Cultural Tidbits from Central America

As I hope you all have heard, there was a coup last week in Honduras. The same day I flew into Nicaragua, the military took over the government in Honduras, installed a new president, and flew President Zelaya to Costa Rica and thus far have not allowed him to return to the country. This happened for a variety of reasons, foremost being that the Honduran constitution prohibits not only re-election, but any attempt at changing the constitution to allow it. So Zelaya was trying to find a way around this little hurdle, not unlike all the Alba buddies (Chavez, Morales, and Nicaragua’s own Daniel Ortega) who are all looking to find a way to remain in power. So far all Peace Corps volunteers in Honduras are staying in their sites since most of the action is in the capital and there have been no far flung effects into Nicaragua.

Closer to home, not to be outdone by Michael Jackson’s sudden death, the mayor of Managua unexpectedly shot himself in the chest (so they say) this past week. The mayor, Alexis Argüello, is well-known and loved in Nicaragua not for his politics but for being a three-time boxing champion who put Nicaragua on the sports world map I believe back in the 70s. Although he was the Sandinista candidate, he was apparently not strongly Sandinista and so the official story is that others were pushing him and trying to control him to implement more of the Sandinista ideals which pushed him to suicide (yeah, I dunno either). I’ve been told that he only got into politics because he’s got like 8 kids and no money after years of battling a drug problem & in Nicaragua you can make some serious money as a politician which is the reason most people want to be mayor, not a desire to improve anything.

I happened to be in Managua the day they processed through town which made my trip to Granada a whole lot slower. People lined the streets to say goodbye and lots of trucks full of supporters and fans followed behind the hearse. Here’s the hullabaloo as it passed:



When I did finally make it to Granada, I enjoyed a lovely weekend with my fellow-volunteers celebrating the 4th of July:

It helps to know expats with pools:


And of course, there was a dance party:


Oh yeah, speaking of pools, we also celebrated Dia del Maestro (Teacher’s Day) last Monday. Our mayor threw a big party for all the teachers down by the beach which was lovely, though it was also my first full day back in the country and I was a little overwhelmed in general.

Mariachi band by the pool:


Last week was kind of a slow start for me coming back, but a little volunteer bonding time has me back to normal and ready to work. Luckily this week we have school vacations before we start the new semester next week so I have some more time to regroup and get ready for the second half of the school year.

Photo Montage of America

Week One: Minnesota:

Ate cheese curds at the Dam Festival with friends:




At my dad’s family reunion with my cousins:


Family reunion potluck = the best food in Minnesota:





Visiting friends:




Visited a winery, I never even knew there were wineries in Minnesota!


Last Three Days: Washington, DC:

At happy hour:


Wandering the city:


A night out with the girls:


More quality time with the girls:



The visit was waaaaay too short, but I had a fantastic time and I miss everyone terribly. I didn’t get hit by culture shock too badly, but here is my Top Ten Weird Things About America list:

1)You can flush toilet paper down the toilet – I knew I was home again when I got to flush TP in the Miami Airport. However, I didn’t get used to it and nearly threw it in the trash every time I used the facilities (TP can’t be flushed here, the system can’t handle it).

2)Streets are clean and free of stray dogs – really I noticed this more in returning to Nicaragua, I guess in the past everything was wrapped up in banana leaves so everything was just thrown on the ground and it would decompose quickly. Not so with plastic bags, but everyone still does it and I have to resist the urge to yell at people when they throw trash out of the windows of the bus.

3)Lots of cars – and in MN, an unbelievable amount of Pontiacs. Never noticed that before.

4)The sun sets at 9pm – we have 12 hours of sun in Nicaragua pretty much year-round, give or take a few minutes. I was in Minnesota during the summer solstice and thought my watch was broken the first day when it hit 6pm and the sun was still pretty high in the sky. I remember that being a major adjustment for me when I first got to Nicaragua, I miss long summer days.

5)Diversity – moreso in DC, people of various colors!! Nicaragua is homogenous.

6)English! – Everyone speaks English (except in the Miami airport), big surprise.

7)People dress weird – Everyone in the U.S. has something to say with their clothing, and in a way so do people here in Nicaragua, but the difference in dress is much less pronounced especially in the countryside. And you can always tell when new shipments have come in because suddenly everyone is wearing the same shirt or shoes or hair clips.

8)I can walk the streets in peace – outside of a couple cat calls in DC, no one paid any attention to me – well they may have paid a little attention to the crazy girl with a massive backpack on the metro but whatevs.

