More of the Achuapa routine…followed by a vacation

2008 25 December

December 18th

Nothing exciting here. I woke up at 4:15 today to go running with Edys only to show up a bit late because I had to slay some dogs in my yard (or at least that’s the way it went in my head). The way it actually boiled down was that there was a group of dogs that started fighting/mauling each other, so I blindly doused them with water, then rode my bike over to Edys’ to go run.

The run went amazingly well, and I still had plenty left in me after our 10 km run. In the next few weeks, I think we’re going to up to number to 11 or 12 km. I should probably run a race or something (or do something with all this training I’ve been doing). This was all followed up by the typical routine that I’ve journaled about countless times now. Sorry, I’ll try to be more exciting and start some mischief in the near future.

One positive development was me getting the ok from the health center to give some talks about the importance about preventing kidney problems. I sent an email to the PC health program director, and she’s going to leave me some information in the office when I pass through. If all goes according to plan, I should be able to give some talks to the community about kidney health by February.

December 19th

The normal routine – gym, yoga, computers. Then, come afternoon – class with Johanni, class with Yordanka, then dinner at my counterpart’s house. My time there ended voluntarily after I kicked his son to the floor. My counterpart laughed. Regardless, I left since I ‘had’ to wake up early (I didn’t have too, but I would have reprimanded myself if I didn’t wake up to go jogging).

After my two English classes today, I’ve decided that ‘vegetables’ is the most difficult English word to pronounce in the world. In my class with Johanni, we spent 40 minutes pronouncing it, and Yordanka spent an hour and 20 minutes until she could pronounce it correctly. Unreal.

December 20th

I slept amazingly for most of the night – I attribute this to my dream I had about sleeping. It felt like the dream equivalent of looking into a mirror when there is a mirror behind you as well – it’s an endless cycle. Whatever caused it, I want to try to duplicate it because I was in an amazingly deep sleep. Unfortunately this deep sleep ended around (I have no idea, I’m guesstimating) 2 AM and I never got back to ‘sleep’ sleep. But that’s ok, I’ve been going to sleep before 8 PM the entire week anyway.

I woke up at 5 AM for my jog and diligently churned out a 5 km jog before going back home, and eating some breakfast. This involved eating an orange on my front porch where a drunk guy asked me for a piece of orange, and after I told him no, he told me “Man! Oranges have some barbaric vitamins in them!” The synonym for this would be something like “Badass!” I followed breakfast up by doing some yoga and watching a movie (Aladdin for the 3rd day in a row). Johanni wanted me to come to her house sometime this weekend, so since I knew I wouldn’t be doing anything at all, I headed over after my movie.

I’ve only been to Johanni’s house twice before but for some reason I knew everybody on the way to her house (which yielded a lot of ‘hellos’ and one challenge to a footrace). Once at her house, I was handed a mountain of limes and oranges and given a knife, “Eat!” they told me. So I ate around 4 limes and 6 oranges while talking with Johanni, her dad, her sister Brenda, and her mother. It was a good relaxing way to pass the rest of the morning. On top of that, I was able to completely overdose on vitamin C while partaking in my new hobby of peeling oranges.

I headed back home at 1 with around 20 oranges, a couple limes, a bag of bananas, a bag of guineos (similar to bananas but huge) and a bag of bananas. Returning home so “late” had its consequences – the lady on the corner had no tortillas left! At the moment I discovered that she and the lady next door had no tortillas, one of my students from Los Caraos, Jammerling, was passing on his tri-ciclo (a bike used to carry cargo), so I hopped on and had him help me find tortillas. This journey brought me to a part of town I’d never been to (where people had clearly never seen me before). This ‘unknown part of town’ was about 50 feet from a place where I sometimes buy vegetables – I need to start exploring a bit more.

Finally, I got some tortillas and had a quick lunch before heading over to Yordanka’s house to get the gym key I lent her (I’m one of 3 people in town with the gym key – talk about gaining trust!). I ended up sticking around for a couple hours talking with her and her mom before going to the gym to turn off a radio she’d left on. On the way over to the gym (one block over), I passed by my friend Kenis’ house. So I stopped for what I thought would be a short chat. This turned into a 5-hour session that involved me prepping and painting their house. Go figure how that one happened, but I did get a dinner out of it (and I was in need of that dinner since my counterpart was going to be in church all night long). And hey – I was able to give them some advice that I learned when I painted with my Dad (I hate painting for the record).

Busy Saturday – that’s the first in a while.

December 21st

Even though I really wasn’t in the mood, I woke up at 5 AM for my jog. However, since I was lacking the motivation, I decided to just run a mile then go back and do some other exercises instead. After doing my exercises, I was exhausted (probably from continually waking up at 0 dark o’clock in the morning. I then laid down to rest for a little bit before heading out and doing my round of visits. However, when that rolled around (9:30), I realised I was extremely dizzy (vertigo right?). Naturally, I shrugged it off and went about my day.

I ran into the directora who asked if I was going to the baseball game, and since I wasn’t doing anything else, I decided to go check it out. I got in early (since it was the championship game, the stands would be packed) and grabbed a seat. It seemed like the who’s who of Achuapa showed up to the game – my lawyer played center field (but unfortunately for him he went 0 for 4) and the vice mayor was on one of the teams too. It was a pretty exciting, low scoring game that saw 3 people thrown out at home plate.

One thing that was interesting was that while there appeared to be uniforms, there were some people in completely random uniforms. Not quite sure why this was, but it made it seem like I was watching a volleyball game of some sort (they have some person in another colour jersey all the time). It was a barebones baseball game, which made it even better. There were only 3 bats and 4 batting helmets to share between the two teams. So after the bottom of every inning the other team tossed the bats and helmets across the diamond (literally) so we could keep the game going. When a guy got on base, he’d take off his helmet and throw it to the sideline for the guy in the on deck circle. Another thing I noticed was that there were no batting gloves (but one guy had one motorcycle glove). The stadium has seating for around 100, but since around 5 times that many showed up, there were people sitting on the walls of the stadium in any place that they could find shade.

When the game ended, I realised my dizziness had gotten a lot worse so I went home and relaxed a bit before deciding air would probably be the best remedy. So I did some rounds of the town and ultimately hung out with my counterpart’s brother, Obed, for around 5 hours before eating dinner and going to sleep.

December 22nd

Luckily, this morning I woke up without my dizziness (I think it was after painting a house for 5 hours with oil paint, or from spraying Raid in my barrel of water to kill a spider – amazingly big. I then bathed with this water.) So who knows what I was sick from, but I’m just glad I was better.

I headed to the gym for my last gym session before going on vacation (woo!) and then hung out around town. The most exciting thing that happened (aside from finding out about the Continental plane crash in Denver) was my English class. Today was a real low-key day, which I feel I deserved. I need to chill out.

Speaking of chilling out, some snow would be great right about now.

December 23rd

Today I left site for the first time since Thanksgiving (a new record for me) and woke up early to catch the 4 AM bus. Originally, my plan was to leave on the 24th, but since the post office wouldn’t be open then, I decided to leave a day early (hey, I’d been in site long enough after all). On top of that, with my exercise routine having me wake up at god awful hours of the morning anyway, I was well rested and didn’t even bat an eye when the 3 AM alarm went off. 

The ride was pretty uneventful but did include the a comical moment (for me anyways) – just outside of Achuapa, the bus stopped to pick up some people. These people subsequently loaded their cargo of 7 loads of chickens and turkeys on the top of the bus. The chickens and turkeys were tied together by their feet in a ball of around 20 a piece and were just loaded to the top of the bus like any other cargo. By the time the chickens were unloaded just outside Leon, almost all of them were dead. I can’t decide if PETA would approve this method or frown at it, but it seemed to be a quite successful method at killing mass numbers of chickens. I’m sure this would be cheaper than what PETA wanted KFC to do. Just some business tips from Nicaragua, that’s all. 

I ran a couple errands in Leon (which included going to the post office: one package from Heather arrived, and one envelope of DVDs from Phil arrived) before meeting up with Brie (a fellow Coloradoan and semi-Denverite who is an SBD volunteer in Leon with me) and catching the microbus to Chinandega. Unfortunately (for other people) most of the micros going to and from Chinandega were on strike, so there was a very limited number of micros (which is completely unheard of). When a micro did finally show up, there was around 70 people waiting that charged the microbus in an effort to get one of the 15 seats available. They all had one disadvantage though – Brie and I are a hell of a lot bigger than all of them. So while they were all pushing and being asshats to each other, we swiftly (I heard I’m CIA after all) moved in for the last two seats available. 

Upon arrival, we set out for the supermarket to indulge for a bit (I had been in my site sans-most American food items for quite a while). We then headed over to Luis’ apartment to drop off the stuff before heading to the park for some banana licuados and beer later that night. Chinandega has very little to offer, so we ended up back in the park later that night to resume our delinquent and vagabond activities.

December 24th

With today being Christmas eve, most of the day was full of comments like:

“Oh my god it’s Christmas eve and I’m here in Nicaragua.”

“Where the $*#@ is the snow?”

“It’s so f*$#@&# hot!”

The aforementioned comments were generally followed by mock sobbing. Today consisted of a lot of nothing. Brie, Luis, and I all watched a ton of movies, grabbed licuados, went to the grocery store to buy food and stuff to drink (so we could forget we’re here?). We didn’t really want to go out and do much simply because it’s Christmas eve, and the last thing we wanted to do was be reminded that we were here. So we turned on NBC (Thank you Florida) and watched news and American TV all day long while playing cards. 

After many a card game, we wanted to indulge ourselves (because we sure didn’t have the resources for a turkey dinner in Luis’ apartment), so we headed to the most luxurious restaurant in Chinandega.We didn’t have very high expectations since it’s Nicaragua but were thoroughly impressed with our meals. We got a salad before our meals (that was actually tasty) and I got a steak that had close to the square footage of my house for only 8 dollars. To close out the night, we through on It’s A Wonderful Life (Thanks again NBC 6 South Florida), drank eggnog (Rum infused Nicaraguan egg nog – who’d have thought they’d have it here? It’s better than egg nog back at home!), and played counterfeit Monopolio. As anybody who has played Monopoly knows, this game dragged on far longer than anybody wanted it to (but It’s a Wonderful Life dragged on even longer – it’s the first time I’ve ever watched more than 10 minutes it and paid attention).

With egg nog, It’s a Wonderful Life, and Monopoly, this was about as close to a U.S. christmas I could get in Nicaragua. I’d say we did a pretty good job of it. 

3 Comments | Peace Corps | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by thegoggins

Starving, Cookies and Benevolence?

2008 18 December

December 16th

Now with the desire not to sleep until 9 everyday (though after not sleeping in for 7 months, you’d think I’d want to), I’ve started a running routine. Given that my huge runs (10 km, or 6.25 miles) are on Thursday’s, I give myself a little break and run around half that every other day. The consensus is that waking up with a jog really is a great way to get the day started. I felt full of energy (even though I woke up at 5) and was in a good mood the entire day. I had an extra jump in my step that helped me get through the day (that in hindsight is awfully monotonous).

 

After my jog, I did my daily ritual of sitting on my porch eating oranges (yet another good way to start the day), and chatting with people as they came by. Then, I headed to the cyber and chatted it up with the guy who works there (incidentally, we’ve become buddies, and I hang out with him sometimes since nobody ever goes to the cyber in the mornings). I also got feedback for my work report from my bosses – I got a thumbs up on everything I’m doing and a praise for my work with the spelling bee. They said everybody in the community has said great things about me – so that’s good.

 

Once out of the cyber, I was starving (I attribute this to all the exercising). I was tired of my normal snack food (oranges, bananas, peanut butter), so I headed to the pulperia to throw some variety into my diet – wafer cookies. I remember that I loved eating those when I was a kid, and since I never eat sweets, I figured I could allot myself some wafer cookies – for a job well done. Yes, a job well done.

 

Wafer cookies cost 2 cordobas (10 cents) a pack, but if I buy the multipack, they are 1 cordoba. Being the economist I am, I refuse to pay high unit costs. So to get the most bang for my buck, I bought a pack of 12 (12 cordobas!). I definitely was not going to eat all 12, and didn’t want to keep them in my house (unhealthy), so I walked around town giving cookies to random people (the whole ‘don’t take candy from strangers’ mantra apparently doesn’t pertain to Nicaragua) and friends. On top of that I got all my vitamin D for the day (which was visible in the form of my burnt forearms).

 

I was totally bored after that, so I headed over to the shop where my English student Yordanka stays. Since she doesn’t have a job in Achuapa, she’s as bored as I am in the mornings, so I killed the morning with her chatting and whatnot. It also appeared that my benevolent (and not thrifty) mood had carried over, and I gave out bananas to anybody I knew that passed me. One of the recipients of my gifted bananas was the directora of the primary school, which elicited the following response:

 

“Oh my god, I’m going to remember this. This is probably the best day of my life if you’re giving me a banana. You’re probably the cheapest person on the planet so this is definitely one of the happiest days of my life.”

“Yea, I know, cherish this moment, it’s about as rare as meeting Jesus.”

 

During the afternoon I taught a couple English classes and took another jog (what else is there to do?). During this jog I was called a terrorist from a group of idiots that always ask me for money (I reply, “I don’t make enough to support your lazy lifestyle, get a job.”), I have some ideas of what I’m going to say to them the next time I see them, but I’m searching for something overly condescending to say to them.

 

Then for dinner with my counterpart, we had fish and crab soup. It was made in a way I’d never seen before – the fish and crabs were just thrown into the soup minus preparation. It still tasted good, though getting a spoonful of just the body of a crab (or is it a crawfish?) was kind of odd. Apparently I can catch tons of fish and crawfish in the river just to the north of Achuapa (the one that flows through Johanni’s farm). Fishing! That’d be a good hobby to pick up.

 

December 17th

Today in the gym, a bunch of little kids decided to join me while I was working out. I gave them a few pointers and learned that one of the little kids was named Richard – that’s something I can remember.

 

Aside from that morning activity, there was really nothing extremely notable to mention. I just gave another English class to Johanni and then hung out the rest of the afternoon before heading to my counterpart’s house for dinner. After dinner we watched Snakes on a Plane that had the best dubbing of Samuel L. Jackson that you could possibly have. It was like listening to him speaking in Spanish – as badass and pissed off as he is in English.

 

3 Comments | Peace Corps | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by thegoggins

A boring weekend, another ET, and a motorcycle accident

2008 16 December

December 13th

 

Yordanka wanted to run with me this morning and after running 1 km she told me she felt like vomiting – so much for my morning jog. While I didn’t get much out of it, I bet I could count the running session as some kind of secondary project. I mean, I did teach her how to save energy, then ab and yoga exercises. I think I’ll report it as such – Peace Corps sure does love seeing reports; it’s a government organization after all.

 

Unfortunately the day didn’t get anymore interesting. The weekends are dull days.

 

December 14th

 

I woke this morning to a whining dog following a battle for territory (or something) – this whining turned out to be from my favourite neighbourhood dog Cual. He was mauled by the other neighbourhood dogs and was in pretty sorry shape when I saw him this morning.

 

The most exciting activity of the day was getting my knife sharpened. I then retired to my new favourite past time of peeling oranges on my porch. I’ve definitely got to be Achuapa’s #1 consumer of oranges by now.

 

I also got my bike lock stolen today – who the hell steals that?

 

December 15th

 

After heading to the gym today, I headed to the cyber for my tri-weekly update on the world. What I found in my inbox was yet another email to all the volunteers in my group from another volunteer who decided to Early Terminate her service. We’ve had so many people of the original 39 (in TEFL and SBD) leave that I’m starting to lose count. But with this last ET, we’ve lost 9 of the original 39. That’s almost 25% of our group! Nuts.

 

In addition to another ET, two of my friends got in a motorcycle accident on the road that goes to my school out in the campo. I didn’t see them, but apparently one of them, Agner (a guy who works in the bike shop) tore all the skin off his leg. So he was hospitalised in León last night. Who knows when he’ll be back. The other guy, Chico, just messed up his foot (they told me he had a “hole” in his foot, but I suppose that’s a relative definition since he’s not in the hospital. Apparently what happened was they were going full speed and hit a pig that wandered into the road. So yea – bummer for them.

 

On a more positive note, I’m getting better at teaching English classes. Now I’m doing “fill in the blanks” for song lyrics. But not just any song lyrics – songs I want to listen to. So while teaching English, I’m converting the town into indie music fanatics. Step by step. Next step, getting some of my favourite bands to play at the concert down here – maybe at the Achuapa International Music Festival!

 

As for the mail situation, it seems to be resolved (or will be shortly), so feel free to resume your sending of things (but god knows if it will arrive since I’ve received 1 of the 10 I was expecting).

 

Finally, I was talking with a friend about my friend about the apparently weakness of my group with so many people leaving, he responded:

 

“Either that, or Nicaragua is horrible and they are smarter than us.”

 

Probably not true. But it made me laugh anyway.

 

1 Comment | Peace Corps | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by thegoggins

DON’T SEND ME PACKAGES

2008 11 December

Just found out today that nobody had paid for our mailbox since 2005, so there is a debt of 1,000 cordobas. So hold off on sending anything until we all get this sorted out.

4 Comments | Peace Corps | Permalink
Posted by thegoggins

Finally – an end to the boredom

2008 11 December

December 9th

 

Today was by far the most productive day I’ve had in weeks – and that made me super happy. Originally I was going to wake up at 4:30 to go jogging with my buddy, but I abandoned that involuntarily by not setting an alarm. With that out of the way, I headed to the cyber (life is so much better with a cyber 100 feet from my house). I got caught up on all the news (Go Nuggets! And how about those gas prices?), then gave Johanni a call to find out when we’d meet for English class.

 

Johanni told me we’d meet during the afternoon, so I headed across the street to the shop where the new girl (whose name I later discovered was Linneth or something like that) I tutor lives. She headed over to my house soon after where we did some listening exercises for 2 hours. Coincidentally, she graduated from high school in León at the same school that a friend of mine teaches at. Not only that, but she got the same business class taught to her by a business volunteer 2 years ago – small world.

 

I ate lunch after my tutoring session and for some reason a bunch of clouds showed up. Earlier I’d been wondering how I would get my run into my schedule since I’d probably be working with Johanni until dinner time, but I’d received my answer – I could run now! I took the same route I normally takes (the “highway” that goes to Estelí) and have a goal of running further than I did the previous time. My not very scenic run has now turned into one full of green mountainous valleys, which is definitely a positive.

 

I got back to my house with an hour to spare before Johanni was to head over. A quick shower later, I headed over to the cooperativa to make some photocopies, then went to the mini super to buy some yoghurt (WE FINALLY HAVE YOGHURT). Happy as a clam (yoghurt and a jog by 2 PM?!?!), I killed some time before Johanni finally showed up. Today was the first time I’d actually see her house, so I was looking forward to that. I knew her house was on the “highway” to Estelí, so I wanted to see if it was within running distance as well. Not only did I discover it was within running distance, but I’d run by it the last 3 times I went jogging. The house is a farm with tons of cows, chickens, pigs, horses, dogs and the most incredible view I’ve ever seen. Not only that, but the river that flows north of Achuapa flows through her property, and it has a swimming hole. I got a tour of the rest of the property as well where I got to see all the other amazing views it has to offer. In this process, she was showing me part of her property where the cows all graze. I was trying to explain the what a fence was (I couldn’t remember what it was in Spanish), and I felt something bite my foot (I was wearing flip flops). I expected to see an ant running around on my foot that I would soon kill, but upon looking down on my feet, I discovered that there was not one but roughly 200 ants running around on my foot. It was like a nightmare – but I’ll never forget the word for fence again. Also, if anybody wants to visit, I can borrow her horses to go up to the scenic overlook of Achuapa (Mom and Dad – plan on it). Then, like always, the night ended with dinner at my counterpart’s house.

 

Finally! Things to do!

 

December 10th

 

For some reason, I couldn’t sleep until my normal wake-up time of 9 AM (campo time no more!) so I got started with the day at the more reasonable hour of 7 AM to start my routine. I stopped by the biggest pulperia on the planet (all the people that work there love me from what I’ve people tell me – always asking about me), for my weekly recharge of my phone and my cereal and oatmeal rations. Then it was over to the mini super to buy every single box of V8 splash they had (it’s the only juice in the whole country that has 100% vitamin C and 50% of vitamin A without having around 60 grams of sugar per box).

 

I had planned on waiting until the afternoon to go to the gym, but with my new access to the gym (whenever I want), I took advantage of this and was at the gym at 9 AM. Since close to nobody uses the gym, and the ones that do use it in the afternoon, I had an entire gym to myself for the entire morning. No sharing necessary! It’s as if I had a gym in my own house!

 

Afterwards, I headed home and promptly gorged myself with food (or so I thought – I was starving to death the rest of the day), did some yoga, and then headed for a shower. My bathroom is right outside my door, but requires that I pass outside to get to it. This has never been a problem until today – upon exiting my house and shutting the door, I turned around to find my new student with a question about an exercise I told her to practice. This was a quite an awkward situation, but since this word doesn’t exist in Spanish, I just have to settle for calling it extremely uncomfortable (this is the closest equivalent. Any clothes I had at my within proximity were drenched with sweat, so I just went with it and addressed her question and had an uncomfortable conversation. Whatever.

 

That afternoon, I headed to Johanni’s house to give her a class and take some pictures of her farm for a couple of hours. Julio, the head of security at Peace Corps randomly showed up while I was over there, and he dropped off a couple of Newsweek’s and some stuff I had from the med office (floss and some mega awesome sunscreen – SPF 55! I’ve never even owned sunscreen that strong!). I got home around 4:15 and did some quick planning for my new student (Lineth?) before she came over. She showed up shortly thereafter with her mother where we all sat around and talked about how awesome yoga is, how important an education is, and about her mother’s trip to Denver and Aspen (it’s the only state in the U.S. that she’s been too – Colorado of all places).

 

Dinner at my counterpart’s house was a short trip over there because I’ve decided to start running with my buddy at 4:30 in the morning (I’m sure I’ll regret it later). On that note…sleeping might be a good idea now.

 

Leave a Comment » | Peace Corps | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by thegoggins

I lost December 4th, Getting shafted by the water company, Nolstalgia, and Losing more PCV´s

2008 9 December

December 5th

In the U.S. when something unjust happens, it’s accepted that people will go out on the street corner and bitch and moan until the head of the organization that did the shafting says, “O.K. guys, they caught us, let’s stop being the total asshats we were trying to be.” Here in Nicaragua, that isn’t the case – but it’s not going to stop me.

 

As I have mentioned many times before, water has been a huge issue in Achuapa, particularly in the last couple of weeks. They just installed a motor to give us water the whole day (at least that’s what they told us, which was a lie), and due to the power being knocked out by wind, we’ve been waterless and powerless for a huge majority of the time.

 

Well, we got our water bills the other day to find out that there was a new ‘minimum’ consumption that we would be charged for. I thought the fixed rate fee that everybody gets charged covered the minimum consumption, but I guess I miscalculated. The new minimum consumption is 16.5 ‘units’ (whatever the hell that is), and is 12.5 more ‘units’ that what I use. So, instead of paying 24 cordobas, I now pay 84 cordobas due to this new ‘minimum rate’ we all have to pay. But do we all have to pay it? After a few phone calls to many volunteers, I found out that no, we don’t all have to pay it. In fact, it appears that only people in Achuapa pay this new minimum fee. My huge problem with this minimum fee is that A – we had a minimum fee already, B – we never have any water anyway, and C – if I left every single faucet open so water drained for the entire month, I STILL wouldn’t used 16.5 ‘units’ of water. We never have water, but now we’re being charged a huge amount. Everybody is outraged. But I think I’m the most outraged.

