When in doubt, let Donald Duck lead the way

2009 31 March

March 18th

 

After going to the gym for a bit, I headed over to Los Caraos to teach my class. After presenting the material (doing a market study), I told my kids that after they finished the questions and after I OK’ed their questions, they could use class time to go out and do their surveys (they needed to do 30). Upon hearing this, most of the class just got up and left. After grilling them and about half of them came back to the classroom. Slackers.

 

March 19th

 

The couchsurfer observed my class in one of my schools today, so I just said he was there on behalf of the Ministry of Education to observe the conduct of the students because he heard they misbehaved too much (even though they’re my best class). Following that class, I headed home for a bit to plan for my class at my private school (the first class with my new Thursday class time). I showed up at my class and my students kept telling me class was cancelled, that my counterpart wasn’t there, and a bunch of other nonsense. I got them all in the classroom, and they protested to cancel the class because they wanted to play kickball. They wasted tons of time complaining, so I said if they didn’t complain the whole time, and participated, they could leave early when we finished the material. They did just that (but nobody took notes – bad idea), and we got out after about 20 minutes (instead of an hour and a half). Since the class was over, I hopped the next bus out of Achuapa, and headed to Malpaisillo for an early start to my birthday weekend.

 

March 20th

 

We headed out around 11 and went to Chinandega for the “big” day (we were going to celebrate my birthday on Friday instead of Sunday). We lounged around most of the morning before getting things started in the afternoon. Our friend Carlos showed up with a present for me – a tank top with 23 on the front and my “name” Goguez written on the back. Since he’d arrived, we headed over to Lagos (the amazing food place in Chinandega), and going to the baseball game.

 

We showed up at the game in the 3rd inning with the expectation of losing our voices by the end of the game. We got a good start and heckled away for around 15 minutes. The 4th inning came around and the opposing team was up to bat. With one out, a batter popped a foul down the right field line. Just when the ball had reached its peak, the power in the whole stadium went out. Since we’d just gotten there, we weren’t about to just leave, and we thought the lights would eventually come back on. Alas, the power never did come back on, so we just sat around screaming refund, and getting our game’s worth of beer.

 

We left the stadium and hitchhiked backed to Luis’ house. Once there, Luis and Carlos set up a piñata and blind folded me and gave me a steel tube to break the piñata. Unfortunately, I just ended up removing paint from the short part of Luis’ wall the piñata was suspended from, and was unable to bust open the piñata. Eventually, we just brought it down on the floor and skewered the piñata. We then found out how piñatas are made in Nicaragua – a clay pot surrounded by the piñata itself.

 

We headed to Dilectus afterwards to…continue the night. I’d had enough around 12:30, so Luis and I took off for his house afterwards.

 

March 21st

 

Just more Lagos. Nothing else happened. We tend to follow a “Party day, recovery day” pattern. That was the plan anyway, but Brie’s friend Carla showed up and wanted go out, so we went back to Dilectus (but to the outdoor bar) for a couple of hours that night.

 

March 22nd

 

Today was what yesterday was supposed to day, a day of nothing. So I spent my birthday just chilling out.

 

March 23rd

 

I headed back to Achuapa, and rolled in around noon for the start of the week. Little did I know that this week would hold virtually NOTHING for me.

 

March 24th – March 26th

 

These days were completely worthless. March 24th, much like the 23rd was spent doing nothing since I don’t have classes. I got a handful of new movies and shows from Phillip, so I watched those in addition to playing a new game Luis got (Sim City 4 – bad news). March 25th, my class in Los Caraos was only 45 minutes long because of some competition between Los Caraos and my public school in Achuapa. Thursday, I was going to get my kids all caught up on the market study, and then give them time to ask questions about the exam in the next week, but both of these classes were cancelled. So I taught class for a grand total of 45 minutes the whole week.

 

March 27th

 

I wanted to meet the principal of the school out in Largartillo (a community 5 km up in the mountains from Achuapa), so I woke up early to go to the TEPCE meeting that MINED has every month for every school district in the country. I generally don’t go because I plan with my teachers individually, but one of my counterpart’s showed up in the morning and said I needed to show up as well. I spoke with the principal of the primary school in Largartillo to see if she’d be interested in the spelling bee. She said she would be interested in doing it, so I told her I told her I’d stop by after Semana Santa (the first week of April). Afterwards, I went to my instituto where the secondary school TEPCE was to find out why they wanted me there. They just wanted me to write what classes I’d be doing for the month – something my counterparts could have done without me, but whatever. This incredibly taxing activity took me 15 minutes, and I headed back home.

 

The lights were out, so I just cleaned my house, and did some errands. It’d been a while since we hadn’t had power, so I couldn’t figure out what to do. Usually when I’m bored, I play a game, or watch a movie, but now that wasn’t an option – so it was back to the hammock with a book. The power finally game on around 6 PM, and I threw on the first episode of season 2 of Mad Men (great show). This was a short-lived activity as the bus Brie was coming in showed up 10 minutes later. I continued my cooking practice with some barbeque chicken and vegetables (oh man I missed barbeque sauce SO much).

 

March 28th

 

I woke up super early and did the dishes, and we got a good breakfast in before finally realising the activity we’d planned to do for a while – go to the waterfalls in Largartillo. With 2 litres of water and a couple of Clif bars, we set out for the 5 km, straight uphill walk to Largartillo. It was overcast, breezy, and cool out so the walk itself was actually quite pleasant. We walked around a kilometre before we saw a truck going the direction we were going. We asked for a ride, and saved a ton of time by getting taken the last 3 kilometres (which are the steepest part of the route) to the Largartillo empalme.

 

Once in Largartillo we started the arduous process of finding the waterfalls. We got out of the town itself (well, more of a road – I think there are around 15 houses in the whole town), and down the path to the waterfalls pretty easily with directions to walk to the cow corral and ask the people in the house where the waterfall is. We trekked for about 20 minutes before stumbling upon a house. There were a bunch of cows in the yard, so we figured this must be the place – after all, this was the first house we’d seen since we’d left the town. Brie went and asked the guy if he knew where the waterfall is in a conversation that went as follows:

 

“Buenas!” (This greeting she shouted was drowned out by cow moos, so she said it again)

“We’re looking for the waterfall. Do you know how to get there?”

“Waterfall? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“There is supposedly a big waterfall down this road.”

“No, there is just a small stream to bathe yourself with a pail.”

“Oh…uh…well where is that?”

“Through here.”

At this point, I chimed in:

“They told us that there is some huge waterfall called Las Lamas, laguas, or something like that if we keep going down this road.”

“You mean Las Laguas?”

“Yea, yea, that’s the one.”

“Oh yea, you’ve never been to it?”

“NO. That’s why we’re looking for it.”

“Oh yea! Just keep going straight down this road!”

 

So all in all, this conversation was worthless as there was only one road to go down in the first place. We continued down the road and asked the same question to a lady on a horse – she too confirmed that the waterfall was just straight down the road, and the road ended at the waterfall. Awesome. So this would be super simple to get to. We walked for a while before gradually going down hill, passing through some sort of gate. I’d heard that we had to pass through a few farms to get to the waterfall, so this made sense. Some guy with a machete was up in the hills and paused for a few seconds to watch us come through before continuing his work. This must have meant that he wasn’t surprised to see us in his farm, so I thought. We finally got down to a small stream where a guy mounted horse was.

 

“So…we’re looking for the waterfall.”

“Waterfall? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” (There appeared to be some kind of different dialect spoken so the guy didn’t quite understand the word waterfall)

“We heard that there is a huge waterfall around here.”

“Nope, just this little brook.”

“Are you serious? I heard there were 3 or 4 waterfalls around here, some are really big too.”

“Oh, you mean the salto with the place where you can swim as well.”

“Yea, I guess so.”

“Oh, those are WAY down this river. You’ve got to walk a long way. You missed the path; there was a little path way up the mountain that you needed to take to get to the waterfall. You could follow this river, but then you wouldn’t know how to get back.”

 

At this point, some old guy with a machete showed up literally making noises like Donald Duck. He shook the hand of the guy on the horse with yet another Donald Duckesque noise. “Well, this guy will be no help, he only speaks…duck,” is what ran through both of our heads. Then the guy on the horse took off laughing and the duck man with a machete came up and started speaking to us in Spanish thankfully. We told him we were looking for the waterfall, which he confirmed existed, but way down the river. He then went off on some tangent, telling us about a house that is like a hotel and has amazing soup. He said no more after this, but merely motioned that we should follow him. So we did.

 

We walked a bit before coming up to a fence, “Shhh…the owners live right there.” he told us. So without a word, we trespassed through the fence and across the guy’s property that had the river flowing through it. The guy with the machete led the way, chopping things at random (even if it wasn’t in the way of the path – he just was going nuts with his machete). He led us zigzagging up and down the mountain for a long time before we heard a river. “Great, we’re going towards the river,” I thought, only to start heading up the mountain and away from the sounds of the river. Neither Brie nor I had any idea where we were going, but we but got a sense that we were going towards this hotel with the soup we neither asked about, nor wanted to go to. I finally asked him where we were going, and he said we were being quiet since we were trespassing. It didn’t answer my question, but I just went with it. Fortunately, we ended up taking a path back down the mountain, one that was incredibly steep. This path eventually ended up at the waterfalls where the guy explained that it was always super full during Semana Santa. We gave the guy 20 cords for unexpectedly being our guide, and went and checked out the waterfall.

 

The waterfall itself was more of a series of waterfalls that dropped around 200 feet in total in a bunch of 50ish foot waterfalls. They were all surrounded by huge boulders, which made exploring super easy. We hung out there for about an hour, eating a Clif bar, getting hydrated, and just relaxing next to the water.

