I´m still working on my post dating  back to mid-June, but while I was sick I finished a couple of books.

The Ugly American: A -  A book about the US foreign service during the 1950’s while the threat of cold war was always looming. It also discusses how U.S. views foreign aid and how they should help countries. Unfortunately, little to none has changed since the 1950’s with how the foreign service has changed their presence in foreign countries.

A Walk Across America: A – A 23 year old recent college graduate with nothing better to do and a lack of appreciation for his country walks from New York to the Gulf of Mexico to meet Americans of all walks of life. During this journey he discovers a wealth of knowledge about himself. I see it as a domestic story of me.

So I know I haven’t posted in a while, but I’ve been busy and I’ll definitely make a worthy entry summarizing what I’ve done since the beginning of the month. On top of being busy though…I’ve been sick, which is the reason for this entry.

I’m in Managua now because I have a mystery illness (again). My blood tests show weird things, and everything (diseases) I got tested for turned out negative. I have blood and solids in my urine (but no kidney stones). I had a fever of about 103+ for 4 days but it disappeared and was replaced by a sore throat today with more stomach pain. PC is keeping me in Managua until Monday so I can do another blood and urine test, followed by a CAT scan. If I still have something going on and they don’t see it, I might go to an infectologist – whatever that is. Aside from that, I’m running out of options.

At least I don’t have malaria.

May 26^th – June 11^th

The last two weeks have been full of disappointments with minor gains. However, I knew stuff like this would be the case – in fact, that’s why I signed up for Peace Corps in the first place. While it’s frustrating to see so many things impede any potential I have going in a class, in the community, or just things that mess with me psychologically – it keeps me sharp and on my feet.

As mentioned, my frustrations have been on a various fronts. The main frustration was one involving my primary project in the schools. Now first of all, I love teaching, for whatever reason. I think I like it because it’s hard – I can plan a class as much as I want, but however my kids feel determines the pace of the class and overall whether or not it was a success or not. While I resolved issues with my private school students, and their behaviour in class became amazing, the level of creativity in their ideas is a downer.

I’ve gotten tons of great ideas for classes from a volunteer, which has been great. It’s helped me improve my class, but led to me comparing myself to the volunteer – a big no-no. It was just frustrating to not know the strategies and things to do to yield a successful outcome – things that I wouldn’t know without the cold, hard experience. We all bring something different to the table, and it was just something that I don’t have. This all was made an even more disappointing experience by the fact that roughly 40% of my kids are passing my classes. While it’s frustrating that so many students decide to not pay attention in class, and not study for exams, it was disappointing to go through such lengths to ensure the success of the students only to see the exact same result.

In my campo school, 3 of 16 kids passed the exam, which left me stunned. The really discouraging part was the fact that I told the kids for 5 weeks what they were going to do. They told me every week they were good. We did a review; they told me they understood that too. Then come the day of the exam, they said they didn’t understand. If just one person had said, “I don’t understand.” I would’ve postponed the exam. I just don’t get it.

However, it’s just something to learn from, and now I’ll be focusing and harnessing my strengths, to try to yield the desired outcome I’m seeking.

I got away from it all by going to Chinandega the last weekend of May, but that just didn’t cut it. I don’t know what it was, but for some reason, it was the only calm weekend we’ve had in my 11 months of going there. Luis will be headed back to the states in July, so my Chinandega days are dwindling down. So maybe it was the disappointment, or whatever. Maybe it was just an off weekend. Who knows?

Another totally unrelated, but something I don’t understand part of Nicaragua is the infidelity. For such a heavily religious country, the logical thought is that this yields a more moral nation, yet it seems to be the opposite here. While I was well aware of the amount of infidelity in the country, I’ve mostly become aware of this via word of mouth. However, in the last couple weeks I was involved in more than a handful of conversations where people are blatantly direct about the fact that their dirtbags. Machismo is an interesting thing.

All of this yielded a very high rating on my “If I were to ET (early terminate) my service, which I won’t, this is how close I’d be” meter. I say this because as I’ve continually said, I’ll never quit, ever. I made the commitment, and I’ll honour it. It’s not hard to be a Peace Corps volunteer, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t piss me off sometimes.

In the midst of all these negative experiences, I had not one, but TWO dreams about Colorado. The first one involved me being on a train that was passing through Denver. We were told we were making a stop in Denver to stretch our legs, and I exited to find myself near my house – and I just bawled. Upon waking up, my first words out of my mouth were, “What the hell was with that? I feel fine.” I shrugged the dream off only to experience another last Friday night. I woke up around 1:30 AM for whatever reason and was unable to get back to sleep. When exhaustion finally got the best out of me and while passed out, I had a dream (in reverse) of things I’d do if I were to go home (for a vacation). The dream ended with me walking up the jetway in Denver and seeing the mountains out the window. I then proceeded to drop to my knees and cry. I immediately woke up after this and that was all I needed. Once could be a fluke, but having a dream like that twice points to one thing – while I could not go home and be fine, something on the inside is telling me to go home. So that’s my game plan now – I’m aiming for a two-week vacation back to the states sometime in December or January.

To top everything off, on Monday I went back to Managua for another appointment with the dermatologist. She showed up 30 minutes late (again, which put me on edge since I hate staying in Managua), and told me we were going to burn my plantar warts with liquid nitrogen. I had never experienced any procedure with liquid nitrogen in the past, and she asked if I’d heard anything. It was then that I realised I’d heard absolutely nothing. I told her I imagined it hurt a lot because it was super cold. That sounded pretty probable to me. She told me that yes, it was unpleasant, and that it would hurt a lot. “Right,” I thought to myself. Well, she was right. With 9 plantar warts on one foot and one on the other, I feel this is where the problem came from. If I had one or two, I would’ve been able to handle it, but that wasn’t the case.

When she first applied it, I was first reminded of running barefoot in the snow. It’s freezing, but tolerable. After 9 times on one foot though, it was rough. I wouldn’t say it felt any different, but that I began feeling that “running barefoot through the snow” feeling deeper in my foot, and all over it. She said she was going to do it 3 times to each wart, but this would be inaccurate. She definitely applied it 3-4 times to each wart each time she would do a “round.” What she really meant it she would do 3 rounds of death on my feet. I managed the first round, but the second round I was practically ripping the cushioning off the padded doctors table. She stopped after round two because I was too “tense” apparently. Fine with me.

