Richard’s Reckless Travels

Images of Achuapa (Click the second picture to see the full photo)

June 27th

After 5 different dreams of how we got our sites, I finally woke up at 6:30. It was the only thing I was thinking about the night before, and it was the only thing on my mind the entire night as was evident from the dreams I had. I was flipping out, not because I was scared about what site I was getting, but because I just wanted to know. I was completely mentally and physically exhausted from speculating.

Jordan (who was surprisingly ready on time today) and I caught the bus to Olla de Barro at around 7:45, to go and learn our fates. On top of learning our sites, I was looking forward to seeing the TEFL volunteers, as I have a lot of good friends amongst the group. Nevertheless, upon our arrival, we discovered that the TEFL volunteers weren’t showing up until the afternoon for the site assignments, and that we had a whole morning full of charlas that we wouldn’t pay attention to.

Thc charlas themselves weren’t that bad. The training group from Nandasmo did a survey on bakeries in Nandasmo, and strangely enough, there is a bakery for every 8 people in the city – aka, it might be hard to establish a niche in the market there. Fortunately, I was still awake following their presentation and made it to the second charla that was planned for the morning. The second charla was about how to plan with a counterpart (deja vú?), and was completely in Spanish (thank god I’m in the advanced group). Nevertheless, I took away a lot from it – at least I hope I did. I’m not too sure since I was distracted with the whole site assignment looming over my head.

They finally turned us loose for lunch where I hopped around from table to table before setting down to talk with Katie Earle, Lindsay, and David. We had a good convo and got pretty mentally prepared for the process itself. Ultimately we knew the time had come upon us when all the TEFL volunteers rolled up in the Peace Corps party bus. We all greeted each other in a sort of “Oh, it’s so great to see you, but holy crap I’m terrified,” type of way, but it was still good to be together. Some people were more nervous to others, and as I commented to some of the other people – it was good to see everybody acting the way I do on a daily basis.

We all got situated in the presentation room at Olla, and were really screwing around for a bit while all the PC staff set up all the maps and everything so we could all see where we were going. To drive home the importance and scariness (?), Peace Corps had hired some 3-person band with guitars and maracas to play Nicaraguan music while we waited. I was hoping that upon calling our name, they would play some sort of ridiculous music while we walked up to the front to accept out assignment – but sadly this did not happen.

Out of Masatepe, we all got sites we were pretty satisfied with. Avi is getting sent to Granada, Granada; Jordan to León, León; Owen to Yalí, Jinotega, and I’m going to…Achuapa, León. That’s right. I called it. From the very beginning I knew that it fit me the best out of all the available sites, I made my spreadsheet, I had my interview and it was the only site my APCD talked about. I told everyone that I was definitely getting sent there, and just hoped it wouldn’t be that site just so I could be surprised. But I got the site that was the best fit from me, so that’s good. It’s pretty centrally with regards to the sites in the country. If I want to go to León, it’s a 3 hour bus ride, if I want to go to Estelí, it’s a 2 hour bus ride (and also the location of the other Peace Corps office).

My good friend Dianne also got put in Granada, so now I’ll have 2 people to visit when I decide to go on vacation. Also, one girl I really get along with, Kat, is in Estelí. My town doesn’t have a bank, so I need to go to Estelí if I want to take out money. As a result, I’ll be seeing her quite often, which is great because she’s great to be around. There is one other SBD volunteer in my site – Bobby. He was the only other person who actually wanted Achuapa aside from me, but he got placed a lot closer to León, in the town of Telíca, León.

After receiving my site assignment, we got a packet full of all the stats of our site – population, site characteristics, how much we pay to rent a place (I’m paying 800 cords for 6 weeks without food), what our work schedule is, as well as information about side projects we can do. I have the least amount of students to teach of any of the 19 SBD volunteers with 113 volunteers in 4 classes. I teach in 3 schools, 1 of which is 5 km outside of Achuapa. I work with an NGO, Cuenta Reto del Milenium, 4 hours a day Monday through Thursday, and had all of Friday open except one planning period in the morning. As for side projects, I have the opportunity to run a ping pong club (seriously!?), advise 2 community members who harvest grapes (awesome, grape juice!), as well as assist a women’s group with quality control of tea that they are hoping to sell in other parts of the country (super cool). There are not really many facilities in the city as apparently there is only one working computer (therefore no internet, so I won’t be updating as frequently at my site). Not only that, but there appears to only be 8 busses that leave the city the entire day. Six of these buses go to León, and 2 go to Estelí. So…if you want to visit me, you better time it correctly. On top of all that luxury, I’m the most isolated volunteer out of all the volunteers. I’m an hour north of the closest volunteers in El Sauce. However, since I have to work in El Sauce (as my schedule indicates) 4 times a week, I don’t really see this being an issue.

Technically, my site is considered a new site, but this is only partially truthful. Apparently in the last business group, Nica 44, there was a volunteer that got placed in my site who as the guy I visited in Chinandega told me, ‘was a legend’. Apparently he was out of his site 90% of the time and I’m guessing he Early Terminated his service. I’m not quite sure of the circumstances concerning the ending of his service. Nevertheless, in addition to providing me with information about the past volunteer, Luis (the guy from Chinandega,) told me that apparently Achuapa has a really cool bike shop. So there you have it, I’ve got a cool bike shop in Achuapa. Who knows if I’ll ever leave Nicaragua now?

Most people were super excited about the site assignments, and most of the SBD volunteers all met up in Masatepe afterwards and we went straight to the bar for a couple of hours. This was followed by a trip to the comedor that my buddy Oliver’s parents own. A great day overall.

However, as if the day wasn’t good enough – I received 4 packages from Heather, my boss from Westfall. Thanks for all the Clif bars Heather! It filled up my backpack! Totally awesome! I don’t know where you got the Jesus stickers, but the packaging was absolutely brilliant. If you want to keep sending packages, I will obligingly accept them. Thanks again!