 

After taking the waterfall in, we scaled the boulder wall out of the waterfall area to blindly find our way down the path we hadn’t taken back to Largartillo. Since nobody had crossed the land we were on, we made our way back to the place where the duck man told us the path was by merely following the marks left by our sandals in the ground (which could’ve proved to be as reliable as Hansel and Gretel’s plan). The path led around the mountain along a thin path through god knows where. While we were walking without a clue, we were afforded some incredible panoramic views. The path wound around and around before bringing us to a fence. We followed a series of fences before miraculously ending up bath on the main road to Largartillo (which was next to the house with an ACTUAL cow corral. Nobody was in the house when we passed by, so we were unable to ask the way).

 

Now on a familiar path, we walked back into Largartillo and ran into one of the gringo’s I’d played Frisbee with a couple weeks ago. There were a handful of other white people there, one of which had a couple of questions about Peace Corps that we answered.

 

With the goal of getting to the good comedor for lunch (which might be closing at 2 PM), we began the journey back to Achuapa. From the entrance to Largartillo on the dirt highway back to Achuapa, you actually can look down and see the town – and it was not close, it was a long way…down. I had my fingers crossed that we’d have another truck give us a lift, but it was not to be. Nevertheless, we got into Achuapa around an hour and 10 minutes after starting off from the Largartillo empalme, not bad (it’s about 5 km).

 

Completely dead, sunburned, dehydrated, and starving, we drank around a gallon of water, some Gatorade, and some cantaloupe. This energized us enough to walk over to the restaurant in town. Following the incredibly deserved lunch, we lost all energy whatsoever, and just chilled out and got out of the heat.

 

Come dinnertime, we made more barbeque chicken and vegetables and watched Milk, the movie with Sean Penn. Great movie.

 

March 29th

 

We had a handful of vegetables left over from the chicken the previous night, so we threw these in some omelettes. All in all, I’d say my cooking ability has increased a good amount – I’ve lost the fear to improvise while cooking, I just lack common sense when it comes to things you can do, like putting fruit in oatmeal. Not my brightest moment.

 

We had lunch again over at the comedor, and Brie took off at 2:45.

 

That afternoon, I wrote a couple of exams for my schools this week (half the points on my exam in my private school are from the class where nobody was taking notes). With that out of the way, I finished up the 5 episodes of Mad Men that I have, and went to sleep. It should be a pretty low key week with only exams. But then again, I’ll need a low-key week considering my buddy Jeff is coming to visit me from the States on Saturday.

 

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Wasting my phone saldo, a 75-cent haircut, and St. Patrick´s Day

2009 18 March

March 16th

Today I did little more than go to the gym. It was Louise’s birthday today, so I gave her a ring, as well as calling my parents, Yuki, and later on, my friend Danica who ET’ed. These were the big activities of the day as Mondays I don’t have classes. I did play Frisbee though, but among the kids the interest seems to have died down substantially. However, this also could have been because two of the kids were throwing rocks at eachother (one threw one about the size of his head, missed, then was hit in the back of the knee with one the size of his hand – this just made him cry, super angry, and ended the game as I spent the rest of the time preventing him from picking up rocks and throwing them at the other kid). Among other things, I was unable to locate a melon or watermelon to eat and instead opted for a pineapple. This sounded like a good idea until later that night it appeared to not agree with my stomach (sparking fears that it could be a parasite/bacterial infection again). I was super nervous about being sick again that I went home after eating at my counterpart’s house to rest, only to have the pain (which was equal to that of a bacterial infection) disappear an hour later. Thank god.

March 17th

I was still semi-nervous about my stomach pain coming back, so I skipped my morning run, and opted for a more cautious yoga routine instead. I also go my house ready for a couchsurfer that was to show up later in the night (www.couchsurfing.com).

I got another haircut, but at a new place this time – where it cost 75 cents instead of a dollar. The guy told me how God visited him via blue light that hit his head when he was in his house one day. He told me that God stuck around and talked with him for a couple of hours, and since then, he’s changed his ways – most importantly by giving up alcohol. In spite of this story, I couldn’t help but think he might have been drinking a bit when I showed up for my haircut. So I said a little prayer and just listened to his story as he used a straight razor to cut my sideburns/the hair off my neck. He cut my sideburns in half vertically, cut my widows peak straight, and got most of the hair off my neck. Most importantly, I got out of there without losing pints of blood. So in the end, a 75-cent haircut feels like a 75-cent haircut.

To kill more time before the couchsurfer showed up, and went and planned with Ana (my counterpart at my private school), and helped her with her English homework. I left her house and headed straight for the park to for a Frisbee play date with the little kids on the street, only to have the interest wane once again. During this time, the last bus from Estelí (the one the couchsurfer was going to be on), came and left, and there was no site of the couchsurfer. So I headed to my counterpart’s house to plan for our class the next day.

Afterwards, I headed to my counterpart’s house to eat, and headed home to watch a movie (and to enjoy a drink to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day). Before I started my movie, the last bus showed up from León, and I went out to check if perhaps the couchsurfer showed up on that bus. He wasn’t on it, but surprisingly, I ran into the American’s I played Frisbee with that weekend. They were eating at the fritanga next door to my house and sitting in front of my neighbor’s house. So I chatted with them a bit before heading back inside to watch Shaun of the Dead.

A little more than 30 minutes into the movie, one of my neighbors called for me, and I went outside…to find the couchsurfer, Bill, standing outside. It turned out that he hitchhiked from Ocotal to Achuapa in a process that took about 8 hours. So he grabbed some food at the fritanga, and we watched Run Lola Run, then played a quick game of Phase 10 before going to bed.

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Posted by thegoggins

Gym, Frisbee and Some Unwanted Friends

2009 16 March

March 11th

I did a brief gym session and headed to Los Caraos to teach my class. About half way there, I heard a noise on my bike and my rear wheel started rubbing against the rear chainstay. Since I was in the middle of nowhere and without any tool, I just kept riding. I eventually got to Los Caraos (but had to walk the last bit as my problem got worse). Fortunately the problem wasn’t severe – it turned out that little by little, one of the bolts holding on the rear wheel was coming loose and finally gave way. The only other activities were playing Frisbee and eating watermelon.

March 12th

I managed to wake up this time and got for a jog, but since I still don’t care, I just cranked out 2 km and went home. Whatever. I like riding my bike anyway. I got my act together a lot quicker this morning because the private school I work in decided to change my schedule. I wasn’t sure when they were going to discuss it, so I got over there at 7:30 to fight for a good hour for the class. The MINED says some classes must be given in the first hours (like gym for example – even though the kids are in school for only 5 hours a day), so I lost my first period class on Tuesdays. I’d heard that they were going to change the class to Friday afternoon, so I needed to go in there and lay down the law. The problem with Friday classes is that I’ll lose 25% of my classes (minimum) since they cancel class the last Friday of every month for a teacher “training” seminar. Fortunately, nobody really argued with me and just gave me the time I want (Thursday afternoon, the second to last class). So my new schedule is this: Wednesdays from 9 – 10:30 in my campo school, then Thursdays from 8:30-10:20, and 11 – 12:30. The disadvantage is that I can’t focus all my efforts on one school for each day as I had been doing. I also won’t be able to help Johani with her Thursday classes either. The clear advantage is that I now work 2 days a week in the schools, which leaves me the rest of the time to do secondary activities (I’ll be able to do some trips out into some other communities to get them to do spelling bees as well).

After getting my schedule situated, I headed back home where I had tons of time left before my class started, so I did some reading. Around the time I was to head over to my other school, they started fumigating my block, so I got my house fumigated and went to the school.

It was the birthday of one of my students, so after an extended song (which I cut short), we jumped into the exciting world of business education! The kids were split up in their groups working, but a couple of students were screwing around (as they generally do). I have students that cause some problems in my classes, but these are the only students I have that fight me when I tell them to stop screwing around (coincidentally, one of them is the student who had her birthday today). I confiscated a couple of calculators from them, then some backpacks, then some notebooks before they finally started working. After recess (it’s in the middle of my class), my two students who’d been screwing around had disappeared. So, I gave them a couple of zero’s and finished the class.

That afternoon, I got another Frisbee game started in the park across the street from my house. Generally, I end up playing with the little kids in town, but this time around, I got most of my 4th year students in my private school playing. We played for a couple of hours before the participation dissipated and I headed home.

March 13th

I had NOTHING to do today, so I headed to the gym with my buddy Colbert for most of the morning. If I were to evaluate my fitness, I’d say that now I’m about on par, or even in better shape than I was when I left the U.S. I for one never thought I’d be going to the gym 3 days a week in Peace Corps. Maybe it was fate? When I was deciding which sites I wanted, I went with my gut and picked the sites that fit me the best, instead of the sites that I actually wanted – and how did it turn out? I got a site that was perfect for me. Funny how that works.

March 14th

I got up for my jog (instead I just turned it into a mile sprint), did some yoga, and just lounged around for a bit. Our internet cafe crashed the previous day, so I hoped to get caught up today…but it was not to be. With those plans thrown out the window, I went to play Frisbee in the park with some kids. Once again, the game just exploded, and I played Frisbee with a bunch of bus drivers, little kids, and some people that are studying Spanish up in Largartillo. This lasted the majority of the morning, so I chilled out for a couple of hours before going to my counterpart’s house at 3 so we could play baseball.

On our way to the stadium, we ran into my buddy Freddy and headed over to the stadium. The stadium is locked, so we had to crawl through the conveniently hole in the wall to play. I’d forgotten how much running you do in baseball, but it was good to get the “flow” back. In the hour and a half we played, we did more damage to the baseballs than I’d managed to do in 10 years. Shows how much I’d been playing.

March 15th

Today was my off day, so I treated it as such, and slept until 8:30 (I’d have to reference my journal to find out the last time I was able to sleep that late). I did nothing the whole morning, ate some lunch, then decided I’d better stop procrastinating. It was time to tackle the mess I had going on in my kitchen cabinet. Since I’d moved into the house in October, I’d accumulated around 50 corn flakes boxes, a handful of receipts and plastic bags for garbage. The past few weeks, I’d heard some noises in the cabinet, so I had a feeling that some guests that weren’t paying rent.

After removing the first cereal box, I saw my first friend – a tiny mouse. By the time I removed the rest of the boxes, I’d found around 8 mice in total. I’d always pictured mice as being nimble and quick witted. However, I found them to be quite stupid and a running ability equivalent to cartoon characters (the legs are moving, but they don’t go anywhere). On top of that, they were no match for the broom I wielded. Two ran in between a shoe and the wall (the shoe was on it’s side), so I put them out of commission quite easily. I only managed to get one more of them with the broom as the others all took off at the same time.

Quite irked by this, I grabbed everything that I had in the cabinet and made a big pile of it in my yard. I also had a mountain of egg cartons underneath my table, so I took those too and threw it on the pile. I’d always been saving these items for projects and whatnot, and I finally found a use for them – making an enormous fire.

img_0810That was a lot of corn flakes

img_08121That´ll teach you to not pay rent!

I thought my problems were over there, but I had a mouse take off and run underneath my armoire. I figured I probably couldn’t get him, but this reminded me of another potential issue – stuff I’d been storing at the bottom of the armoire. If I had mice in my kitchen cabinets, I sure wasn’t about to have them where I put all my clothes. So this was project number two, no problem. Oh but did I encounter a problem.

When you have a pile of things that you need to go through, you start at the top. This is how I was going to approach it as well, but I wanted to take a peek at the sorts of things I would run into. I grabbed a binder I had at the bottom of it, the Peace Corps Emergency Handbook.


img_0813

What the hell?


It was covered with something that was stuck over everything. I had no idea what it could be, so I opened up the book, and found that most of it had been eaten – I had termites.

img_0814Crap.

After getting all the stuff off the top, I found a termite party in a stack of magazines/newspapers. They were all stuck to the wood by some intricate tunnelling system them had going on. I don’t have anything to really kill termites, so I went to my solution for killing anything – Raid. It worked for the time being, but I’ll definitely have to find something more suited for termites in the future (see next weekend when I’m out of site for my birthday).

Thank god my house is made of brick and concrete. Hopefully I’ll be out of here by the time the termites get to the doors.

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A semi-illness and becoming one with my food

2009 11 March

March 4th

Today was a really uneventful day. I did my normal gym routine, taught at Los Caraos, then spent the rest of the day reading Greenspan’s memoirs.

March 5th

I skipped my jog this morning with the assumption that I would be running this afternoon (when I went to Malpaisillo), and instead did some yoga before heading to class. I always enjoy teaching my 4th year students at the Instituto because they pay attention and, to put it frankly, aren’t brats. Nevertheless, after the class, I helped Johani with her 1st year English class, and they are brats. So it all evens out.

After class, I went home and threw my things together and hopped on the noon bus out of Achuapa. For whatever reason, the only people travelling on the bus were me, my sub-directora, and the 3 people that worked on the bus. Not a very profitable afternoon. It was that way all the way until El Sauce too. In El Sauce, around 7 trillion people got on the bus, which made up for the lack of profitability on the Achuapa – El Sauce route. We were clipping along quite nicely and I thought I might set a new time record on the bus, but then we got a flat tire just before we turned onto the new paved highway (that goes all the way to my empalme – it’s amazing!). I rolled into Malpaisillo at 3, and Brie and I went jogging down her garbage strewn (well, only in the beginning) running route. Apparently all the lang outside of the center of Malpaisillo is owned by 5 families. Upon passing the house of one of these families, a group of little girls that Brie knows with started running with us. These kids ran with us for a good mile and a half in flip-flops. Some of their flip-flops were barely functional. Not only that, but they didn’t even bat an eye the whole time. Troopers.

That night, I learned how to make chicken soup. It was flipping amazing, but had one side effect – it did some mad damage to my digestion. This unfortunately rendered me sick close to the entire weekend.

March 6th

We headed to Leon in the morning so I could grab some money and check my mail (got your scratch paper letter Britt). I also took this opportunity to browse through the supermarket and perhaps get something that I can’t get in Achuapa. The end purchase was a bottle of Hunt’s Barbeque Sauce. In hindsight, it was a kind of unusual purchase considering the millions of things that I can’t get in Achuapa. But hey, we all have cravings. Afterwards, we hit up the new U.S.-like coffee shop in León for lunch before heading back to Malpaisillo. Then the sickness came back and prevented me from being very useful the rest of the day – but it didn’t keep me from downing another bowl of that amazing soup for dinner. Mmm…soup.

March 7th

The original plan had been to head to León Viejo, or San Jacinto (they have some boiling mud pits), but I after some self-diagnosis, this seemed like a poor idea. Instead, the day turned into a lazy day and I did some yoga to try to get my chi to deal with my stomach – and it worked.

March 8th

Today, we just chilled out (and ate some more amazing melon) and went out to the good restaurant they have in Malpaisillo (it’s got a floor of volcanic ash – creative if nothing else). Then I headed back to Achuapa on the mid-afternoon bus. Back in Achuapa, I did some more reading (and some yoga), which got me back to normal.

March 9th

With my sickness throwing me into a loop, I dedicated the entire morning to a hardcore 3.5-hour workout/yoga session (I’m more diligent with this than I was in the U.S.). It definitely got me back to equilibrium and I felt a million times better. During the afternoon, I just read the Greenspan book and played Frisbee with the kids in my neighborhood.

March 10th

I skipped my morning jog because I didn’t really want to do it (it’s the only thing that I have a tough time motivating myself to do), and instead just had a hearty breakfast and headed over to class at my private school. The class started out painless enough, but the lack of creativity (see à laziness) in my students really drove me crazy and by the end, I was ready to be out of there. One of the groups is going to start a dance class business. It’s definitely the most creative idea out of any of my kids so far (dating back to last year). That afternoon, I busted out the Frisbee and went out to the park (across the street). What started as a small game with a 3 and 5 year old turned into a frisbee session with anybody who walked into the park. All in all, I think I had around 25 people playing, including some of my 4th year students from my private school. Then it was back to the Greenspan memoirs before heading to my counterpart’s house for dinner. I’ve been reading a yoga book, and it mentioned the importance of “appreciating your food.” So I tried appreciating my dinner that night the way the book advised (by chewing each bite 50 times before swallowing). I successfully did this, but the outcome was a dinner that took an hour to eat, incredible hunger once I’d finished, and a process that really drove me crazy. I promptly left afterwards to eat half a cantaloupe and a handful of almonds. And just for reference – this is a terrible thing to gorge on right before going to sleep (it’s full of water).

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So I was cleaning my house the other day…

2009 9 March

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Whoops.

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A bacterial infection, frisbee, a census, and too much orange juice

2009 2 March

February 24th

 

I didn’t have water the previous day, so I decided not to go jogging in the morning. However, on top of that, I felt terrible that morning. My back felt all weird, I had a headache, and a minor stomachache. What a pain (literally in this case). I headed to my class at my private school, and instead of having my counterpart teach like I’d planned, I taught the entire class. Oh well, there’s always the next class. I had a relatively normal day the rest of the day (minus planning with my counterpart from Los Caraos since she told me she wouldn’t be in the class).

 

February 25th

 

My sickness continued, so I had to skip another day of exercising (this is driving me crazy). I just took it easy during the morning and then headed to Los Caraos for my class at 9. My kids wanted to do something fun at first, so we did a quick game before we started, then started the class. I asked them what we did in the previous class, and nobody had any idea. With that, fun Ricardo left the classroom and angry Ricardo that was going to give everybody a zero came in. For the most part, we made it through the class without too many problems, but the students were quite aware that I was not happy that they’d screwed around and not taken any notes. Afterwards, I headed back to Achuapa (for some reason I saw tons of turkeys). I wasn’t feeling great, so I pretty much laid low in the house until it came time to go eat at Esteban’s house. I felt pretty crummy the whole time and had a major craving for coke the whole time (I never drink soda). I figured it was because I was dehydrated, and when I got home drank a good amount of water before going to sleep.

 

February 26th

 

Today started really early for me – 1:30 AM. The water hadn’t come on forever, so when I saw that there was water, I washed all my dishes that had been piling up, and filled up every barrel and bottle I had. However, there was only water pressure in my spout on the porch, so I had to do everything from that one. When everything was said and done, it took me around an hour and fifteen minutes. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only reason I’d woken up – my stomach was killing me. My rule of thumb (which I’ve apparently forgotten) is if you have a stomachache that isn’t getting better, it’s not something you ate, it means you’ve got a little friend (bacteria or parasite) that’s living in you. I didn’t sleep the rest of the night (or rather, morning), and woke up feeling worse. I decided to take some medicine and got an incredible fever (103-104) and a pounding headache for a couple of hours. I laid down to get some rest and had some crazy semi dream. The only thing I remember about it is that there were dwarves that we had to save according to some law (I think it was more like some sort of protection act). Everybody in the dream was disappointed. Man, fever dreams are weird.

