The Far Ranging Effects of SNOWPOCALYPSE & Bag of juice, anyone??

I used to live in DC and still have many friends there, so I was rather amused by the huge snowfall that hit the east coast a couple weeks ago. The Washington metro area cannot handle any weather out of the ordinary, it would rain and suddenly everyone forgot how to drive, they even preemptively delay school openings for even a forecast of snow. As a Minnesotan I always chided my friends and coworkers for not being able to function in an inch or two of snow. They always retorted that DC didn’t have a fleet of plows to deal with the snowfall to which I quickly told them that in many parts of Minnesota the plows don’t come out till there are up to four inches of snow on the ground.

Why am I publicly poking fun at DC’s snowphobia other than for my own personal entertainment?? Because that giant snowstorm even had effects down to Nicaragua, or at least Peace Corps Nicaragua & I imagine Peace Corps posts all around the world. For reasons I do not know, all the operating money we receive from Washington has to be physically sent in the form of a check through the mail. Therefore, when snowpocalypse hit and no one could get into their office for however long, those checks didn’t get sent out on time and we volunteers were alerted on Thursday that we would not be paid our monthly living stipend on Friday as scheduled! Luckily I live in a smaller site and have reserves every month but for the volunteers who live in larger sites or who spend all their money were left to work with our scrambling office to figure out how to get some money. We’ve been paid now apparently, but that’s my own snowpocalypse story, even if I don’t live in DC anymore :)

As mentioned last week, the art of drinking a beverage out of a plastic bag. I figure the bag option is popular here because it’s probably cheap. Compare the cost of paying for that plastic bottle or aluminum can with a little plastic bag. Therefore, my favorite Eskimo (eskeeeeeeemo) brand grape juice in a bag only costs 2 cordobas, or 10 cents:



The technique for drinking this little bundle of happiness (a cold bag of juice after a hot afternoon of teaching is oh so refreshing) is as follows:

Rip a corner off the bag with your teeth, being careful not to squeeze the bag too much while doing so or else the contents will spray out (this is of much more concern with the little 1 cordoba bags of water they sell at school and on the bus which are filled up good and full). Spit out the little piece of plastic for effect. Then enjoy your beverage, squeezing the contents up to the top as you go. Really it’s not all that tricky, just different.

This photo was actually taken after I got home from a long, hot walk, hence the shininess:


At many pulperias (little general stores) where they sell soda in returnable glass bottles (also a cheaper option) instead of waiting for the bottle to come back, they simply take a regular little baggie & pour the soda in, tie a knot, and the buyer just bites off a corner & enjoys their beverage. This might be one of those things I import back to the US with me. One technique I have yet to learn is how the refresco ladies are able to tie a straw into a regular old baggie which makes the whole deal much easier.

A couple of my 10th graders modeling the straw-in-bag option: