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!

Déjà Vu

On May 7th, 2008 I woke up while it was still dark outside and went to Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC where I boarded a plane to Miami and then caught my connecting flight to Managua. On May 7th, 2010 I did the exact same thing!! Last Friday was my two year anniversary of arriving in Nicaragua and I got to celebrate by repeating my very same itinerary.

Overall, though, it was a pretty anticlimactic day. I got to Managua around noon and went straight to the Peace Corps office to lighten my load by dropping off my really thick medical file (the day I picked up my file from my nurse in DC she told me she’d been collecting a novel on me, and that was only part of it) but I didn’t run into a lot of familiar faces. I got back to my casita safe and sound and honestly felt as if I’d never left.

Monday was a whole other story, though, when I went back to school and realized that I may have left my patience somewhere in DC. I think having had that little taste of my former life and knowing that I will have it again so very soon and for as long as I want it, my tolerance for the screaming and disorder of my school was just very low. It was good to see everyone though, and a number of my students said they’d missed me so that was nice.

My landlord greeted me with the news that she’s hopefully found her next tenant – a Canadian Jehovah’s Witness (of which there are now 4 or 5 I think – including my doppelgangers, the blonde twins who I thought had left but apparently haven’t and I still can’t figure out why anyone would think they’re me or I’m them because whenever I see them they’re always together and I generally am the only one of me walking down the street). The lady wanted more light and air in the house (it’s a little oven in the daytime) so Monday a couple guys came down and banged a hole in my kitchen and one in my living room:

The mason standing on my kitchen counter:

Back to Nica

I have my plane ticket booked and all my approvals ready to return to Nicaragua on Friday! As it turns out, I have a high-grade (read: bad) tear in the meniscus in my knee which will require surgery in the future. However, they’re letting me go back and finish my service and do the surgery when I’m done in July. I have several reasons for being so gungho about returning, one of which is an uncompleted project and another of which is the 15% I’ll get forgiven off one of my student loans if I can make it to July 16th. Soooo, it’s worth it, the doctor says I just have to “be careful.”

I spent the lovely weekend in New York City bouncing between various friends. It made me realize how much I rely on walking and how annoying it will be when I can’t. Now I’m back in DC continuing to make the rounds among friends here. Despite the obnoxious health issues, I’ve enjoyed having the time to catch up with lots of friends, family, and former co-workers. I’ve been too lazy to post photos, so here are a few (I haven’t taken very many either):

The beautiful flowers my parents sent me in the hospital:


Next to a finger painting (seriously) at the National Gallery of Art:


My friend Julia in New York and the biggest cat I’ve seen in two years:


The new Nationals stadium that they were building right before I left DC:

Benign Betty!!

That’s right, Betty was a fibroadenoma!! Happiness all around.

I don’t remember if I posted previously about my knee, but it’s been bugging me for a couple months and I finally got to the orthopedist in Nicaragua just before I left for DC. Well, he told me to get an MRI because he thought I have a torn meniscus so when I got to DC I mentioned it to my Peace Corps nurse and she said I should see an orthopedist here and get the MRI so I did that yesterday. Regardless of what the MRI says I’ll still be going back to Nicaragua early next week because it isn’t causing me major problems, it’s just annoying. If I just need physical therapy then I can do that in Managua and if it’s arthoscopy then I’ll do it after I COS.

Sooo, I’m just waiting for the MRI report and to talk to the orthopedist. It’s been nice being in DC and seeing tons of people and calling a few more but I think I’m ready to get back to Nicaragua and finish up. Next week is my two year anniversary!! Weee.

Bye Bye Betty!

Surgery yesterday went well, the procedure is usually outpatient but Peace Corps had me stay the night so I’d be taken care of and some friends came by after they got off work to keep me company and my parents sent me flowers so I was pretty content. Today I’m feeling good, chilling in the hotel, doing laundry (holy crap do I love washers and dryers) and making plans with friends. I’ll go in for a follow-up on Wednesday to see what the biopsy says but I was told that Betty looked just like a fibroadenoma (aka benign) so I’m optimistic. In the meanwhile I’ve already starting my rounds of dinners and happy hours with my DC friends and it appears that I will keep myself good and occupied through next week. I do have a prepaid T-mobile cell phone so I can talk to anyone on T-mobile for free and anyone anyone after 7pm for free so email me for the number if you wanna chat.

On a completely unrelated note, I just ordered Chinese food (because I CAN!) and this was my fortune: “You have an unusual equipment for success, use it properly.”

The Continuing Story of Medevac Jen

Perhaps it’s the fact that I’m so close to actually moving back to this country or maybe it’s because I’m not just running around with friends all the time, but being in DC is a lot stranger than it was when I visited last June. I feel like I’m just kinda floating around. It’s hard to describe. It’s like part culture shock and part out of body experience.

