month was great. I felt it was so long over due, the phrase of the day was ¨It´s About Time!¨

There´s also been a decent amount of rain lately, which means Reading Weather for me. We´re actually in a great saddle between two climatic peaks. With the dry season waning, and rains a´comin´, there´s enough water to do laundry and still enough sun to dry it! After a long, and completely drenched hike the other day, I was very happy to have dry towels, boxers AND sweatpants. Hot coffee didn´t hurt either.

P.S. I´ve become so proficient at clothes washing, I broke chunks off of the cement washboard the other day! Too much stress, or Old Abe? You be the judge.

As I dab at my never ending snuffles, I am thankful I didn´t get them last week. After spending a couple of days I should have just taken as vacation days, I left on the grandest adventure of my Peace Corps career. We got down to Granada by evening and escaped to the volcano Island of Ometepe be noon the next day. Contending for a position as one of the Seven Wonders of the World, our brief stay on the island was an important part of the Peace Corps Nicaragua experience.

We stayed with a friend and made a sprint attempt to the top of the smaller of two volcanoes, Maderas. Turning the four hour hike into a two hour jaunt, we all felt deserving of the five pounds of rice we brought to the top--we no where near finished it. Within fifteen minutes of reaching the crater lake at the summit, two of us were swimming across. We got to the other end to find one of the most spectacular views I´ve been privy to see. We slowly made our way back, tighting with every stroke. Turning to each other half way back we said what we had avoided admitting: our legs were starting to cramp up. We stopped talking and just kept trucking, using mostly our arms. Making it back to shore--ten yards of mud and partially decomposed detritus--was painful. But we did it alive. By the time I got back, though, my legs had cramped up so bad, I had to crawl through the mud in front of a group of twenty canadian super-hippy med students. They proved to be some odd-balls, but at the time it was embarassing.

The ultra-hippy vibe is marvellous, and I hadn´t been called Conservative in years. The narrow-minds of the extreme Left have found a haven on Ometepe. I´m happy they can find peace hiding away from the rest of the world: the literature, the research, the anecdotes that describe the world progressing because of capitalism. I´ve researched the etimology of words looking for a good combination. After already applying it to a scholarship application, I´m ready to say I support Regulated Capitalism. I believe in it, and I believe it works. Weather it come from the Left (opening and reforming socialist ideals to realities of free markets) or from the Right (responsible taxation and limited distribution of basic needs) I think it works.

The rest of the political discussion on the trip was dictated by a German companion whose uniquie view on Northern European Socialism was eye-opening. We were all interested and had our own swists on the story. We cruised in a private whip, a rare experience in Peace Corps, up North. We hiked around Estelí, and finally made it to Canyon Somoto. It was beautiful, filled with people because of Semana Santa (Holy Week) but Beautiful none the less. I got dropped of in Condega just in time to get my last bus back, and found myself home for a very late dinner.

Since then, I´ve been preparing for a training session my sector has with our teacher counterparts. We´ve also been inundated by a plague of large insects called the chicharra. If I hadn´t been convinced they were an annual epidemic, I would have sworn we harboring Jewish slaves in town. Their humming sound is so intense, it disrupts class in periodic bursts. They are beautiful in their all encompassing presence. I´ve never heald an exoskeletal creature of such girth. They are about two and half inches long, and longer in circumfrance. Their long, fine, paper-thin wings barely look like they are strong enough to support them in aerial transport. This could explain their frequent landings in inauspicious spots. Like my bed. It reminds me more of a mutant locust plague than a yearly occurance.

I´m also suffereing from some combination of allergies and a cold. They all tell me I´ve got gripe, which is a cover-all, non-specific set of symptoms I don´t believe in. I´ve spent more time in bed than I should have after a week of vacations. Cést la vie.

Happy Easter and Much Love

Transitions are always strange times. I feel like Peace Corps life can often be as big of a transition as Middle School. I´m losing my sitemate and getting a new one. Sometimes there are two volunteers in a single site and I have been lucky enough to be one of those. But just as my sitemate and I are starting to understand each other and work together really well, her service has ended. She´ll be going back to Portland, Oregon after an extrodinarily successful service as I put together makeshift vacations for Semana Santa. There will be a new volunteer moving into my town within the month. She seems really nice and I´m excited for a change, though still nervous that we won´t get along. It´s not like there are a lot of options if you don´t like your sitemate, though I have become more confident in my ability to deal with all sorts of characters successfully.

This week, I´ve been pretty busy planning my exams for the institute, saying goodbye to my current sitemate, planning Semana Santa, and planning for the rest of my month being packed with Peace Corps training sessions. I´m also realizing that I´ve been here for a little while. Having been in Nicaragua for almost a year and watching my sitemate leave I can´t help but think about what I´ll do when I leave. My time to ¨Plan the Rest of My Life¨ is waning.

None of this has anything to do with the reason for today´s commentary. I just felt my first honest to goodness earthquake in Nicaragua. I have to admit that the sensation was slightly numbed by feeling an earthquake in Chicago at four in the morning just before I left last year--minor geologic miracle. This one was still cool, though. I was sitting down to type in my buddy´s cyber when all the monitors and roofing started to shake. It was cool but when we went outside, we thought we were both crazy because it didn´t look like anyone else had even noticed. Turns out we weren´t crazy. In the last twenty minutes half a dozen people have come in to confirm this small quake. Keep in mind Nicaragua does have an extraordinary reputation for destructive quakes.

Half marathons are not that long. I suppose they are supposed to be completed in less than my 1:56. But at least I know what I have to do for next year.

Little Mark has been born, healthy and well. Congratualtions, Alec! Being so far from the excitement back home, I feel slightly removed from it, but I´m happy that I´ve been kept abreast of the situation. Lee-Ann´s students also found an old book that Susy Ramos gave me years and years back. I write to them more or less every week, and they sounded so excited to be using the same book I used.

As my half-marathon quickly approaches, I have lost the ability to avoid stress with the occassional piece of chocolate or even more rare... cigarette. Better for it. I found myself running to the next department, Estelí the other day. I was told when I got there that I had already run 15 km. Running the way back, the my only thought was pride that I was running more than a half-marathon (21 km) in one day. Once I got back, I was told that I had only run 16 km in total! Disappointed, but no where near defeated, I´m still cross training daily.

Saturday, I found myself hiking uphill with my sitemate and a group of girls I teach. In a defiant act of masculinity, or perhaps testosterone based stupidity, once lost I would not allow the group to rethink directions. Instead I took out my trusty machete and slashed our way through the cloud forest, uphill--ughhh!--until we reached the summit of one of the tallest peaks in Yalí, El Volcán. After being called cochón (faggot) repeadetly the week before, it was an even more necessary and invigorating Indiana Jones experience. The entire top of the mountain was covered in thick vines and pillowy, green, lichenous trees. It looked more like a movie set than reality. We found an easier way down once at the summit, but low and behold, I came to the rescue again! Forced into service, I killed a snake for the screaming masses of helpless damsals.

The next morning I found myself handwashing (per usual) all of my days garments, just to give myself a little gender balance. I then ran up to the base of El Volcán and tacked on my usual hour of Yoga. I´m not sure if I´m going to be in shape for this mini-marathon, but I´m sure trying.

I walked four hours yesterday through some of the prettiest parts of the world. There were parts I had passed in bus before and never really had the chance to just stop and stare at. There were flowers by the side of the road I had never had the time to smell or pick. I climbed a hilltop on a great divide from which the views abound. The tallest peak in the Municipality, Cayansimil, played peak-a-boo from behind passing mists. The misnomer El Volcán stood proud and tall on the other side of what seemed to be the infintesimally small town of San Sebastian de Yalí.

After a beautiful day of adventures, I was afronted by further frustrations. The Peace Corps requires work reports every so often to make sure we are actually volunteering our time and efforts. The new design has been unserviceable to say the least. I have now written the report twice and on my third attempt this morning, could not even open the file. This, after making the best out of what would otherwise have been an idle weekend. I went to a community to work on a promised and highly anticipated business plan with a local entrepreneur. Needless to say, the business plan hadn´t been touched. We pushed through and developed some of his ideas anyway. The weekend did prove productive, but enlessly frustrating.

Compared to the world standard, North Americans are active, timely, and easily annoyed. We are perplexed when others don´t fit into our norms of acheivement, aptitude and motivation. When things don´t work, I make them work. There´s often a large amount of inner turmoil and frustration, but things happen. I am critical, demanding, always certain, goal oriented and motivating. I am an Alien in Nicaragua. I am American.

Unlike last year, this year has already been a whirlwind of events, problems, possible solutions, work, and fun. This last week alone was indicative of the schedule and the year I have chosen for myself.

I restarted classes Sunday night with my youth group and it went well. Monday I started classes, had the evening off, but was out by eight o´clock with my jeans still on. I made one of my teacher´s cry in the institute and we subsequently had a huge blow out that started in front of students, followed into the office and finished with two intermediaries and some more tears. I had classes in the day and started my English classes to two coffee cooperatives at night--all of which went surprisingly well considering my morning.

I gave class Wednesday morning before packing my bags and heading out to Jinotega. I spent the rest of the week helping translate, eating way too much and drinking until way too late with another trade mission with delegates primarily from England, but also comprised of Australians Danish, Americans and Japanese. During the week, I also found out my Mother might never be able to see my ailing Grandmother again because of family disagreements. I had gotten over the fact that I may never see my grandparents again, but I was dead set on having my parents tell them to their faces I loved them as often as they could. On top of that, the only girl I´ve met in nine months who I thought I might ever click with decided we didn´t click so well afterall. Someone I work with pulled a rather Mrs. Havershamesque move, both encouraging me and warning me of the impending doom. I´m now exhausted and just want to go home. Being an absolute vagrant, though, I´m not sure where that is. Right now I´m going back to the bed I´ve been sleeping in for the last few months. I will arrive fifteen minutes before I have to give class because I missed my noon bus to Yalí having not prepared for it beforehand.

Sitting in the institute where I give business classes, I realized I was getting in the way more than helping. We are putting together the schedules for the year and I may have worn out my welcome. I don´t want classes on Mondays or Fridays because the majority of a seemingly endless cascade of holidays, reunions, and meetings fall on those days. I´ve made my point and now type away my morning waiting for the debates to finish and the white papal smoke to arise in decision. My schedule last year was clear and I spent the majority of my day (and night) reading or looking for other projects. This year, I will have to micromanage my schedule to make sure that I give due time and effort to each pending project. My main projects remain giving business classes and helping certify farms to sell to Starbucks. I´ve finished two projects during the vacations: painting the world map in the primary school and translating for the Japanese/Korean Trade Mission. I also have a host of other side projects I´ve recently started or will be starting soon. Amongst them are supporting Yalí´s struggling tourism industry and giving English classes to professional coffee cuppers in Yalí and Jinotega. I´m excited to get the year started as all of it depends on the schedules of my primary projects. My recreational activities have naturally been spurned in the process. I have found myself halfway or almost done with four different books, all of which I started thinking I had all the time in the world. My budding interest in my Catholic heritage—no doubt to my parents´ content—has had to take a backseat. I even stopped running for several weeks because my schedule and my traveling simply didn´t allow it. The hyper-tradeoff is just being realized, and I´m sure its full impacts are not quite felt. This week I´ve been running between propaganda drenched trainings at the institute, meetings all over town, and touch-up-work on our world map—all of which needs to be done before classes start next Tuesday. In the meantime, I´ve found solace in reading Harry Potter to my eight-year-old host brother every night after dinner. So perhaps I still have more time than most.

After spending the majority of December stagnating, activity has improved. After my vacations, I found myself facilitating my sitemates dream of painting a world map on the grammar school. Two weeks ago we got the mayor´s office here to pay for the project and pumped most of it out. Although some fine details still await attention, the majority is done. I had to leave early to join a trade mission in Jinotega City. The group was a mix of Japanese and Korean coffee buyers and ¨Cuppers,¨ or professional tasters.

