June 26th
Today I slept way late for Nicaraguan Richard – 7:30! It was pretty awesome, but I overslept my breakfast, and ended up stumbling into the kitchen as a complete zombie. It was awesome. Generally I’m bouncing off the walls 2 seconds after I wake up, but I was finally lethargic and not ready for the day. Man, I’m becoming more and more ready for the Nicaraguan lifestyle of ‘slow and steady wins the race’ every day!
I headed over to Jordan’s house at around 9:30 to get my translated resume checked over before I sent it in. I spoke with the teacher for a while about my motivations behind studying languages, and how I intend to learn as many languages possible before I die. She thought it was great, and was really pleased with the quality of my Spanish in the resume that I translated. It was really difficult before there are some terms that you just cant translate into Spanish – examples being foreclosure, loss mitigation, and payoffs processor. They end up being an extremely verbose way of saying something, but since there’s not a word for the terms, I’m not left with much of a choice.
After getting my resume checked, I enlightened Jordan’s movie world with some of the foreign movies that I brought with me and gave some to her. Then I headed over to ‘my’ cousin’s shop to give her a more intensive interview so I can advise her business. The interview took around 15 minutes, but then I chatted with her for about 30 minutes about Peace Corps, the business world in Nicaragua, and how absolutely anxious I was to find out my site tomorrow. I don’t know why I’m so anxious, because I really don’t care where I go. So it’s not that I’m worried, but I’m just excited to find out who is going to be around me, and where I’m going to be living the next 2 years. Tomorrow I’ll finally be able to start mentally preparing myself for the transition to my permanent site. Furthermore, I’ll know who I need to hang out with a lot before training is over, you know, just to get my fill of people before I leave.
I came home and watched a movie, took a short nap, then headed to the grocery store. I grabbed a yoghurt drink and went and sat in the park and just thought for 2 hours. A man who always sits in the park and wears a bobcat cub scouts hat that I see all the time, showed up about 30 minutes after I’d been sitting there. We exchanged some small talk for a bit, mainly about how I’m ready to find out my fate, and then I took off and headed back home.
After hanging around home, Oliver showed up and we chatted for a bit. The whole idea of him showing up is for him to practice his English with me, but we always end up speaking in Spanish (which is fine since I could use the practice in Spanish anyway). It’s great speaking with him because his Spanish is really clear and his Spanish tends to rub off on me. Generally by the end of our conversations, I’m speaking super fast, and with few errors. Really the confidence level is all you need, and the Spanish comes with it – I wish I’d known that back when I was studying Spanish in school.
After eating dinner, I found that I just couldn’t remain stationary. Even though it was 8 PM, I headed out and down the highway to Avi’s house. He wasn’t home, so I continued meandering over to Owen’s house. There was no point to this trip but to kill time and get my mind off the site assignments (which didn’t really work), but I figured mixing in a couple of visits certainly wouldn’t hurt.
Upon arriving at Owen’s house, I found the family all watching TV. After chatting with them a bit, learning that we’re forever Masetepinos, and watching some of the news, we decided we needed to loosen up – so we headed to the bar. We were there for a couple of hours and just unwound/passed the time. It was really what we needed, but at the same time didn’t relieve any of the stress associated with the site assignments. Whatever.
Down to the hours that I find out my site assignment now. Nuts. El tiempo vuela.