 

The water company is engaged in thievery right now. That’s all I have to say.

 

Maybe I should start a march!

 

December 6th

With the whole having the government steal from me as well as everybody else in Achuapa being a thing of the past (so I keep telling myself), l kept myself relatively mentally and physically occupied for the most part. Some of my soon to be 4th year students have pen pals in Florida, so I did a bunch of translations for them so they could send responses. Additionally, today was the graduation for students at one of my institutes (though I didn’t go – I don’t know any of them, or so I thought), and I did some reading up on places to bring my parents to when they come next month. I also caught that Mel Gibson movies Apocalypso – it was nice to watch a movie with subtitles instead of watching horrible dubbing.

 

But that aside, I had one amazing high point of the day. A couple of days ago, I noticed that the fruit stand down the street now had watermelons. Being the glutton that I am, I bought an entire watermelon as opposed to buying a slice like everybody else in the town was doing. I’d wager that it was about 7-8 pounds for 30 cordobas (about $1.50 – I think I overpaid, but I don’t care).

 

Today, I really dove into that watermelon and ate roughly half of it. This unleashed a torrent of endorphins that quickly overtook my body, thus rendering me in a sort of euphoric state. It reminded me of summer (though it’s December and summertime here) where I’d have access to all those super great summery fruits like cantaloupe (in Spanish it’s ‘melon’ for those of you interested), honeydew, watermelon, etc. Totally gorging myself seemed to almost transport me to a sunny park out in Denver – I completely forgot I was standing in my kitchen in Achuapa.

 

Those are the kind of simple things you appreciate in Peace Corps. Simplicity never tasted so good.

 

December 7th

Since I forgot to write it 2 days ago when I finished it, here it is:

 

Mountains beyond Mountains – A. A book about a doctor devoted to improving conditions for the poor. Real good book that was pretty inspirational – it surprises you just how much one person can do.

 

Today was a normal day for me. Nothing too exciting happened – this stems from the fact that it was a weekend, but also because I live in the campo. That being said, I did my normal round of visits.

 

I have developed a new hobby though – peeling oranges, the Nicaraguan way. It’s a great way to pass time, act Nicaraguan, and people watch at the same time. So every day, I buy a handful of oranges (10 cents a piece no matter what size they are!), and sit in front of my house and peel oranges with a big huge knife. This way, I get to ‘adios’ passer-by’s, enjoy the weather, and eat tons of oranges to boot.

 

While I’m on the topic of food, I’ve been eating extremely healthy lately. I easily eat about 2 lb. of bananas, oranges, and watermelon (now that it’s in season) everyday, and I’ve started eating chicken livers frequently too (though it’s not my choice), which are loaded with vitamin A. All this combined with my new hardcore exercise routine, and I should be getting into mad good shape in a matter of no time (speaking of which, one of my counterparts says I’m fat because my shoulders are wide – ?????)

 

December 8th

Today, I was under the assumption that it was the “purísima”, but upon waking up and asking a couple people, I discovered that all the parties and fireworks that I slept through last night was in fact the “purísima.” Whoops. I guess I’ll just have to wait until next year.

 

On that note, I wasn’t really in the mood to sit in my house the entire day, so I hopped on the bike and did a couple rounds of the town visiting people before borrowing the key to the gym. I have access to the gym whenever I want, and I don’t even have to pay for it. I might ask if I can make a copy of the key so I can just stop borrowing it. After a couple of hours in the gym, and an hour on the yoga mat, I ate some lunch (first time I’ve had tuna fish in more than 7 months!).

 

On that note, it appears that I’ve fallen into a routine; when I went to buy my tortillas from the lady on the corner, she didn’t even ask how many I wanted, she just gave me how many I always ask for. She’s not the only one either – whenever I go to the fruit stand, the lady always asks me if I want 6 bananas or 3 oranges. I gotta start mixin’ things up.

 

I hung out with Edys (like the ice cream!) at his shop for a couple of hours during the afternoon. I also ran into Claudia and Kenis from the cooperativa while I was at Edys’ shop. The big thing during the summer time is swimming in the river in a part of the river that I’ve never seen before – and this is nothing new. I find myself asking people very frequently about the location of places. My town is only 4ish blocks by 4ish blocks, and I rarely travel outside of that square. I know there’s supposed to be a river some 100 meters to the north of the last street and a waterfall to the east of the town, but I have yet to see either. I should really go exploring with all this free time.

 

I helped a new ‘student’ with English today as well. So we started the whole assessment process for her so I can figure out where she struggles. She took off at 6 (after she left I realised that I have absolutely no idea what her name is), and I headed to my counterpart’s house for dinner. It was his 6 year anniversary with his wife (he’s 2 years older than I am), so they made a huge gigantic dinner of grilled meat, rice, tortillas, and the mountain of vegetables that I bought this morning. (Mom and Dad – we’re going to eat at their house when you come visit)

 

Comparatively, that was a pretty productive day.