She told me the worst was over since she’d stopped applying the liquid nitrogen, but my problems really just began there. I made it back to the Peace Corps office, to the bus station, and somehow caught a bus to Malpaisillo in time. However, upon arriving in Malpaisillo, my ability to walk had diminished incredibly. A normally 5-minute walk now took a good 15 minutes. Things got worse as the night went on as well – 3 of my blisters swelled up with blood.

The next morning I could only hobble to the bus station. While considering chopping off my foot on the bus, I left it on and barely managed to hobble to my house. Things just got worse the following days as well. I was unable to walk, let alone teach, and was forced to stay in my house. Some friends found me some crutches to use, which I did use for one day. However, one day of using these left my armpits bruised, blisters on my hands, and turned a normal 15-minute shopping trip to my favourite pulperia into an hour-long trip. Things got worse later as my foot swelled up more and I managed to go to the corner to buy tortillas and get back to my house in 20 minutes. This virtual inability to move killed my enthusiasm to even try. I couldn’t even go to the store to buy food, so I’ve been living off of oatmeal and corn flakes. Good thing I take a vitamin. I sent my buddy to buy some syringes for me, and after draining the blood myself (a horrible daunting task initially), I had more but still severely limited mobility in my feet.

Due to my immobility, I have been stuck in my house for around 2.5 days watching movies and TV shows (thanks Phil!). Unfortunately for me, I finished them all (I’ve averaged 10 hours of watching these shows the last 2 days), and am now on to more productive things. While I did have a pretty crummy couple of weeks, I did have some high points. I got to see some people I hadn’t seen in awhile (that felt great), and I did my first successful business advising (well, via the method that Peace Corps advocates). I got a buddy of mine to implement a basic accounting system, do an analysis of the community, and make a market study so he can survey and see if his idea for a business (cyber) is viable in the community.

I’m surviving. Still here. Things are good – just a bit slowed down at the moment. Here’s hoping I can walk tomorrow.

Water for Elephants – A. A fictional (but historically accurate) novel about the life of a circus veterinarian. The main character, an old and restless man in a retirement home, recalls his time in the circus via flashbacks. Really well written and a good book for those that enjoy history.

May 9^th – May 10^th

It’s the weekend – I did nothing. But I did eat super well and learned how to cook several kinds of potatoes.

May 11^th

Being Monday, there is generally very little to do in Achuapa. Furthermore, I don’t have classes or any other work scheduled for Mondays due to Peace Corps meetings and whatnot that tend to happen. But I did get into the gym – and did some personal training for the son of the gym owner. Afterwards, I met up with Noriko (the Japanese Peace Corps Volunteer) to discuss the nutrition charla I would be giving with her the following day in the health center. Also a frog jumped into the corner of my bathroom door when I was shutting it, rendering a non-shutting and very squishy way to keep my door open (it didn’t die).

May 12^th

I was still a little unsure what I was going to talk about this morning, so I woke up early and reviewed my material for the nutrition presentation I was going to do in the health center. At 9, I went to the health center to find that there weren’t too many people there (We were just going to give the presentation in the waiting room). After waiting a bit, we had a group of about 35 people on hand to listen to me blab about the importance of eating well (the point I kept driving home was that they could avoid being sick/avoid being as sick by simply improving their diets) for around 25 minutes (15 minutes longer than I originally planned on talking). Following the charla (it went quite well), I headed home to do some quick planning and ate some lunch.

That afternoon I went to the primary school to teach chess to the 6^th graders (a meeting that has failed to happen for 3 weeks). I arrived to find a handful of kids actually there waiting for me. Unfortunately, neither the directora nor the sub-directora were there for me to get the chess boards, so we played soccer for a bit. The sub-directora eventually showed up, and I taught chess to about 9 kids, with 1 that really grasped it. Well, one is better than none.

A chicken was wandering around my porch when I got home and I ended up trapping it between my door and the fence. Chickens aren’t the brightest. Afterwards, I planned with Profe Maria.

I started seeing that I had garbage missing around the time I was called a CIA agent back in November. I was thinking that people might be stealing my garbage and spying on me to find out if I was actually a spy or something. Turns out the kids that live on the corner of my street dig through and play with my garbage (empty cereal, bags of oatmeal, juice bottles, etc.). So if anybody could send any small toys (I don’t even care what it is), that would be great.

The stupid vago chicken

May 13^th

I prepared myself a little more for my class today (Equilibrium point – the hardest class we have to teach due to the math involved), and headed to Los Caraos with my fingers crossed – hoping that the kids would grasp this class better than the previous class (which they didn’t understand at all). Amazingly, the class turned out to be the best class I’ve taught in my year here thus far. Brie gave me some hints for the class (have the class teach me the class after a brief explanation), and they were invaluable. I’ve definitely saved a lot of time by focusing on the main topics in the class instead of wasting my time in the early (and less important sections) of the course. So, if all goes according to plan now, my students will have learned everything necessary to participate in the local competition (which will be in August) by June. They’ll have 3 months to pull something together – I’m on top of things this year.

After class, I walked around town making visits and planned with my counterparts from my two other schools. I got done with everything by 3:15 with the expectation that I could go to the gym at 4…only to find out that the person with the only key didn’t show up (this is why I need the key, which I’ve been promised, but has yet to be realised). So I headed to the park and did a bunch of pull-ups instead. In the midst of this, 2 of my students showed up to do pull-ups with me and I sat around talking with them for about an hour about travelling, weight training, and why I don’t drink in Achuapa.

I had dinner at my buddy’s house and then came home and planned for my classes the following day.

Keeping busy-ish.

May 14^th

Today was relatively uneventful; I went for a jog then prepared myself for my classes for the day. For my private school kids, this would be their last class before the exam. In order to assure that as many students as possible get a good score on the exam, I’ve had the students to exams that are exactly like ones I’m going to put on the exam, except with different numbers. On top of telling them exactly what is on the exam, I’m going to give them the formulas needed to calculate the problems. How much easier could it get? No memorizing, just plug and chug. Unfortunately, the students failed to take advantage of the time in class and were screwing around a lot. The majority weren’t paying attention, and I kicked my first student out of class. The discipline is always an issue, but is an even more severe issue when my counterpart is not teaching with me. So the kids kept screwing around, the class left, and so did the students – with the exception of my 2 best students who stuck around to ask questions.

After class, I headed home and got my home all prepared and cleaned up. I made myself some lunch then headed to Chinandega on the last bus out of Achuapa. I rolled into Chinandega at 7:30 and Luis and I headed down to the park for some pupusas (for those of you that haven’t read my previous 10 million entries, pupusas are an El Salvadorean tortilla-like food with cheese and/or meat on the inside. They’re delicious. Then in true Chinandega fashion, we ended the night in a bar (but the high class bar).

May 15^th

Today was a pretty low-key day that saw us do very little since Luis had a class to go to. Ben, the SBD volunteer from Villa Nueva showed up for the day and we headed to the baseball game (it’s the playoffs now). Without our buddy Carlos (who told us he was going to show up but never did), the game just wasn’t the same. Fernando showed up with a friend, but the game was dull without all the heckling that Luis and I generally do in the presence of Carlos. He brings out the loud side in us, and sometimes, that’s just what I need. Without the screaming and yelling that typically personifies the type of experience we have at the game, I ended up falling asleep and Chinandega trudged itself to a 7-2 loss (we thought it was 4-2). Following the game, we went the bar outside the Dilectus nightclub and hung out for a couple hours before heading home.

May 16^th

After sleeping in for a while, we grabbed a licuado in the park, and Ben headed back to his town. During the day we did absolutely nothing until Lindsay and her site mate Xemo (I have no idea how her name is written) showed up and we all went to dinner at Lagos (our favourite restaurant in Chinadega, though Paraíso, the new bar, is a close 2^nd). Moscow circus was in town, so after eating we all went over there to do something different for a change. Surprisingly, there was an enormous line to get in that stretched all the way to the highway, so to the end of the line we went. The main draw of the circus (the part that Luis and I were looking for) was the Ossito (little bear) that was “casi humano” (almost human). Earlier in the day, we’d been joking that it was “almost human” because he would be selling the tickets and would be outraged to get a 500 cordoba bill (nobody has change for them), or that he would be security and would eat anybody that got rowdy. This made plenty of sense to us, but unfortunately neither of these potential events happened. The circus was set up an iron and scrap metal recycling yard that I didn’t even know existed, but it seemed like they maximised all the space and squeezed every possible vehicle they could into the lot. We bought the cheapest tickets because 20 dollars seemed like a little to steep for a Russian circus in Nicaragua. With our 5-dollar tickets, we expected pretty poor seats and that we’d be unable to see much. However, upon entering, we saw that there were only around 15 rows in total, and our cheap seats provided plenty of buffer zone in the event that tigers, or the ossito got lose and went on a killing rampage; Luis and I even discussed potential evacuation strategies.

The circus was pretty entertaining and boasted a super lame clown who, coincidentally, also road a dirt bike in their steel ball of death (where 3-5 motorcycles are all driving around at the same time). The “ossito” left a bunch of unanswered questions as from where we were sitting it looked very much, acted very much, and moved very much like a person in a costume. Furthermore, it was wearing a kind of towel skirt. Very suspicious. There were also around 8 tigers who would take swings at the trainer. Much to our disappointment, every time the tigers would take a swing at him (see  always), the always missed. For me, this was the best part of the circus. They also had acrobats and tightrope walkers – the typical circus venue. At the end of it all, after coming out to take a bow, they brought out the “ossito” which was definitely not the same bear that performed (though they claim otherwise), and a tiger so you could take a picture with them. The tiger had its neck chained down, but would always throw up his head and growl when people went to have a picture taken – this amused me much. I would’ve paid just to see the tiger do that for a couple hours.

May 17^th

That morning, we grabbed a licuado in the park and Lindsay and her site mate headed back to their site. Once again, Luis and I were bored out of our minds and killed time by going to the park later that afternoon with Carlos and eating ice cream/making commentary about a couple that was sitting there – the guy clearly had done something wrong, and his girlfriend was pissed. This entertained us for around an hour and we headed back to Luis’ house. That night, we met up with the new health volunteer in Chinandega and went out to Paraíso with him. He’d only been in site for around a month, so we exchanged some stories for a couple hours over beers. The entertaining part of the night was that some girl in the bar randomly bought me a beer – a first. However, we remained suspicious as it appeared to us that all the guys she was with were gay. Either way I got a free beer out of it.

May 18^th

I had to get up super early in the morning so I could get to the Peace Corps office at 9:30 for my one-year medical exam. Fortunately, I fell asleep on the microbus for the first time in my life, which made the time fly by (it’s around 2.5 hours in microbus). I dropped off my PC passport to Mimi (the lady who works the phones at the office and knows every single face of every single volunteer before they even learn who she is) to get my visa renewed. Afterwards, I had some time to kill and headed to the volunteer lounge to wait until my appointment. A couple volunteers from my group showed up for their medical appointment as well, including a TEFL volunteer who I hadn’t seen in almost a year. On top of that, I saw the SBD volunteer in the town an hour south of Achuapa, she was meeting with the PC Nicaragua director to discuss something. Afterwards, she told me exactly why she was there – she was getting married to a Nicaraguan she’d been dating since she was a trainee 2 years ago.

I did my medical appointment, which was much more of an informal chat than a med appointment, and got an appointment set up to go get my dental check up at 11:30. The dentist office is way on the other side of town, but I was able to bargain down to $1.25 to get over there. My taxi driver turned out to be a physics teacher, and I chatted him up the whole time about the class I teach, and about the problems of being a teacher in a Nicaraguan classroom. He had no idea where I was going, so we drove around asking people where it was, and eventually found it.

Once in the office, I waited a bit before being brought into the room with the chair and being told to wait a little bit – and wait I did. I was sitting around for 20 minutes before the dentist showed up, looked at my teeth for no more than 20 seconds, told me I had no cavities, then told me she’d be back in 7 little minutes. Around 35 “little” minutes later, she came back and cleaned my teeth with her dental pick or whatever. She was so brutal with the cleaning, that she probably couldn’t have drawn more blood from me if she decapitated me. She had little pieces of cotton that she’d use to absorb all the blood from her cleaning – I feel this should be the first indication that she is using a little too much “elbow grease” to quote my dentist in the states. Her cleaning process consisted of stabbing your in the gums and going up from that. On a few instances, I was concerned she was on the verge of pulling out my tooth. Eventually I got out of there minus a few liters of blood – but with clean teeth, and headed back to the office.

