The last month or so haven't exactly been the best for me healthwise. It started at the end of June when I got diarrhea again, only this time I had a parasite in my digestive system (last time it was an amoeba). It was awful, I'm not going to go into details or anything, but lets just say I had it shooting out of both ends. This happened on a weekend when I had plans to go see friends, instead I had to remain within a five block radius of my house so I could run back and use the toilet. I got better once I took some antiparastic medication, which apparently isn't approved by the FDA, but hey, it got the job done. Afterwards I was fine, but weary of what I ate and drank since I still don't know where I caught a parasite from. It's funny though because the next week after recovering I actually got hit with constapation, which while not as bad as diarrhea, its not very fun either.

The next week I came down with a cold. The first few days I had a wicked cough and a scratchy throat. Once that was gone I was left for a week and a half shooting out bright yellow green snot and phelgm out of my nose and throat. It was pretty disgusting. Also a good thing that I spent a lot of my class time working outside, because I was spitting out a lot of it. Trust me when say you would not want to see my handkerchief.

Upon recovering I felt the amount of energy they had to be very low, and suspectful that I was losing weight. By now most of my pants fit real big on me, and though I've punched in a new hole in my belt before, a new one needs to be made. So I decided to call the PC medical office to try and set up an appointment. Unfortuanetly, my phone decided it didn't want to function for me that afternoon, I mean it's not like I had any important calls to make! Later that night, however, my situation got a little bit more dire. I had a fever of about 100F and some other symptoms I'm not entirely comfortable sharing. By morning I had also seemed to have come down with, yes that's right, diarrhea. I made my way down to Managua to see the doctor where I was sent to the hospital in order to get some blood work and stool samples taken. Turns out I had yet another bacterial infection and was put on antibiotics for the week.

Now skip forward to the following weekend, three days after I had finished my antibiotics. Don't worry, no diarrhea, but I did get another fever. Except this one was different. It started Friday night that I was feeling tired. By Saturday afternoon I had a full blown fever that never dropped below 100F, and going up to 103 degrees for a while. I had a few other accompanying symptoms though that spelled out trouble for me. Aches throughout my legs and thighs, swollen lymph nodes, headaches, and once my fever broke on Monday, a itchy rash on my chest, upper arms, and upper back.

So what could all of this be? Dengue fever, a tropical fever transmitted by mosquitos that are most active during the day (making my mosquito net useless against them). And in addittion to all of these symptoms I also have no energy and feel constantly tired, and due to how much blood work I've had to get done I feel a little like a pincushion. So far I've gotten blood taken three times in four days. The first time I went to the lab to get my blood taken was especially awful and the woman kept poking me trying to find my vein, first with her finger then with a needle. Eventually she decided that rather than take it from my arm near the elbow she would draw the blood from my hand where my veins were visible. It was horrible. It hurts, and after making the mistake of looking I saw that instead of being pumped into a closed test tube, I saw that my blood squirting out of a needle and dripping into an open tube, the gremlin looking nurse with heavy eye makeup asking me the whole time "sos nervioso?". Add to this the fact that it was late and that I had barely eaten that day and you can well imagine just how light headed I got. In responce to this, my wonderful nurse decided to use an alcohol swab as smelling salts and kept shoving it in my face to the point where I felt I couldn't even breathe out (since usually only one of my nostrils will work at a time).

Anyways, its been four days since I've been here in Managua waiting for my white blood cell count to go back up so that I can be dismissed and go back to my site.

I’ll start with the critters. Due to the fact that none of the schools that I work at have electricity, the windows are always kept open. This allows sunlight (the only light source in the schools) and some air to filter into the classrooms. This also lets in other things such as an incredible amount of dust. But the most exciting thing to fly in so far has been a bat, a serious blood sucking bat. As I was in the middle of dictating a spelling test to the kids, some bats flew in, one of which hung itself up on the wall near me. One of the students got up in a flash, threw an empty plastic bottle at it, make it crash down to the floor, where it wriggled for a bit before my student stomped his foot on it. All this right in front of me (the classrooms aren’t very big). It was heart wrenching watching that poor thing killed right in front of me when it wasn’t doing a thing to anyone, and could have easily just been chased out of the school.

So most of my encounters with reptiles deal with finding a few geckos on my bathroom walls. No big, don’t bother me none. Last week was a little different for me. One of the kids from my neighborhood came over to tell me how his family had gone to the river and wanted me to check out what they had found, but to wait a bit, he’d come and call me over. So eventually I make my way over and there in front of there house, right on the sidewalk, is lying this huge snake, about four and a half feet long! I watch as they hack its head off and start throwing it at each other. And can you guess what they did with it? If you’re thinking snake skin belt, then I’m sorry, but no. They fried it and had it for dinner. The next night I had gone over (no worries, the snake was all gone by then) they were having soup for dinner. Iguana soup, with these little iguana eggs floating at the top of it. They invited me to have some, which of course I responded that I had already had dinner. I don’t eat poultry, beef, pork, and I most certainly won’t be trying reptile anytime soon.

I think I may have mentioned traveling in Nicaragua before, whereby it involves getting on a very crowded old school bus from the states. Let me now emphasis just how crowded. This past weekend I was traveling to my friend’s small mountain town for her birthday party and to get away from the excruciating heat of Leon. The ride to the department capital of Matagalpa was glorious. There was a crisp, cool wind and we made good time since it was an express bus that makes less stops. The ride from Matagalpa to the campo where the birthday girl is located, not so great. This road weaves up and down and all around all these mountains, and it’s not even paved. So whereas 18 kilometers on Leon’s flat, paved roads take 20 minutes to travel, it takes an hour in Matagalpa. To make matters even better, the bus to this town leaves only every couple of hours, so when it arrives at the terminal everyone rushes the bus to get a seat (standing for 3 hours on a bus down a dirt road can’t be fun, thankfully I don’t know from experience). Luckily one of my friends that I was traveling with is friends with the driver who saw us walking towards the bus, so he saved us a seat, onto which we squeezed three people and a dog. Most of the trip there my friend sitting closest to the aisle had some woman keep resting her entire bosom on her shoulder, and my other friend three seats down from me had a fupa in her face. Things got better two hours into the trip when many of the passengers got off at another town along the way. However, 20 minutes after that the bus broke down, at a distance from our destination where there was no way we were walking there with all our crap. So everyone gets down from the bus and we stand around on this deserted road up some damn mountain, and at some point I look behind me and see the bus just rolling downhill! Thankfully there was someone on board who hit the breaks on that thing. Needless to say, once it seemed safe everyone unloaded their possessions from the bus, and waited around for a half hour or so for another bus to pick us up and take us the rest of the way (which was still a half hour trip left).

Despite the rocky start, the weekend was great; I barely sweat, whereas in Leon I consider it a good day when I’m merely perspiring a little as opposed to being drenched in sweat. Getting back home is a different story. This time I decided to go the opposite direction towards Managua instead. Apparently a town down the road (which of course takes hours to get to) was having some sort of festival, so the bus was packed. I’m going to go ahead and throw a cliché in here, because it fits rather perfectly. We were packed like sardines. The bus was so full they couldn’t shut the doors; people were literally hanging out of the bus. One woman decided to squeeze herself onto the two person seat my friend and I were sharing, by nudging us and plastering me to the wall. She then asked where I was headed, and upon finding out that I was going further than her, decided to seat her child on my lap. So there I was on this extremely crowded bus, pressed against the wall, with some random woman’s five year old kid sitting on my lap, for about an hour or so. Other than that, the trip went smoothly, or as smoothly as it can on an unpaved mountain road. The next bus I took, however, did break down. The good thing was that this happened just outside my town, and right in front of the best quesillo place, which is just what I wanted for dinner.

My last topic in this entry will actually be about my project. I’ve finally started to teach. My work consists of four stages; the first is observation where I just observe classes. I have now gotten into the demonstration stage, where I teach classes on my own. I can’t believe that I’m going to be an elementary school teacher for two years! When I signed up for Peace Corps, I wanted to be an environment volunteer doing environmental work, now I’m an environmental volunteer teaching. It’s not so bad since all of my schools are in the very rural parts of town, and the rural kids are so much easier to deal with than the urban kids, but still… I’ll survive, and maybe even impart some good knowledge.

Last week was amazing. Why? Because I had a visitor. Andrew, my favorite brother. It was terrific having him here in Nicaragua, land of lakes and volcanoes. The first few days he hung out with me in my town, going to school with me and everything. Seeing what a normal day is for me, from riding 3 miles to get to school, to hitch hiking to get to my other school, seeing how my hammock time on the porch can easily turn you into a zoo creature as all the neighborhood kids press there faces to the bars and gawk at you, to washing clothes by hand, and trying your hardest to sleep when you feel you´re going to melt. Aww yes, the wonders of Nicaragua.

We also did quite a bit of traveling too. I´m not sure if I´ve mentioned this before, but traveling usually means you hop onto what used to be a school bus back in the states but is now meant to cover a distance of several kilometers and filled to brim with people (some of which travel with chickens), and where at every stop vendors get on and try to sell you everything from food, beverages, pills, dvds. Although most of the trip Andrew was lucky and we traveled mostly in micros (pronounced me-crows), which is a van that will seat 16 people, but usually jammed with about 20. Its much faster and more comfterable, and if you´re trully lucky they´ll even turn on the a/c.

So where did we go? All over. First we went to León, where I usually go about once a week for lunch and some shopping. But we were there to party and savor Nicaragua´s specialty, Flor de Caña! After that we headed to the beautiful city of Granada, followed by my favorite place to swim and relax by the water, the gorgeous Laguna de Apoyo. Finally we went to my training town to say hey to the family and spent our last night chilling in Managua.

I mention the sites in order to entice some of you to come and visit me, because I assure you, we will have a wonderful time. But really, the best part of the trip wasn´t so much the traveling, but getting to hang out with my brother for a whole week after not seeing him for six months. It´s funny, last night as I sat outside chatting with my neighbors (part of my normal routine), they said that as I talked about his time here and of how I get to see the rest of my family in December that I got a glassy eyed. Well, I´m not afraid to admit it, its been six months and I have to wait nine more until I get to see all my friends and family again. I miss them all so much, and do get homesick. But no worries, I´m doing fine, having a blast, and looking forward until our next encounter.