9)Tall trees – driving around in Minnesota I was amazed at how tall the trees are there and how small they are around here in comparison.

10)Easy access to goods and services – Even in Small Falls there are various 24-hour establishments and in DC you can get a wide variety of food and goods at any hour of the day. Some of it will even arrive directly to your door. Amazing!

Adios America

I've been too busy eating everything in my path and spending time with my family and as many friends as I have had time for (sorry to those people I missed, the visit was short) to post on the blog. And I still haven't been able to upload my photos so I don't have much to show for the past 10 days yet. But my vacation is quickly coming to an end, sadly enough. The whole thing has felt much like a dream and going back to Nicaragua is neither sad or exciting for me. Regardless, I fly out tomorrow morning and I'll have a better post sometime next week.

USAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I'm writing this from the comfort of my parent's unbelievably comfortable recliner couch while hooked up to wireless internet (though that was a bit of a challenge) and listening to the sounds of my mom making bars (a midwestern delicacy of epic proportions). I am home.

My mind is still in a half-dream state about being here, but my stomach sure isn't. So far I've been fed amazingly wonderful food: hamburgers, steak, yummy sandwiches, grapes, pizza hut pizza, and cheese curds!! There will be a picture of the cheese curds later when I find someone to lend me their camera cable because I intelligently left mine in Nicaragua. Even though they cost $6 (that's about 120 cordobas which will buy you a small but very nice fish at the beach), the cheese curds were totally worth it.

In my small hometown I happened to come home during the Dam Festival (hence the cheese curds), celebrating the dam in town (toted as "the best dam festival in Minnesota") which reminded me again of the incredible diversity of rural Minnesotans. Granted they were all white, but you got your rural gangster types, farmers, bikers, townies who think they have money, townies who definitely don't have money, and about half of my high school class. Ok, there weren't that many of my former classmates there, but enough that I was doing double takes every couple of minutes trying to remember names and faces.

Today we're heading down for family reunion fun with my dad's family and I'm quite excited for the potluck lunch on Sunday. It should be good times with a large group of very chatty folks.

Exito!!

Success!!

I can breathe a huge sigh of relief now that we’ve given the workshop for the English teachers in my municipality. I’ve been planning this workshop (or in Spanish: Taller) with two other volunteers for a couple months now but it kicked into high gear towards the end of April/beginning of May as I started talking with the principals and the Ministry of Education folks and set a tentative date of June 9th that I wasn’t really sure would happen. Plans changed a little bit from what I had been envisioning and so I made a last minute attempt to get money from the mayor’s office (alcaldia) to cover the transportation for the teacher participants and the volunteers who would be presenting, a snack, and some materials. This can be a long, arduous process as you chase down the mayor and hope that he’s feeling generous, and since I’d heard mixed reviews of our new mayor’s willingness to give money, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Luckily a friend advised me to make an appointment which I never would have thought to do because usually you just have to go to the alcaldia and hope the mayor’s there and that there isn’t a huge line of people waiting to speak to him.

I went to the alcaldia in mid-May in hopes of seeing the mayor but ended up making an appointment for the 29th and left a letter of request for 725 cordobas (roughly $36). I went back on the 27th to confirm my appointment and the secretary told me that my request had been authorized!! I was shocked, and kind of didn’t believe her at first. She made some copies of stuff and told me the money would be ready the following week. I did go back that Friday for the appointment but the mayor wasn’t in the office, but my check was all ready by June 3rd and I went to the bank this past Saturday and stood in line for an hour and a half to cash it. But not without documenting it first:



With my money in hand, I only had to organize a few last details such as the snacks and, oh yeah, planning almost my entire presentation on materials development on Sunday morning! But I got everything in line, a good location, thank you notes for the mayor and MINED folks, food for the other two volunteers, and small change to use to reimburse the travel expenses. Tuesday morning I woke up at 4:30am to the sound of rain and figured that my good karma was ending because no one does anything when it’s raining out and they certainly don’t travel anywhere from one to 20 kilometers to go to a workshop they may not even want to attend. To beat, I got a call from my volunteer friends that they had been waiting for the bus for a very long time and none had passed.

I kind of nervously made my way up to the school around 7:15 (morning classes start at 7am) and there were a few kids and fewer teachers around. I waited calmly and eventually the rain let up, the teacher with the keys to our space showed up and around 7:45 so did my volunteer friends. Slowly the English teachers started rolling in and by 8:30 all of the six teachers I expected had arrived (we told everyone 8am but planned for an 8:30 start time, it worked out perfectly). Needless to say, I was relieved and amazed to have everyone there, the presentations went really well and I think the teachers really learned something – one woman gave us all hugs which was nice! The afternoon wasn’t quite as smooth, I expected four teachers and we only got two, but it was still a good session.

I wish I could accurately convey just how proud and happy I am that things went so well. Doing a taller seemed like something so far above my level when I started my service and I never expected to do one before my second year (more experienced volunteers are expected to do talleres their first year and those of us with less teaching experience are expected to start them the second year – of the three of us who were working together, one was more experienced and two of us were newbies). My work can be really frustrating at times and I have trouble getting projects off the ground, so this comes as a huge personal and professional accomplishment for me, and what’s more I feel like I built up some good relationships with people in the community who helped me draft letters and thank you notes, set up the appointments, and just generally gave me advice.

Here are the six teachers working hard in the morning session (the two guys on the right are my counterparts I work with every week):



On Monday and Tuesday we’re doing the same taller in the other volunteers’ sites and Wednesday I fly for Minnesota! Unbelievable.

Another Successful Visit

The rest of Laura's visit was fantastic, we enjoyed the beach at Pochomil





and then headed down to the Island of Ometepe for the weekend which was spectacular.


I believe it is my new favorite place in Nicaragua, too bad it's it takes forever to get there from my site. I think the island is Nicaragua at its best: the people are super nice (I have the number for an excellent and informative taxi driver if anyone is looking for one), the landscape is gorgeous, it's safe, and although there were many tourists around even for the end of May, it didn't feel like they were encroaching on the local culture and I got the impression that more of the tourist infrastructure out there is Nica-owned (as opposed to Granada where it seems like all the most successful businesses are owned by expats).

Rather than spend a full day and what I can only imagine would have been gallons of sweat climbing up one of the two volcanoes, we opted for a 3 hour hike to a look-out point on Volcan Maderas, the smaller of the two. I think it nearly killed Laura and left me with a little family of blisters on both my feet.

Laura & our guide heading up the last steep portion:


The lovely view, Volcan Concepcion hidden behind the clouds and the lake below:


We rewarded that effort with an afternoon on the beach at Playa Santo Domingo:


(It was windy)


The next day we walked 4 kilometers to a farm in Balgue to see petroglyphs and buy some locally grown coffee.




We saw some howler monkeys along the way:




My feet survived that trip better but Laura's did not and we had some extremely good luck when the owner of our hostel drove past and gave us a lift home.

We also rewarded that with some beach time.


We spent our last night back in Granada and after all that sweating, we opted for a room with AC and got prettied up for our last night.

Cable TV and air conditioning totally warrants a photo:


Out on the town:


I'm sad to see Laura go, we had a great time and it seemed like everyone and their mother was asking when she would come back (my students even offered to raise money to fly her back down!). But continue I must, and I’m happy to say that I just had my mid-term health check-up and I’m pretty darned healthy. However, the highlight of my week was definitely receiving a check from the mayor’s office to cover some of the expenses for the teacher workshop I’m putting on next week with two other volunteers. That's a whole story in itself that I'll tell another day.

Round Two

My second visitor of the month is in Nicaragua right now, although my brother was the first to actually come visit me, my DC housemate Laura was the first person to buy tickets to come visit which we agree is equally special. She flew in Saturday and in her short time here so far we’ve enjoyed kayaking on the Lake of Nicaragua in Granada, judging an English song competition in Diriamba, and all the fun you can handle right here in my site. Despite the rains starting up again this week, not having water, and having the power go out she’s been a real trooper! In addition to Laura, my high school friend Roseanne and her husband Nic are enjoying an anniversary trip to Nicaragua this week so I’ve gotten to spend some time with them too.

Here’s Laura and me all ready to get our kayak on:


Our kayaking buddies, volunteer Liz and her friend Martha:


The Isletas, tiny islands left over from the last time Volcan Mombacho erupted:


Volunteer Sonia and Laura considering all the facts in judging the performers in the song competition:


Rosie & Nic, also at the song competition:



This kid sang Nirvana and got second place:


This girl won, but I can’t remember what song she sang:


Also, my foot is healing nicely. It was all swelled up for a while but it’s pretty much back to its normal size, the pain has gone down a lot, and I took out the one stitch so I’m feelin pretty good! But I’m still trying not to strain it too bad, hence the kayaking this weekend instead of hiking the volcano again.

Warning: Details about how I hurt myself to follow

In what can only be described as an epic display of awesomeness (and an event that rivals when I broke my baby toe), I impaled my right foot on a piece of rebar in the street Saturday night.

I was walking home late Saturday with my friend Bernd, a non-PC volunteer in my site, and in the dimly lit streets I managed to miss seeing a piece of concrete lying horizontally with rebar sticking out of it (rebar are the metal rods they use to reinforce concrete). Me, being the fast walker I am, took a step and as I swung my foot forward it contacted perfectly with the end of the rebar and it went straight into the top of my right foot! More shocking than the sudden pain was my realization that my foot was stuck in the rebar! I wasn’t really sure if Bernd had figured out what happened, but I thought to myself “ok, you have to pull your foot off. One… two… three…” Bernd says he still has a perfect image in his mind of me pulling my foot off the rebar.

Then it started bleeding so we started walking up to the centro de salud (health center) but thankfully a taxi drove past and we rode the rest of the way up. The nice ladies at the centro de salud cleaned up my foot, gave me one little stitch and a tetanus shot, and sent me on my way. As he helped me home, Bernd just kept saying “Jenny, that was completely unnecessary.”

I spent all day Sunday lying around in bed because I couldn’t even put weight on my right foot and Monday I headed up to Managua and got checked out and got x-rays. Nothing is broken but I think I was the most interesting thing in the medical office. The doc I was talking to left to get some stuff for me & another one wandered in to take a look and when the first one came back she was like ‘sorry about that, he just wanted to see your foot.’

But not to worry, the pain is lessening, I can move it more, and as long as it doesn’t get infected (I’m taking lots of antibiotics to prevent that) then I should be just fine!

Photo Highlights from Jonathan's Visit

My brother got to see a good chunk of Nicaragua - from my local schools to some nice spots around Managua to Volcan Mombacho and power outages in Granada - and I'm proud to say he never got sick and is safely back in the States.

First tastes of lobster at the local beach:


On the streets in Jinotepe - Gallo Mas Gallo sells electronics & furniture & such things, the name basically means "cock of the walk" but it translates directly as "the rooster more rooster":


Personally, Volcan Mombacho was my favorite part. I hadn't been there before, it was actually chilly up on the volcano and it was nice to be out in nature hiking around.

At the entrance:


Dianne on the trail:


Tunnel:


Jonathan enjoying the cloud forest:


Me with the Lago de Nicaragua and Granada in the background:


Jonathan, back in Granada, in front of the cathedral & pointing out Volcan Mombacho:


And, here's a colorful stickshift in one of the buses that Jonathan took a liking to:


In conclusion, what's the deal with the weird monkey comments?? I will disallow anonymous comments if I must.

The rains came on Sunday....

and so did my brother!! He's my first official visitor and so far he hasn't died, gotten sick, or gotten into a machete fight so I think it's going pretty well. We haven't done much though either, this weekend we'll run around but for now I'm still working so we're just hanging around my site and I'm practicing my translator skills.

Here we are at the Plaza de la Revolucion in Managua:


And here's a photo he took yesterday of my laundry, you can see the dark, threatening skies in the background:


So the other news is that summer is now officially over and we have entered into winter since it's now started raining. And I'm happy to say that my roof is standing up to the test, it poured last night and no leaks!!! The start of winter is good because the rains provide a much-needed break from the incredible heat however it is badly timed with this whole Swine Flue Craziness that's going on because when it rains, the flies come out and the flies spread germs which means that we are also entering into flu season here. Nicaragua still hasn't had any confirmed cases and Peace Corps is taking necessary precautions such as restricting travel to Mexico and passing out masks and medication to use in case things take a turn for the worse, and emailing us like 10 times with the same information (wash your hands, etc etc).

This week marks my one year anniversary leaving home, joining the Peace Corps, and moving to Nicaragua. Today is the day I flew out of Minnesota last year and Thursday is my one year anniversary in-country. When I was struggling to get through training last year and staring down 26 months of service, I told myself that one day I would wake up and realize that I've been here for a year and wonder where the time went and that is exactly what's happening right now. Suddenly it's been a year, but it doesn't feel like a year's gone by, and my countdown is now at a more manageable 15 months which I don't doubt will go by very quickly.

So I guess I should thank all my family and friends for your support, love, packages, letters, emails, and everything over the past year. I've been overwhelmed and amazed at the amount of support I've received and am extremely grateful for it. I hope to see as many of you as possible when I finally come home for a visit in June to Minnesota and DC.