But all the Peace Corps people are nice and I went to see the doc today. He thinks that Betty remains a fibroadenoma and completely harmless, and she’s coming out on Thursday! I haven’t met all the medevacs, but the ones I have met seem to mostly be from Africa (my roommate is serving in Togo, I also heard Zambia and Lesotho among others). There is one other girl from Nicaragua and a guy who’s serving on a tiny Caribbean island. The hotel runs a shuttle to Peace Corps headquarters each day and on the way in we were sharing fun transportation stories. One girl said that the only van that goes to her site has non-functional brakes so they have to jump out and try to drag it to a stop. Or about taxis with seven people in them and then the driver started putting people in the trunk. It’s funny to see how Peace Corps volunteers from all over the world can bond over the same kind of craziness.

I again find that the hardest adjustment is to the long hours of sunlight. This happened in June when I came home and the opposite happened when I came home from studying in India and found myself in a cloudy, dark place after experiencing sunny days for almost four months straight. I was also frustrated by my inability to randomly toss Spanish into my sentences and still be understood, Spanglish is far more awesome than either of the languages alone (in my opinion). But the best part is the variety of food, tonight I had dinner with my friend Melanie and we enjoyed Thai and sushi. Mmmmmm….

Medevac Update

Although my travel plans were supposedly set on Monday, something happened and I got a phone call yesterday afternoon that I'm not flying out until Monday (one person says it came from Washington, one person tells me it was the travel agency here, so I'm not sure). Frustrating to say the least, but after eating a large bowl of popcorn, taking my frustrations out on handwashing some laundry (the water came on for more than an hour! a little miracle in my life) and now hanging out with some friends in Managua, I'm feeling better :) I'm gonna use my extra days to relax since I have everything pretty much ready and enjoy the fiestas patronales (patron saint festival) in my town this weekend.

COS Conference & Some Craaaazy News

I had quite the eventful week last week. Tuesday we had our first training for that HIV/AIDs project I have and it went pretty well. We had 27 teens show up (we were expecting 30) and the only thing that went badly was that the power went out about halfway through which made our fans die and everyone was pretty sweaty by the end.

Wednesday I went to Managua for my final language exam (still don’t know my results!) and then Thursday we came back down my way to a nice hotel on the beach for the Close of Service Conference. It was a lot of talking about what we did here and giving feedback on the first day. The second day was all job search techniques, applying to grad school, interview advice, and that kind of thing.

Here we are visualizing:

Luckily Friday night we had a big beach party and were able to relax a bit and enjoy the fact that our two groups were together again:

My old training town friends:

Lining up to play games:

It was a fantastic time but my mind was about only part there because I was pondering the news I received on Wednesday which is that I’m being medically evacuated… again. This time I’m going to DC to remove what I like to call Betty the Breast Lump. Betty’s been around for about three years but was determined to be a fibroadenoma (aka benign). The reason she’s coming out now is growth and a little pain but the technician who did my recent ultrasound told me that it doesn’t look like Betty’s changed into anything bad, she’s just kinda big. Obviously the timing’s kinda weird considering that I only have three months left and I could be spending one of those in DC. I fly out on Thursday and once I get there and have the operation and such things I’ll be able to say how long I’ll be sticking around the U.S. So, DC friends, expect emails when I know more and anyone with Skype who wants to chat, just let me know.

Para mis amigos latinos: Lo que pasa es que tengo una pelota en el seno (la puse el nombre de Betty para hacerlo mas facil hablar de ella). Hace tres años hice la biopsia y me dijeron que estuvo benino. Ahorita esta creciendo del tamaño y me duele un poquito entonces tengo que irme a Washington, DC para que la saquen. El tecnico que hizo el ultrasonido hace un mes me dijo que no parece que ha cambiado a algo malo, pero ya esta bastante grande y es mejor quitarla. Podré communicarme en Skype durante mi tiempo en Washington si alguien quiere platicar, seria bueno para que no olvide el español!

100 Days Remaining

A while back when I was bored I counted back 100 days from my Close of Service (COS) date of July 16th and that day is today! To make it even extra special, today is my final language exam. We had three of these exams when I first got to country to measure our proficiency and then to measure our improvement throughout training. This last one is to give us a final measure so that I can put on my resume “XX-level Spanish oral proficiency.” Tomorrow all of us Nica 47 volunteers from English and Small Business will head off to a two-day COS conference where I guess we’ll get lots of information and be given a long list of stuff to do in our remaining three months.

The rest of my Semana Santa (Holy Week) last week was pretty chill, but only in my state of being because the weather itself was unbelievable hot. Like laying-in-my-hammock-in-the-shade-and-still-sweating-and-somehow-getting-sunburnt­-as-well hot.

Wednesday I went to the river with my favorite NGO people:


The ladies made soup with these “chotes” we got out of the river:


Seriously beautiful, and we had it all to ourselves:


Friday I trucked over to Diriamba to go to a beach there with Maria. Since it was Good Friday, on the way I saw little processions in each town commemorating the crucifixion. This one went right past Maria’s house:




People decorating their house:


Then we went to La Boquita, as did many other people:


I went to a fiesta that night but I hate carrying my camera to those things so there are no pictures. I hope everyone had a happy Easter!! And I finally got some mail that I think was waiting for a long time at the post office, so thanks for the birthday mail, just a little late but that’s my fault :)