The week before last I got the worst news since I´ve left home. While I was away I lost my grandfather, and I found my heart broken. It was a complete shock to hear, having spoken to him and heard him laughing over the phone just four days earlier. The rest of that day I was only glad to be living on my own, as having to experience this pain in my host family's home would have felt terrible. If I could not be with my own family where I could comfort them, and they me, I wanted to be no where else at the time but locked in the cave that is my house and let my grief wash over me.

Though the heart retching pang I felt had not gone away by the next day, I tried my best to stay strong as my grandfather always did and try to go about my day as normally as possible. I went to my school where I had a meeting with all my teachers where I had to give them a short presentation. It was hard to be in that classroom, but it would have been hard to be anywhere else in the world. I knew I could not handle another night like the one before and decided to go into the capital city to be with friends when I needed the support, but still understand my need for space. It went as well as one could hope and since then I´ve been feeling a little better trying to keep busy.

And so I try to live on. My grandfather was strong and would want me to maintain so. So from here I´ll tell you all the things that have happened that would have made him laugh.

Classes started recently and traveling to my rural schools is an adventure all on its own. Walking to the bus stop with my teachers on the first day of school we got chased by a mad cow down a dirt road. Even this is nothing compared to going to my farthest school the next week. More than five miles into the trip I fell off my bicycle, and into a river. And as I lay there in the water scrambling to get back up I look behind me and there are my teachers just cackling! By the time I finally made it to the school I was still soaking wet, and my shoes were so water logged I had to spend the rest of the school day observing classes barefoot. The best part is, this was my first day at this school, and that´s how the students met me.

Te quiero mucho Abuelo. Y te extrañare.

The first thing I´d like to do in this entry is to apologize to all my followers for the lack of any entries in over a month now, especially since my last entry was a bit depressing. December was a rough month for me here, between being bored and homesick during the holidays it was hard to get through. Happily, my first Christmas away from home wasn´t too bad. Christmas eve was spent with my host family just enjoying the day and culminating in a big dinner for which I made a tasty vegetable pot pie (you know you´re in Nicaragua when you have to use a ketchup bottle as a rolling pin!). Christmas day itself doesn´t seem to be a huge deal here as the streets were deserted. Since my host family headed out for the day, I decided to do the same and visited another volunteer in a nearby town. Her town was also deserted, but it was nice just hanging out and talking how Christmas wasn´t as bad as we thought it´d be.

The next thing that I have to do in this entry is give a great big thank you to my friends back home in Miami. I recieved your package yesterday, yes a full month later. But I have to say, it felt so good to get mail here. I felt opulent with my new treasure as I walked around the city with that box in my arms. Upon opening it, however, I was seized with emotion as I got to the singing card with all of your voices ringing out to me. Afterwards though, I have to see that I greedily tore through it reading each card thoroughly and finding my gifts. In the end, I have to say that I am glad that I got the package when I did, as rifling through it made me happy and only a little nostalgic, for I have to say if it came on Christmas I think it would have made me very homesick. So again special thanks to: Danielle, Daliz, Jeanette, Christina, Sandra, Silvia, Carolina, Melanie, Vivian, Flor, and Diego (in no particular order).

The point when things changed from a great deal of monotany to excitement can be pinpointed to New Years. Having stayed in my site for Christmas I was allowed to venture out for the celebration of the New Year. And venture out I did, going all the way to the beautiful San Juan del Sur, where they have great beaches, and some nice establishments. It was also good to spend it with some of my friends from training, a trully wonderful bunch of people. The traditions here for the New Year are a little different from the ones back home. There are still fire works, but most of them are shot off at an effigy of the Old Year as an old man. Also there was no countdown. It wasn´t until one amongst my group looked down at their watch and noted it was 12:01 did we yell and hug and celebrate on the sand surrounded by stars, it was the grand start to what I hope to be a great year in Nicaragua.

About a week and a half after that I was able to move into my own house, the first time I´ve ever lived entirely by myself. It was a great move. I love my new house, a little, unpainted house with a flushing toilet (a real luxury among Peace Corps volunteers), no windows, and a beautiful view of the nearby volcanoe. My new neighboorhood is great too, after two days everyone has gotten to know me, and now after two weeks I´ve learned the names of almost all the neighboorhood kids. So far most of my neighboors have asked me the same if I am afraid to live alone (I´m not, so don´t worry) and isn´t it boring not having a tv? I still keep in contact with my host family, as I haven´t moved very far from them, just a few blocks away. Also for those of you who were worried before I´ve kept a tally of my battle with the local arachnids, Scorpions: 1, Chris: 4! Although scorpions are not the only visitors to my house as I can´t keep the neighboors´dogs and chickens out of my yard, and last week I had to chase an iguana out of my bedroom. One kid told me that I should have let him catch it so that he could eat it.

The new school year here starts next week. In preparation for that I´ve been accompaning my counterparts to their respective schools for enrollment of the students these past two weeks. During that time I finally got to see my last school (I didn´t make it before because I got stung by the scorpion on the appointed date). It is definetly my farthest school at 10km (6.2 miles!) away. The only was to get there is by riding my bike down the dirt road and crossing the river. By which I don´t mean, going over a bridge, but rather, riding through an actual stream. When I asked what they do during the rainy season (as it is now the dry season here, and hott!!) my counterpart replied that they usually take off their shows, roll up their pants, and walk their bikes across. In effect I have to ford a river as if this was the Oregon trail!

Merry Christmas everyone! This week has been on the duller side and I haven´t done much beyond reading. However, I did start a small vegetable garden at a local elementary school. Nothing major, just a few tomatoe and pepper plants, and 3 pepians (a type of squash).

I have to say though, that I´m not exactly looking forward to Thursday or Friday. While it will be nice to have some active days full of festivities, it will also be super weird being away from all the people I love when they´ll be all gathered together. A few weeks ago I watched my host family put together a plastic tree with some plastic ornaments, and while thinking that its just not as good as a real douglas fir smellng of pine and decked with tinsel and shiny glass globes I suddenly became very nostalgic. Thanksgiving was a little sad not fulfilling all the traditions I have with all my friends and family, but I ended up having a good time with my new Peace Corps friends. But Christmas has always been my favorite holiday, because then I was with all my family and togehter we would sit outside and spend the day playing dominoes and having a few beers, enjoy a huge feast at night, and the next day there would be presents and more family bonding time. I think this is going to be one of the hardest parts about being a Peace Corps Volunteer, being away from my family that I love so much. But I will get along, and how knows, I might even have a spectacular time with my new host family.

I miss all of you so much, and wish you the merriest of Christmases and the cheerrist New Year. May you take pride and fulfilment with your families, because trust me its not always easy being apart from them, no matter how you spend your time.

¡La Conception de Maria! Or so I´m told. Last Monday was the Catholic holiday La Purisima, a strange cross between caroling and trick or treating. The holiday celebrates the Virgin Mary´s immaculate conception and starts off with the setting off of fireworks at noon, which makes it sound as if a war is going off outside. Later in the evening starts la gritura. This when you go traveling from house to house where people have set up an altar to the Virgin and you begin to sing songs to her (there are several songs dedicated to her). I sang ¨Por Eso el Cristianismo¨ so many times I actually memorized it. The cool part of the whole thing though is that once you´re done singing people give you free stuff. Of course, like Halloween, you get a lot of candy, but that was actually the least of what I got. I also got a nacatamal, a chicken sandwhich, 3 cups (2 plastic, 1 glass), dry beans, 2 bags of sugar, a bucket, a basket, soap, detergent, a razor. By the end of the night I had a huge bag just full of stuff weighing me down.

After the holidays I had a visit from one of my fellow volunteers who came to try the quesillos, a dish my town is known for. Its a stretchy cheese, on a tortilla with crema and onions. Super tasty. It was nice having contact with someone a friend as lately I´ve been kind of bored. We walked around town and saw the sights including the oldest genizaro tree in Nicaragua (its this huge amazing tree thats centuries old) and the mirador that you can climb up and get a great view of the whole town and of the nearby volcanoe. The next day I also accompanied her to the city of Leon, which is a pretty cool place.

I´m not even sure where to start. Training is finally over, except for the two days after swearing in it didn´t really feel like that as I had to go to the All Volunteer Conference, which was cool in that I got to see all of Nicaragua´s Peace Corps Volunteers, but it made me feel as if I was still in training as I still had more charlas to go to!

Since I got into town last Friday, I´ve gone to four elementary school graduations (only one of them is at a school that I´ll actually be working at). They are quite interesting. Kids don´t get to walk on their own, but are actually guided by a family member, this goes for high school graduation too. I also went to my first TEPCE (a monthly teacher planning meeting) where I got to meet all of my counterparts. It was nice, and they´re pretty funny telling me all of these bawdy jokes and happily scraping any meat that was on my plate (they gave me so much food) onto their own after finding out I don´t eat any meat.

I also learned a very important lesson: When in Nicaragua make sure to shake out your bedsheets in case of scorpions. Oh yes, and the thing is that the sharp pain you receive from a sting is nothing compared to the rest of the symptoms. For example a tingling feeling in your extremities (lips, tongue, hands and feet) that´s kind of like your limbs falling asleep, except you feel it even when you don´t move that body part. Also there is the complete restlessness that swept over me, despite my body being exhausted and me having taken a benadryl (not so drowsy I would say). The worst I would say though is the loss of control of my motor skills, causing me to walk around like a drunk baby. Luckily the effects only last 24 hours. So no worries, I am all better now.

The Monday of my last entry was a bit wild. I got home to a nearly empty house. The only ones home were my host grandparents in the back. As the two of them are nearly deaf they couldn’t hear me as I pounded on the door or yelled out for someone to open up. As the rain started to come down I decided that I couldn’t stand outside and get wet and finally just jumped in through the window. Retelling the story to my host mom she was yelling out and laughing at me saying I was a bandido.