Luis was in the office when I got back, and after finding out from Peace Corps that I’d have to spend the night in Managua (this is probably the thing I dislike most about Peace Corps, Managua is terrible), we headed out for a couple beers. From the bar, I went to the hospital to have my appointment with a dermatologist (I have around 12 plantar warts, and one regular one on my foot – gross). She showed up 30 minutes late, but my appointment was pretty quick and she prescribed a regimen and told me to come back in 15 days to burn the rest off with liquid nitrogen. Cool – whatever, I just wanted to get out of there.

There weren’t any taxi’s in front of the hospital, so I walked all the way to the highway to try to catch one. After a good 10 minutes I just resorted to catching a microbus, which was 80% less and coincidentally took the same amount of time as a taxi. After getting dropped off on the highway I ran to the office, grabbed my stuff, got my prescriptions and caught a taxi to the UCA (I refused PC’s hotel room and left – choosing to either stay in Chinandega or Malpaisillo since I had to be in Achuapa by noon the next day).

May 19^th

I caught an early bus out of Malpaisillo and got back to Achuapa in time to do my chess/domino club at the primary school. There, I taught a handful of kids how to play dominoes/domino strategy. Afterwards, I headed over to my counterpart’s house to discuss a review I was going to do with the kids. The rest of the day I spent doing nothing – I just practiced cooking potatoes (something that has become sort of a daily ritual for me now).

May 20^th

After teaching my class in my campo town, I came home and wrote the exam for all my 4^th year kids. To prevent copying, I wrote 3 versions of the exam – this I felt, would prevent any copying during the exam. I then showed the exam to my counterparts who gave it the go-ahead.

May 21^st

After giving doing a final review of the material with my kids in the Instituto, I headed to my private school to finally give the exam. Several times I questioned whether or not the material was too easy (we did examples in class that were identical to the ones on the exam), since there was nothing to fool the kids on the exam. They knew exactly what I was going to put on the exam. However, I decided to ignore that hunch because I knew that my students would surprise me and fail anyway – and fail they did. After 3 hours of grading 17 exams (I was giving partial credit to those who turned in their scratch paper), I had the results – 6 people got more than 95% (with 2 getting more than 100%), 1 person with 85%, and the rest of the class got less than 50%. One student didn’t even get 5% on the test. I was super disappointed, but the 6 super good grades were evidence enough that the test was fair. This was a downer, so I just dwelled on it the rest of the day.

May 22^nd

The highlight of the day – the parent of a student that failed my exam said the parents of the kids in 4^th year wanted a meeting with me because they were concerned about their students.

May 23^rd

I went on my morning jog (I’m getting my endurance/enthusiasm back), and after getting cleaned up, I took the initiative. Instead of waiting for a meeting with all the parents of my students in 4^th year, I was going to go to the house of every one of them and speak to their parents individually. I decided to go to the house of every student instead of just the houses of the students who performed poorly on the exam, just to be fair and avoid any potential misunderstandings. I started a little before 8 AM, and went to the house of the first student on my list, coincidentally her mother was the president of the Parent/School Union. Her daughter did super well on my exam (and showed up to my house the previous day for help with her English homework), so this made my case super easy. I kept doing this routine until I had visited all but 3 students (who lived in a comarca super far away). I initially was worried that the parents of my students who had poor grades in the class would not be understanding, and would be pissed at me. It turned out to be just the opposite; I was received very well in everybody’s house (with one exception) and received the support of the parents. One comical moment was when I went to the house of one student who really does poorly in my class, she told me that her parents weren’t home/were on vacation and she didn’t know when they were coming back, and that she had no family members that were home either, “Then who is living here with you?” I asked. Just then, her Mom walked in and asked who I was. Needless to say, she got in trouble. All in all, I spent 4.5 hours non-stop visiting every student’s house in my private school class.

The only exception was the family of a student in my class that I know very well. I know the student’s parents very well too. Unfortunately, this student performs very poorly in my class because he’s never paying attention. His parents didn’t see it this way though, and instead blew up at me saying my exams are written poorly, that the Ministry of Education says I can’t give exams worth so many points, and that so many people are failing the class because my teaching methodology is poor. I need to understand the difficulties of every single one of my students and teach according to their struggles. In other words, she was making excuses for her son having performed so poorly. So now they’re demanding a meeting with all the parents of the students, the principal, and the Ministry of Education delegate in my town. What a nightmare. This stressed me out. The lights went out for the rest of the night afterwards – this stressed me out too.

The frog that keeps trying to come into my house when it rains

May 24^th

In light of the brain damage I encountered at the end of the day yesterday, today after going on my jog and cleaning myself up, I did some “prep work” if you will. First I headed to the delegada’s house to ask about having a meeting with her Monday, and made it for 3 the next afternoon. Then, I headed to the sub-directora’s house to discuss what plan of action I should take in response to the parental threat I’ve encountered. So I discussed everything with her, got on the same page, she gave me things to talk to the delegada about, and told me the administration of the school would back me. Then I went to my counterpart’s house and talked to her about what went down, and she too told me she’d be behind me, “Let them have their reunion.” She told me.

After figuring out my position and seeing what kind of potential roadblocks I could encounter, I headed to Johani’s farm to get away from the nonsense that is Achuapa. It’s the perfect retreat for me when I’m stressed out because it’s outside the town and lacks all those town noises (people selling stuff, blaring music, generators, welding, etc.). I hung out at her house for a few hours and helped her with her English homework before going back to good ol’ Achuapa.

Yesterday, a friend of mine (who used to do bodybuilding before getting sick), told me the previous day that he had some weights for me that I could bring to my house. When I got back, he was next door and said I could come pick them all up. Not having any idea what to expect, I brought my backpack and headed down to his house. Once there, I discovered that he had makeshift barbells made of iron bars, iron ball bearings, concrete, and what appear to be some sort of iron wheels (perhaps from a mining cart?). Needless to say, the backpack would be worthless with this, so I’d have to bring them to my house one by one. It was about 300 meters up a hill from my friend’s house to my house and I figured it’d be cake. Well, I did 5 trips carrying barbells that were 60 lbs and more, and it rendered me absolutely exhausted – I couldn’t even grip a glass of water afterwards. All in all it took me an hour, and I’m still not done because I had no strength to grab the last makeshift dumbbells. But finally – a gym! No more paying 3 dollars a month to go to the gym for me! With this new acquisition, I now have the most complete gym I could ever care to have in Achuapa – now I’ll be able to get back in great shape again. It also means no more waiting to go to the gym, or not being able to go because it’s raining. Talk about a high point. Awesome.

My new badass gym

May 25^th

I took a day off from jogging and instead woke up early to continue my “preparation” in the event that the 4^th year parents in my private school want to lynch me. First I headed to the house of several families to discuss their student’s progress in my class (both went well). Afterwards, I went to the Institute to discuss some things with the directora and sub-directora. Furthermore, I helped Johani a bit with her English homework. Come afternoon, I had my meeting with the delegada to discuss the issue I have in my private school. The basis for the meeting was to discuss what I’d been doing to improve the grades of the students, what I had changed, and things I had done to essentially give free points to the students. I then mentioned the problem with a family and the students that I have. She started out by saying that she was behind me all the way and finished by mentioning that if the school, students, and parents are going to screw around with me like this, she’ll just pull me out of the school and I can just keep teaching in the public schools. This answer was not what I expected – so much in fact that I was rendered speechless when she said it. I’ve always disliked the school due to the poor behaviour of the students and the lack of support from the administration, but I had never thought about leaving (well, I never thought it was possible). After the meeting, I called up Georgia (my PC boss) to tell her everything that had went down. After filling her in, she decided to get involved to, and is going to attempt to help smooth things over for me.

Tonight, I also experimented cooking – I made an AMAZING spicy potato burrito. The first time I’ve ever experimented and come up with something that tasted great. Add another cooking skill!

]]> http://thegoggins.com/2009/05/26/russian-circus-lazy-students-a-new-gym-and-a-disaster/feed/ 1 thegoggins IMG_0825 IMG_0826 IMG_0827 http://thegoggins.com/2009/05/11/nicaraguan-ice-cream-is-fortified/ http://thegoggins.com/2009/05/11/nicaraguan-ice-cream-is-fortified/#comments Mon, 11 May 2009 16:21:13 +0000 thegoggins http://thegoggins.com/?p=448 ]]>

100% of my iron, most of my vitamin A, and most of my vitamin B.

Out of all things.

May 5th
So the month of May is the start of winter (which is around 5 months long) in Nicaragua, and it really didn’t wait at all. As I mentioned, I got back to Achuapa on the 4th to find a pool of water in my house, and the rainstorm that happened that night flooded my house even more. So today I got up on my roof and I dealt with my problems head on.

As my parents know, I have a roof made out of zinc, which means it’s about as sturdy as aluminum foil. My roof was covered with a fruit (marmones) from my neighbor’s tree and was to blame for the rivers of water that came rushing through my roof the previous day. I got it all cleaned off, tightened all the bolts holding down the zinc, and that was that. In the super bright Nicaraguan sun though, I kind of felt like I was on a solar cooker while cleaning my roof.

The rest of the day was spent reading Memoirs of a Geisha (GOOD book)

May 6th
I taught my class in my campo school (they understood none of it, nor participated, in spite of the 15% extra I offered them on their exams if they could solve a couple problems), then headed back to Achuapa. I stopped by the primary school in the early afternoon to teach my chess/domino club, but since it was raining earlier…nobody showed up again. We’ll give it another go next Tuesday.  I planned with both my other counterparts (which now generally consists of:

“So, I’m going to teach this, this, and this.”

“Ok, cool. I’ll write up a lesson plan if they come to check and read the chapter in the book.”

This is really not the “sustainable” way to do this, but the problem is that if I teach my counterparts the material, and they teach the class, they just teach it how they would normally teach it – completely ignoring any suggestions, games, or methods that we’d discussed. The subsequent problem is that the students don’t understand. So I’ve chosen the lesser of the two evils and have my counterparts take a lesser role so the students leave the class with a better understanding of the material. After getting through the hard material, I’m going to have my counterparts teach more, but as for the difficult stuff, I want the students to understand. That’s the way it goes sometimes.

Afterwards, I stopped by the house of the Japanese Peace Corps Volunteer and discussed a charla we’re going to give in the health center about proper nutrition (and how this can help them avoid getting sick). We’re going to give 2 talks in the health center with her giving the introduction, and me talking about everything…even though she’s the nurse. Whatever, should be good.

Kept reading Memoirs of a Geisha too.

May 7th

For the 4th consecutive day, we’ve been without water and power in Achuapa. I was a bit worried since I was now using water from my second storage barrel (I haven’t touched the water there since February), and there was no sign of relief from the water company, electric company, or the mayor’s office.

I taught my two classes in Achuapa (the kids in these schools completely grasped the concept I was trying to teach in the class – thank god), and finished Memoirs of a Geisha (428 pages in 3 days, not bad!).

The rest of the afternoon I “celebrated” being in Nicaragua for one year (Holy! It’s been a year?). I was planning on going to a comedor with the Japanese Peace Corps volunteer and the Slovakian lady in my town, but then the mayor’s office drove a truck around announcing that the water would come on at 7 PM, thus ending my celebration. None of us wanted to be out of the house when the water came back on (the mayor’s office bought a barrel of diesel gas to go switch on the generator to turn on the water), so we just sat and waited instead.

Since I wouldn’t be celebrating really, I headed to the ice cream shop 4 houses over (they had a generator going for 5 days to keep the ice cream cold), and gorged myself on 3 ice creams. Whatever, I never eat ice cream anyway.

By the time this was all said and done, it was real dark out, so I headed back to my house and sat in my hammock waiting for the water (and light’s supposedly) that were going to come on at 7. Well, 7 PM came and went without any sign that either of the utilities that the town had been lacking were coming back. I decided to give them benefit of the doubt that they were on “Nica time” and waited until 8 PM…which also came and went. Ultimately, when I gave up and went inside, the water came on. I was finally able to do all my dishes, fill up 5 bottles of water…before the water went out. After not having water for 5 days, you’d think they’d give us a little more than 20 minutes of water…and you’d be wrong. The lights came back on, but since I can’t drink electricity, I didn’t really care. I was pretty mad following this and just went to sleep.

Memoirs of a Geisha – A+. A fictional story about the life of a Kyoto geisha. Completely based on fact and super good. I recommend it to anybody who likes history. It was a great book.