 

After waking up from that nonsensical dreamland, I went and laid in my hammock (I thought the fresh air might make me feel good). Instead, I remained immobile in the hammock as my fever, headache, and stomachache proceeded to kill me. Around 10 minutes later, my neighbor Martha told me that the electricity guy was in town (there is no office in Achuapa, so a guy shows up with a little desk he puts on the sidewalk where we pay the electric bill every month). My Spanish is horrible when I’m sick (because I’m focussing on everything but the outside world. So I grabbed my bill (I wasn’t sure if it was a water bill or electricity bill or if she told me there was now an electricity office – nothing made sense at the time), and stumbled across the park (with a obvious look of agony on my face). In the line, I found myself surrounded by my students, all waiting in line to pay their parents electricity bill. This meant one thing – they would talk to me.  I could barely open my eyes because of my fever and headache, so I just mumbled a bit, paid my bill, and went home. I realised that walking around actually made me feel a little bit better, so I took a shower and headed to the cyber (yes, I know it’s not moving around, but I did have to walk the half block there).

 

That experience left me feeling horrible, so I headed back home and watched a movie (Broken Flowers – there’s something about Bill Murray movies that make Peace Corps easier for me). I apparently wasn’t paying attention, because shortly after my movie was over, my computer turned off – the power had apparently gone off. Now with no power, I laid in my bed/rested for an hour before heading over to eat at Esteban’s house. At his house I just ate and left, as I still felt horrible. They all kept telling me I have a kidney infection because I have a fever and headache (yea, ok, whatever). I wasn’t up for too long before going to sleep (I think I went to sleep at 7:45 or something).

 

February 27th

 

My sickness continued, but appeared to be getting better. However, since I was still unsure if I was dying or not (or if I’d diagnosed myself correctly), I held off on the gym for yet another day. Instead, I did a few errands and cleaned the house. I had a list of things to do (they weren’t too important, but they were still things to do), but everything on that said list took a back seat as I got a strange urge – to play Frisbee. I figured I needn’t find anybody to play with since all I have to do is step outside and ask any kid on the block if they wanted to play a new game. This is exactly what I did – and I taught around 15 kids how to play Frisbee for around 4 hours. Now when I’m super bored, I know the exact activity I can do that will kill heaps of time.

 

After Frisbee with the kids, I continued my errands and bought a bunch of food. Later that night, I threw a chicken in some water on the stove to cook while I hung out with some of the neighborhood kids and waited for Brie to show up on the last Achuapa bus. When she showed up, I began continued with my cooking lessons – fajitas. I had no idea that you could boil a chicken and it’d be completely cooked (WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME THIS?), so I was one step ahead of the game by the time she showed up. After sautéing some peppers and onions, it was done (They never make it look this easy on those cooking shows). Not only that – it was amazingly delicious (I gave all the bones to Cual the dog – he’s now attached to me). I’m definitely going to be cooking chicken once a week at least (and even more once I buy some barbeque sauce). We watched the movie Zach and Miri make a porno which was hysterical. It’s definitely one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in a long while. But then again, who’s to question the ways of Kevin Smith?

 

Oh, and today I’ve been in site for 7 months. Woo.

 

February 28th

 

Originally, Brie and I planned on taking a hike to a waterfall in a community 5 kilometres from Achuapa (Largartillo), but I was still feeling a little strange due to my illness (I think it’s a bacterial infection). I woke up early and did dishes, filled up my barrels, and other things since the water came on. A little later however, I had an unexpected visit.

 

“Buenas.”

My neighbor called me and telling me somebody was looking for me, so I poked my head out to find 3 people dressed in lab coats. They didn’t introduce themselves or say where they were from, so I stood there awkwardly for a bit until I figured I asked them if they wanted to sit down. They accepted the offer, and I grabbed some chairs out of my house and sat out on the porch with these mystery visitors. They told me they were doing a census for the Ministry of Health and were passing by each residence in the country. They asked me some basic questions, address, date of birth, level of education attained, job, and then some not so basic things. After their few questions, they took my waist size (80 centimeters! Or 31.5 inches for those with no idea), and my blood pressure (still 110/70), They also looked at the cleanliness of my porch/living area (good thing I cleaned the day before), and said they were thoroughly impressed. They were exceptionally pleased with my stored water with a top on it, “Ah, that’s one of our requirements to prevent the spread of disease and illness.” “Well yes, of course, that’s why I did it, I want to be a model citizen.” And that was that – I got the stamp of approval from the Ministry of Health. God knows what will happen now. They’ll probably draft me or something.

 

After my “visit”, Brie and I headed out to eat at one of the two restaurants in town. After the delicious food (and a stop by the biggest pulperia in the world to grab stuff for dinner), we headed off to Johani’s farm since every family member has asked me when I’m going to stop by. There we chatted with Johani’s sister Glenda, her mother, and father for a bit before heading down to the river on the farm. It was starting to get dark, so we stopped by their house one last time before heading back to Achaupa. Brie and I got the urge to make fresh orange juice in the morning (actually, I think it was my craving), so I asked Glenda how much 12 oranges would cost. She then informed me I wasn’t allowed to buy them, and that I should take 24. I reluctantly agreed and we headed back to Achuapa with pounds of oranges (amazingly sweet oranges no less!).

 

I played less of a role in the dinner but helped nonetheless – we had a sort of noodle dish with vegetables, eggs and peanut/soy sauce. It was pretty good, and SUPER filling. I was only able to eat a bit of it. We watched another movie (Rachel gets Married), for about an hour before we both decided we hated it. Off went the movie and we busted out a new dice game Brie had (Phase 10 – anybody heard of it?). It was nice to mix it up since Brie is the worst card (and monopoly) player on the planet.

 

March 1st

 

I got up instinctively several times very early because I assumed the water was going to come on, and I could do my dishes and clean up. These endeavors were all made in vain though as the water was not on any of the times that I checked. So in addition to not having water, I was now awake despite it being 6 AM.

 

We woke up and made some breakfast, and I went to work on squeezing the oranges for orange juice. We were originally going to make juice out of 12 oranges, thinking it would make enough juice for two people. However, we had no idea what to do with the other 12 oranges, so I squeezed those too. By the time I’d squeezed all 24 oranges, I’d been making the juice for an hour. That was my first surprise. My second surprise – I made around 70 ounces of juice. I thought maybe I’d get a litre of juice out of the oranges, but never in my life did I think I’d get more than half a gallon of juice out of them. I downed a 24 ounce cup of it (barely), and just felt too orange-y to drink more (I would learn later that if you remove the peel before extracting the juice, you get rid of the certain bite/tang to the juice).

 

We just hung out the rest of the morning reading, rocking out to the Pixies, and played the dice game again (Brie won for probably the first time in her life – at anything). She took off at 2:45 and I bought some food and did a couple visits with people before heading over to Esteban’s house. After eating dinner, I went on a rave about the Max and Miri movie, so we went to my house and watched it (thankfully the majority of the jokes were still funny after being translated).

 

Good weekend.

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Spontaneity

2009 24 February

February 19th

Today was much of the same – the morning jog and class. The class that I was to help Johani with was “cancelled” because the students just aren’t as perceptive as another one of our classes. So due to this, she didn’t need my help since they’d just be repeating the class with them. With the unexpected large chunk of free time, I headed home and cleaned up my house and did a few errands. I also had the shortest planning session of my life – 11 minutes – with my new counterpart at my private school. She seems like she’s on top of it, but I’ll have to see if this was sufficient when we teach our class next Tuesday.

I then headed to Malpaisillo on the last bus out of Achuapa

February 20th

Brie and I headed into León today to go pick up mail as well as to just amble through León for the day. We went to check them mail (they changed their hours to 7 – 1 PM (not including lunch), so god knows when I’ll be able to get packages now), then grabbed some food at the good vegetarian restaurant (why not?). Then we headed to the market to replenish on luxuries that we can find in site (see à everything).

That night, I got some cooking lessons and made some chicken and mozzarella cheese crepes (I made some of the crepes – I feel I should make a button toting this new ability). Not only that, but they were corn crepes made with blended tortillas. Some people have that cooking creativity, but I sure as hell don’t. Good thing I know people who have a little more artistic culinary flair than I hold (though cereal holds a special place in my heart).

February 21st

In an act of “Why not?” (a mantra that has seemed to envelop me completely), we decided to head to Estelí for no other reason than to eat breakfast. For those of you unaware of Nicaraguan geography (or transportation), this was a 3-hour trip by bus, one-way. When you crave something, why not go for it? In Estelí, we caught a taxi with a friendly driver who dropped us off at the restaurant. Unfortunately, there were no lights, so my primary reason to go there – to get an amazing milkshake – was impeded. Devastated, I ordered some orange juice – it was not the same.

With our craving satistified (mine partially), we took a walk around Estelí and bought some counterfeit movies (movie industry: I’d support you if I had any idea where to buy non-counterfeit movies in this country). It appears to me that the counterfeiters have received our business course as some of them have a reputation for offering high quality movies (the guy in the theatre doesn’t move a lot, etc), and people subsequently walk the extra couple blocks to buy from them. That’s innovation for you folks.

We hit another grocery store (a PCV hobby) and then headed to the park where we ran into another business volunteer. She was in Estelí to meet up with some volunteers from my group (Kat, Katie E, and Andrea), so we accompanied her back to the café where we ate breakfast. I hadn’t seen most of them for awhile (with the exception of Kat who I saw when my parents showed up), so we exchanged a history of what we’d been doing recently, and then went to go pick up some custom made cowboy boots they all bought. It was some super high quality work that was done, and if that were my thing, I’d have gotten a pair. Maybe I should start a farm or something? Or start riding horses?

Brie and I then headed to La Casita (an organic eatery place on the edge of Estelí), and caught a taxi there. Coincidentally, the taxi that picked us up was the same guy who picked us up from the bus station. After our déjà vu moment, we had a good conversation with the guy, Rolando, while he brought us to the eatery. Following our lunch, Brie got locked in the bathroom (remember this bathroom mom?), and after saving her from the evil privy, she bought a plant and we left. Rolando gave us his number, so we summoned him (a good connection in light of the “express kidnappings” that sometimes happen in the country) and he dropped us off at the bus station.


