Free at last!!

On Wednesday I finally tracked down the counterpart I´ve had problems with since the beginning and, prepared for an argument once again, told her that I didn´t think we should work together any longer. Much to my surprise and complete happiness, she agreed! She said she´s too busy to plan, but she really wanted to work with me, but she´s busy with church stuff, but you know, she really wanted to work with me, but yeah, it´s better if we don´t work together anymore…. even though she reeeeeeeaaaally wanted to work with me (that's basically how the conversation went).

Thursday I had my second site visit, our Project Specialist, Karen, came down for the day to speak with the principals, my counterparts, and the woman in charge of the Ministry of Education in the municipality. Everyone was really positive and the visit went really well and hopefully no one from Peace Corps will have to come down here again until my final site visit in a year.

I was happy to have Karen here when I told my principal that I am finally ending my working relationship with the one counterpart. This particular principal likes to think she has complete control over my work and what I do. Mostly she just really wants me to spend all my time at the instituto so when I started working out in the comunidades I could tell she wasn't happy. In fact, she told Karen that she had given me permission to work at the other school when in reality I hadn't asked her anything and told her only after the fact. Anyway, I knew that hearing that I would be working even less at the instituto wouldn't be welcome news. She tried to tell me that she had to speak with the counterpart because she had a compromiso (basically a promise) to work with me. Karen spoke up and defended my right to drop a counterpart and the issue hasn't come up since.

I spent the weekend in Granada, catching up with some volunteers I haven't seen in ages and got to spend Sunday afternoon chilling on the shores of Lake Nicaragua at a nice little vacation house of one of the volunteer's girlfriend's family:





And when we got back home, we happened to catch the tail end of the hipica (the big thing with horses and beer that I always talk about)! I love hipicas, but at one time had been told that there wasn't one here, then I was told it was down closer to the coast and wasn't any good, but what I saw was pretty nice. Lots of people all done up in their boots, nice horses, and a sound system that pumped music clear to my house for most of the night: