RPCV

I am officially an RPCV, a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer!! My official Close of Service (COS) date was yesterday, July 16th but because my flight left at 7am I finished everything up in the office on Thursday. When volunteers COS the tradition is to ring the bell in the office and the staff comes out of their offices and everyone cheers. We had three people who were flying early on Friday so we rang the bell together on Thursday afternoon:





My flights home on Friday went smoothly. I had a fellow-RPCV as a travel buddy for the first leg and I still just love his comment after we passed through customs in Houston and headed into the airport: “Let’s integrate!!” It seemed so perfect after being so focused on integrating into a foreign culture for two years we’re now back home and quite frankly, I do feel a little bit like I have to switch and re-integrate myself to American culture. And what better way to do that than to go to a big party?!

I was a little nervous about basically going straight from the plane to my cousin’s wedding reception but it was the perfect reintroduction. I got to see almost my entire family, enjoy fantastic food and drink, and danced my face off with my cousins, aunts, and even my grandma.

The fam:


Holy crap, American cake!!! (Nica cake isn’t nearly as sweet):


All the cousins minus one with my grandma:


Dancing our faces off:


Now I’m back at my parents’ house, exhausted and still adjusting to the familiar and yet strange surroundings. The plan is to move back to DC on August 4th and go back to work at my old job starting August 9th and I’d like to apply to grad school this fall for Urban Planning. So life marches on, I’ll probably keep writing in the blog as the mood hits me. I don’t think my post-Peace Corps life will be quite as interesting but we shall see about that.

Lastly, I bring you the massive list of 62 books I read throughout my Peace Corps service. Many of these were sent to me by my wonderful friends and family, but we also have a library of books at the office and much trading occurs among volunteers. My Top 10 are in italics:

Persuasion – Jane Austen
The Prophet – Khalil Gilbran
Beloved – Toni Morrison
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
Next – Michael Crichton
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
No 1 Ladies Detective Agency – Alexander McCall Smith
A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
Dreams from my Father – Barack Obama
Still the Mind – Alan Watts
Sula – Toni Morrison
Through the Arc of the Rainforest – Karen Tamashita
The Perfect Storm – Sebastian Junger
The DaVinci Code – Dan Brown
Eat Pray Love – Elizabeth Gilbert
The Mirror Crack’d – Agatha Cristie
Into the Wild – Jon Krakauer
The Other Boleyn Girl – Philippa Greggory
Love Me – Garrison Keillor
My Horizontal Life – Chelsea Handler
Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez
The Audacity of Hope – Barack Obama
The Celestine Prophecy – James Redfield
The Devil in the White City – Erik Larson
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
Instinct for Freedom – Alan Clements
A Case of Exploding Mangoes – Mohammed Hanif
Bonk – Mary Roach
Speak Peace in a World of Conflict – Marshall Rosenberg
Timeline - Michael Crichton
And Then There Were None – Agatha Cristie
Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts
The Penguin Book of International Women’s Stories
Deception Point – Dan Brown
Before You Know Kindness – Chris Bohjalian
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
The Tipping Point – Malcom Gladwell
13 Clues for Miss Marple – Agatha Cristie
Tears of the Giraffe – Alexander McCall Smith
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay – Michael Chabon
Forever Ours – Janis Amatuzio
Middle Passage – Charles Johnson
Murder in Mesopotamia – Agatha Cristie
The Tao of Equus – Linda Kohanov
The Power of Now – Eckhart Tolle
Veronika Decide Morir – Paulo Coelho
Diary – Chuck Palahniuk
Twelve by Twelve – William Powers
Nine Stories – J.D. Salinger
The Zahir – Paulo Coelho
Collapse – Jared Diamond
Running with Scissors – Augusten Burrows
The Moving Finger – Agatha Cristie
A Caribbean Mystery – Agatha Cristie
Lamb – Christopher Moore
Three Act Tragedy – Agatha Cristie
The Murder on the Links – Agatha Cristie
Cards on the Table – Agatha Cristie
They Came to Baghdad – Agatha Cristie
Spider’s Web – Agatha Cristie
Caramelo – Sandra Cisneros
The Country Under My Skin – Gioconda Belli

Countdown: 4 days

I had a fantastic, and exhausting, last weekend in Nicaragua. Friday night I spent in Managua with a couple volunteers and two Nica friends who live in Managua. There was an artist at the bar who drew portraits for my friend Kat and me:



Saturday my friend Vera had a cookout at her house, she’s Nicaraguan but has residency in the U.S. and has been back for about a month to visit. When she’s in Nicaragua I get to see how the other half lives: her family has a nice house with a pool, we ride around in her Land Cruiser, and go out to some of the nicer places in Managua. Almost all of the people at the barbecue spoke perfect English to the point that I almost forgot I was in Nicaragua.

One epic grille out:


We watched the World Cup 3rd place game between Uruguay and Germany (Germany won):


And went swimming:


After the BBQ I returned to my recent home of Granada for one last fiesta. As our group likes to say, we danced our faces off:



“Jump on it”


And lastly, I dragged myself back up to Managua on Sunday noontime for the uber fancy Champagne Brunch at the Hotel Intercontinental. It’s pricey but worth every cordoba.

Salud!


The World Cup final between Spain and the Netherlands, pretty much everyone I know here was going for Spain so everyone in the restaurant cheered when they won in overtime:


I’m hoping to finalize more of my post-Peace Corps plans before I actually fly out on Friday. I know that I’m moving back to DC sometime in probably August, I have an apartment lined up with a friend from college and am waiting to hear about going back to work at my old organization as a researcher, which I should know shortly. If that doesn’t pan out then I’ll continue sending out resumes and bugging everyone I know about job openings. After the weekend I just had I’m definitely sad to be leaving my friends, but I’m still pretty psyched to see everyone at home.

More Despedidas

My instituto did get their act together and organized a despedida for me and also for a teacher who's retiring, Profesor Oswaldo. They had a short presentation with dancing and everything:



and then we had lunch:



and cake "Thank you Oswaldo and Jennifer for your labor":



With Profesor Celso in the middle and Profesor Oswaldo:


I have also made peace with my former landlady and her cousin, we've hung out a couple times and thankfully any discussion of the attempted break-in was amiable. Turns out one of the guys who tried to break in was the son of the owner of the sketchy bar that was down the street from my house. I actually saw him being arrested by police for breaking into houses nearby about a year ago probably, so it wasn't just me. And he's back in jail because he attacked his uncle. Awesome.

So here I am with Claudia & Linda when we said our goodbyes:


After one last trip on Sunday I'm pretty sure I won't be going back to San Rafael before I leave Nicaragua in about TEN DAYS!!

Despedidas

Despedida is another word in Spanish that I prefer to its translation in English, which is a farewell or going away pary. My despedidas have officially begun in my site, on Friday I said goodbye to the English teachers from the municipality at our monthly planning workshop. Most volunteers hate these workshops and many don't even go but I hate missing them because I just love hanging out with this group of teachers. After the workshop was over they took me out for lunch and gave me a couple recuerdos (memories, presents). Not everyone was able to come but here's the group:



After that I went to CEDRU, my friendly neighborhood NGO, and had cake and coke and they gave me a really nice ring as a going away gift which miraculously fits me (they often don't). I also presented the ones who participated in my English class with their certificates for 18 months of participation. Wow.

My seriously awesome cake:


With my class plus one of the German volunteers who's still around:


Handing out certificates:


I spent Saturday and Sunday at a beach near the city of Leon with the English and Business volunteers for our Nica 47 despedida. It was a pretty chill weekend, which is normal for our group. I think the high points of Saturday night were a couple games of Twister played on a homemade board and when the hostel randomly put the instrumental of the national anthem on the stereo and we all stopped what we were doing, saluted, and sang the whole song, much to the shock of the staff and other patrons!

The high point of Sunday was definitely the lobster lunch a few of us indulged in. I've never really eaten lobster and here it cost less than $15 for this:



Everyone was veeeeery happy after that meal:


These several days of despedidas were bookended by celebrations for Teacher's Day, which is actually June 29th but the mayor's office threw a big party for the teachers last Thursday, Monday we celebrated at school, and Tuesday we had the day off again for the actual day. Some photos from Thursday's celebration:

With some teachers from the instituto:


With Joe, the volunteer who lives closest to me & apparently looks like we're related:


And with my friend Blanca who teaches preschool:


On Thursday both of my schools told me I had to be at their Teacher's Day celebrations on Monday, when I really wasn't planning on going to class because I'd still be at the beach. But whatevs, I got up early and made my way down. I actually ended up missing the majority of the festivities at both schools because one started literally three hours late and the other an hour and a half. Sad news. Hopefully I'll have a despedida still at my instituto but I'm getting a sneaking suspicion that they're gonna schedule it for my very last week in-country when I will be living far away and won't be able to make it. I guess we'll see.

The time I milked a cow....