We’d missed the bus back to León, so we just hopped the first bus that headed south, which was a bus to Masaya (we’re not quite sure why Estelí has so many busses going to so many places in the country, but it’s awesome). We rode to San Isidro and got off there (this was a potential site for a business volunteer, though nobody was put here), where we caught another bus that went to León. When all was said and done, we rolled into Malpaisillo at 5 PM, an hour earlier than if we’d waited for the bus from Estelí to León.

We enjoyed reheated crepes (amazing) and watched Slumdog Millionaire that night. All I have to say is that movie was super overrated. For all the hype it got, I was super disappointed in it – it wasn’t that good.

February 22nd

Today I learned how to make omelettes (I feel like a Sim increasing my cooking skill). This whole cooking thing isn’t so out of reach as possible. However, I feel that when I try to mimic this new skill, an explosion or some other adverse effect will result. With this in mind, I express cautious optimism regarding my new cooking skills. On top of this, Brie and I got into a pretty good conversation about the sustainability about PC. It’s nothing for the internet though.

Before catching the bus back to Achuapa, I tried a new concoction – tuna fish with sweet relish (I’d never tried relish in my life), and was borderline terrified at having my normal Denver dish altered so. Surprisingly, it’s amazing. I’d never have thought to put relish in my tuna fish, but I will now be doing it whenever I can. It’s delicious.

On the bus (which I almost missed), there was no place to sit for the first hour so I stood and waited in the front of the bus before a “seat” opened up on the engine. I took this seat (my butt avoided third degree burns due to a pillow the driver provided me. The ride was pretty uneventful (though the radiator had several problems, meaning the bus driver took his gallon of water and poured it into the dashboard), and I read the whole book of Tao Te Ching that Heather had mailed me (Thanks again!). Then since I still had time before I got to Achuapa, I read it again.

Tao Te Ching (Steven Mitchell translation) – A. A good book that makes you think. I feel super wise now. Super confused as well.

February 23rd

Mondays I don’t have to give classes, so I went to the gym and did yoga forever. I was in zen mode after becoming all-knowledgeable (or rather more lost) by reading the tao book. I got caught up on some errands (like stocking my fridge with V8, and found that there were no more boxes of V8, but there were only 3 bottles – so I bought them all. I figure that if I raise demand (I think I’m the only one that demands them), they’ll keep buying them. This is my hope anyway. So far, the hypothesis is proving true. So my solution to drinking 100% fruit juice throughout my service is by buying more juice than I really need/buying in bulk (a new concept for Nicaraguans). I finished The Devil in the White City:

The Devil in the White City – A+. The same author as Isaac’s storm, the book is about the construction of the 1893 World Fair in Chicago. It tells the story of the main architect of the fair and that of a psychopath who leisurely killed a dozens of people during the same time in Chicago. The book talks about all the things that were a result of the fair: the Ferris Wheel, Shredded Wheat, Aunt Jemimas Pancake mix, and the AC current (electricity) among other things. Great book.

I also had an amusing conversation with my ex-counterpart and his wife. My favourite dog in town, Cual, follows me everywhere and everybody thinks he’s my dog. However, “Cual” means “which” in English. The following happened:

“Come here Cual!”

“What’s that dog’s name?”

“Cual.” (which)

“That dog right there.”

“Cual.”

“This dog you’re talking to.”

“CUAL”

“THAT DOG RIGHT THERE, THE ONE YOU’RE TALKING WITH. FORGET IT.”

“He’s named Cual.”

“Oh, who gave him that name?”

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More school, more books

2009 19 February

February 17th

 

For the first time in longer than I care to admit, I got up to run and ran the full 5 km. For some reason, daydreaming while running helps me reach my goal. If I’m focusing on the running itself, I get bored and just go home. But yes – today I did it. Right on.

 

After running, I did some yoga and headed to my 7:30 AM class at my private school across the street (7:30 AM classes are nothing when you’re waking up at 5 AM). The class was better than they were the first class (it’d be hard not to be), and for the most part they were participating, which is a big plus for that class.

 

Afterwards, since I wasn’t sure what my schedule was, I headed over to Instituto San Jose to see when I was suppose to help Johani with her classes. When I showed up, she was giving a class to my 4th year students (the ones I teach a business class to), so I stuck around and helped with pronunciation for their class and then the 1st year class afterward. What I immediately realised after helping her with the 1st year students (which was a super disruptive and big class), is if I were an English volunteer, I’d ET in a heartbeat. There’s no way I could put up with that for 2 years – not a chance.

 

I spent the rest of the day putting a huge dent in a new book, The Devil In the White City.

 

February 18th

 

Today I hit the gym for an abbreviated amount of time with my new treated water. Finally, I didn’t have the hardcore bleach taste, and I still had clean water – it’s been a while.

 

I taught my class in Los Caraos and got there in not time at all. When everything was set and ready for the class to begin, my counterpart picked up her bag, “Um…where are you going?” I asked. Turns out that she’s busy doing some sort of planning with the school and therefore won’t be teaching with me until around April. Peachy. Not pleased – this is HER class. Not mine. For those of you who wondered where Peace Corps encounters sustainability problems, this is a prime example when you question yourself if when you leave, they’ll continue practicing what you taught them.

 

On the way out of Los Caraos, I decided to take another exit out (instead of the one that goes uphill then downhill). I’d always seen a road that went downhill, so I naturally assumed that by following it, I’d run into the road. I was clipping along for a little bit until I hit a path of sand and was forced to resume on foot. Finally the opening open and I found myself, not at the road, but at the river. If I were to turn around and go around the way that I’d know, it’d take at least 15 minutes. So instead of doing that, I just forded the river. I apparently got water all over me and had no idea until somebody told me later that afternoon. It happens. I put another big dent in The Devil in the White City too while waiting for Johani to show up to help her grade some papers…and she never showed up.

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The post you´ve all been looking for

2009 17 February

January 18th

 

I woke up today in Chinandega with plans later that night – make sure my parents showed up. However, aside from that, there was nothing else on the agenda. Whenever I’m in Achuapa, I have no problem killing days and weeks, but whenever I leave, it’s another issue, even though there are more options at my disposal everywhere else. After grabbing a licuado with Luis and Brie, Brie and I caught a bus down to Leon where I parted ways with her. I then hopped a bus to Managua where I would waste the second half of the day.

 

I paid for the room and pickup of my parents later that night and then went and saw the Tom Cruise movie Valkyrie. The only thing I have to say about it is that it was a bad movie. If the “Germans” had German accents instead of British and American ones, I might have enjoyed it. However, since they made no effort whatsoever to convince me that these were Germans (the movie started out in German – I had high hopes in the beginning), it ruined the movie for me. Tom Cruise’s character should have died in the first scene so as to avoid exposing the audience to a movie that was made half-heartedly.

 

After the terrible movie, I still had around 4 hours to kill before my parents showed up, so I headed back to the office to take advantage of the cable and free internet as well as the safe feeling you have being in a compound with at least 2 security guards at all times. I ran into a volunteer who lives on Ometepe (the island) and who is good friends with my friend in Altagracia. We hung out and talked for a bit before I went to grab some dinner by the office. The office is located in a pretty rich neighborhood filled with NGO’s so understandably it is filled with the good (they’re all pretty mediocre) places to eat in Managua. I found a place to eat and while I was there, in walked in the person who Luis and I call “Licuado girl”. Licuado girl works at a place that sells food in the park in Chinandega (they also sell licuados, or milkshakes, hence the name ‘licuado girl’), so seeing her here in Managua, which is 3.5 hours away by bus, was quite a surprise. Licuado girl is memorable because she’s particularly attractive, but also because she had an affair with the previous mayor of Chinandega. But anyway, for whatever reason, Licuado girl was in Chinandega. This was fun for Luis and I because we got to discuss what possible delinquent activities she was involved in on her trip to Managua – good coffee shop (or rather licuado) fodder.

 

Following my dinner, I headed to the hostel and waited for my parents to show up. When they finally showed up, though tired, they still had enough energy to sit around a chat for a few hours.

 

January 19th

 

We woke up early this morning (my Dad’s birthday), and headed to Granada. The only reason I put a trip to Granada into our plans was because it was my Dad’s birthday. Since he had never travelled outside of the U.S. (Canada does not count), I decided if he was going to go to a 3rd world country, the first place visited should be the most touristy spot in the country. Fortunately for me, they both liked Granada the least (I guess it runs in the blood!).

 

Soon after getting off the bus, we walked over to a hotel I hoped to stay at (I had no reservations nor plans anywhere in the country, just a rough idea of what I’d like to do) and dropped off our stuff and headed out to breakfast at the “best” breakfast place in the country (or at least it was the best). There really isn’t all that much to see in Granada, so we saw everything (minus the Isletas) in a little more than a few hours. With everything I wanted to show my parents having been done, the trip there was much more of a culinary experience (or rather a gluttony experience) as we really just ate and went out for drinks when we were there. Good times.

 

January 20th

 

Since I didn’t feel like kicking it around Granada for another day doing nothing, this morning I got my parents on a bus and we headed to Masaya. From there we headed to Masatepe, my old training town. I just wanted them to see where I lived for 3 months. I also wanted it to serve as a comparison for where I am living now. When we got into Masatepe, I gave a friend of mine a call and took a stroll around the town. Also, while strolling around I picked up some sandals for my parents that they’d have the rest of their trip. Originally, I planned on just swinging my parents by the neighborhood and house I used to live in, but in the end we stopped by my old host family’s house and stopped by for an awkward conversation with the family that stopped feeding me the last 3 weeks of training (wanted to take advantage of their bathroom). On the way out of town, we ran into a kid who was in my youth group, and chatted him up a bit before heading to the highway.

 

My parents got the full Nica experience when we caught a microbus to Catarina. It was a tiny micro with a ton of people crammed in it (as it should be!) and we took it to the Catarina entrance on the highway. From the entrance to the highway (a rotary or roundabout), we walked the mile (I think?) to the Catarina mirador, an overlook of the Laguna de Apoyo, which is the deepest lake in Central America. In addition to hosting the Laguna de Apoyo, Catarina is a training site for Peace Corps. So on the way to the Mirador, I showed my parents a couple houses PC uses for trainees.

 

After seeing the Laguna (which they really enjoyed), I got us a cab to go to Masaya (for the same price it would have cost us to take a microbus!) so my parents could see the artesian market (and also to grab a pizza). My parents weren’t huge fans of the market (another thing that ran in the blood apparently!) so we took off after about 30 minutes and headed back to Granada for our final culinary experience in the city.

 

January 21st

 

Today I got my parents together and we went to Kathy’s Waffle House one last time before I got them on a bus to the UCA. When we got into the UCA, I left them there with the hope that they’d still be there when I got back (I had to go to the PC office to pick up some bags we left there). While I was in a hurry, I’m also super cheap. With this in mind, I ran to the Peace Corps office instead of taking a taxi. There I picked up our bags, some more bug spray and dental floss (two things which are good to stock up on in this country), and then ran out of the office with the 3 bags. The office is at the end of the block from a busy (well, within site of a busier street) so I had to run down there with bags in tow to catch a cab back to the bus station. The experience turned out to be a quick and problem-free one as my newly adapted bargaining habits came in useful (For those that are curious, I say, “Bring me here for this much,” and instead of arguing or giving me a higher offer, they just say, “OK”). The guy turned out to be a real nice guy and chatted me up the whole time to the bus stop too.

 

We grabbed the micro to León and I sat next to some guy who chimed in when I asked my dad how long I was gone, “30 minutes.” He said. “What are you talking about?” Said I. As we pulled out of Managua, I ended up chatting up the guy for a good amount of time about a handful of topics, but mainly about my parents, “They look terrified” “Yea, they are.” When the conversation with him died down, I chatted it up with some chela seated next to me who was from Germany. She was studying in Argentina, and was taking her summer break. She had no idea what there was to do in Nicaragua, so I provided whatever advice I could before sending her on a camioneta when we got into León.

 

My parents, wanting to be a little more facenta (uppity), decided they wanted to stay in a super nice hotel in León. So instead of the hostel (it’s a nice one) I had planned on taking them to, we went to Hotel Austria where for whatever reason, I got a Peace Corps discount. Those impeccable rooms, air conditioning, hot water, and super high pressure (or I guess that would be normal pressure for the rest of you) toilets, ran me 63 dollars 3 people a night. NICE.

 

I showed my parents a couple of churches that day as well as where the PCV’s there lived before meeting up for dinner with Jordan and the pretentious restaurant for dinner (we also ate lunch at a similarly non-Nicaraguan eatery). I lived it up in the air-conditioned completely silent room this night – don’t have this in Achuapa.

 

January 22nd

 

We took a walk around the city again to show my parents everything they hadn’t seen in León (including buying some Spanish religious stickers to throw on some packages to Padre Richard), and then headed to Chinandega for lunch. On the bus, I sat next to a lady who made a snide comment after some guy tried to pay a 20 cord fare with a 500 cord bill, “What a fool.” Understandably, we struck up a conversation, and coincidentally, I struck up a conversation with her only to find out she was a friend of Johanni, my good friend in Achuapa. She was going to a teacher conference in Chinandega where she would meet up with Johani as well as most of the teachers from the western part of the country. Appropriately enough, her name was Martha (which is the name of every other female in Achuapa it seems). In Chinandega, my parents and I met up with my buddy Luis and went out to the amazing steak place, Lago’s. This was really the only purpose of the trip as there is nothing to see in Chinandega (except for the one road with everything), but in addition to the steak place, I showed my parents the one street with everything as well as the park which Luis and I have frequented every day that I’ve ever been in Chinandega.

 

As impressed as you could be with Chinandega, we headed back to León where I dropped off my parents at the hotel. They were content with doing nothing (since it was their last night in León), so I went and saw a movie (Yes sir – I think? It was Sí, Señor in Spanish). After the movie, I took my parents over to a restaurant across the street from my favourite hostel where we enjoyed an amazing (and amazingly cheap) meal, the last meal in León.

 

January 23rd

 

Today, we all got up around 4:15 to catch the bus from León to Achuapa. After getting into town around 10, I took my parents on a quick tour of the town and grabbed some food with them at our comedor. That night we ate dinner at my counterpart’s house only with him and their son. It was kind of strange having to translate absolutely everything my parents wanted to say to Esteban, and then translating everything he wanted to say to my parents. But it worked.

 

January 24th

 

My parents, both of whom exclaimed that could sleep through anything became aware of the harsh realities that life in the campo presents – the roosters start at 3 AM. To make it better, they had a rooster right on the other side of the wall in the hospedaje they were staying in.

 

After getting ready (which took them forever with the bucket shower), we walked to Johani’s farm just outside of Achuapa. There, we hung out with her family for around 5 hours. We took my parents down to the river on her farm, ate mountains of oranges, ate lunch, and got to ride Johani’s family’s scary horses.  It was a good time.

 

That night, we again ate at my counterpart’s house this time with him and his wife. We showed up a little earlier and my parents got a taste of how Nicaraguan food is really like. My parents also got a whole bunch of other cultural culinary experiences that they enjoyed.

 

January 25th

 

Today held more of the same – more visits for my parents. Everybody in my town knew my parents were coming, so that meant I had to bring them by just about everybody’s house. That’s what we did – and it took all day. But they continued enjoying the whole campo experience that I live day in and day out (except when I’m hanging out in Chinandega).

 

January 26th

 

For whatever reason, my Dad wanted to work. My counterpart is in the process of constructing 2 rooms and a bathroom on the back of his house, so we brought my dad over at 8 AM and sent him to work. While he did his thing, my Mom and I enjoyed some rosquillas (corn cookies) with Digna before heading over to the cooperativa to get my parents some of the organic sesame seed oil that Achuapa is famous for. This process was a bit complicated as I went to the shop to buy it, they sent me to the financiera to pay for it, then I was sent back with a receipt the shop. Little did I know, my troubles had not ended there, “We don’t have a bottle that will hold a liter, I’m going to go buy one.” So we sat around waiting before the some lady showed up and said, “Yea, I couldn’t find one.” This required me to be the proactive one – so off I went to a shop. There I got an empty bottle and bought a bottle of water which I immediately chugged in front of the shop. I gave the lady the two empty bottles and she went to the back of the shop to get some oil. She then came back with two different bottles (but unknowingly she filled 2-600 ml bottles – so we got 20% free!

 

By then it was noon and we went and picked up my Dad from “work”. From there, we went to Johani’s farm to eat lunch. There we had an amazing dish (what they call Plato Chino, or Chinese plate, even though none of it is even remotely close to Chinese food), and Johani’s family insisted of giving gifts to my parents. However, a problem arose when they figured out that they had nothing to give. But Nica’s are innovative, so my parents did get gifts – a pair of underwear for each of them. It was hilarious.

 

January 27th

 

Today we all got up early so we could take the 6 AM bus to Estelí. My parents got to experience boarding a bus that is always packed – it’s a madhouse. Then they got to experience the gorgeous trip to Estelí (it was my first time seeing it too). After arriving, we went to a hotel that I got a Peace Corps discount at and dropped off our stuff. I gave a call to my friend who lived there. We met up with her around 11 and headed over to the Nicarao cigar factory. There, one of her friends gave tours of the factory, so I did the translating for him. It was an awesome experience even though I don’t smoke – definitely one of the coolest things I’ve seen in Nicaragua. After the factory tour, Kat (the volunteer) took us to her womens group that makes homemade paper. We spent a long time there due to the graciousness and friendliness of the women. Additionally, my parents bought millions of things. That night we went out for dinner at some place Kat recommended, then went to the bar across the street from our hotel and drank the second best Nicaraguan rum you can buy – good times.

 

January 28th

 

Today, after eating breakfast at a café near our hotel (which is now my favourite place to eat breakfast in the whole country), we walked around Estelí a bit and just window-shopped. Afterwards, we headed to La Casita, an organic eatery of sorts on the edge of Estelí. There they sell amazing organic food (whole wheat bread, fresh vegetables, fresh organic yoghurt, etc.). After that amazing, delicious experience, we just headed back to the hotel and chilled out the rest of the day (particularly since it was my parents last day in Estelí).

 

January 29th

 

I got my parents all together and down to the bus station so we could catch the expreso bus to Managua this morning. The bus was amazingly fast and got us to Managua in around 2 hours. Once in our hotel (across the street from the airport), it was just time to relax and do nothing. My parents hung out at the pool and the bar while I stayed in the air-conditioned room watching TV. I had to take advantage of it. Dinner that night was one of the most expensive dinners I’ve had in Nicaragua and was incredibly mediocre.

