I found a more user friendly site to send me text messages – so please do! Texts/Phone Calls will be my only form of communication most of the time, so this is a good option.
http://plexinium.com.ni/?x=sms
And for Gram/Non-Spanish speakers:
1. Just click on Nicaragua in the map
2. Under “numero de celular”, put in my number: 924.9465
3. Under “tu nombre”, put your name, whatever you decide it is for the day.
4. Under “mensaje”, write your message (up to 120 characters)
5. Click “enviar”
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Peace Corps | Tagged: Send me text messages! | 
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Posted by thegoggins
Well, as I leave for Achuapa in around 4 hours, I feel it’s necessary to point out that I will have access to the internet way less. There is word that there is a primary school that has a lab, and if I gain some mega trust I can use it. The school has a history of working with PC volunteers in the past, so maybe I could teach some Microsoft Excel/Word classes in exchange for some internet time. If I could, you can expect posts a lot more frequently, but time will tell. If I don’t gain that trust that I’m aiming for, I might go 2 weeks without posting but fear not, you’ll get my day to day report of work in the field – for those of you that have the patience to actually read all these posts. And since I didn’t take any pictures of swearing in, I’ve been stealing them from other people who did take some, this is one of those pictures:
Owen, Nikki, Me, Joanna P, Joanna C, Liz S – Look how we all pretend not to be terrified! (Thanks to Joanna C for the picture)
Hasta Pronto!
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Posted by thegoggins
July 25th
On our last morning as Peace Corps Trainees, we all had to get up wicked early again due to our swearing in ceremony starting at 8:30. The ceremony was at a real nice hotel down the street from the Peace Corps office and started off with a ceremony to thank the host families for allowing us to stay in their homes for the last 3 months. My family didn’t show up…so they gave out a bunch of certificates to the families and everybody socialized with their families following the ceremony. I ended up strolling around awkwardly with Joanna Pezko and my buddy Shyra pretending that we had somewhere to go and people to talk with.
After 15 minutes of socializing, they brought us all in the conference room where the U.S. ambassador, training staff, host families, MINED representative, and 7 news crews were to watch us to swear in as formal volunteers. It was by far the biggest hoopla over something that I’ve ever been a part of. We had to sing the Nicaraguan national anthem, the U.S. national anthem, and go through the formalities of the ceremony before hearing speeches by two of our fellow volunteers. For us SBD volunteers, we elected Avi to give a speech about our host families, which ended up being well thought out and endearing. Joey gave the speech during the big ceremony with the press and ambassador and gave us quite a surprise. He ended up dedicating a part of his speech to each trainee in each of the training towns and transitioning his clothes from business casual to a traditional Nicaraguan dress that he had been wearing underneath his clothes. This really didn’t go over highly with the ambassador, and made the training staff super nervous, but we all got a huge kick out of it.
After the ceremony, we had a pizza and mingling session with the Peace Corps staff before finally going to our respective hotels. I went with a couple of the SBD volunteers down to the mall and picked up some clothes for the celebration we were going to have that night for officially being Peace Corps volunteers. Coincidentally, I ended up finding a Bata shoe store (a Czech shoe store). Also by chance, it ended up being the only shoe store in the mall that had shoes that would fit me – can you say fate? Thank you Prague, I love you. We also picked up some custom shirts for our trainee group, Nica 47. Joanna, my friend whose family didn’t show up to the ceremony, drew a design that we ended up putting on a bunch of t-shirts to recognise how flipping awesome we all are. The shirts look great and have the very appropriate Nicaraguan phrase: “Hasta 2010…Si Dios Quiere”, or “Until 2010, if God wants”.
We ended up making a reservation for 37 people at a club near the PC office and hung out there the whole night. It was good to unwind with everybody in the group before heading off to our sites this weekend. Gonna miss them.
Nica 47 SBD
Nica 47 TEFL
Joey – after disrobing
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Peace Corps | Tagged: Official Volunteer! | 
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Posted by thegoggins
July 24th
More charlas. More waiting. That much closer.
Had to get up at around 6 today to, you know, keep a rhythm. IPADE gave us a breakfast that was the fulfilling but not entirely exciting gallo pinto, white bread, and salty omelet, and it left me wanting more – more vitamins that is. I found Sonia, Danica, and Dianne and we all decided we yearned for something a bit more…exciting for breakfast. After settling on a plan, we headed to La Colonia, the grocery store right next to the mall where we went and saw Batman last night.
However, all too often you plan something here that doesn’t go according to plan – and that happened again. We had a charla at 8, but figured we could get to the store and back before all was said and done. The microbus rolled up to the store at 7:30…but the store didn’t open until 8. With everything starting on Nica time, we weren’t overly concerned with being late to the charla since they never start on time anyway.
Waiting seemed like the best idea since we’d just paid a quarter to get over to the store, so we parked ourselves in front of the door and chatted for a while. Unfortunately, the grocery store was operating on Nica time as well, and opened 10 minutes late – as if we weren’t in a big enough hurry already. We figured devising an excuse as to why we were late would be a good idea, and coincidentally, things unfolded exactly the way we were going to say it did. The store itself had next to nothing to offer, then we ended up getting called by PC staff 3 times asking us where we were, when we were going to get back, and reminding us we were late.
Ultimately we ended up stumbling into our first session 30 minutes late, quite terrified, but without the scolding we thought we’d receive.
Our first session was a simple, but long handbook review with the country director. Following this, we met the former U.S. ambassador (his service ended Saturday), who told us how the embassy worked, programs the embassy is involved in, then just broke down how we can get support from them in the future.
It was pretty interesting, but we were all beat from charlas, and this feeling carried over into the afternoon sessions where we barely were able to listen to a presentation about USAID, before finally being sent off for the day. And that’s where we are now. Time will tell what we do tonight. I think we’re heading to the mall to buy the rest of the basics (yoga mat, maybe another pair of dress shoes?), before heading off to our sites on Sunday. Exciting!
2 Comments | Peace Corps | Tagged: Irresponsibility, Last day of training! | Permalink
Posted by thegoggins
July 23rd
With plans to head off to Managua following our last day of training, I woke up at 4:30 in the morning so I could show up to Managua at 7. I ended up getting there 45 minutes early, got suckered into buying a newspaper, and waited.
Eventually, I found the PC party bus and was shuttled along with the rest of the aspirantes to the IPADE, some hotel on the highway to Masaya.
We went through our final medical charlas, as well as our final security briefing, and ended the charlas with a presentation of each of the 5 sectors that Peace Corps is involved in here in Nicaragua, so we’re aware of cross sector work opportunities if the opportunity comes up. Following the charlas, I had my close of training work interview just to clear up any questions I had about my site, training, and just any general questions. I got another stack of books to drag up to site that I’m just going to leave for my project coordinator to bring up to me when we have a site interview on Thursday.
After this, we finally had freedom – and in Managua. After a dinner and hanging out with the rest of the trainees, a group of us headed to the gigantic mall that is down the highway. Literally, it was more American than an American mall. I went and checked out the price of a yoga mat, then we all went and saw the new Batman movie – awesome! Nothing else too exciting aside from running across the highway.
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Posted by thegoggins
July 19th
Well, good or bad, I intended to document my experiences here in Nicaragua so I could look back on them in some years and say “OH YEA!”
Today I had a complete meltdown.
All the stressors of the week:
- Last due dates for projects
- A youth group without a tangible result
- Some issues with the host family
- Word choice blunder
- Finishing ASBO project
- Finishing youth group prep/presentation
- Bobby getting sent home
- No clean clothes
- Mold growing on all my hats (save the Goggins hat) due to rainy season, total loss
o Losing my sense of identity with this one
- Lent my sandals to a fellow volunteer, came back with a not so nice smell
All in all, they were all small things, but holy crap did they ever pile up. I canceled everything I was planning on doing right as I was walking out the door because I realised I just couldn’t handle it.
I ended up locking myself up for 5 hours meditating and being introspective. This session helped a lot.
Not regretting being here at all – love it here. Not wishing I could leave – excited about what I’m here to do. It was just a completely new experience. When they said you’d be exposed to extremely stressful situations, they weren’t kidding. Intense experience.
The field trip into my mind was all I did today. That was an intense enough activity for one day.
July 20th
The day today started relatively bright an early at 6:30 (still not able to sleep in) because I had to get out of the land of SBD volunteers. I was just craving contact with my fellow TEFLers, particularly following my meltdown of yesterday. The game plan was to meet Danica and Dianne in Diriamba (whoa – mega alliteration!) just to hang out. However, while I was getting ready Dianne called with dreaded news – she was sick so she wouldn’t be coming (it turned out that most of the TEFL volunteers were sick with an amoeba and bacterial infection (double whammy!) that they got from food they got in a workshop with the ministry of education. So with her out of the picture, I called up Danica and planned on just hanging out with her.
The bus ride down to Diriamba was a…new experience, as it appeared to have 2 clowns on it making the ride to Jinotepe. They were just bickering back and forth with jokes and making balloon animals, making the ride itself quite entertaining and tolerable. I ended up buying 2 balloon animals from them to give to Danica and Dianne, as well to support these guys who obviously put forth an impressive effort for out hard earned cordobas.
When I got into Diriamba, Danica and I chatted about the whole situation with Bobby, then met up with Maria, a new TEFL “aspirante” who is a transfer volunteer from the Republic of Georgia (she came straight from Georgia following her 2 years there). We walked around and hung out for a bit, then went to the Pali to put together a care “sack” (cookies, banana, and juice boxes) for Dianne since she wasn’t feeling too well.
Dianne was super surprised by our unexpected visit, but she ended up needing the visit just to improve her mood (it’s the end of training blues, everybody’s got them), in addition to improving her health. We ended up spending about 2 hours there before convincing her to go to Jinotepe to go indulge in some pizza.
Our lunch trip to Jinotepe was full of distressing, as well as poking Maria’s brain for info about spending 2 years as a Peace Corps volunteer – how it wears on you and whatnot. However, the conversation covered several million topics (I can rarely remain focused, but apparently other people couldn’t either), and it was just a good way to relax following the overly stressful week. Apparently TEFL had been pushed to their limits after the last week as well, so we had a good venting session. This venting session was continued as we made our way to a bar in Jinotepe to meet a bunch of other TEFL volunteers – good times.
Coincidentally, the bus ride home included the same entertainment that I enjoyed on my trip down to Diriamba this morning – that’s right, the clowns were back. This time, I was able to refrain from buying one of their balloon animals, and just donated a cord to their cause (yea, only around 5 cents, but 5 cents goes far here).
Definitely a good day spent unwinding and getting out the tension, for all involved parties it seems.
July 21st
Today started early. I woke up at 5 AM so I could be out of the door by 6 AM because Peace Corps wanted us at the UCA at 7:30. I got out after a few issues (my host sister was sick), grabbed Jordan, and we headed to the bus stop. After a quick stop by the ATM, we were in the bus and I was seated on a bucket (they were out of seats).
Our cobrador was anything but pleasant and insisted on giving crap to pretty much everybody. He made me move to a different seat 3 different times, as if it were more efficient. However, in the end he got his own – the bus got pulled over and was ticketed because we’d crammed 25 people in the bus and people were standing. He continued to whine before the guy sitting in front of me, a 20-year officer (I think a general) in the Nicaraguan navy just told him to shut up and quit his whining.
Jordan, Owen, and I ended up being the first people to show up at the UCA. We ended up finding Douglas, the awesome Peace Corps party bus driver waiting for us and enjoyed all its air-conditioned goodness (it’s about 87 degrees here at 7 AM everyday). After we got the majority of people in the bus (Avi was sick, and Joey was severely bitten by a dog), Douglas proceeded to take us to La China, Matagalpa. The ride itself was absolutely gorgeous and reminded me of how Colorado would be if it were incredibly lush all the time.
La China is situated in a mountainous community just outside of Sebaco, Matagalpa and really is quite a beautiful place. All the SBD volunteers went there so we could observe an agriculture volunteer and learn more about agrobusiness opportunities (well for those of us that are in small sites). There we had a 3 hour presentation by the program director for Peace Corps Ag program, then broke for lunch. One of the projects the volunteer had done was create a park for the town. This involved getting 55 dump truck loads of dirt brought in to level the ground, a bank donated a stage for the park, they put in a tetherball pole, and he recently just got funding to build a basketball court. In addition to that, he’s been working with a woman who started growing mung beans in a garage. She went from having absolutely nothing to building a house, installing running water, a flush toilet, and buying a flatbed truck to deliver her beans as well as other goods in the community to the supermarkets in Managua. She really was a rags to riches operation and really amazed us all – just an incredibly talented, driven, and smart woman.
In addition to the aforementioned, we talked with some farmers from the area that the volunteer worked with. One is getting certified to be an organic farmer, one was lauded for having for “good farming practices”, and we talked with a few others that were creative/innovative farmers in the area. We ended up getting a tour of the organic farmers farm where he grew papayas, tomatoes, and passion fruit. He had all these incredible methods of naturally keeping pests off his crops it was unbelievable. But not only that, his papaya trees had at least 100 papayas sprouting off wherever there was room on each tree. All the other papaya trees I’ve seen in the country have not even compared, generally there would be 10 to 15 on an enormous tree.
After seeing the farm (and getting papayas for free!), we got to observe a methane storage area that a previous ag volunteer had created. In involved taking horse manure and mixing it in a gigantic concrete vat with water. The methane gas would rise after mixing it with the water, and in turn, this gas was used for the stoves in 3 houses. It was really incredible and one of the most sustainable things I’ve seen in the country – totally cool.
We ended up leaving around 4:30 (an hour and a half after we planned on leaving), but it was worth it in the long run. I’m excited about the opportunity to potentially find ag projects to work on when I get to Achuapa. Furthermore, PC is going to give us a ton of ag resources for those of us with the opportunity to work with farmers. Douglas, with his fearless driving, got us down to Managua in about an hour (instead of the 2 hours it normally takes), and I ended up getting back to Masatepe at around 7 PM.
The days tend to go by pretty quickly whether it’s a good or bad day.
July 22nd
Well, as our last day in our training towns, you’d think the day would go a bit differently – and you’d be wrong. The day started out at 7:30 AM so Jordan and I could arrive at Olla de Barro on time for our 8 AM charla. To say we were stoked to be having our last charla in our training towns would be an understatement. The wear and tear of training really has started to set in on us, particularly after this past week. Nevertheless, we stuck with it and will just hold in all the tension until we’re alone at our sites so we can explode there – just kidding.
Actually, the charlas today were halfway useful on top of being straightforward and non-sugarcoated, something that is always welcomed after 11 weeks of charlas full of icebreakers. The end is just over the horizon, and we’re ready to just get to it. The charlas themselves weren’t really noteworthy, but provided us with the information we’ve been pondering from the very beginning – at least we finally got it.
We ended up getting out of Olla de Barro at around 4:30, completely charla-ed out, and with but a mere afternoon left in our training towns. Katie, Lindsay, Jordan, and I ended up grabbing going to the Pali in Masatepe, then hanging out in the park for a while to do some reflecting on the day/enjoy some ice cream/oreos/chocolate milk. However, as luck would have it, it started to sprinkle after very little time, and we had to split ways.
On the way home, I stopped by the Tiendita, the shop my host mom’s cousin owns, because I heard she had a guayavera (a lightweight Nicaraguan shirt) that was in my size. Unfortunately it had 4 pockets, and struck me as more of a lumberjack shirt than one that would scream “authentic Nicaraguan,” so I ended up holding off on the purchase and will just swear in as a Peace Corps volunteer in my normal clothes that I teach in – I’m not here to impress anybody (with my looks anyway).
The rest of the night just held the always-dreaded packing. It’s awfully strange to have packed up my entire life in a bag 3 times since December. I’m actually looking forward to getting to my site and having all my stuff in one place (well, when I move out of my host family’s house) for an extended period of time. Who knows? Maybe I’ll find more of a sense of myself than I did in the U.S.?
2 Comments | Peace Corps | Tagged: Meltdown, Stress, What an experience! | Permalink
Posted by thegoggins
July 17th
729 days to go! Just kidding.
Woke up at a more reasonable hour this morning – 6 AM – where I pondered over whether or not I’d head to Masaya to get a shirt for the swearing in ceremony. I ultimately decided that I would not because I’m cheap. That 10 dollars could be the difference between me eating for 2 days or starving – who knows what the situation will be at site? Anyway, we have to present our youth group tomorrow to the rest of the business trainees/PC staff about our results, or in our case, our “learning experiences.” I worked on that a little bit before ultimately deciding to work on our business advising report that we also have to turn in tomorrow. We’ve all been doing interviews/assessments of a small business owner (in most people’s cases, this small business owner was in the family), and we do an assessment of their business, and give advice accordingly afterwards. In particular, we look at 4 areas – Human Resources, Production/Operation, Administration, and Marketing. After analyzing their responses and observing the business itself, we lump our recommendations into one of the aforementioned categories. After making the recommendations we are required to make a plan of action for said recommendations and indicate the priority of each. The whole prospect of doing this and providing feedback was incredibly daunting, but after jumping in, I got on a roll and it became relatively easy and I churned out a good 3 pages of recommendations. Just gotta get your feet wet I guess.
In the midst of writing my report, a “Buenas” came from our front gate where some desconocida was looking for me. She just came on in and asked for my name. I had no idea what to make of her – whether she was from the government/Peace Corps/was there to kill me/give me a present or what. It turned out she was the lady who was going to give me my language interview at 1 that afternoon. However, since she was in Masatepe, she wanted to try to get one interview over with in the morning. So I did mine a couple of hours early, and judging from the questions she asked me, I think I tested around the same area. She asked me a bunch of technical questions, about bicycles for example, and riding 21 miles for my birthday. She wanted to tell me how it was – what am I supposed to say? “Well…it was fun, pretty, lots of hills…” I also didn’t/don’t know the names of bike components in Spanish so that really set me back. Overall I was really unsatisfied/pissed with the interview, but whatever. I’m already at a high language level, this interview was worthless for me anyway.
I then headed to the gym for a couple hours to de-stress – god I missed the gym! There is a gigantic (like the size of 2 Olympic swimming pools enclosed paved area in back of the gym where there were around 20 guys brushing kidney beans around on the ground. I’ve never seen anything like this before in my life, but I think they were drying the beans? Honestly couldn’t tell you, but it was just a whole bunch of beans – and now I know the process they go through before they get to my plate.
Following the gym, I worked a little longer on the small business report before meeting up with Jordan and our youth group to discuss our presentation that we’re going to talk about. It was a pretty successful meeting, and we didn’t have to pull information out of the kids like I thought we’d have to. Nevertheless, during the brainstorming process, we asked Javier what he thought about the goal of doing a mini-project. He responded:
Visualizar un proyecto que nos sirve de alguna manera para mejorar el ambiente o facilitar información histórica de nuestro pueblo.