From Monday through Thursday I dutifully translated from Spanish to English, from which the two English speakers translated to their respective native tongues. Amongst the coffee plants, were presented Western proclivities to Eastern accuracy. We travelled over some of the best coffee producing lands in the world. As such, I even got to show off Yalí and a friends farm to the delegation. I learned that there is a lifetime of information to learn about the mystery of coffee as some of the world´s most discerning cuppers were just learning about its production for the first time. Caffeine is a drug just like any other... it has its mysteries and its romances, its temptations and entrapments.

Sometimes the only thing someone needs from stress is a little escape. I got to see other volunteers and had a very positive vacation. Returning to my little room, I breathed a sigh of relief. The boys were excited to see me back. I continued my position as their superman by bringing home smores. I taught the lads to heat up marshmallows over the stove. They were elated and spent most of the next morning plotting how they were going to get more marshmallows. Today I went on a three hour hike with my sitemate. She´s not the best hiker, but a good conversationalist, which made things funner than my solo venture would have been. That´s how I enjoy myself here in Yalí. I read, relax, hike, run, and do whatever work I can find. I missed it.

With the world economy in the tank, this is the perfect place for me.

As Christmas approaches and then arrives, I find myself wishing more and more that my family was here, or I were with them. Not my host family, not my training family, but MY Family. I miss you all a ton, and things can get lonely without the people you identify. Reading doesn´t take the edge off, you can only run for so many hours a day, eating makes you tired, drinking is expensive, and watching the Bears beat the Pack REALLY made me want to be curled up at home watching on the TV at home instead of my little TV in the pharmacy. I guess I just have to deal. As quickly as the holidays have come they will go. In the mean time at least the weather´s nice.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. I will wake up for an early run, come back and do some quick shopping before I attempt to cook Oatmeal and softboiled eggs for the twelve people in the house right now (a mere 4 more than usual). Soon I´ll be in the middle of a surfing vacation with warm waves crashing around me and fireworks above. I´ve got bigger fish to fry!

Love you all, Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, and an immensely Happy New Year

The slow creeping days of vacation I´ve been warned about are here. I miss my family and watching my host family get together with all the awkward moments, old stories and inside jokes doesn´t make things easier. Not being particularly emotional, I tried getting really drunk instead which resulted in nothing more than embarrassment and a very difficult run the next morning--training for a half marathon an hour south of me in the Ithsmus-Bound Cordillera Isabella.

I´ve spent plenty of time calling my counterparts and looking for new work with coffee cooperatives, the harvest of which has begun. I though I would see only an increase in work due to my connection with a large coffee exporter, but the opposite has been true. I woke up at four thirty in the morning to take a four hour bus ride for a ten o´clock meeting with a cooperative coordinator. How did that pan out? He wasn´t in the office that day. I called and or showed up at the coffee exporter office four days in a row. What happened? My counterpart was not in or did not call me back. I tried to take a two hour bike ride over a mountain with a faulty bike to find a friend to get my new phone´s user code. Where did I end up? Sleeping in his bed waiting for enough sun to ride back and talking to him on the phone because he wasn´t there.

Other than that, I´ve had a lot of time to run, yoga and read. I´ve been running through books faster than I ever have and listening to the same CDs over and over again. It reminds me of the Christmas breaks of the past sans Starwars on constant repeat. Oh and I´m wearing shorts right now.

This weekend, a friend of mine and Peace Corps set up a trip to Managua to eat Thanksgiving with the Deputy Ambassador of the US. After a long bus ride and a quick visit with my training host family and almost a month without leaving my site, I felt very Nicaraguan. As soon as we got to Turkey Day, it was a whole different story.

We spent the early part of the afternoon sipping on cocktails in the pool. We moved on to vino, turkey, garden-grown vegetables, cranberry sauce, apple and pumpkin pies, etc. All were done to perfection and covered with gravy. The afternoon was fantastic and quickly shifted to the tryptophan-enduced slump. We recovered for a second round then drifted off to sleep on big beds in air conditioned rooms with hot showers.

The next morning we continued to indulge until shortly after lunch when my buddy and I left. We were sated and beginning to burn from swimming in the hot midday sun. It was perfect. The Deputy Ambassador´s driver dropped us off to get cabs, but within twenty minutes I was back to the Nicaragua I know.

I´ve realized the reason so many Peace Corps Volunteers feel unfomfortable in there sites and when they return home, is an inability to adapt quickly. The transition from rich to poor, from powerful to powerless, and the reverse needs to be mastered. I will never be a Nicaraguan Campesino. I am a Chicagoan, born and bred. I am also a well adjusted employee of the United States living in Nicaragua. I function within the community perhaps not seemlessly, but functionally. I´m still the gringo, but I have no problem moving from world to world.

In the interest of the science of comfort I´ve picked up a new project. I spent this weekend at a hostal two hours north of Yalí. They are putting in flushing toilets, hot water showers and eventually internet access. None of this sounds like a big deal, but mixed with an integrated community and farm experience, it should be really cool. There are also petroglyphs about a two hour hike from Rancho Solentiname. I gave an impromptu class at a Polytechnical school, and we ended up dragging half the class along to see them. Horse back riding is a must, and some of the views were incredible. Needless to say, it was an amazing experience in an iconic setting.

Although I should leave analysis of the US elections to those residing in state, or those who at least cast their ballot, I can’t help myself. In my defense my parents did mail my ballot to me. Due to inherent inconsistencies of the Nicaraguan Post, however, it has yet to arrive. I am proud that our president elect is one of such international esteem as opposed to Voldemort W. Bush. I was also proud to have the concession speech in Chicago. I bragged to volunteer and Nicaraguan friends alike that ‘Those hundreds of thousands of people are watching Obama accept the presidency fifteen minutes from my house!’

Five days after John McCain delivered history’s most gracious concession speech, the Nicaraguan Municipal Elections broke out. There were no peaceful mass gatherings. There was no concession. Period. The FSLN Sandinista Party—reformed remnants of the Cuban-style-socialist-dictatorship still figureheaded by Daniel Ortega—stands accused of stealing the elections. The PLC Liberal Party is counting and recounting the election results in Managua, reminding me of the 2000 or 2004 US elections. Party leaders called their constituents to the streets en masse to protect or protest the election results, respectively.

Four people were murdered in Managua as the streets erupted in a violent spectacle, a caricature of Nicaraguan politics. Even here in Yalí, the warm, eerily quiet and visibly tense election day boiled over in a 2 am rock fight. Broken up by the army two hours later the exchange resulted in a mere two injuries. One young man was shot in the leg, and an even younger women lost her front eight teeth. Although a 48 hour prohibition was placed on the country, booze was well stocked and may be held accountable for significantly lowered accuracy.

No one will ever know if the elections were truly fraudulent, due to a lack of extra-party—not to mention international—observations. This factor does not help the tainted claim of ¨Free and Fair Elections.¨ In Managua the Friday before the elections, drinking cocktails with US Ambassador Callahan, hitting up the poshest nightclubs in Nicaragua, I barely considered the political trepidation. I love the seamless contradictions of being a Peace Corps Volunteer.

Although interested and bound to informing those interested of the goings on here in Nicaragua, the subject is already passé. I lost the first draft of this blog in a botched file transfer, but just couldn’t let myself get by without explaining what happened in the Nicaraguan elections. I’ve gotten over them and now I’m really excited about my future projects. I’ve started a series of accounting presentations with my coffee farmers and I will be working with the Mayor’s office to promote tourism to local petroglyphs and waterfalls. Today I’m having a deservedly comfortable evening creating my first business exam in Spanish for my high-schoolers. My site-mate and I even made smores and tea to celebrate pure relaxation. She knits as I absently type.

Although being a PCV is a string of stereotypes, every one has their own experience. Today nicely represented my general modus operandi. I spent just enough time shaving before an icy shower to remember how much nicer hot showers are on such cold mornings. My hot breakfast and coffee waiting for me more than made up for the previous temperature offense. I co-taugh my three monday classes without incident, the first being at 7:15am.

My coffee counterpart called me on my return at 11 am and informed me I was needed. I led our new technician on an unexpected adventure to the misty mountain of El Volcán, where I introduced him to one of my favorite farmers in our group. His wife happily fed my avacados, cuajada, and tortillas, and of course coffee. Post return I relaxed and finished a Michael Pollen book on American eating habits. I rearranged my clothes drying inside and practiced yoga for an hour or so as the rain picked up. I briefly picked up another book before eating my gallo-pinto, tortilla, cuajada, and coffee dinner. Of course, I did none of the cooking or cleaning, but rather ran accross the street to the cyber where I waited 14 minutes to upload this very page due to the ever heavy rains.

As it turns out, members of the superfamily Hymenoptera vespoidea can pack a punch for their size. This superfamily includes all wasps, between which I can´t decide the culprit. About two and a half hours into a four hour hike to a nearby lagoon, I trapsed into the wrong side of the tracks. A pure black wasp stung the upper inside of my right calf, and it swelled almost instantaneously. I slept through it last night, but today walking to and from the institute was a serious problem as I can´t quite command my right calf muscle to flex. By the end of my classes, my calf was red, hot, and swollen to the point that my sock was cutting circulation off. I talked to my doctor/host sister and called the PC medical office. Making a compromise of the two advices, I´m now on an anithistamine, pain-killer, antibotic slurry. Yumm...

Don´t worry, the rest of the hike was beautiful. I didn´t let a swollen calf get in my way of enjoying the all powerful Mother Nature.

The evangelical priest that started the prayer service didn´t know the family name, much less that of the little girl. At seven years old she at least deserved someone remembering her name. Not the priest, the following eulogizer, nor I remembered her name. After an hour and a half of claiming that this already forgotten girl was never really of our world anyway, but rather--like all of us--a possession of god, the torch was passed.

The diminuitive white box, which had oddly been the focus of the sermon, was angled and prepared to be filled. Cal and salts were tucked between liners, although their combined aroma sacked the room. The angelic body was picked up by a slight woman and put into the freshly painted box. The woman then picked up the blood soaked pillow as though uncertain what to do with it. It was soon removed with the bed she had been imbedded in pre-box.

My four friends and I sat awkwardly in near-silence downing coffee and rosquillas. As we left, we stopped in front of the box. Nothing but a piece of clear plastic seperated the living world from her. I was expecting a manicured face, like the open caskets at home. Instead, her nose and mouth were stuffed with cotton gauze to keep the fluids in place. Her forehead still bore the three marks that most undoubtedly left her unconcious long enough to drown in the rocky rapids near town. Rain spit at us on our way home nailing home a reminder.

* * * *

After my pleasantly soaking Thursday morning run, I ran into a couple of friends on their way to work. It was the birthday of two twins, and I balked a sweaty hug to the one present. We talked about the potential of going out that night to celebrate, despite the terrential downpour. Hours later, my counterpart called to tell me that we would not be leaving town nor would the coffee producers be coming in for our usual work. There had been a man and a young girl washed down stream from the nearby fiord, truck and all. I walked to my friends store, whose older sisters were having the birthday. They all told me they would be going to the vela, (a late night observance of the recently dead including unending eulogies, rosquillas and coffee) instead of celebrating the birthday duet.

It was their second cousin who had been washed downstream. Her uncle had been driving at around the same time I was running. The girl had been found on that very friends´--her second cousins´--family farm. The Uncles´ jeans were found with C$11,100 from their recent frijoles crop. Not knowing that the Uncle was to be found at the end of the weekend, bloated, and with his eyes eaten out, we all went to the depressingly unattached service. They tried to cross a swollen river I´ve crossed time and time before, and in worse-off trucks. The rain had been beautiful and ceaseless for weeks. Tragedy was now tacked on as Mother Nature´s reminder that ravishing beauty can be deceptive.