I spent the weekend running around the countryside like I tend to do. Friday I went to Granada and helped my friends paint their house:



Saturday I got up early to go up to Managua and meet up with some friends for a trip to a farm in the central region of Chontales. The trip out took a lot longer than we were expecting but the drive through the mountains was gorgeous:



Even on the main highway it's common to see cows being herded to pasture:



Chontales, along with the rest of the central region, is basically known as cowboy country and a place to get really good cuajada which is white cheese that I can't figure out how to best explain but they make it fresh on the farm everyday and I just couldn't get enough.

Although it ended up being a short weekend, I think we all loved it. We got to ride horses, milk cows, swim in a little lagoon that was seriously amazing, and just chill out.



With my friend Coco:




A little boy who lives on the farm:


Handmade tortillas cooking on the fire:


The lagoon:


My friend Vera & me:

Less than a month left!

I've been enjoying living in Diriamba with my friend Maria, taking the bus over to San Rafael and back three days this week was less fun but not terrible. Actually living with Maria has enabled me to stay up to date on the World Cup which would have been totally lost on me if I'd still been living where I was at. In case the World Cup is lost on you, so far the U.S. has tied England and Slovenia! Not great but not so bad either. Nicaragua didn't make it to South Africa but Honduras did and so far they're not doing great either. Most people I know are going for Spain or Brazil.

Today I had the joy of judging the English Song Festival at Maria's school for the second year in a row. Neither of my schools is really organized enough to do this (actually one might be disbanded if they can't get the discipline problems under control!) but I think it's super awesome to see these kids get all dressed up and even choreograph a little bit. This year the winners were a group of boys in their final year singing "And I Love Her" by the Beatles. Clearly the girls went wild.

They even had a kid playing the bongos!


Eighth graders supporting their singer:


They dedicated the festival to Maria, awwwww:

Technically Homeless

In a complicated and unfortunate turn of events, I had to spontaneously move out of my site yesterday. Sunday night I was staying with friends elsewhere and was woken up at 3:30am by a phone call from my landlady, Claudia, telling me that two men had come to break into my house and fought with the caretaker guy who I pay to stay on the back patio while I'm gone (on the insistence of the Claudia). The positive was that the men had been arrested, but I still couldn't get back to sleep that night.

I was supposed to be doing my close of service medical review which meant 3 days in Managua (visit the dentist, have a physical, poo in a cup three days in a row - not kidding) Monday through Wednesday. So I did that and was in contact with Claudia, who made it clear that she thought it only happened because the streetlamp in front of my house was out so it was pitch black and that I should've left the outside lights on (I was gone for 5 days so I didn't think that was a great idea before I left).

So Wednesday rolled around and I wasn't excited to go back, but I was planning to move in with Claudia and her cousin Linda this weekend and the men were in prison (one was even a neighbor, it always happens like that) so I felt like it would be ok. Well, Claudia called and said the police screwed up and had to let the would-be thieves out which made me have a nervous breakdown. Peace Corps was very awesome and said I could stay another night in Managua and I ended up deciding to just move my stuff out and stay with a volunteer friend nearby because when I spoke to Linda she yelled at me and told me it was all my fault and so clearly I knew I couldn't stay with them.

I went down yesterday afternoon with a PC driver and my friend Allison, got everything out of the house and had a very sad and angry (on their part) goodbye with Claudia and Linda who would not get off the fact that it was my fault and I had to just walk away because they wouldn't listen to any of my apologies. Really, I was very lucky to have not suffered harm myself or to have lost anything, but losing friends who have been extremely generous and kind to me in the past is something completely different. At the same time, as I've seen with more than one person here, the same person who is kind and generous one moment can change into a mean, hateful being in the next and that will never cease to completely confuse me.

I'm going back on Monday with the Safety and Security Coordinator to check out the situation with the police and for now I'll be staying with my friend Maria in Diriamba and traveling for class. Peace Corps also appears to have some work I could do to occupy myself.

To not end on a depressing note, on Sunday I did a zipline canopy tour with my friend Dianne and her mom. It was awesome:

Happy Nicaraguan Mother’s Day!

The power outage of last week lasted about 50 odd hours, it came back on Friday morning while I was at a workshop with the teachers and a little cry of joy went up when the lights came on :) The sun even came out on Friday so life is pretty much back to normal with clean clothes, cold water, and 3am serenades for Mothers Day….. wait, what??

Sunday was Mother’s Day here in Nicaragua, and it is a BIG deal. The stores all offer sales (which aren’t that common), everyone buys a cake, there are signs all over the place thanking all the Nicaraguan moms, and apparently it is not rude or poor form to wake up your mother (and half the neighborhood) by hiring a mariachi band to play for her at 3:00 in the morning!!!! I heard two such serenades before 4am at which point I put in my earplugs and went back to sleep.

*****

Since the rains started up this year my house has become infested with mosquitoes like never before. Now I do work on my bed (inside my mosquito net) to avoid being bitten and every time I look up I feel like I’m in a mosquito horror movie because I can see them perched on the net and buzzing around trying to find a way inside. It’s really creepy.

*****

The week before last I was invited to the birthday party for my friend’s nephew’s 4th birthday, and also the 1 month birthday of her very brand new niece. So I put some toys in a bag and walked over at the appointed time expecting to see a piñata and kids running around. Instead I found a bunch of adults and children seated in the yard and a bunch of speakers and a band! Strange, I thought to myself, but as I got closer I realized what it was: an evangelical church service. If I was four and my birthday party was actually church, I would be pretty disappointed but Sebastian didn’t seem to mind.

Here he is with his mom and sister:


And the band:

What a week

I had a nice little blog post planned for this week about the various birthdays that happened last week, but this week's just been so weird I can't help but write about it. So Sunday night I got back from a lovely weekend out and went to bed early and woke up with major stomach pains! I guess that fried chicken (it's always chicken isn't it) wasn't agreeing with me and was looking for every possible escape route - I'll say no more. Around midnight I was able to get to sleep.

I lucked out on Monday that it was rainy and cool and laid around the house attempting to rehydrate and eat a bit, Tuesday I still didn't go to class and enjoyed another cool rainy day, by Wednesday I felt almost normal and the rain was getting a little old especially because the power went out at 5am which means there's no water either and I had a pile of dirty clothes that wouldn't dry even if I could wash them. I ventured out to tell my NGO friends that we wouldn't have class because the power still hadn't come on at 5pm and they informed me that there was something wrong with some towers and we'd be without light for three days! They also told me to get some candles.

Being without power isn't so bad if it's not hot, I actually slept fine last night because the rain kept the house cool but of course my cell phone battery was low so I decided that the best use of my time today would be to come to the office in Managua and charge my phone, run some errands, etc. As it turns out, our fit of rain isn't an official tropical storm but it's causing major flooding in Leon, which is the department north of me. I looked up one of the national newspapers and found out what's causing our power outage: 5 towers fell down!!! Why did 5 freaking towers fall down?? Because people have been stealing the lower supports to sell for money which obviously left them weakened and I'm sure the storm and winds were the final blow to bring them down. I can't get the images to copy so just go look at this article. Scroll down to see the awesome graphic of the tower actually falling over.

The article says that power was rerouted for many of the affected communities but my town, of course, is hit the hardest because the towers are actually in my municipality and it's the only power line so we just have to wait until they can reinforce those things with concrete. Apparently the parts stolen are really expensive and have to be imported so they're reinforcing them with concrete until they can get the parts. Damages are estimated as up to half a million dollars. Eek!

Thus ends A Very Peace Corps Week.

Good times with cross-cultural communication and owls

On Saturday I went to visit my friend Maria for some Gringa Time as I like to call it. Shortly after I got to her place, which sits behind her landlady’s house in kind of a closed-in compound area, the landlady’s boyfriend and his friend started hacking down a perfectly good avocado tree with machetes. We asked them why they were cutting it down and so, as men of few words, they put it very eloquently: “Because.”

After a few more minutes we discovered it was in order to build a wall. A wall for what?? For a house. Huh??? So thankfully the landlady, explained that it’s a wall that will initially be used to hide the grossness of the backyard for her impending wedding to said boyfriend, or I guess, fiancée. Then they’ll add onto it and make a little covered spot for sitting, which we call a ranchón and I can’t think of a good translation in English. It took most of the morning to figure that out.

The other fun part of this whole tree cutting process was that the tree was also the home to a little family of owls who were thusly made homeless. I don’t think I’d ever seen an owl in person before, they’re funny looking little guys:

This is just after this baby owl freed himself from being stuck under the fallen branches:


And now he’s got his head completely turned around backward:


Yes, they cut the tree down with the cars right next to it, dropping at least one large branch on the white one:


To get the little guy out of harm’s way, the friend picked him up in a saco and found him a new home away from falling objects:


Later, when the action had quieted down a bit, the mother and father owls, who had taken refuge in a tree that the babies could fly up to, took to dive-bombing the guy who was hacking the tree into smaller pieces. Quite the Saturday!