 

Oh! A volunteer from the business group before me got medically separated yesterday. So while she’s not from my group, her loss brings the total number of SBD volunteers to around 28 I think. Each group started with 20 people. Nuts. Peace Corps kills you, well, at least small business volunteers.

Leave a Comment » | Peace Corps | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by thegoggins

Life is boring now

2008 4 December

December 1st

 

As you’ve (hopefully) quickly come to realise, I’m on vacation. That being said, I’m doing very little.

 

Today’s highlights include my friend Kenia telling me that me with no hair makes me look nicer. I also got a similar comment from somebody who works at the enormous pulperia. This makes me think – do I look like a serial killer with hair? What’s the deal? So far, I’ve just had once person doesn’t like my haircut, Melba. Her remark about it was something to the regard of, “What barbarity!” which was preceded by, “Noooooooooooooooooo!” So, while everybody else does like it, I intend to grow my hair back ASAP (as if I had some control over it).

 

I used the new cyber for the second time today as well. Now with water most of the day, a cyber, and not having to worry about making dinner, living here isn’t so mentally (and sometimes physically) straining as it once was. Sure, in terms of what I’m doing resembles little of what I did in the States (like reading – what the hell?), but at least I get through the day without any major hiccups.

 

I also saw a dog get hit by a truck today, and it was about as pleasant as it sounded. It couldn’t get up and walk, and when I tried to help it, it preferred to lay in the road wailing as opposed to being dragged under a tree or something.

 

Oh yes, exciting – I know. 

 

December 2nd

 

Just when things start to look up, something else hits – typical. I’d be so overjoyed with my seemingly endless supply of water that I refrained to think about problems the wind could cause. In Colorado, lots of wind meant that my bike ride home would a little slower (but it’d be a challenge!) than usual.

 

Here in Achuapa however, the wind brings on an unforeseen problem – no power. No problem right? I mean, it’s sunny during the day anyway, so power isn’t that much of a necessity. However, when the power goes out, so does the water. So my living situation gets downgraded yet again because the quality of all the power lines and whatnot is absolutely terrible. That being said, the power lines don’t break or blow down so I don’t exactly know where the power goes – maybe the wind blows it away?

 

Today was more reading (gotta do something to get out of the sun), but I also met some girl who goes to the university in León who studies English. So from what it sounded like, I’ll probably start helping her with her English.

 

I should start working on some of my secondary projects…

 

December 3rd

 

I only read a little bit today, but this was because I finished my book, so on that note…

 

Bobby Fischer Goes to War – A-. The story about Bobby Fischer’s road to the world chess championship. Really portrays him as a paranoid, ungrateful jackass. My opinion of him has definitely changed.

 

I did a little more socializing today than in previous days. It all started out at my counterparts house where we ate oranges from his tree, and then taught his son how to hit curve balls (this is done by throwing bottle caps – since the caps curve when you throw them, it’s just like a curve ball). After this, I headed to the cooperativa where I chatted with Karelia and Claudia (the vice president) about a wide array of things. After this, it was back to the normal routine – read, workout, visit. Rinse and repeat.

 

Then I found 20 dollars!

Leave a Comment » | Peace Corps | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by thegoggins

I´m reading and cutting off all my hair

2008 1 December

November 28th

 

After waking up and taking an amazing shower in “U.S. embassy resort” (I can’t think of anything more appropriate to call it), I got a ride to the Peace Corps office in the U.S. embassy vehicle that picks up the DCM. I hung out in the office for a bit, picked up some more necessities at the store, then headed to León to catch the bus to Achuapa with my counterpart’s wife.

 

Once back in Achuapa, I hung out with a couple of buddies in front of the Enitel (once again, the only ‘streetlight’ we’ve got) before heading to my counterpart’s house for dinner. Then I dove into another book – Moneyball.

 

But the big news out of Achuapa is that they finally installed the water pump on Thanksgiving while I was gone. As a result, we now have water most of the time – I’d forgotten what having consistent running water felt like. To take advantage of this strange phenomenon, I cleaned practically my whole house, bathroom, the fridge, filled my water bottles, and boiled some drinking water. I wasn’t entirely aware how restricted my living was without water!

 

Oh yea, and I’d like to say thank you to the volunteer who completed their service and abandoned their rubber boots in the office. They fit perfectly.

 

November 29th

 

Continuing my vacation, I finished up Moneyball, which made me realise an amazing thing – I’ve read 9 books in my 16 weeks in Achuapa. A book every 2 weeks? Before Peace Corps, I don’t think I read 9 books for fun in my entire life. I read two other books while I was in training (3 months), but since I didn’t really have free time, I’m keeping a tally for the books I’ve read since I’ve come to site. So, since I’ve read 11 books, I figure I might as well rate them – maybe some of you will want to pick them up!