Thinking ¨finding oneself¨ applied only to wanderlust beatnicks, I ignored its implications. However one phrases it, one of the biggest parts of growing up--exacerbated by living abroad--is finding a way to anchor oneself. Without family or friends, there is no discernable point of reference. One is left with a matrix of previous perceptions and pretentions on which to build, but there is certainly no architect but myself.

After my recent vacation to the fabulous colonial house my friend is sitting in Granada, there were things that I had missed. I put off one meeting and completely blew off another. With the excuse of the fiestas patronales further complicating lengthy bus travel, I was easily let off the hook. After a week of no classes, and having forgotten to mention to anyone that I was judging a competition an hour South of me instead of giving class the following day, I had come back to a mess of my own making.

This tension was compiled by senseless jealousy that all of the guys in my group had found a girlfriend or at least a playmate. By yesterday morning I was sour and an hour outside of town at a coffee farm. The whole day became consumed by a beautiful rainstorm. With no chance of escape or making it to our second appointment, my counterpart, the producer and I buckled down to work. We got all the paperwork immaginable out of the way by the afternoon.

The rain begrudingly halted as though it had run out of water but not the energy with which to dispell it. Conversation had turned to native plants. Our host took us out to his modest plantation while fog and clouds silently unzipped themselves from one another. I stood on the flatbed of the truck smiling as we passed under trees spewing Spanish Moss-like barba del viejo. I smiled so hard I found myself laughing at how miraculous the spectacle was: thousands of glossy coffee plants dwarfed by monstrous trees bedragled by barba del viejo. This is my Nicaragua.

Being unanchored as I am and thus subject to every emotional squall, I find it hard to remain politically neutral. Peace Corps policy is officially neutral, and we volunteers are obliged to follow suite. The Danielista* party headquarters are directly across the street from my humble abode. Sandanista songs about ¨Killing the Yanqui¨ and ¨Kill the Gringos¨ play day and night. Those don´t bother me because they are often coupled with Michael Jackson or Stairway to Heaven. What does bother me is that my host mother lost her job as a high school teacher last year because of being Liberal. My host sister and counterpart will be losing the same job this November because she will vote Liberal.

*US backed Somoza dictatorship overtaken by socialist Sandanista party in1979. By mid 1980´s, the Sandanista party--headed by Daniel Ortega indefinately--had increased public welfare and infrastructure, though was no less oppressive than Somoza. The Contra army began in the town two hours North of Yalí, La Rica. With US support and unneccesary ruthlessness, it overtook the Sandanistas. Free and fair elections have been held since 1991. Because of a party split in the last elections, Daniel Ortega won the presidential seat for the old Sandinista party, FSLN (mockingly called the Danielista Party). The FSLN has since disabled the participation of various political parties. They have also rigged the upcoming municipal elections through dislocated polling and obvious gifts to party members. Weekly, the FSLN blatently delivers livestock or construction material to party members.

On a more regional note, Latin America is becoming an even more interesting place to live than usual. Bolivia and Venezuela have recently asked their respective United States embassadors to leave. The American government stands accused of encouraging the Bolivian seperatist movement. Venezuela has followed suit to show solidarity. Nicaragua, being economically reliant on Cesar Chavez, often takes political hints from Venezuela.

Venezuela does not have Peace Corps Volunteers, and Bolivia is not accepting new ones after a recent political misunderstanding. So we will see how the remaining volunteers are dealt with as a lithmus test for any potential embassadorial changes. Honduras is also pending the expulsion of their US embassador, which puts even more regional pressure on Nicaragua to tow the line.

With no current gubernatorial changes in motion here, life will continue as normal. Even in the worst case scenario--if the US embassador to Nicaragua were to be removed--we volunteers won't necessarily leave. It will just leave us a little less political cushion.

In the meanwhile, I will continue to eat my gallo-pinto and cuajada. As a matter of fact I am currently on a little vacation in Granada, a tourist destination where a volunteer in my group lives. The former Captaincy-General of Guatemala, which included Nicaragua at the time, gained independence from Spain on September 14th. Hence, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica celebrate Independence Day at the same time. We are about to grill and have a guys night out to celebrate like we celebrate our independence: cultural exchange?

A week of scorching days can so easily be sedated and forgotten by one good afternoon of rain. The rising and re-rising dust is replaced by low lying clouds. Everyone sits on their porch, dances to otherwise loud music rendered inoffensive by the rain, and enjoy whatever solitude is gained by incliment weather. Good rainstorms are the Nicaraguan equivelant to a foot and a half of snow: too much to voluntarily leave the house, but not legally enough to close school. Nearly falling victim to the utility of a good excuse I forgot about tomorrow´s class until after dinner.

Before the rain I had a great melding of both my worlds. My institute is funded by the coffee exporter I work for. Today the exporter invited all of their local growers, recognized students, and school officials for a thank you and a presentation. I got a little thank you, the type given to a relative for warm wool socks on christmas. Although I think I´ll be fine without wool socks for the duration of my service, my fleece pants and long sleeve shirt feel just right. Even goldilocks would be jealous.

I noticed it first as I would ride between farms. The long lines of foliage drying in the countryside. Beans hung up on barbed wire--which is used for everything including clothes lines. In town trucks filled with bean sacks rumble through. The once quiet cooperatives and otherwise vacant storefronts are bustling with sack after sack of beans. Each bag is emptied out, dried, sifted, and bagged for sale. The cosecha primaria, or first harvest is in full swing. This is the biggest harvest of the year and I´ve got court-side tickets.

Today I went out to the family farm with my host brother. It is a hundred or so meters above Yalí, and only three kilometers down the road. We hiked along a beautiful creek upstream from Yalí and up to the plantaciones. As we approached I heard repeated dull thuds. The workers pull the lightly dried bean pods onto a tarp and beat them mercellously until every bean has been freed from its husk. They discard the empty husks into a second pile. They stand on the beans, a slowly but surely growing hill of dark red kidney beans. I hiked around the farm for a few hours, and when I returned, the beans were bagged. My host brother was putting away all his paperwork and protecting his meticullous calculations. The pile of dried, beaten, sorry husks are set to an immediately roaring blaze.

We drove back to town just as it began to drizzle. I realized that almost every field with the tell tale burned look of beans in cosecha had an equally large blaze going. The air was filled with smoke. There were smoke lines coming from every farm and hillside in view. It became apparent that this was becoming an all encompassing experience: the town is alive, the hills become burned, and all of this is viewed between whispes of smoke and dilapidated trucks.

Its a whole lot of work to get one plate of beans. Fortunately the farmers minimum wage--usually supporting an entire family--of $2.50 a day keeps the prices down.

As I walk up to the steps of my house, my host sister calls out cochino... vago, cochino! amongst smirking laughs. I must look strange covered in mud, drenched to the bone producing ear after ear of pinolo--a native corn which Nicaraguans proudly derive their auto-appellative, pinolero--highlighted by juicy purple kernals. My horse hair covered jeans were a task to remove being plastered to my thighs for the last several hours.

I left this morning with an adventure in mind, although not really sure what the adventure would entail. My guides were a couple of girls that work in the nearby Mini-Super, my favorite oximoronic store on the main--and only for that matter--square. We hiked off the roads I had walked up, and found our way through a valley. We passed by two familial houses, accumulating a cousin and a horse at the latter. We hiked up to a mountain ridge and hid under the generous boughs of trees during the first downpour.

We could already see our destination: a small laguna which had recently been cleaned out of detritous material by a local cooperative. The cousin was a very well informed and politically aware high school dropout. His questions were pointed. His interest in the US political and immigration system was inspiring even as I explained the difficulties of nationalization.

We walked on to the Laguna, behind which was a gorgeous field. Jack Nicklaus could not have designed a better golf course. Horses ran wild and bonsai-esque trees grew as though divinely planted. As one of the girls and the cousin explained that this field and all the fields around it had been their childhood playlot, and the laguna their kiddie-pool, I became lustingly envious. It began to absolutely poor as we talked about politics, and educational and professional obstacles typical to Nicaragua. The mountains seemed to open up a new, even more impressive view with every turn.

On our return, I deftly took the horse down the mountain. They all said I needed the practice with a younger, more bravo horse. Of course a mountainous hike with ocassional precipices is the only time to learn. We dropped the horse off at the second house and continued on foot. The dense rain lightened up just as we realized that the little streams we had hopped over hours before had become fjording nightmares. Once my shoes knew no return, the cousin took me to pick corn from his grandfathers plot. He taught me how to pick sweet corn, pinolero, and cubano. We shoved as much as we could into our bags and went to catch up with the girls. As we got into town it began to rain again, as though one encore was not enough. I said my good-byes and thank yous as the rain let up, and walked up to my porch. My host sister called me a little piggy, a little piggy who just bums around town, never content to stay in one place. Vago, cochino!

My counterpart and I rolled out of a coffee farm this Thursday just as the clouds started to settle in. We didn´t talk the whole way back. Two bunches of ripe coffee beans at the end of the farm flaunted their crimson jackets. Each hung low, proud, and bountiful, like a miniature Buddha. We rose out of the valley as the clouds slid down to meet us heavy and wet. Surrounded by green, two auburn trees blushed to reveal their deciduous tell. I could see the main road up ahead as a striking black bird with two robust red stripes landed and watched our departure.

I went to my first Yalí funeral. I ended up walking the half mile between the church and the cemetary with the sister of the deceased. She weeped, and I did my best to give her water when necessary. Her boyfriend and best friend hadn´t been able to come, so she was happy that I was there, even though I´ve only known her a month. She ran off, and one of her other friends and I found her crying against the hot, black hood of a flat-bed truck. As she cried onto both of our already sweaty shoulders I felt like I was actually supposed to be there. Today at the final Mass for her brother, that sentiment was reinforced. We sat with the Father and the closest family eating lunch afterwards.

In between those events I went diving off of a ledge called ¨El Salto¨ with my first visitor, a volunteer from the Japanese version of the Peace Corps, JICA. The dive was about four meters and at first made me nervous. I first encountered it the day before while hiking to a farm to learn how to horse back ride. Im getting used to it.

Although jealous of many of the summer photos I have seen of waterside fun, concerts at dusk, etc., my biggest regret is that the internet here is not strong enough for me to upload any more pictures to show you. At least I have internet access, though. My air conditioned class room right now is a comfortable place to type. There are pine trees around the Institute, and my new buddies are painting the walls outside right now. I call them my buddies because the local futbol team has taken me under their wing as a kind of social interest. I don´t think they know what I am yet. They may just be following the adage ¨Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer.¨ Who knows, though.

Whatever it is, they have helped me feel slightly more normal in an abnormal environment. I´ve played soccer with them a few times and we throw the football around every couple of days. We had beers and listened to hip hop and reggaeton the other night on the corner in front of my house. They tend to be some of the more influential people in town, both socially and financially--one of the guys is a lawyer who lived in Arizona and Virginia for a few years--which might come in handy down the road. Yali having had previous peace corps presence has made my references a lot more stable.

After the most dilerious fever I´ve ever had burned off my stomach bug, Yali has been action packed. I´ve gotten my running and yoga routines down, supplemented by whatever activities the lads are up to. This is my second week of co-teaching classes, and one of my professors is already showing her own flare and interest. My youth group looks like its going to be focused on the environment and eco-thourism, and we´re going on a hike to view the town on Sunday. My training is done and my coffee counterpart and I will be hitting the dusty trail to help certify our micro-producers next week. I still seem to have time to read, play the guitar, play cards with the boys I live with, and help some of the kids from the Institute sing in English. That acutally reminds me I have a session with them in four minutes.

I hopped on the six am trip to the departmental head to arrive by about eight thirty this morning. Above the windshield one old sign read a list of ten commandments of behaviour in english--including ¨Don´t smoke¨ just to highlight the fact that these buses have been around since before indoor, or minor´s smoking was banned--while right next to it read Dios Salve. The dilapidated fleat of old school-buses the country relies on for transportation is in some ways charming, despite the obvious dangers of overcrowding coupled by a host of functional and aesthetic maladies. Between that and the rag tag old pick up that my counterpart and I will be driving around in three days a week, I´ve got my transporation needs set out.

I spent this week visiting coffee farms. They look no different from the normal woodland until you realize that every leaf under the sparse canopy has uniformly glossy, rippled leaves already budding the granos de café. Although it will certainly fade, I´m enamored with this beautiful process. I´m working with super-small time coffee farmers to certify them for Starbucks, which is very similar to FairTrade, but without the organic component. This week has been a bit of an eye opener as to what Nicaragua is like away from the touristy center where we trained.

The week beforehand was fun, and American, and airconditioned, and summery. Our swearing in ceremony was bookended by charlas to whom few paid attention and a few days in a hotel together. We went to expensive clubs and restaurants, strolled the malls of downtown Managua, and talked endlessly in English about who we were before arriving inNicaragua and to whom we espoused to be during and after our services. They were fruitless conversations that made us all feel a little bit better about letting go for a long time.

As a fellow Volunteer mentioned yesterday, Jinotega is the understated beauty of Nicaragua. Clouds being burned away from the valley by the early morning sun is striking, even for those of us who have a hard time remembering the extensive facets and potentials of beauty. That doesn´t mean that these two years won´t be a challenge. There will be no one asking me how I feel. There won´t be anyone telling me ¨It´s OK,¨ or reminding me that despite the daily ego hits, there are things I´m good at. I´ll miss those little crutches, but I´m as ready as I´ll ever be.

P.S. All the hippies claiming that Starbucks, the WTO, and any large corporations with their manufacturing or farming in developing countries are evil empires: try living in a developing country. I fully support those developments because they are feeding hard working families. Their are certain steps that every economy must go through to reach wealth. What are you doing to help? Don´t protest these processes and delay the betterment of workers rights. Instead protest trade barriers to get more money to the world´s poorest employees. Remember the economy is not an equal sum game.

After one of our Peace Corps brethren was told he could not be sworn in as a volunteer next week, a group of us went to a beautiful vista overlooking the Laguna de Apoyo and Granada. The Mirador and the view we´ve come to know clouded over as we watched a storm approach. The black stillness of Lake Nicaragua was replaced by an undulating dark grey. The twinkling lights of Granada went next as the clouds consumed whatever they passed. We sat in the drizzle watching the lagoon disappear before ducking under someone´s house or restaurant, we couldn´t tell. I couldn´t help but connect with this pathetic fallacy. I am even leaving the small list of things I have become comfortable with here for the mountains of the north woods.

Currently reading ¨Into the Wild¨ makes me feel comparatively sane. I am still nervous.

After getting back last night I decided to call the old Deuce, my former employer. I felt like I was back there, and maybe that´s what I wanted. When I woke up, slightly hungover, I realized familiarity is a crutch. Its alright to miss it sometimes.

Well this is my town. It is as charming as it is secluded, although for the first couple of weeks there´s a British gal in my host family´s home. I guess she got there first, so its more her family than anyone elses. She´s really cool, though and so is my site-mate. We ended up back at our training sites after almost a week of being in-site and i felt like there was ready to move on. We still have to complete our youth group project which theoretically will be going to a local orphanage and at least spending some time with the kids. But I have not been compelled to work on it. As a matter of fact all I can think about is what I´m going to be doing in my site for the next two years. I know I shouldn´t rush this process but I can´t help myself... I´m excited!

I have another week and a half here and then we have our swearing in and I´m released into the wild. My site is spectacularly beautiful as you can all see from my video below. I met with a youth group I´ll be working with and afterwards they walked me up to a mountain just outside of town (with my extreme suggetion). They were really cool and really nice. My counterparts all seem very similar in this light, and because I am the first business volunteer in the site they are also really excited.

I will be teaching classes in the institute in town as well as to the youth group. I will also be teaching a refined and distilled form of the business class to a group of fifteen local coffee producers. My counterpart and I will be working closely to make sure they follow our business development models and become certified for broader exportation. As excited as I am, it can be upwards of an 8 hour commute from Managua, and 3 hours from the nearest supermarket. Hope you all enjoy this little nugget of Jinotega beauty.

After seven weeks of training, I´m finally starting to feel comfortable in my town. My family and I understand each other, I know the prices and routes the buses run. I know the local paper vendors, bartenders, and other people its good to know in town. That cooshy life will be over July 18, and after a week of swearing in and preparing, training will be over and I will start my work in my permanant site: San Sebastián de Yalí, Jinotega, Nicaragua, which boasts a bustling population of 6,000. As soon as I am comfortable at one site, I´m off to the next one, my real one!

Yalí is in one of the poorest and most remote regions our hemisphere has to offer. It is way up in the mountains for Nica standards, although the summits are just a little higher than the base level for Denver. The town is one hour from the nearest paved road and nearest person from my sector, three hours from the Department Head (Jinotega), and six and a half hours from the capital city (Managua).

Now, before you make judgements, there are seventeen other volunteers in the department from other sectors, including a health volunteer in Yalí itself. The countryside is supposed to be spectacularly beautiful and pristine, and my packet reads:

¨If you like to hike, this is your site!¨ I will be teaching high school students La Empresa Creativa, a business class designed by the Peace Corps and the Ministry of Education. I will also be teaching the LEC to 80 local coffee producers and helping them with their practices. There is also a fantastic opportunity to work with the local government on a project promoting ecotourism. It is not going to be easy without paved roads!

Anyway, after figuring everything out, this is exactly the type of site I wanted. I want a tight knit community where I will feel that I am making a difference, and am given the space for some introspection and personal development. That sounds a little lame and even a little selfish, but then again, isn´t everyone?

Sometimes its the really little, lame-ass things that make a big difference. Today, my site-mate and I went to a local orphange, which is really not local because its forty-five minutes in a mototaxi down a dirt road. We talked to the directora about having our youth group in town collect books for them only to find out that they lacked even basic necessities: fruits, vegetables and bread. We took a tour around the clean, though modest faciltities. Every door we opened held children calling every woman in the room mami, clinging to our legs, reaching to be picked up, held, talked to, and loved. I found myself with a child on my hip in every room. A two-year old named Manuel reached for my face. He grabbed my nose, pulled my lips and tugged on the flesh of my gruff, unshaven chin, over and over again. I never would have stopped him. I didn´t want to. I explained to him that it was my beard, and that one day he would have one too.

I still don´t love kids, but I found it hard to leave every room. The youngest, like Manuel, cried after spending only minutes together. I realized that these kids need a lot of loving, maybe more than this life can offer them. On the ride back, I didn´t know what else to do but joke about it. All I could say to my site-mate was ¨I can´t believe that kid tried to stick his fingers in my mouth!¨

Saturday night at eleven o´clock I hear running and general chaos between my little apartment and the main house. Thinking it a family problem that has nothing to do with me, I roll over. Not a minute later, my host mother is pleading my name outside of my door, obviously in tears. In nothing but my boxers I run out to see a huge blaze not fifty yards from my doorstep. My host mother is telling me her brother-in-law´s house is on fire, and I hug her out of instinct.

I run back in to grab clothes and glasses, but by the time I run into my host father he has already given up running buckets of water across the street. The girls and my host mother are out front repeatedly screaching, ¨They never come! The firemen never come!¨ It was something I would hear over and over for the next forty minutes. By that time, two houses, a construction company the family also owned, and the boarding house of a japanese volunteer away for the weekend are in a forty-foot blaze. The exploding cans and equipment in the store continuously explodes making the scene reminiscent of war. The firemen have to come from the next department and return to it everytime they need more water. There is no hyrant in my town. The fire continues until about one-thirty in the morning. In the mean-time one man is carried onto our porch with a burned leg. He yells for water, which I get for him from our kitchen, although by the time I get back outside the story has unfolded. My host family tells me he dropped boiling paint on himself while trying to steal it from the burning store. He is hauled away by paramedics as I narrowly avoid what would have been my second appearance on national television. ¨Only in Nicaragua¨ say the girls, ¨Only in Nicaragua would someone do such a thing.¨ I almost regailed them of the looting in the States during the Rodney King Riots or Hurricane Katrina. In a country where agony and suffering are the only memorable history, I thought it better to bite my tongue.

Last week I went on what we call our Volunteer Visit, where we aspirantes go to visit active volunteers for a couple days. I ended up with a really cool guy and I hope my site is as full of activity as his. He has a couple really cool projects with a pineapple coop and with nature reserve guides. Speaking of which, this week we get our site booklet which shows us our posibilities. We get to look at the different sites and even get to list our preferences, although the descision is ultimately made by our APCD (Assistant Peace Corps Director). There are many an acroname I have omitted from previous blogs, so consider yourself lucky.

The day I got back from my volunteer visit, I really felt at home here in Masatepe. My home here and my host family felt really comfortable. I think I may have some trouble moving on. I´m happy where I am, in the close proximity of other aspirantes and in a great town/family/institute. I even had my father´s day conversation while dangling my toes in the lagoon of an inactive volcano, which made me appreciate my setting even more. Teaching is getting easier, although our youthgroup has taken a turn for the worse. The kids seem uninterested. I do feel like I´m getting a little bit better with them, although not sure if it´s too late.

Well I think I´ve started to talk about what a complete 180 this has been for me, but it´s starting to sink in fully. I´m enjoying myself here, but there are just things I miss. You have to watch your back at all times here, and one just can´t take a walk at night here if stressed out. There are just certain pleasures of American adulthood that I have had to shelf. I miss the night life, which was fun here during our Fiestas Patronales, but has since disappeared. I miss the ability to have a hot or cold shower then cuddle up in whatever temperature setting I want! I miss being an adult: doing my own laundry, cooking my own dinner, leaving whenever I want, talking to whoever I want, doing whateverI want, and going wherever I want. Most of the things I miss are small things. Although I love my host family, I miss all of you who are reading this, you who make me comfortable and at home: MY friends and MY family. Thank you for always being there in the past if I didn´t say that before I left, and I hope some of you will still be there for me when I get back. Sorry to sound possessive, but that´s how I feel today.

Here I have had fun and learned a lot of things, but cultural differences can be frustrating, just as much so as a Nica would have in the states. The fact that no one talks to there children about condoms and then get pissed of at their kids when they get pregnant. The occassional lack of individuality and the desperate need for family. At the same time, I imagine they think of us as monsters for kicking out our kids at the ripe old age of eighteen! Well the first quarter of the 11 week training is enjoying the novelty, and the second quarter is feeling the initial culture shock. That´s where I am. The rest of training is usually getting settled in. After training there is apparently further culture shock and further settling in. I´ll keep you all informed don´t worry... Oh and I promise at some point there will be photos, but i haev simply not had time yet, sorry!

For those select few interested in world wide weather patterns, you have probably noticed the tropical storm ¨Alma¨ passing over Nicaragua right now. For those of you who are normal, that´s what´s up. School got cancelled almost nation-wide and there has already been one man killed. Despite these weather patterns and a serious lack of sleep last night due to an incesantly leaky roof, I got to meet the Embassador from the US in Managua at the Embassy while seeing a little presentation from them. On top of that, when I got back home I started to get restless. I couldn´t help myself and I went on what I think is about a six mile run to the nearest town there are more aspirantes in. My family thought I was crazy, as did my fellow aspirantes... I love to play in the rain!