May 8th

We get free medicine from the Peace Corps med office which is pretty great. In light of my no-water rage that happened last night, I turned to the Peace Corps sleeping pill – Benadryl. The downside is that you always have crazy dreams when taking it…but it really works well.

After my Benadryl wore off, I had absolutely no idea what time it was. I went to the bathroom and saw that the water was on, so I just decided it was time to wake up right then and there…at 4:30 in the morning. I was paranoid considering the draconian water “rationing” methods they have that I filled up anything that could be filled up, clean the kitchen, the bathroom and then mopped the floors. Better safe then sorry. I was able to go to “sleep” (see semi-consciousness) for around an hour afterwards.

After waking up, I killed some time doing exercises in the park (still don’t have my copy of the key to the gym – working on that still), yoga, then headed to El Sauce to have lunch with the volunteer there, Irene, and get a big jug of purified water (since they don’t sell it in my town).

But…I missed the bus out of El Sauce, so I’m killing time until the next one passes for Achuapa.

April 30^th through May 3^rd

After being told time and time again how beautiful and amazing it is, I finally went to Selva Negra this weekend. Selva Negra is located about 12 kilometers out of Matagalpa (roughly in the middle of the country), and is a farm nestled in the mountains outside of the city of Matagalpa. We got the direct León – Matagalpa expreso bus which dropped us off in Matagalpa around 10:45ish (about 2.75 hours after leaving Malpaisillo). Upon entering Matagalpa you notice one thing, it’s super cool there. This is saying something because before going there, I had yet to feel “cool” in the last year. From Matagalpa, we hopped a bus to Jinotega and got off at the stop for Selva Negra, where an old army tank sits at the entrance of the forest.

Following a gorgeous 1.5 km walk to the hotel, we arrived at the entrance of the compound, which was followed by another uphill jaunt to arrive at the restaurant/office. Strangely ehough, it actually did look like Germany.

All in all, you go to Selva Negra for is two things – the atmosphere and the food. The 2.5 days we were there, the temperature was always between 50 and 70 degrees, a lot of the time there was a light mist, and it was EXACTLY what I needed after a year in scorching León temperatures. We took a tour of the farm (they make all their cheeses, grow all their vegetables, and all the meet comes from their farm as well), saw the coffee fields, and the facility where they process their coffee. I was really surprised to see how big the farm was (they have 200 permanent workers) and all the things they do for their workers/do to make the farm sustainable. The farm sports solar panels and a hydroelectric generator, biodigestors, a worm farm, and is all-organic (meat, vegetables, fruits and coffee). We checked out some of the numerous hiking paths that they had around the farm through their cloud forest. According to their map, it supposedly takes hours upon hours to hike around the paths, but we covered the majority of the trails in about an hour. Go figure. One of the highlights of the trip was the amazing food in the restaurant – amazing cakes, cheeses, salads, and  incredible German sausages, potatoes, and sauerkraut.

We left Selva Negra the 3^rd, and on the way back to León, our bus stopped in Sébaco, a literal highway town/city. For whatever reason though, Sébaco is known to have some of the best vegetables in the country, and we realised this when all the vendors hopped on the bus selling them. A roughly 5 lb bag of beets ran for 50 cents and 12 bell peppers (not measly Nicaraguan chiltoma bell peppers, but actual bell peppers) ran for 50 cents as well. With food prices climbing so much lately, it was amazing to see such great quality being offered for so cheap. I’ll definitely be back.

The entrance to Selva Negra

May 4^th

I rolled into Achuapa around noon and immediately noticed one thing – all the farm lands just outside the town were flooded. This was particularly noteworthy since we’d had one significant rainstorm since October (but it happened about 6 weeks ago). The first thing I thought had happened was a water main burst, but since we have running water for around 4 hours a day, I threw out that idea.

When I finally got home, my neighbors told me that they had horrible rainstorms the previous two days and they hadn’t had power in two days either. This was super surprising since May is when the rainy season starts (but it never really picks up until September). When I opened the door to my house, I found that my house had flooded. I figured it was due to the half-window I have in my kitchen, so I decided to deal with it later.

I went and grabbed lunch at the comedor, then came back and finished off the Alan Greenspan biography. In the midst of this, it started to rain – hard. Normally, I wouldn’t even bat an eye, but it was more like a hurricane rain. It was so ridiculous that I first had to abandon my porch after seeing my neighbor’s yard struck by lightning, then I became aware of the river-like leaks I had coming through my roof (so this is why my house flooded!). As the rain got worse, so did the amount of water coming into my house from anywhere it could (and even places I thought it couldn’t come through). It got to the point that I had no other choice and abandoned my house. With no better option I went over to my buddy’s house and hung out with him and his family.

Looks like I got a busy day ahead of me…

The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World – B-. In Greenspan’s biography the book is broken up into two parts – the history of his life and how he came to be who he is, then his analysis of the economy and forecast of how things will be in the future. The part about him was great, I flew through the 400ish pages without even batting an eye. However, when he started discussing the economy and whatnot, he started getting really dry and it all had the same tone. Basically, the way he approaches the problems of today is by saying, “It’s not my fault.” Good book if you stop before he starts getting defensive.

 April 16^th

I was able to give my classes and get back in the flow of things (minus the flowing of the bodily fluids). Aside from that, I took it easy (doctor’s orders).

April 17^th

Friday’s I do nothing when I’m in site and this lived up to it.

April 18^th – 19^th

This was the first time I’d spent a weekend in site without a visit from somebody. I’d forgotten how little there is to do on the weekends, particularly when I don’t have any plans myself. It was brutal, but I made it.

April 20^th

I stopped by the elementary school to talk with the principal and a few of the teachers in an attempt to do a chess club. I got a tentative start date for the club (next Tuesday), and being the birthday of the principal, I bought her a juice box to show I’m not a miser all the time. My counterpart at my private school also got the OK to go to our Peace Corps workshop in Managua, so I tied up all loose ends since I’m heading out tomorrow.

April 21^st

My counterpart and I caught the 4 am bus out of Achuapa (the first time I’ve ridden it in months). We rolled into Managua around 9:30 AM (can you see why I dread going to Managua so much?), and caught a cab to go to the PC office. The training staff wanted to do some interviews with us to get some feedback on things they should do with the incoming, so I dropped my counterpart off in the volunteer lounge and did the interview. I picked her up around 20 minutes later and she told me that all the Ag volunteers in the lounge were just talking about all the delinquencies they’d been involved in (she’s an English teacher). Whoops on their part.