 

Stories I Stole – B/B+. A book about a journalist from England who just randomly up and moves to Georgia. She writes about all the types of experiences she has while living in the country.

 

Into the Wild – B+. The story of the kid who wanted to live off the land in Alaska. He dies. Frankly, I think he’s a jackass to his family. I admire what he wanted to do, but he was a total dick to anybody who cared about him. His dad went to CSU.

 

Confessions of an Economic Hitman – A+. A book about a former Peace Corps Volunteer from Ecuador who goes into the business of forcing poor developing countries into mountains of debt through U.S. sponsored economic projects, thus indebting them to the U.S. machine effectively for the rest of their lives (and thereby impeding them from actually improving their quality of life through economic development).

 

Mayflower – C+. The story of those pilgrims that landed in Plymouth (Plymouth? But we’ve just come from Plymouth! We’ve gone around in a circle lads, everybody back on the boats. –Eddie Izzard). Talks about their struggles when they first landed, befriending the indigenous tribes of the northeast, betraying their indigenous buddies, and the huge war that ensued. Sometimes reading it felt like reading a history textbook, and thereby induced incredible amounts of sleepiness.

 

Issac’s Storm – A-. A history of the evolution of meteorology, following one of the most gifted meteorologists in the country, Issac Cline. Talks about the life of this meteorologist and the subsequent hurricane in 1900 that completely annihilates Galveston, Texas despite all current weather data saying a storm striking his town was impossible.

 

Prague – B+. A book I read simply because it was called Prague. I expected the book you know, to be about Prague. Hell, they even have a section in the book called Prague. Surely I thought, this must finally talk about Prague. However, it says nothing about it – even though the cover is a picture of the Charles Bridge. I kept reading so I could feel nostalgic, but the entire book takes place in Budapest. Aside from references to how much cooler Prague is than Budapest, it just left me angry – I was deceived! It is a good book though.

 

A Million Little Pieces – A. A book about an addict who is addicted to any and everything he can get his hands on and goes to rehab. I’ve never seen a writing style quite like it; it flows and you just want to read more. You really get an idea how hard it is to go through something like rehab after having something control your life for so long.

 

The Unheard – B+. Written by a Peace Corps volunteer from Zambia who wore hearing aids. I give it a B+ pretty much because he’s an arrogant idiot. The book is a super easy read, but he definitely didn’t learn anything about cultural sensitivity during training.

 

Alive – A. The book that influence the movie that I watched when I was 8 or something like that. Tells the story of the Uruguayan rugby team that crashed in the Andes in the 1970’s and how 16 people survived 72 days on a mountain by eating their friends that had already perished.

 

The Celestine Prophecy – A+. A book Danica gave me that I finished reading less than 24 hours later. It’s a story about a guy who up and goes to Peru to search for some Manuscript that has revelations about who you are in the world, where you are, and what you’re going to do. It’s a fiction story based on real principles (it’s more exciting than just reading the boring principles of the manuscript). Thanks Danica!

 

Moneyball – A. The story about how Billy Beane turned the Oakland Athletics into a super cheap team that won tons of games. Also discusses how he continually fields a amazing team despite having a low payroll. Definitely something Dan O’Dowd should read. He needs a new strategy…or rather, he needs a strategy. Maybe we can just get new management. 

 

It just struck me that all the books I’ve read are non-fiction. I’ve got some fiction books I can dive into…I just haven’t yet. Maybe I should’ve been a history major.

 

In other big news, I cut off all my hair. I have a buzz cut galore. It’s weird having next to no hair. Everybody has reacted to it in a shocked, but mostly positive way. My favourite reaction was the little kids who live next door to me, “Whoa Chele! You’ve got like no hair! You’re awesome chele!”

img_0713-1

Before

img_0715-1

After

 

November 30th

 

There was nothing that was extremely notable today. I started a running routine this morning and effectively kicked my ass – it felt good. Aside from that, I hung out at my old host family’s house since it was their empleada’s last day. She was moving back to her comarca (a small town within the municipality), so I went there and hung out for a bit. Strangely enough, the movie Juno was playing on TV – IMMEDIATELY after I’d just finished watching it at home, so that was a great way to work on my Spanish.

 

Additionally to my boring day, I fell into ‘rthym.’ Today felt like a good day because I didn’t have any really pressing needs or worries. With the new town water pump giving me water most of the afternoon, it’s one less thing that I have to worry about (and it’s generally the big thing). Not only that, but with the school year out, I’m on my own schedule, so I don’t have to worry about planning my next lesson, or my kids being ready for a competition.

 

Yea – nothing too exciting today. I’m journaling for me, not for you (cough – GRAM).

 

1 Comment | Peace Corps | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by thegoggins