The above is just a bulleted caption for the quote, so it’s not conjugated, but what it says is that we wanted to visualize a Project that would serve the group in some way to improve the environment or facilitate historical information about our town. We were pretty dumbfounded as this is the kind of textbook like answer that we, and Peace Corps want to hear, but it came straight from his mouth without feeding him ideas. Nuts.
After our rendezvous, Jordan and I threw together a quick presentation for tomorrow for the rest of the trainees, and that was that.
Got 2 free pineapples too! Sweet deal!
July 18th
Today started out as a pretty bad day – with tons of rain. Whenever it rains, almost everything in Nicaragua is bad as it inevitably causes not so happy things to happen.
I woke up to what was a dull roar – no, that’s a bad assessment. I woke up to an incredible roar, even though I was wearing earplugs. I got up to find that the source of this powerful noise was in fact the incredible downpour of rain. Whenever it rains, I have no desire to go anywhere because any and everything you possess will be completely drenched. Basically, you end up becoming so wet that it would be a laborious task to explain to anybody that you were in fact not swimming in your clothes. Another thing the rain brings – mold. When I first read about this in other volunteer’s blogs, I was not really concerned as they pointed out this is spontaneously occurs on leather products. Well, little did I know that mold grows on EVERYTHING. Mold has grown on every single one of my cycling caps, what the hell? I don’t know what the combination is to yield such an outcome, but it’s unreal. Some days I can’t even take this mold.
Wow, tangential.
Anyway, we had to go to Ave Maria today for a training session/youth group presentation, and this rain wasn’t conducive to any of this happening without massive issues. It was raining way too much to not wear my sandals and bring my shoes in a bag, so I compromised my professional look. I ended up arriving at Ave Maria completely drenched anyway, but fortunately, I had some warm/dry shoes to change into – oh yea, that’s planning ahead.
We had a charla on alcohol, which was a pretty standard informative but not overly new information for us. Generally this is how all the charlas are – they fill in the gaps for things you don’t know since most of what they teach you is common sense. Example: alcohol can impair your judgement. Further explanation is unnecessary. This was followed by our youth group presentations. At first only one youth group out of all the training towns showed up because apparently the PC bus didn’t show up to pick up any of the youths. The kids from my youth group were some of the missing youths, which led to worry – our youth group didn’t succeed, and now they aren’t there to help explain what happened? Oh no. Eventually they showed up because they took a normal bus (good kids!), and we gave our presentation. At first I was nervous about it compared to the rest of the groups, since they actually realised a project. However, in the end I discovered that if you presented a convincing argument for the outcome you got, that was ok.
Following the end of the ceremony, our youths got sent home and we headed to lunch. The afternoon session was followed by presentations by the trainees from San Juan de Oriente. They did an amazing job, particularly considering the horribly difficult topic that they had to present – easily the most difficult class we’ll have to teach in all our Peace Corps service.
After the presentation, we did evaluations, and then we all got hit with a total curveball. For reasons I won’t delve into, our fellow PCT Bobby was told he will be sent home and won’t be allowed to continue as a volunteer. Basically they believed he wouldn’t be a successful volunteer, so he’s getting sent home. We were all shocked and incredibly set back by this decision and headed straight to a bar afterwards. Due to potential issues with this, I’m going to limit the description of this incident to this paragraph.
After a couple of hours hanging out with the other trainees, we all headed back home to cenar (eat dinner). This trip home was a quick trip back as we were all going straight back out to San Juan de Oriente to hang out with Bobby for the night. So after getting some food in my system and money from the bank, I headed over to Avi’s house where Owen, Avi, and I sat around and talked with Avi’s host family before taking off. It was about 8:30 by the time we decided to embark – meaning there weren’t busses running. This meant that in order to get there, we’d need to be creative. Or in other words, we’d need to find an alternative way to arrive at our destination.
We ended up catching a ride in the back of a truck where we had a conversation with a police officer that was from 22 and from Masatepe. Apparently hitchhiking was the only way he can get to work in Masaya that late at night, but it’s far more efficient than any other form of transportation, and he does it every night.
We arrived in Catarina where we met up with Kat and Andrea to talk a bit. This meeting lasted only a bit before we headed to the Mirador to hang out with Bobby for the last night. Our rendezvous lasted a couple of hours but was a good time overall. The trip home ended up being more entertaining as I had to deal with some amiable drunk guy for 20 minutes. A cab ended up being the only car on the highway, magically, and we caught that home, putting an successful end to our not so great day.
2 Comments | Peace Corps | Tagged: Bummer, Gym, Stress, What an experiece! | Permalink
Posted by thegoggins
July 16th
Today I woke up super, super early (4:45) because I had good intentions, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions – so they say. Kind of how the day unfolded in the long run.
When my alarm went off, I searched around for the clock so I could turn off the alarm, but couldn’t find it in the dark. I ended up just hitting the desk until I hit the clock, and in the process knocked most of my things on the floor – but the alarm turned off. Success! I wanted to go to the gym but ended up putting it off until 6 AM. Just had a light 2-hour workout and then headed back home by around 7:30.
After eating, Jordan and I did some errands and then stopped by the cyber. It’s kind of weird going so long without using the internet and getting online to find so much huge news that has happened. I was astounded to find that the U.S. had the highest inflation in 25 years for a month, and Zimbabwe was doing a little worse with an inflation rate of 2,200,00%. For those of you that aren’t really mathematically inclined – that’s 4.18% inflation every minute of the day. How terrible.
We had to make a trip to Managua this afternoon, so I went home and ate lunch really quickly before we headed to Managua at 11:30. Strangely, I haven’t grown weary of eating gallo pinto so frequently, but as they say – variety is the spice of life. I’m starting to understand why.
After a relatively comfortable ride to the UCA, we all met up and had an “NGO Fair” for lack of a better name. There were 6 organizations, and each of us has the opportunity to work with some of the organizations that have a presence in/near our sites. One of the NGO’s told me that there is a guy in Achuapa who wants to export honey to the U.S. and that I should talk to him to see what’s up. Awesome! Maybe I could finally realise one of my dreams of being a beekeeper – in Nicaragua no less! Learning about this guy who wants to sell honey was really the most useful information I took away from the charla itself. After this, I had to go to the PCHQ where I was briefed over the word choice of a certain comment I made on a video. Words say a lot.