From the office we headed to the hotel Peace Corps had arranged for the taller. Magically, I was able to get to the hotel from the office for a dollar a piece (apparently nobody else had gotten there for any less than 2.50), which tells me that my ability to drive a hard bargain in Managua is pretty good (I did get 2 dollars from the airport to downtown instead of the normal 10-20 dollar price when my parents came in). I was one of the first volunteers to show up and just crashed in my room until lunch was finally served at noon.

By noon, most of the volunteers had arrived by noon, and we went to eat up by the pool. I ate with my counterpart and her two roommates (2 counterparts from Somotillo, Chinandega), and this would be how things would go the rest of the taller. The amount of food they gave us was scant, which left everybody who left super early in the morning to arrive (like my counterpart an I) incredibly starving. The afternoon’s charlas were informative for my counterpart and I feel she got a lot out of it.

Come nighttime, most of us just hung out for a bit before heading to our rooms and sleeping.

April 22^nd

Today was the big switchover for phone numbers in Nicaragua. Now every cell phone has an 8 before the number (so now my number is 505.8.924.9465), and all landlines have a 2 before the number. However, Claro providing the most god awful service in the world had their system “fail,” which resulted in anybody who didn’t have money on their phone being able to make calls to anywhere in Nicaragua or the world for free. Oops Claro. You screwed up. Due to the free phone calls, right when my alarm was scheduled to go off, I got a phone call at 6:30 AM, which I mistook for my alarm. After realising I was being called, I’d missed the call from the girl I use to teach English classes to in Achuapa (before she started blowing off the class). She called me back, and I talked to her a bit before heading to breakfast. At breakfast, like before, I ate with my counterpart and her roommates from Somotillo.

The days charlas were long, but by the time they were over, I felt my counterpart had a good understanding of the course, which will be necessary when I pass over more responsibilities to her in the future.

After our charlas, the volunteers got together and discussed what they were going to do for the 1 year in country anniversary, followed by the 1 year in site anniversary. I say “they” because I’m not going to participate. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the volunteers in my group, it’s just that I don’t care to celebrate being here a year, particularly since it’s not hard. Another reason is that nobody in my group is in my “support network,” or rather, when I am stressed out, I don’t give any of them a call. Just how it goes I suppose.

I ate dinner again with my counterpart and her roommates, and all the volunteers except me headed to a bar in Managua. I was too cheap and didn’t care to drink that night, so I just stayed in, hung out and went swimming with a handful of the counterparts that night. Good times.

April 23^rd

The counterparts all headed back to their towns today leaving us volunteers for an evaluation session of the workshop that morning. Afterwards we headed back to the office (I grabbed a ride with our project specialist), where we proceeded to lose 2 white boards on the highway (one disappeared, but the other landed in a median in the middle where somebody, who we initially thought was stealing it, brought it over to us.

At the office, I had a medical appointment to do another test to make sure I didn’t have my million illnesses and also to find out what the deal was with my foot (I’d been under the assumption that I had ringworm). I turned in all my refund forms, and headed to the doctor. After a quick look, I found out I have planters warts. Not just one, but seven. Then I have a regular wart on my other foot. What a pain in the ass. When I go back to Managua for my one year check up, I’m going to get them all removed (apparently I will have some issues walking since there are so many in the same area). FUN.

I tried to get back to site, but by the time I rolled into León, it was already 5 PM and the last bus to Achuapa had left more than an hour before. I wasn’t going to stay in León, so I got a little closer by heading to Malpaisillo instead.

April 24^th

I hung out with Brie and her neighbor Carla (even got a free lunch from Carla) and since Brie was sick, she couldn’t go to Achuapa. Luis was going to go to Achuapa as well, but after finding out that Brie wasn’t going, his enthusiasm nose-dived as well. So I just stayed in Malpaisillo another day.

April 25^th

We did nothing today.

April 26^th

I did some reading and checked out the news to see this swine flu is really exploding around the world. I wondered if or when Peace Corps was going to say anything about it, particularly given our proximity to Mexico, but so far we haven’t heard anything from them. I headed back to Achuapa on the last bus that night.

April 27^th

Still no word from Peace Corps on the swine flu. I got a new TV series (Entourage), so I just watched it the entire day. What a great waste of time. It’s too hot to do anything anyway.

April 28^th

We finally got an email from Peace Corps saying that we could potentially be consolidated to our sites and to be on alert. Furthermore, they will be distributing Tamiflu and masks through our EAP coordinators that will be handed out soon. Aside from that, I just kept watching Entourage (I finished 3 seasons in 2 days – awesome). Those of you that know of cool TV series should send them to me. Those kill lots of time.

April 29^th

I taught my class in Los Caraos today and discovered that our TEPCE workshop that is at the end of every month was being rescheduled again for the following Monday. Furthermore, classes on Thursday will be cancelled (one of my schools hasn’t had my class for 3 weeks already). To make matters worse, apparently, the Ministry of Education hasn’t paid any of the teachers for the last 3 months. The information I got from my counterparts is that if they are not paid by MINED tomorrow, all the teachers in the country will go on strike Monday until they are paid. This is bad, bad, bad news. I was worried about missing time in class to begin with, and now I have to worry about a teacher strike cancelling my classes for god knows how long. Since I don’t have class tomorrow, I’m going to head out to Selva Negra (the Black Forest) for the weekend. I’m staying at a hotel run by 4^th generation German immigrants that have a coffee plantation, as well as a ton of hiking areas. Supposedly the area looks exactly like the Black Forest in Germany. You can check it out at www.selvanegra.com.

March 30^th

Nothing.

March 31^st

Today I gave my first business exam to my private school students. Of the 19 that took the exam, a grand total of 5 people got a 60% or higher (with 3 of those people getting A’s). My students were pissed, and then had the nerve to say that it was my fault they failed. I was pissed they failed, but even more pissed that they could say I was to blame. I had no trick questions on the exam at all, and not even that, I told them all exactly what they should study – and they apparently studied nothing.

Mad.

April 1^st

With the month of March ending on such a rough note, I have a feeling that April will be a difficult month. Unfortunately, my campo kids did nothing to change my feeling. They screwed around most of the class, and one of my student groups hasn’t even picked an idea for their projects. All they do is sit around laughing, drawing on each other, etc. They’re toast, and even after being scolded by the principal, they don’t care. 

April 2^nd

Today I gave the exact same exam to my students in the Instituto. The couple previous days, whenever I saw a student in the street, I’d tell them to study hard. They all told me they would – they didn’t.

There are around 31 students in my class, and just a handful of them passed the exam. The ones that didn’t pass the exam, not only failed, but they failed HORRIBLY. I couldn’t even fathom how so many could do so poorly on the exam. Their participation is amazing, and their ideas are great, but for some reason, the majority of them did horribly on the exam. The material I spent 3 weeks on yielded absolutely nothing on their exams – literally. They just left the answer blank. Ironically, the student who fights with me the most in class ended up getting one of the best grades in the class. However, it was obvious that most of my class did little to no studying before the exam. Shame.

After leaving the Instituto, I was livid (I had just finished grading their exams), and had to keep teaching at my private school. Upon arriving, my counterpart informed me that I’d be teaching the class solo because she had to go to a teacher’s meeting. So I went to teach my kids even though they weren’t paying attention/were angry because they failed the exam. I ended up spending most of the time asking the kids how they expected to pass the class if they weren’t going to do anything. In the midst of this one-way discussion, I was summoned to the teacher meeting. There I found all the secondary school professors and the director (the priest) of the school. They wanted to know why so many students failed the class. The majority resorted to blaming my teaching methodology, and the fact that my exam wasn’t multiple-choice. To this I responded that the students in my other schools failed the exam too (“Oh, so this is not just a problem in our school” – Exactly, it’s a countrywide issue) have to present in a competition and will not be able to select a multiple-choice answer when the judges have questions about their businesses. Then they all wanted me to give the students a “rescate” or some way to make up the points (mind you the grades were to be turned in a few hours). So instead of doing that, I told them I’d make the first trimester worth less than the last two.

I was even more enraged after this meeting (since most of my students had failed, and because I was told that it was my fault the students failed), and went home, threw stuff in a bag, locked up my house, and got on the bus. I said nothing to anybody, I just left.

April 3^rd

Today I just hung out in Malpaisillo and did nothing. I earned that nothing.

April 4^th

After getting up early, Brie and I headed to Las Peñitas for our tri-annual VAC (volunteer advisory committee) meeting. During the meeting we discuss things that we (the volunteers in the department) think needs to be improved with Peace Corps. We can have the meeting wherever we want, so this time we went to the beach in León at a super nice restaurant. Following the meeting I went with Jordan, Brie, Irene and Olena an environmental volunteer to a coffee shop in León (I’m pretty sure it’s the only one), and talked for a while. After which, I headed to Managua with Olena to pick up my buddy Jeff who was flying in later that night.

Jeff’s plane showed up around 5 hours late, leaving me extremely bored until he showed up around 11:30 PM. He brought me some presents too – 8 Colorado beers, a bottle of Becherovka, and Tabasco sauce. Good work Jeff.

April 5^th – April 11^th

I don’t even know how to put this week into words. It was just too unbelievable. So I’m not going to.

April 12^th

I hung out in Malpaisillo with Brie to close out the weekend, and just chilled out.

April 13^th

Today I got back to Achuapa after an incredible 11-day stretch of being out of site. It was a weird feeling. However, after a couple hours, it felt good to be back in town (and I didn’t have the rage I left with). So I caught up with everybody, tutored Johani for a bit, and went to my buddy’s house for dinner/showing him and his son how to play the computer games I gave them.

April 14^th

Completely energized from an amazing sleep (I slept around 10 hours), I woke up at 5 AM to hop the bus to Largartillo to talk with the primary school principal about doing a spelling bee. The bus ride took about an hour and I rolled into town about an hour before classes started. Judging by the way everybody was looking at me, I gathered it was the first time any of them had seen a gringo dressed up (there is an Spanish school in the town, and a handful of white people at all times studying there, but they all look like grubby backpackers). The principal was out of town, so I spoke with the vice principal (who lives in Achuapa), and she was super excited about the spelling bee and said they would keep in touch with me during the process of teaching the students and for help with the competition.

It took a lot less time to discuss the spelling bee than I had planned, so I went to the bus stop in Largartillo and planned to wait for the bus that would show up at 9:30. There I met an old homeless guy who told me he made pants, but had nowhere to live, he just travelled and survived by selling pants. He told me I could walk to Achuapa in less than an hour (it’s 5-6 km), so with this information, I put on my sandals and walked to town.

I got to my house in 53 minutes, which I was pretty impressed with. I spent the majority of the day in my house chilling out, and I tutored Johani a bit as well.

As soon as she left though, I got a bit of a stomachache. This is a always a bad sign, as a stomachache in Peace Corps is never a stomachache, but a sign that you’ve got something living inside you that shouldn’t be. I shrugged it off and went to my buddy’s house to eat dinner, but didn’t stick around to chat because I didn’t feel well.

At home, I watched a movie to kill some time, but my kitchen was full of flying ants that kept on dive-bombing me, so I decided to just go to sleep. By this time, it was around 8 PM, and the pain in my stomach was intolerable. I tried to sleep, but every time I’d lay down, I’d have to get up again to go to the bathroom. I was nauseous, had diarrhea, and couldn’t lay down. I couldn’t stand this process, so I resorted to just lying in my hammock since I would definitely be getting up again to go to the bathroom. Finally, I ended up throwing up (this is all in a 2-hour time span), and after laying in my hammock for 30 minutes, the pain had subsided enough that I was able to go to sleep.

April 15^th

I woke up and still had diarrhea, so I called my counterpart to tell her I wouldn’t be able to go to class. I then headed to the health center to turn in a stool sample and get some blood work. I waited for an hour and a half before we were told the lab specialist wasn’t coming in (she only had to work 4 days a week for an hour each day – what is she doing?), so I went to a private laboratory (which I didn’t even know existed), which was a concrete room with a microscope and a centrifuge, and got everything taken care of. An hour and a half later I had my results – I have giardia, a bacterial infection, and worms. A 3 in 1 package! So I’m back on cipro, antiparasite drugs, and anti worm drugs. It seems that the Peace Corps life that I’d expected but had yet to experience is all catching up with me this month. Well, gotta get it over with sometime.