The next day was filled with more charlas. We went to a biodynamic farm in a neighboring town that was started by Methodists. That farm was actually really cool; they had a large organic operation going on there with a variety of crops, trees, and livestock. I got two great presentations on starting a tree nursery and on lombriculture (that is worm composting). It was rather exciting.

Wednesday and Thursday were on the duller side as they were just normal days filled with Spanish class. It all culminated with my last language interview during training. The week was not improved, however, with the writing of my final youth group report (to be done in Spanish). Even with several of us writing it together, it was still painful. Two things that made the end of those days lighter though were the purchase of my hammock, in which I will be taking my daily siesta after teaching at my very rural schools, and the playing of Monopoly. Yes, you have no idea how good it can be to sit around play a board game with your friends, eat popcorn, and speak English. Well, maybe you do, but it still felt so relaxing, and for a little while I almost forgot I was even in Nicaragua.

Friday was fun as we had our youth group ceremony were all 37 trainees had a presentation of what they did with their youth group. And some of the youth even got to attend! It was fascinating seeing the TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) group’s presentation as it’s quite different from ours. While we did gardens and made a recycled materials project with our groups, they taught them English songs. My youth group was terrific though. We were allowed to bring five kids to represent the group and they were great talking about our activities, I barely had to talk. And we also got a lot of compliments on the picture frames we made out of trash.

Saturday was yet another thrilling day exploring the beautiful country of Nicaragua. So a volunteer that’s living in my training town heard of some hot springs up in Mombacho, a nearby inactive volcano, so we thought we’d get directions and check it out. It seems the person who gave her the directions was a bit confused as they instead told her how to get to Las Aguas Agrias. We were also informed it was a 3km walk from the bus stop. No, no, not the case. We walked down this dirt road past several farms and rural communities for about two and a half hours (so about 10 miles) until we reached the entrance of the reserve, and from there it was three more kilometers! But in all earnestness, the walk was actually quite nice since it was still early in the day and not too hot, and the company was good. The entrance was C$5 (25¢) and the reserve was beautiful. It was jungle lite, very manageable, with a slow moving river. We followed the river along until we got where it collected in a big pool with crystal clear pristine water all in the shade with cool water that reached to about chest level. It was absolutely perfect, and the sound of howling monkeys in the background added just the perfect feeling of savage adventure.

Sunday I had planned a gringo free day, hanging out with my family and teaching my host mom to make lasagna. However, la queserilla ran out of the cheese we wanted so couldn’t make lasagna and everyone in the house was quite busy, and so I became bored. To cure my boredom I decided to go to the Hípica in the nearby town. This was my third hípica and by far the best one; an hípica, in case you’ve forgotten, is a type of horse parade that’s part of the celebration of las fiestas patronales. Had a good time hanging out with my friends watching the festivities.

Monday I had to go into Managua for a full day of AIDS charlas. I received four sessions on HIV/AIDS education and an introduction to some NGOs working on those issues here in Nicaragua. All of this is good as it gives me a bit more confidence in giving my own AIDS charlas; however it was a very long day that wore me out by the end.

Tuesday was my last day of Spanish class. ¡Ahora soy oficialmente un hablo hispano de nivel avanzado! This means I am not required to receive more Spanish training during my service, which could be a bit of a drag. The rest of class was dedicated to going over housing contracts and learning the Nicaraguan national anthem and the oath I need to say for swearing in.

Wednesday night was the despedida with my youth group. For the occasion we collected money and had a small little party. We made quesadillas, salsa, popcorn, and cake for the occasion. But before we got to the food we played some games; these included musical chairs and twister (which I fashioned myself out of paper, with dice in place of a spinner). They really enjoyed the games even though they were a bit shy at first as they can be when we make them play games (you should have seen them when we had them spell their name with their butts!). At the end we had a sort of awards ceremony where we passed out certificates to all the kids.

Thursday had to travel back to Managua for the last of the PST charlas. There were numerous, and required an overnight stay so that we could continue with them on Friday. Some of the sessions were a bit dull (such as my 7th medical charla), some where excruciating (such as having to sit through the program presentation for the third time), while some were quite interesting. The last one I speak of is the talk we got to have from the Ambassador. He is obviously a good source on the political and diplomatic situation here in Nicaragua. He was very open and gave us the realities, both good and bad, and it was great getting a better sense of what’s going on.

Friday after all the sessions were over I went along with half of my training group and went to the Laguna Apoya instead of my training town. We stayed at this hostel right on the water’s edge. It offered amazing views of the lagoon and the surrounding mountains (it’s a water filled crater). The water was incredible, the perfect temperature (neither cool nor warm, just perfect). At night without any lights we laid out on the dock and had a perfect view of the stars, unobstructed my light pollution or city sounds. It was the best possible way to celebrate the end of training.

So first I would like to apologize that it's been so long since I've last posted and that I have no photos this time. A lot has happened these past two weeks. Last weekend I went to Granada, which is really pretty. It's full of old buildings and kept up really well, its nice to walk around and wander around the city. That being said, it's quite a touristy place, very different from the Nicaragua I've gotten used to.

The most exciting thing that's gone on though is getting my site. This being the place where I will be living and working in for the next two years of my life. Site assignment is something that I've been pretty anxious about and working myself up to, and the event itself was rather anticlimactic. I am happy with my site though which is....(drum roll): a nice large pueblo in the department of Leon. My site is actually quite urban (by Nicaraguan standards) with a population of 35,000. The schools where I'm going to be teaching however are very rural. One of my schools requires me to take a bus out of town then its a 30-45 minute trek through horse pastures, corn fields, banana plantations, and a rickety bridge to get to a tiny multi-grade school that has 1 teacher and 11 kids.

So now that I've got my site and have seen it I have to say that I am done with training, or rather wish I was. I'm ready to start my service. To move to my town, get to know the community, and start working. I am excited.

Miss you all so much!

This past week has been good and quite a bit has been going on. Saturday I saw my first volcano. It was exhilarating to be outdoors, do a little hiking and seeing something new, all with some pretty cool peeps: my fellow trainees. The landscape at the park was beautiful and offered some great views once you climbed up the dormant volcano (there was another one that was active and smoking). Afterwards hit up the nearby town and had the best pizza I’ve had in Nicaragua to date, mind you it still doesn’t compare to pizza back in the states, but that seems so far removed from here it doesn’t even matter that much anymore.

Sunday was a much calmer day. I got to sleep in (which means I stayed in bed until 7:30am) and then read my book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which is terrific. After breakfast I went out to work on the garden. It looks terrific! One of the pumpkin plants died after transplanting, but everything else is thriving. The pepian (kind of like a squash) looks especially good, I might even be able to eat one before I leave my training town.

Monday and Tuesday I worked with my youth group on a recycled materials project where we made picture frames out of inorganic waste such as popsicle sticks, candy wrappers, chip bags, plastic bottles, and more. Had some interesting results ranging from the really cool looking to the kindergarten level, but they got a kick out of it. The rest of the week went pretty smoothly too. Thursday I had my second language interview that I was a little nervous about. Although, they have yet to tell me if my level has changed at all, not that it matters since I still have class anyways. I do feel that my Spanish has improved since I've been here, but its not perfect so I guess its good I still have class.

Saturday was terrific. Me and a few other Peace Corps peeps (along with some German guy) took a bus out of town and went to La Laguna Apoya. It was awesome. First had a nice hike down into the crater, straight through a forest (unfortunately I did not see any monkeys), which took about an hour or so. The water looked so pristine, and the temperature was perfect, nice and warm. It felt so good to be in the water again.

Sunday I went to Jinotega with my host sisters and their ballet. The town (or maybe it was the department) of Jinotega was celebrating their 118th anniversary with an Hipica (sort of horse parade) and my sisters did traditional Nicaraguan dances. The area was beautiful set amongst the mountains, and the weather was quite refreshing. It was also neat seeing all the dances and the regalia they dressed in.

Right now I'm getting excited and a little anxious as next week I get to know my site where I'll be living and working for the next 2 years! The interview I had today with my boss over it was almost nerve wreaking trying to convey my wants and expectations. We'll see how it goes.

Hasta Pronto!

This last week has been great. I've actually been out of my training town since Wednesday because I got to do a Volunteer Visit. What happens is that for a few days I got to visit a current volunteer at her site, basically as a shadow. It went fantastic. It was my first time traveling in the country on my own. It was such a long trip. I took a bus (1 hour) from my town to Managua, then a cab ride to my bus stop, and then a very bumpy bus (3 hours) to the town I was visiting in the department of Matagalpa. It was a medium sized town up in the mountains with beautiful views of the hills and mountains and wonderful weather (I was actually cold at night). It was great also to see what the life of a volunteer is really like, which is extremely different than being a trainee, where everything is heavily regimented and I am constantly tied to a strict schedule. I was also excited about eating non-Nica food. Don't get me wrong, I like the food here, but it was nice to have normal dishes like stir fry veggies or pasta without ketchup.

As you can see I've also finally posted some pictures so enjoy them! Anyways, its been a really long day so I'll leave with just these few words and these images of my life in Nicaragua.

Hasta Pronto!

Since my last entry things have been hectic ( in good ways too). As Peace Corps trainees I've basically been reduced to a teenager. I have a curfew, I'm usually asleep before 10pm, I expected to alert my mom of my comings and goings, and after two drinks I'm only one away from being drunk. Last Tuesday one of the trainee's sister was having celebrating her birthday at home with cake and we were all invited. This got me as excited as the wild and out parties I liked to go to in the States.

Wednesday I was a wreck. We had a charla (informational session or class) in a neighboring town that lasted two hours longer than usual. I was also extremely nervous about the fact that I was going to teach my first class the next day and wasn't quite prepared for, and the fact that I was jittery from all the coffee I drank was not helping. I stayed up late into the night (midnight) finishing my class material.

All turned out well, and Thursday ended up being a great day. Spanish class was shorter than usual as we spent the first hour making pioquinto, a typical Nicaraguan desert (it's half rum cake half pudding). On top of that since it was our last day with that facilitator she let us have an extended lunch. My class ended up going smoothly, my students were attentive and seemed to enjoy the exercise I had planned for them. After class we all celebrated by getting phones (so you can now call me!) and eating the cake we made, which was delicious.