After this rendezvous, I once again had to make my way from the PCHQ to Masatepe. Avi was with me, so we had to make our way back – and this came in the form of a regular ol’ school bus headed to Pontillo (wherever that is). The bus roared by us and we lamented the fact that it was totally oblivious to the fact that we in fact wanted to catch the bus. We stood around for 2 minutes before ultimately deciding to run 3 blocks to try to catch the bus at a red light. Magically this happened. However, there were a good 150 people on a school bus made for 65, so I ended up riding a couple of blocks hanging outside the door, but ultimately I made my way inside of the bus. It took a really roundabout way of going to Masatepe, but this just meant that seats started to open the farther we got from Managua, AKA we didn’t have to stand the whole time.
About an hour and a half later, we got into Masatepe (and saved a whole 10 cords in the process by taking this as oppose to the microbus!) and headed home. I downed another plate of gallo pinto, met up with Owen to give him a book, and paid Oliver some money I owed him (he bought me some peanut butter which unfortunately was crunchy, next time I’ll specify creamy).
2 years from today my Peace Corps service is over. Crazy.
Oh and Gram – a charla is a presentation, more or less. Just a talk about something.
1 Comment | Peace Corps | Tagged: I like honey, What an experience! | Permalink
Posted by thegoggins
July 14th
Uneventful day today. I felt like I had the plague, so I was pretty much bedridden for most of the day. I finally rolled out of bed at around 9:30, went to a training session where we got a rundown of how to organize a housing contract with a landlord, and also we practiced the Nicaraguan national anthem.
Since I was still sick, I just went back home and slept for a while, and read all of “Into the Wild.”
Aside from the aforementioned, I took a short trip to the grocery store (well, normally it’s a short 10 minute walk, but this time it took me 40 minutes one way because I was moseying as opposed to clipping along at my normal pace. On the walk I became readily aware of how much Spanish I know…but don’t really know. I became aware of various words and phrases that I’m familiar with but have no idea what they mean. I know exactly when to use them, and what contexts they fit in, but I have no idea as to what I’m actually saying. This didn’t actually hit me until today.
Hopefully, I’ll have a more exciting entry tomorrow for I anticipate that I’ll be actually…well, moving.
July 15th
The day started out a little earlier than I’d planned (9 AM instead of 10) because I’m forgetful, but all is well. We had a meeting with Ernie to discuss the book we’re reading. Since I thought I had to leave earlier, I had an hour of free time, and to kill that extra hour, I inadvertently struck up an hour conversation with the lady who lives across the street from me. She’s 27 and studied at Ave Maria College in San Marcos – a very expensive school. She has a huge interest in foreigners just to get their views and whatnot. I ended up talking with her about a wide variety of topics – everything from religious fanaticism to dancing to exercising. There didn’t seem to be any real structure to the conversation (but this generally is the case since I tend to have tangents to conversations every 10 seconds), but most of the conversation had religious undertones, which I wasn’t a huge fan of, but was more than happy to provide my thoughts on everything that was brought up.
This conversation was abruptly brought to an end as Roger, one of the Peace Corps drivers, pulled up to my house. He has a strange fascination with my last name and tends to repeat it 6 or 7 thousand times every time I see him. To these…statements (or would they be exclamations?), I generally have the same response, “Uh…ok Roger, ¡Bien hecho! That’s my name!” Hey at least he pronounces it correctly. He was there to drop off money to my host money, and then gave Jordan and I a ride to Avi’s house for our meeting. He made us both sit up front despite the 12-person capacity of the vehicle because he had spilled a massive amount of coffee creamer in the back of the truck (no idea).
We were at Avi’s house only for a short bit before Ernie showed up – amazingly on time (or rather, close to it). First thing he says upon entering is, “Hey Google (a volunteer called me Google accidentally during a charla, and it’s stuck with a lot of people), did you ever go to Flor de Pochote?” We talked about it, and he had the perception that it was a place to eat – which it isn’t anymore. He didn’t want to do our quizzes there, so we hopped in the car and headed to Managua to go to the restaurant we had read about for homework, Pollo Narcy’s. We thought maybe we could talk to Narcy about entrepreneurial skills and whatnot, but upon arriving, we found that Pollo Narcy’s was quite…commercialized (even though it’s just one restaurant), and kind of gave the feel of a McDonalds environment mixed with an English Pub (you order your food at a counter with all your choices illuminated on the wall, then you have very comfortable oak seats with a very nice ambience). However, Narcy wasn’t there, and unfortunately for her, she had a partnership with Papa Johns (she leases employees and some of the building to them), and we ended up patronizing them instead. Sorry Narcy.
After eating a pizza and…”discussing entrepreneurship blah blah blah”, we decided we’d go do our quiz at the Mirador de la Laguna de Apoyo, in Catarina. It took about 20 minutes to get there, and after fabricating a story to gain entry into the parking lot for free, we sat at the mirador and overlooked the Laguna and all it’s beauty. It’s really incredible and probably the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in Nicaragua so far. The Laguna itself is like a gigantic crater and involves a 45-minute hike in order to get to the beach from the Mirador. In addition to being able to see all of the Laguna from the aerial view of the Mirador, you can see all of Granada, the entire northern part of Lago de Nicaragua, and you can even see clear into Boaco – a 6 hour bus ride away! It was a little cloudy, so only what I described was visible. I can only imagine what you can see on a clear day, but it has to be amazing.
After getting home from the Mirador, we did our quiz for 20 minutes (a meeting that could’ve taken 20 minutes ended up taking 4 hours with all our “field trips”), and then headed home. I grabbed 20 cords and headed to the store to buy a banana, as is my routine when I stumbled upon a lost (but not forgotten) part of my life – the newly opened gym in Masatepe. Wide-eyed, I stumbled into the gym, asked how much it cost for a week – 40 cords (that’s like 2 bucks!), canceled my trip to buy a banana and went straight home to get my gym stuff. Twenty minutes later, I was back in the gym for a 3-hour workout-till-I-dropped session. I absolutely destroyed myself, and it was awesome. While it was incredible, I did have a short duel with a scorpion that seemed convinced it owned the plate I was to use. The result of this duel was me being stung: Scorpion – 1, Richard – 0. I countered this by smashing it with a dumbbell: Scorpion – 1, Richard – 2 (I got 2 points since I KO’d, more or less, the scorpion). My game plan is to utilize the gym everyday until I leave Masatepe, so I’m showing up at 5 AM tomorrow (when they open) so I can get in a workout ASAP (I might even sneak in another tomorrow night). My Nicaraguan life will be complete if I can find some kind of gym in Achuapa.
Chatted with some other neighbors when I got back for about an hour. One of them lives in Toronto and told me about his travels to Belize, Mexico, Jamaica, Argentina, and whatnot. I countered with all my awesome traveling stories. I think the result was a tie.
On an peculiar note: the mouthwash I buy (Lander Mouthwash and Gargle), because it’s the cheapest, is made in Binghamton, New York – the home of my Grandma. Hahahaha. The randomness.
1 Comment | Peace Corps | Tagged: A gym!, Plague, Scorpion duel, What an experience! | Permalink
Posted by thegoggins
July 9th
I slept pretty well today but woke up to an unusual sound I heard through my earplugs – a soft roar. It hit me as soon as I took them out what the roar was – hurricane-like rain. Great. I had to wake up early as it was – 5:30 – but to top it off, it was pouring which would further inhibit my motivation to actually get ready and leave. I started buying food to increase my calorie intake (I think I doubled it), so I ate 2 Goggins cauldron-sized bowls of cereal, then my host mom gave me some pineapple followed by a half liter of milk. This all meant that I could save one of my calcium supplement pills for today! Hey, I’m all about saving anything that can be depleted – why not?
Fortunately, the rain stopped just before I had to leave, so I was able to walk with Jordan to the bus stop to catch the bus to Managua without a problem. However there was one problem – the cobrador told us to fit 4 people in the back row. This yielded Jordan, Avi, and Owen all sitting on the bench, and me partially sitting on the edge of the bench, with my entire body smashed together with my legs on top of each other because there was no to put them. It was incredibly uncomfortable, times 70, for an hour and twenty minutes. Oh Nicaragua! Thank you very much! Please keep giving me these learning experiences!
We arrived in Managua after a seemingly endless bus ride and only have to wait a little bit before a Peace Corps mobile showed up to haul us to the office. There we sat around and waited for the other volunteers to show up before finally beginning our training sessions. The morning training session was about how to properly conduct interviews with business owners – taking note of the topics to bring up to warm up to the interview, demeanor during the interview, questions to ask, when to provide advice. The session itself was really actually very helpful in providing substance for an interview, but it was a tad spotty in places. My thoughts concerning this were further amplified when we observed an interview of a business owner of a video game business in Masaya. For some people, the interview was useful – and I’m glad they took away something from it. The only thing I focused on was his dirty coffee table, how the owner was fidgeting the entire time, with anything within arm reach, how intimidating the interviewer was, and how this was totally not the way I was going to approach interviews. Nevertheless, thank you Peace Corps for giving me ideas!
After some of us woke up following the interview observation, we all hopped in the Peace Corps ambulance (well, that’s what they look like), and got hauled off to the gigantic mall in Managua that reminds me more of the U.S. than well, the U.S. Personally, I hate it, and refused to pay their exorbitant prices for fast food. Oh my god – a heart attack for a 5-dollar cheeseburger! For that price, it must be good! I maintained my “to hell with these prices” mentality and just bought an ice cream cone to hold me over until…whenever the next meal was. However, I got lucky again, and the guy who drove us told us he was heading back to the office, so I could get a ride to the grocery store if I wanted to go. Hell yes! I picked up some overpriced thing of Peter Pan peanut butter (granted it’s not the 6 lb jug from Sam’s that I’m used to, but I’m not here to complain…all the time), some bread, bananas (not the ones for export – those are 78% more!), and a juice and satisfyingly ran across the highway so I could make my way back to the PC office.
It was all worth it and I felt I was a lot more satisfied with what I had than the others judging by the look on everybody’s face (a guess, but for practical purposes, let’s just assume I was right). This was followed up by a couple of presentations from the Catarina and Niquinohomo groups. I’d tell you what their presentations were about, but I’m trying to keep readership levels high, so I’ll spare you the riveting and captivating details. Yea, I’m sure some of you feel cheated about how Peace Corps life really is, but you’ll live. Following the sessions, I asked my program director if she had thought about any other sites for me before deciding Achuapa for my site. She told me that she hadn’t thought about sites that would’ve been good for me until I told her I liked Achuapa. She said that it just made sense – the previous volunteer had been timid, introverted, and had bad Spanish, and he left. I on the other hand am super extroverted, have a good Spanish level, and super enthusiastic about just being here. Then I was informed that as soon as I mentioned Achuapa, the interview was over. Well it’s good to know I was right on the money/convincing.
In addition to the all of the aforementioned, PC got 2 cakes (bad communication amongst staff members) for all the people who had birthdays – Joanna during the site visit, David’s birthday was today, and Kat’s birthday is the 21st – Peace Corps was just covering the bases. For practical purposes, they threw Avi’s name on the cake too…even though his birthday was a while ago…and he already got a cake. This just meant more gluttonous goodness for all of us – particularly since Georgia (our program director) bought an AMAZING (if you’re reading this Jordan, it was amazingly terrible) chocolate/caramel/whipped cream cake. It definitely made me nostalgic for the U.S., even though I don’t eat that type of crap in the U.S. since I’m a health nut – but let me have my moment.
Peace Corps, being kind of Peace Corpsy (I think I need a more functional adjective), dropped us off at the UCA so we could go home. This just meant that we couldn’t take a direct bus back to Masatepe, but just the better. Everybody wanted to rent our own bus to take us all home, but I didn’t particularly care since I’d get there faster on another bus. Jordan and Lindsay ended up agreeing, and we caught the first microbus out of the UCA. I ended up sitting next to some cheery Nicaraguan guy underneath his enormous suitcase, however with the way Nicaraguans driver, this was a welcome obstruction to witnessing the impending accident we’re always about to get in.
In San Marcos, to unwind, we ended up going to a the facenta (stuck up) bar/restaurant so we could just chill out and collect our thoughts/recuperate. It was a nice time to relax and we hung out for around an hour before catching a mototaxi back to our towns.
A good way to end the day. Bring on tomorrow!
July 10th
Thankfully I had a light schedule today, so that meant I could catch up on sleep – which is exactly what I did. However, as I’ve found typical, I got a phone call (two actually, but I missed them both) from Peace Corps. I figured it was either the med office, or somebody from HQ telling us about some meeting. Either way, I’m too cheap to call them back. Yea, that’s right – the government can call me back. Jordan ended up calling me to tell me that we had a session for our Masatepe group in two hours, so we had to read 3 sections in this book and then go discuss what we read and take a quiz. Thanks for letting us know ahead of time! How am I supposed to adapt to Nica time if PC keeps giving me tasks mere hours before the deadline? Culturally insensitive, that’s all I have to say.