 

January 30th

 

I dropped my parents off at the airport and caught a taxi to the UCA (the bus station by the PC office) this morning. I talked to tons of Peace Corps volunteers about how much I should pay to go from the airport to downtown in a taxi, and everybody told me anywhere from 3 dollars to 20 dollars. So when I went to catch a taxi, I was going to start my bargaining at 60 cordobas (3 dollars). However, I was thrown off when the guy told me he’d take me for 40 cordobas. I should’ve thought twice, but I didn’t and jumped in. Generally when a taxi driver in Managua offers you a ridiculously low cab fare, it means you’re going to get kidnapped, but the guy took me to where I was going without any issues. Talk about an awesome deal.

 

I had planned on buying some clothes in Managua, but the stores were still closed, so I headed to León and met up with Brie for lunch and to pick up some mail. We ate lunch and ran into a bunch of other volunteers, so we went out for a couple of beers with them as well before I headed to Chinandega to meet up with Luis.

 

We just chilled out that night watching TV, which was probably for the best.

 

January 31st

 

Luis and I hung out most of the morning before he told me that he was heading to León with his girlfriend to go out for lunch. This would’ve been fine since he has a Playstation, cable tv, and internet, but 10 minutes before he left, the power in the entire city went out. Without power in Chinandega, I was totally lost. I did some reading, but it was so hot I had to stop, then I decided to go grab some lunch at Subway, but without power there were no hot subs. I was starting to lose my mind at this point, so I headed to the park to get a licuado (my Chinandega vice) only to find out that without power, there were no licuados.

 

I was dying. Eventually Luis showed up and we went out to a bar with Fernando and Elizabeth (a TEFL volunteer there). Luis and I were there for a couple hours longer than they were, so we took off with the intention of meeting up with them later. We went and grabbed some food in Top Tip (and made tons of noise and random phone calls), then headed back to Luis’ house. This involved walking past Subway – and here a cookie craving struck us. Subway was closed, but we banged on the window begging for cookies, and for some reason, they opened up and sold us a bunch of cookies.

 

We then went home and fell asleep – very content.

 

February 1st

 

Today I came back from Chinandega on the 1 PM bus from León. While the bus usually takes 3.5 hours, I somehow got back in 2.25 hours. We were travelling so fast, it was like I was on a plane.

 

February 2nd

 

School officially starts tomorrow, so I went and cut off all my hair again. Gotta be professional after all.

 

February 3rd

 

Today was the “acto” for schools, which meant all the kids had to get decked out in their school garb and go to a sort of presentation inaugurating the school year. I unenthusiastically attended to kill time before I went to go plan my schedule at San Sebastian (my private school). The process was a pain as I had to create a schedule in 3 schools, and make sure none of my classes fell on Friday (since we lose tons of Fridays throughout the year). The end result was perfect – I teach one class Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. This gives me a 4 day weekend every week, and plenty of time to do extracurriculars and secondary projects.

 

February 4th

 

I woke up early today for my normal routine of going to the gym, but this time I was a little bit more rushed because I had class – today is the first day of school. I knew I’d be teaching at Los Caraos, but had no idea what time class would start with. I was just told to give a call around 8 AM to find out what time class would be at. My counterpart gave me a ring around 8 and told me class would be starting at 9 AM, so I threw it into high gear and left with a half hour to spare as I usually do.

 

At the end of last year, the road to Los Caraos was less road and more quarry. Dirt was scarce, and the road was pretty much full of rocks the size of a fist. As soon as I got to the road itself, I saw that it was completely repaired, and nothing but flat, compacted dirt as far as the eye could see. Due to this, I turned the normally 30 minute bike ride into a 10-minute pleasure trip. I was FLYING down the highway and got into Los Caraos 10 minutes early.

 

At Los Caraos, I said hi to all the professors and went to my classroom full of…4 of my 4th year students. Apparently the rest still think we’re on vacation, so when they get back, I’ll inform them they’ve failed my class and don’t need to bother showing up the rest of the year – that’d be awesome if I could do that. I want authority like THAT. Maybe I should be a principal.

 

After class, the high winds limited my speed coming home so I didn’t get the endorphin rush I had going to school (endorphin rush going to school?). I got back and stopped by Instituto San Jose to ask Johani about her classes, and then stopped by the primary school to see how much interest there was in a chess club amont 4th, 5th, and 6th graders – the answer? Tons of interest. Everybody raised their hand. They’ll be interested until they realise how to play. I then headed to the cyber for a bit before going home for lunch.

 

My lunch was the typical, super-boring lunch I usually go with but instead of casually peeling my oranges on the porch, the Slovakian lady stopped by and I talked with her for a good hour. I decided to get caught up with my journal, and in the process remembered that my neighbor gave me a bottle of liquid the other day. He kept telling me he’d give me clean water that he had cleaned with chlorine. I was pretty thirsty, so I figured I’d check it out. The colour was a little off, but I attributed this to the colour of the bottle (even though the bottle was clear – hey, I thought it could be dirty). I took a smell and was overwhelmed with the smell of chlorine, “Is this what clean water smells like?” I thought, even though the it was clearly more chlorinated than pool water. I don’t know what was going on, but for some reason, I gave myself the green light to try it…and I wish I didn’t. I realised my ignorance (stupidness) immediately, and spit it out all over the table and into the sink. I had a little water and downed that, but it did nothing to alleviate the pain associated with taking a mouthful of chlorine. I ran over to Rene’s bike shop, ripped open his fridge and downed a soda to get the taste out of my mouth. This too did little, so after forking over the 5 cords, I headed home and looked for something to drink in my fridge. Unfortunately, the only thing there was a can of Heineken my parents brought from the airplane. It was cold and not chlorine, so I popped it open and proceeded to drink it. However, Heineken is such a repulsive beer, I was half tempted to continue drinking the chlorine. In the end, I think I lost more than a couple of taste buds in my mouth – but what an experience (a stupid one)!

 

After my dumb experience, Jesi, Yordanka’s cousin, stopped by my house to say goodbye since she’s going to Costa Rica tomorrow to find a job for the next year.

 

That was effectively the night in a nutshell. Oh and the chlorine I spit out removed the finish off my table.

 

February 5th

 

We had a strange “phenomena” apparently with some severely high winds that knocked out power in the beginning of the day. I was jogging during the morning and got a first had experience of how brutal the wind would come to be. Not only that, but as I was doing my 5 km run, tree branches were literally falling out of the trees as I ran by. It was a humbling experience to say the least.

 

Following my jog, I came home and did some yoga before my first class of the year at my public school in Achuapa. In the midst of my yoga session, a branch was ripped off the tree in my neighbor’s yard and came crashing down onto my roof. Thinking my house was going to cave in and that’d I’d die anyway.

 

February 6th

 

Still no power. Went to gym and benched 225 – now people say, “Tiene fuerza Ricardo.” whenever I walk by on the streets. Cleaned my house because we got water for 30 minutes. Filled everything I could. Brie showed up on the last bus from León – we sat around in the dark (had 4 candles and my headlamp going though), played cards, chatted, and drank Flor de Caña. We got a full bottle for the 2 days (we also thought we were going to share with 2 JICA volunteers), but instead we just shared it, then took a walk around town at 11:30 PM. Not much else to do in Achuapa.

 

February 7th

 

Brie and I both woke up kind of slow (yea…might have been the rum). We made some eggs and finally rolled out of the house at 10:30 to go sit in the park and get some air. Originally, we’d planned on going to Johani’s farm, but due to the wicked heat, we vetoed that plan. We hung out and ate some oranges and clementines before heading over to the comedor to grab some lunch. After a good solid lunch, we headed back to my house to continue doing nothing We just chilled out to get back to equilibrium (and deal with the heat), and while resting, the power finally came back on.

 

With the power back on, we watched Science of Sleep, and made an epic dinner of Chinese egg soup, and a spicy tuna dish (thanks for the tuna mom).

 

February 8th

 

We woke up today and made a bunch of eggs, ate a couple of clif bars, and downed a couple V8’s (wait a second, I’m in Peace Corps right?) and just lounged around. We were going to watch a movie before Brie took off, but the sloth got to us and we just lounged around instead. Brie took off on the last bus out of Achuapa and I went back into Spanish mode (it was weird to be speaking English for so long in site).

 

February 9th

 

Aside from going to the gym (and getting back into my exercise routine after the weekend), I did a planning session with my counterparts. This was a cultural experience in itself. It’d been so long since I’d planned a class, that I’d forgotten how long it takes. It’s not that planning the class itself takes so long, it’s that you don’t work for about 90% of the “planning” session. I showed up at 3 PM hoping to be able to leave at 4 so I could go play soccer, but it just dragged on. One of my counterparts was talking with everybody who passed the house (she’s on the main drag of town), then talking to my other counterpart about her schedule. By the time we finally buckled down and started working we finished in 20 minutes. I spent an hour and 40 minutes doing a planning session for something that only needed 20 minutes.

 

February 10th

 

Today I became aware of the kinds of questions I end up asking myself daily. I woke up at 5 for my jog before classes, and while running, I had so many questions for myself. After 400 meters, I ran past the house that has 2 swans in the back yard (both of which always ‘bark’ or ‘honk’ or whatever swans do every time I pass). This is where I had my first question, “Why do they even have swans?” I mean, you don’t eat swan eggs, they aren’t eating the swans, and these are pretty defensive swans. I can’t imagine they’re easier to take care of than a dog. After a couple more laps of my 1.2 km loop, I found two huge pigs running down the middle of the road. “Where did these pigs even come from? Whose are they?” It was the similar to situation that is depicted in an Eddie Izzard skit. I wasn’t surprised by it, but it was just something I realised I’m becoming more and more accustomed to. Things like this don’t even faze me anymore. A couple blocks later I had yet another “huh” situation when I saw a bale of hay high in a tree. First of all, “How did the hay get in the tree?” and “Why is the bale of hay even in the tree?” The tree it is in a yard with no pets, no horses, nothing…so why on Earth is it there?