I did a lot of traveling this weekend, Friday's charla was in a neighboring tourist town that has this amazing look out point where you can see Granada across the lake. Saturday, after all the torrential rain went out on an adventure and jumped on the first bus.

So right now I´m procrastinating from studying. What exactly would I be studying now that I graduated from college? Biology, in Spanish! That´s what the first class I´m teaching is on, and I´m nervous about how its going to go. My youth group is going really well though. We have a great group of kids that have been consistent with coming to our meetings. They´re always excited to play a dinamica and work on our projects.

One of the main projects I have to do with them is make an organic garden. It´s coming along really well. We spent two days with the kids digging up the earth to make seed beds and earthen mounds to plant our seeds. We also had to make a fence around the garden out of sacos (kind of like burlap, but the plastic kind that rice bags are made out of) to keep out chickens and dogs. It was really exciting going to work on the garden today to find that the cucumbers we planted have already sprouted. I think that´s really going to motivate the kids to keep working in the garden. In addition to cucumbers we also planted pumpkin, squash, peppers, and tomatoes, yum!

There´s been a lot of interesting experiences that I´ve had this past week. Eating pizza Nicaraguan style was definitely one of them when you´re used to eating it in the US. Not only did I eat this sauceless pizza with a knife and fork, but I also had ketchup on top of it. To tell the truth though, it wasn´t disgusting, just unusual. Needless to say though, I won´t be hankering for pizza while I´m here.

Travel here is insane! I had to ride the bus in order to get to a nearby town (about 5km away) for a lecture we were having on natural history in Nicaragua). It was extremely cramped, with people pressing on me from the aisle. At one point the guy who takes your fare (never when you get on because that would be too easy) had to walk to the back. In order for him to do that he shoved me into my seat more, forcing me to practically sit in the lap of the guy next to me, with my leg drapped over his, for a good three minutes. And while I am quite uncomfortable with this the guy I´m sitting on doesn´t say or word or even look at me. Personal space is not a familiar concept down here.

I´ve been feeling a little stressed with how much I have to do, but either way I´m still having a great time and looking forward to making a difference. And don´t fret, I have been taking pictures and will post asap.

Friday marked the end of my first week in my training town (please excuse my not disclosing it fully--Peace Corps policy). It feels like I´ve been living here for quite a while now. So much has happened. Each day begins around 5:30 for me as I wake up to the sun shinning into my room and the sounds of the neighbors´roosters crowing. At first it drove me crazy as I couldn´t fall back asleep after that and just lied there awake waiting for a reasonable hour to get ready for the day (and dreading that ice cold shower).

More recently, however, I´ve been using that time more effectively by working out a little and then joining two of my fellow trainees for a jog around town. We must make quite a site! Three gringos just running around town at 6 in the morning. Beyond the general health benefits and a way to keep down the pounds from the very large and heavy portions my host family serves me, working up a sweat makes that cold shower not just tolerable, but a general relief.

After getting ready I make my way to the houses of two of the other trainees house so that together we can walk to the last trainee´s house where Spanish class is at. Oh yes, Spanish class. After my language interview in Managua, I knew I definitely needed some help with my Spanish, but arriving at my training town brought new issues to light. The Spanish here is not that which I grew up with, the accent is quite different (some people keep mentioning how Cuban mine is), they never use the pronoun tu, only usted and vos. Yes, vos, which sometimes requires a different tense of the verb. And to top it all off, I have to learn whole new words for things I already knew. Sandals are chinelas, adios is hello, and the word pulove does not work here.

It´s pretty warm here, but overall the weather is actually nicer than it is in Florida. At night the temperature cools down quite a bit (to the 70s) and there aren´t too many mosquitos (although I still sleep with a mosquito net and take cholorquinine (a very bitter and unpleasent tasting Malaria medication that gives you vivid dreams)).

Training is a lot of work and can be quite stressful. As it is I have a lot of trouble staying up past 9:30 at night. Beyond just working on my Spanish, I also have techinal training which ranges from things like making maps of my town, interviewing the people here, and learning to make a garden. I also have to do several projects during the 10 weeks of training, including running an environmental youth group and teaching a fifth grade class.

Both of these projects have been hard to start. The youth we´ve been trying to get together keeps falling through. Eventually we found a class of third year students (thats 8th grade, I think) willing to be part of our group, the school director is giving them community service hours for it. So basically my group is a charity case... Teaching at the school also makes me nervous. The kids are rowdy, and never raise their hands, just all yell out what they´d like to say at the same time! I´m going to try my best though.

Overall I have to say, I´m having a great time, making friends, liking my town, and getting excited for the work that I do.

Till next time!