I stopped by Jordan’s house about an hour before the training session to discuss the book/get the virus off of my flash drive that she gave me. Eventually I figured it out, and we also discovered that her computer/flash drive was a virus haven. Nevertheless, we cleaned it for the now, even though it will just be virus laden the next time she plugs it into a computer. What do they say? It’s the little things in life that add up? That’s right! Short-term satisfaction – that’s what gets you through the day in the Peace Corps.
As luck would have it, Jordan immediately got a fever in the 30 minutes I was away from her house, so she skipped the training session. I showed up about 5 minutes late and waited for Peace Corps to show up. Not surprisingly, Ernie showed up 20 minutes late, without ice cream. We tarred and feathered him immediately after he stepped out of his car – at least that’s what we wanted to do. The ‘training session’ ended up being less training and more…chisme session, but asi es la vida no? Eventually we got around to the training session we actually planned, but it totally lacked the formality/structure. Hey, just becoming more accustomed to life in Nicaragua! Nevertheless, the session lasted a daunting 2 hours (god knows how) before we finally parted ways.
I wanted to take a walk to Flor de Pochote, a scenic overlook 5 km north of Masatepe, but with the weather being suspect, I headed over to the cyber for a bit instead. After updating myself on the world news (I swear that world news was more exciting to me when I was reading it everyday – context, I’m useless without it), I left the cyber to find that the clouds had parted to bring me the sunshine I’d been yearning for. Where was it earlier when I had enough time to take the scenic walk? Perhaps a Nicaraguan ploy to thwart my opportunities to see the lovely parts of my training town? I’m comfortable shifting the blame.
Oliver called me when I got home to tell me that he has a job interview on Monday in Managua in English, and that he’d like to practice with me before he has the interview, so I told him to come on over…and I left. Haha. Usually he says he’ll show up, then 38 days later, he shows up – so I figured I’d have some time to do some errands. I headed with Jordan to the bank and the grocery store (I’m going to miss both of those when I’m in Achuapa). Craving the caloric subsidy of my Nicaraguan life – corn flakes – it was necessary to pick up some milk. However, as fate would have it, I couldn’t turn down the chocolate ice cream bar that looked (that’s what ice cream bars do right?) at me through the freezer glass – so I got one of those too.
I found Oliver in front of my house upon returning home, “Why are you here already?” I said to him to make myself appear less culpable. He’d been there for 15 minutes – very un-Nica of him. However, we buckled down and I grilled him with some tough generic interview questions for him to practice his English. His English is amazing (for having only studied 6 months), but he still has some issues with past and present tense. Aside from that though, I’m really impressed with his level. He’s applying to a customer service center in Managua that pays around $500 a month. To provide a reference – that’s more than lots of Nicaraguan doctors get paid. I don’t know where these jobs came from, but they sure are a lot more lucrative than Peace Corps. I mean that’s why I joined the Peace Corps ri….errr….no.
I kicked Oliver out of my house at 5:30 so I could attend a youth group meeting, and headed over to grab them and Jordan. We decided to take a trip to the laguna to the north of Masatepe (had no idea there was one until today) on Saturday at 8 AM, and then discussed our presentation we have to do for Peace Corps the following Friday. The initial reaction of Javier and Mario, our youths, was apprehension, but after telling them there would be cake – this was no longer an issue. So hopefully that goes well.
Managua tomorrow for HIV/AIDS day (is this a world event or just a Nicaraguan one?)
July 11th
Well the day started out early since we all (TEFL and SBD) had to meet at the UCA at the ungodly hour of 7:30 AM. After doing all the morning routine, I stopped by Jordan’s house before we caught the microbus for Managua. When we got to the main street, we were surprised to see the microbus passing, so we flagged it down and got in. The bus was 15 minutes earlier than the bus we had thought it was supposed to leave, but we just didn’t think about it. When we were around San Marcos (or something), the microbus stopped, and the cobrador got out and started whistling down the street. We had no idea what was going on, but just went with it. However, he then told Jordan, me, and some other guy who was seated next to us to get out, and he threw us in a mototaxi. There was no explanation to what was going on, and the mototaxi just kept going straight down the highway. “Are we taking a mototaxi all the way to Managua?” we both thought. However, after about a mile or two in the mototaxi, it pulled over, and we pulled over and hopped back in the microbus. Apparently a policeman, or somebody had caught us, for overcrowding, so we waited for him to pass, and then they threw us all back in the bus. Not sure what the deal was, but it was definitely a new experience.
After arriving at the UCA and meeting up with a bunch of the TEFLers, we piled into a number of PC mobiles to get hauled over to some location for HIV/AIDS charlas the entire day. Most of the charlas were pretty informative, and gave us ideas for ways to give health charlas in our sites to groups of people – be it youths or adults. Really, there is no sort of interesting and informative way to describe what happened during charla as the subject is all pretty direct. In other words, it was like we were all in middle school again.
After the charlas and parting way with the TEFL volunteers, 12 of us piled into a microbus and headed to San Marcos. After a relatively uneventful trip through the pineapple fields of Ticuantepe and the other towns on the route, we arrived in San Marcos, but not exactly with an immediate desire to head back to our training towns. Some of us had heard of a pupuseria near the Ave Maria College, so we went venturing around looking for said restaurant. It ended up being right in front of the school in some sort of warehouse/apartment building type of restaurant. I really couldn’t explain exactly what it was, but it was quaint and provided a good atmosphere. To top it off they blasted all those great 80’s hits that any good Nica eating establishment can’t be without. It was a good time to just relax with everybody and unwind after the training session (in a way that didn’t involve going to a bar).
Around 9 of us caught the last bus back to Masatepe and planned to go to Perry’s (the TEFL volunteer in Masatepe) house to play cards. I ran home quick to unformalize my attire (aka I put on sandals) and eat. When I got over to Perry’s, I found the group unsurprisingly ready with the cards, and unsurprisingly, a couple of bottles of rum (I guess this is cultural assimilation). I’m going for the Peace Corps body (get in wicked good shape, then when people ask how I got in such good shape, I just tell them I went on the Peace Corps diet – the diet/exercise program that pays you! [Though this amount is negligible, and probably won’t beat inflation]). Anyways, I wasn’t feeling the booze today, so we just sat around for a couple hours and played some cards (but don’t tell the evangelicals!). It was a good time as we always tend to unwind from our typical focused on training-type selves.
Tomorrow, Jordan and I are headed to the Laguna de Masaya with our youth group (I think), hopefully it goes well.