 

The rest of the day, I just taught a class, and ran around doing a ton of errands.

 

February 11th

 

Today I headed to Los Caraos and taught my business class to the 4th year students (the one I planned with my counterpart – and she wasn’t even there). After giving the class, I headed back to Achuapa to do my work report for Peace Corps. I sent off the report and lounged around reading Blink (which I finished). So on that note:

 

Blink – A+. A book about what you perceive in the blink of an eye. It also talks about how you make judgements and the results of going with your gut instinct, or sitting around and deliberating a situation. Basically, what you do after getting a complete set of information instead of just going with your instincts (which you can develop). Great book.

 

Today is also Luis’ birthday (my friend in Chinandega). So Happy Birthday Luis.

 

February 12th

 

While I continued my routine today (running), I just didn’t have the motivation. I don’t understand it.  Sometimes I have tons of motivation and can run forever. Lately however, whenever I go out running, I just want to stop – it’s just too boring for me. I didn’t hit my goal of 5k like I normally shoot for, but I did a respectable (to me anyways) 2.6 km before going home.

 

After my exercises and yoga, I headed to San Jose to teach my class. Somehow, my class increased by 9 people, so it went from being quaint and nice to a little disruptive. Fortunately for me, and unfortunately for my class, I can be louder than all of them.

 

With the class out of the way, I did a bunch of errands and burned a CD for Johani to use in her English class, then got a copy of the lyrics.

 

After writing a bit in my journal, and getting my act together, I caught the last bus out of town and went to Malpaisillo to hang out with Brie. It’s easier splitting up the trip to Chinandega (where I was headed to), so since Brie was going to go there as well, I decided to just stay and hang out with her and then we could both go to Chinandega in the morning.

 

At Brie’s, I got to take advantage of Brie’s awesome cooking skills and we watched a movie to boot (Im Juli – check it out). Then just to put the icing on the cake (or rather, to top of the tacos we had for dinner), we ate one of the dark chocolate bars my parents brought me when they came (in fact, it was the last one – no!).

 

February 13th

 

We got a late start on the day (we woke up at around 7), so after futzing around and eating breakfast, we headed to Chinandega. Since Luis’ birthday was 2 days before, we headed to the store and picked up a bottle of the aged 18-year Nicaraguan rum (the second best there is) – it felt only appropriate since Luis adopted the “You have to watch your calories/You have to take care of yourself” mantra.

 

We ended up getting to Luis’ around 1 PM, dropped off our stuff and headed over to Lagos (our favourite restaurant) to take advantage of the new promotion they had going on. The lunch didn’t really size up to how amazing their food normally is, but since it was only 50 cordobas (about $2.50) for a plate, you still can’t really go wrong with it.

 

Back at Luis’ house, we busted open the ritzy bottle of rum we bought him for his birthday. Though it was only 2 PM, we justified by saying that drinking expensive booze made us classy. Whatever makes you feel better I suppose.

 

We got ‘lubricated’ so to speak, then decided to go to a baseball game. Chinandega has one of the handful of professional baseball teams that there are in Nicaragua, so we got to see Chinandega play the national champions Boer from the last year. We paid for some high-end seats (25 cordobas, or about $1.25), which put us right in back of home plate. The game turned out to be a riot because Luis’ friends (I suppose they’re my friends now as well) Carlos and Cesar showed up and we heckled for around 2 hours straight. Chinandega had a player named C. Paz which led to us exploding in joy and starting a Cuerpo de Paz (Peace Corps in Spanish) chant (though we were the only ones partaking in it). We also kept giving our recyclables to a couple of kids who were collecting them. Not ones to turn down an opportunity like this, we talked with the kids for most of the game and got them to do errands for us. Little did I know, but this involved Cesar and Carlos telling some girl sitting in the section next to us that we all thought she was attractive – it was kind of like playing telephone. Not sure how, but it turned into Carlos and Cesar giving this random girl my phone number and then my name – Gongwenz. My name wasn’t the only name he was having trouble with as he kept saying Breeze all night long when he was talking to our friend Brie. We were really the life of the crowd (and the loudest), and even started a wave (which we only participated in as well). Nica’s need to learn how to get into a baseball game.

 

We took off around the 8th inning and headed to Terraza, which is some kind of pool/dance bar. I had already had enough, so keeping to Luis’ new mantra, I drank 3 liters of water while Brie, Carlos, and Cesar all danced…or rather while Brie danced and Carlos and Cesar hobbled around like injured animals.

 

We finally got out of there and headed home around midnight (not bad) – and we got there in one piece (though without our voices after having screamed during the whole baseball game).

 

February 14th

 

We did enough partying the day before, so sticking to the norm, we took a day off. We started the day by heading over to On the Run (or according to Nica’s – On de RRRun) and had an amazing omelette sandwich. Then it was back to Luis’ how for a very non-Peace Corps experience – we played Guitar Hero. That lasted a ridiculously long time, so after Brie had beaten the game we headed to Lagos for dinner (Where else would we go? It’s the best restaurant ever). While we were there, we figured out what the incredibly attractive thing about the restaurant is – the atmosphere. It’s’ one thing to have good food (which it certainly isn’t lacking), but it’s another thing to completely remove you from the outside environment. In their dining room, you can’t hear any of the noise from outside, the inside environment is clean, quiet, and air-conditioned. We completely forget we’re in Nicaragua every time we go in there. It’s like taking a vacation every time we eat dinner there.

 

Following our dinner, we took a walk down to the park where they were having some sort of fair (this always seems to be the case). We walked around for a bit before buying the movie “Dial M for Murder” to watch later. When we sat down to watch the movie, I promptly fell asleep for 30 minutes before waking up to some amazing loud noise across the street. What we found was some million-year-old fire truck being cleaned out/filled/something that we didn’t understand. We went back to watching the movie and I started thinking about what I was smelling, “Is that what air from a tire smells like?” When I finally came to it, I looked up to find that the room was filled with exhaust from the million-year-old fire truck. None of us had noticed until I jumped up and pointed it out. To “solve” the problem, Luis went over and closed her door. This did nothing because A. He had a window that was always open, and B. There was still tons of exhaust in the room. Luis wanted to keep watching the movie until I mentioned that it could kill us if we just sat there. So we watched the fire fighters do their thing (whatever it was), while waiting for them to stop pouring exhaust into Luis’ apartment. The fire truck finally pulled away sparking (this is in a gas station mind you) and promptly broke down no more than 20 feet from the gas station. So we kept watching the antics of the fire fighters before they asked us for a push to get the truck (which was more of a fire starting truck) started. Luis and I ran over there only to have them drive away and out of our lives forever (hopefully).

 

February 15th

 

Luis had class in the morning, so after grabbing a licuado with him in the park, Brie and I went and hung out in his apartment while we waited for him. During this time, Cesar showed up, and we talked about how fun the baseball game was (and how we’d all lost our voices). Luis finally showed up around noon, and we headed over to On The Run to grab lunch (another omelette sandwich) before Brie and I hopped a bus back to León. There Brie headed back to Malpaisillo and I caught the bus to Achuapa.

 

February 16th

 

Instead of waking up at 6 AM to go to the gym, I took it easier and woke up a little later since I had nothing on my schedule. After that was all said and done, I did a bunch of errands (mainly groceries). While doing these, I realise that my buying in bulk was finally starting to pay off. Since I’m and oatmeal eating machine and buy anywhere from 3 to 10 bags of oatmeal at a time, the owner has decided to sell them to me for 2 cords cheaper (that’s almost a 10% discount!). Then I headed over to another pulperia to replenish my V8 supply to find that they restocked their V8 supply – so I bought all 17 boxes they had. I then went to get a haircut (to re-bald myself).

 

In the afternoon I tried to finish off the holes in my journal. Due to the extreme heat I had to stop and went to my counterpart’s house to discuss our class for tomorrow. I spent the rest of the afternoon resting in the hammock reading before heading for dinner at my ex-counterpart’s house.

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Killing time, The Sauce, and Cutting my hair off (again)

2009 17 January

January 13th

Nothing exciting today. Movies, planning for my English classes – then neither of my students showed up. 

January 14th

Brie suckered me into going to El Sauce since they have the most famous “Black Christ” in Central America, so I hopped the 8 AM bus down to El Sauce only to wait around because we had to wait for Brie to start the festivities. Ultimately, Brie showed up at 11 and instead of jumping to things, we lounged around for a while longer. We checked out a new place to eat in El Sauce, then went back to Irene’s house. We felt badly that we came all the way to El Sauce and had yet to actually do anything productive, so we went to the church (which has burned down twice – most recently in 1998), saw the Black Christ, then we set out for the bus station.

As my luck would have it, I ended up missing my bus. For some reason I thought a bus headed for Achuapa at 4 PM (which Irene confirmed) but it never passed. While I was annoyed that I had to wait to take the last bus to Achuapa, I realised that I in fact did not have my keys – an omen of some sort?

January 15th

Got a haircut today. SHORT. Shorter than last time – just in time for the SBD meeting tomorrow in Managua and for my trip with my parents. I’m expecting some jaws to drop.

January 16th

I grabbed the morning bus from Achuapa (with the fastest bus driver on the planet) and unfortunately sat next to the @$$hole who called me a spy the entire way to Managua) and got into Managua for a SBD meeting at 9. This gave me around an hour to hang out with the other volunteers to chat and whatnot before we got started with our meeting. We just discussed each section of the book we use to teach the course then Brie, Lindsay, Luis, and I all headed to Chinandega (to…relax). Relaxing brought us to the park (surprise surprise?) to have a licuado then to a new place where we sat and “relaxed” some more until around 2 AM. Hey, whatever kills the time until the ‘rents come.

 

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