My last update took place during the orientation retreat in Managua. That was followed by more training and language sessions (where we played more dynamicas). For the last session all of the medioabiente trainees gathered around for the revealing of our host families. That´s were I found out I´d be living in the department of Masaya with the Serpas family. It was a three and a half hour ride in the van before I made it to my new home as we had to drop off volunteers at other towns. I finally got to where I´d be staying, and let me tell you its very different from anything in the states. First off the roof is tin and there is no ceiling so light from other rooms will flood into my own at night. And while my room doesn´t have a lock, I still count myself lucky that I even have a bedroom door. And the bathroom door! Its actually a shower door! But beyond these things I like it. The town is very nice, biggest in the department, but still not huge, and people here are very nice. The weather is great, its a lot cooler than stinking Managua, not to mention safer. Here I can wander about on my own with no problem, during the day at least, I don´t venture out at night.My host family is really nice too, and huge! There´s 15 others living in that house! I like them though. There´s a bunch more to say, but I´m sorry to say I have to cut it short as I´m running out of time here at the cyber.

Bay Pue!

So I woke up nice and early yesterday, with the sun shining into my room. I slept real good. I started the day with a shower, which was COLD, that's right, no hot water. Not to mention, there was no shower head, it was like one constant stream from a faucet. After the initial shock however, it wasn't bad and actually rather refreshing. The staging event in DC was exhausting with all the information we had to take in, but it was nothing compared to all the sessions we had yesterday. The day started after breakfast with some dynacas, which are games we played together as an ice breaker, our game was Fuego en la Iglesia. Then the first session included a speech from the new Peace Corps Director Aaron Williams, who seems to be a great person for the job (especially after we saw his interview on a Nicaraguan TV show last night). His talk was followed by the country Directors. Next we had a long session that included a language interview to diagnose my skill level, a medical interview, visa photos, and my first vaccine: rabies (the first in a series of 3). This was followed by a big lunch that put my in the mood for a nap. Unfortunately that didn't happen. Instead, we had a talk from our Peace Corps Medical Officers (PCMO), all four of which are actual doctors (usually they're RNs) that speak english. After them we met the Safety and Security Coordinator. This session was followed by one from our Project Specialist and Project Manager that told us more about our project which has me much more excited. Going to be teaching about the environment at three different schools once a week, setting up local gardens and compost piles, and working with youth groups and other NGOs that deal with environmental issues. After this session we found out it was one of the other Trainee's birthday so we sang happy birthday "Nica style" and had some tasty cake. Then we got our first installment of walk around money, $295 cordobas a week (20 cords = 1 US dollar). Finally our last session of the day finished to the very welcome surprise that some of our luggage arrived, including both of my suitcases. I went straight to my room and changed into some shorts and a wife beater, comfy! Going back out to the common area I decided to join in on the basketball game with my fellow trainees, which considering I haven't played in over three years, went just as expected. I gave up after I finally made a basket, either way it just felt good to do something active. Dinner was good, it was our first serving of gallo pinto, yum. After this we lounged about in the common area where no one was getting internet, so we just hung out and talked and exchanged stories. At 8 we watched a Nicaraguan news program "Esta Noche" to see Director William's interview. After this we saw an episode of Bizarre Foods that takes place in Nicaraguan, it was nasty (maggot cheese!). So that was my day, building up my anticipation and aspiration for my training and my service. Miss you all!

P.S. If you have skype, find me: krz820.

Hey! I'm in Nicaragua! Safe and alive, although not without some drama. Today was a serious day. For starters it started at 1am, That's when I woke up (went to bed at 11). Then I had to check out of the hotel by 1:30. They had a bus pick us up from the hotel that took us to the airport. We had to squeeze luggage for 38 people on board (almost everyone had 2 suitcases totally up to 80lbs) and it almost didn't fit. We made it there at 2:50, however, the airport desk doesn't open until 4am! so we were just sitting there waiting. Luckily a woman there started checking us in early and giving us our boarding pass. Our flight boarded at 5:45 and we arrived in Miami International at 8:50, exactly 24 hours after I had flown out from there! We get there to find out that our 11:15am flight has been delayed to 1:15, which was delayed to 1:45, which boarded at 2:10ish. We finally made it to Nicaragua, the flight felt super short, got there at 2:55 local time (4:55 your time). We go to baggage claim where we don't see any of our baggage (we all tied orange yarn to it). Then someone in our group informs us that half our luggage is in Haiti and that a woman from a Peace Corp has a list of whose luggage that includes. My name was on the list! So those of us on that list get a huge bottle of water and pack into a van and we drive from the airport in Managua to the retreat center. All of us in the van are in this weird dream state. I can't believe I'm here in Nicaragua, its just surreal. We make it to the retreat center (where we find out no one had baggage, even if you weren't on the list) and check out our rooms, I walk into this room I'm sharing with another volunteer and see four beds, a fan, a roll of tee pee (we had to take that to and from the community bathroom), and two bars of soap. I set down my backpack (which thankfully had my toothbrush, deodorant, and a towel) and we got to the dining area where we have dinner. I had rice, veggies in a sauce, pasta, salad, french fries and red fanta. After that we had a welcome session where they introduced the Peace Corps Staff and hand out forms. So here I am, in Nicaragua, part of Nica 51 (the 51st group of peace corps volunteers in Nicaragua since their return). I'm safe, alive, excited, and even having some fun.