Thanks for the letter Heather! It got here today! Amazing – 4 days!
July 12th
The morning started early today – because I had plans! I woke up early because Jordan and I were going with our youth group (well, it’s less of a group – there are only 2 people in it) to the Laguna de Masaya. It’s around 7 zillion kilometers north of Masatepe (though I didn’t learn that until minutes before leaving. We rendezvoused with Javier and Mario in front of Jordan’s house and began the trek to the Laguna at 8 on the dot. The street that passes in front of the main church in Masatepe goes the entire way to the Laguna and goes from being an urban street, to semi-urban, to rural, to a road in the middle of nowhere, to being completely unpaved – that’s right, you reach the end of the road.
It became incredibly obvious that as we continued our walk, that Masatepe was actually on a mountain – I had no idea it was so high up. The entire route to the Laguna is a massive descent and at some parts the road is easily at a 45-degree angle, I’m actually surprised some cars can ascend it. The road descends at a this ridiculous incline for 7 kilometers until you actually hit the sand of the area surrounding the Laguna. Nevertheless, the route itself is absolutely gorgeous, and after 5 km, you pass a restaurant, which is the last piece of civilization before you get thrown into the wild. The only way to describe how the land around the Laguna is to say it’s exactly how Jurassic Park is. There are rolling mountains, a jungle, all the jungle noises, and then to top it all off, you have a view of the Masaya volcano. It’s gorgeous and just completely savage.
After the highway just random ended (I don’t even know why the last 2 km of the road were even paved, it’s totally worthless), the road gives way to massive boulders and rocks in the middle of the road. The good thing is that the route from there is relatively flat and sandy. After around 25 minutes of walking down this path, suddenly the Laguna popped out of nowhere – and the ungodly amount of garbage strewn across the ‘beach’ became visible. Being the end of the route though, we were exhausted, so we just sat down amidst all the garbage and enjoyed a deserved snack.
After our break, we started navigating the beach and taking all sorts of side routes that Javier was taking us down. We ran into random fishermen, people swimming (even though it’s in the middle of nowhere and almost completely inaccessible), and barely-there volcanic rock trails. Before we finally ventured back to Masatepe, we carved “Cuerpo de Paz” into a tree (if you’re an environment volunteer, this uh…didn’t happen), and got a picture. However, we got a picture of Javier carving it into the tree, so if anybody wants to prosecute or yell or whatever, bark up his tree.
Javier led us down endless paths, and though I was completely lost, he knew exactly where we were. I’ve never seen anybody with such good bearings in my life, but he ended up finding a back route to the highway and we got back to Masatepe in no time. However, with the WICKED incline of the road, it was an hour and a half walk that was absolutely ridiculous and left all of us incredibly sore by the end of it.
Following the trip, I came home and fell unconscious. After waking from my coma, I did some reading before deciding to go to the store/bank. As my luck generally works out, as soon as I stepped foot outside my door, it started raining, and then the power went out. I refrained to think about the effects of a power outage, and trudged to the center of Masatepe. As the power was out, so was the ATM ($#@&), so I only had 5 cords to buy stuff at the grocery store. Fortunately I was just buying bananas, so 3 cords later, I walked out of there. While I was glad I was able to buy what I needed, I need change/money for my trip to El Rosario tomorrow, so I was still in a bit of a rut.
I headed back home and waited for around 3 hours for the power to come back on, which it ultimately did at 7. Owen gave me a call to tell me that he just met a Japanese Peace Corps volunteer, Yoshida, who is moving into his house after he goes off to his site in 2 weeks. Apparently, she’s a friend of Noriko, the Japanese Peace Corps volunteer that is in Achuapa. I had planned to meet her during my site visit, but with the unfriendly weather during my week there, I wasn’t able to stop by her house to introduce myself. She was hoping another volunteer would get placed in Achuapa because apparently it’s a little daunting being there solo. That made me feel better as I was a little reluctant to just show up, and didn’t want to be imposing (surprising, I know). Good to know I have designated friend already in Achuapa, I’ll probably need it.
July 13th
Today I woke up wicked early for my trip to El Rosario. I met up with Dianne and Sonia in Jinotepe and we hit up a fabric shop. Sonia was looking to buy some fabric to get some pants made, and Dianne wanted some for some headbands, or something. Basically what it breaks down to is this: if you buy fabric and have somebody make clothes for you, it’s cheaper than actually buying the clothes in the store. The store had every kind of fabric, yarn, buttons, and zippers you could imagine. Sonia and Dianne ended up buying tons of fabric and it came out to mere pennies – what a good deal! I’m seriously considering going back to get fabric to get a shirt made.
After the fabric store, we went to the grocery store to tease the inner Americans in us. It had tons of “luxury” goods (stuff we typically consume in the U.S., but is ridiculously expensive here), and we hung out there for about an hour enjoying the nostalgia. After this, we parted ways with Sonia and planned to meet up with her later that afternoon at the TEFLers local hangout, The Greenhouse.
Dianne and I then went and got a cab for El Rosario. The cab itself was…in shambles. There were no door latches, on the inside or the outside. Actually, there wasn’t even an inside to any of the doors either. The glove compartment was taped shut, the steering wheel was tied/taped on, and there was a huge crack in the windshield. I have no idea how this car was still running, but I just went with it – Si dios quiere.
After hanging out in El Rosario for a couple hours, Dianne and I met up with a group of the TEFLers for a couple beers at the Greenhouse. Apparently that’s where they all go after all the charlas we get in training sessions – very welcoming place.
After a couple hours there, I broke off from the TEFlers and hopped a bus back to Masatepe. As the day progressed, I’d gradually gotten really sick. The day started with me having the sniffles, this progressed to a sore throat, and by the time I left, I had a massive headache. All these ailments yielded plenty of distractions for me on the bus ride home. In addition to dying, it started hurricaning on the ride back.
I eventually got back home – completely drenched – but nevertheless, in one piece. I ate dinner quickly, then thought I’d do some reading. Yoshida, the Japanese Peace Corps volunteer in Masatepe ended up calling me to find out when I’d be going to Achuapa so she could let her friend know. Her English is really good, but with my massive headache/fever, I could understand very little of what she said. She kept talking to me about some environmental youth group or something and just went on and on and on about it. It’s all a blur really as I fell unconscious from my fever right after the phone call was over.
But I survived, barely.
Leave a Comment » | Peace Corps | Tagged: Charlas, Dying, What an experience! | Permalink
Posted by thegoggins
