Maybe not so different

If you remember correctly (and it appears many people do because I think this is the event in my two plus years in Nicaragua that people most like to talk to me about), I was without power for more than 50 hours after a storm brought down five power towers that were weakened because people were stealing the supports to sell for scrap. If you think that kinda stuff only happens in third world countries, think again. There were major delays for Amtrak trains between DC and Baltimore recently because someone(s) stole a good 100 feet of copper signal wiring to sell for scrap, which obviously caused some problems.

Speaking of things one would assume occur in Nicaragua and not the U.S., one of the projects I'm working on right now for work is a regional analysis and case study on the area around the U.S. - Mexico border called the colonias. This area is known for poor, oftentimes rural settlements called colonias (Spanish for neighborhood) where families live in near third world conditions. Each colonia is different, but there are some that don't have running water or sewer systems which probably wouldn't make much difference anyway because many of the houses are built using whatever materials the inhabitants can get their hands on. As they say in Spanish: Que pena (how embarrassing). More on that another day.

Spa World

Waaaaay back in August, pre-surgery, I went on a little cultural outing with my roommate, Emiko, her friend, and her friend's sister-in-law. Emiko and her friend were both in Peace Corps in Kazakhstan where, unlike Nicaragua, it gets really cold. They had grown to appreciate regular trips to the bath house for a good, cleansing steam and had managed to find the equivalent in the DC metro area: the Korean spa.

There's a pretty decent-sized Korean community in parts of Virginia, so we went way beyond the reach of the metro to Spa World. From the outside it looks like maybe it's the world's biggest bath supply store situated in a regular old suburban strip mall. Just from looking at it I never would have guess what was inside.



When you pay, you're given a little orange jumpsuit and a fancy little electronic, waterproof key that will open the shoe locker right in the entry way. Next men and women head to their respective locker rooms where that key opens another locker and absolutely everything you have goes in and you're left wearing your key on its little bracelet and nothing else!

In the spa they have showers for rinsing, two saunas (hot and dry), a giant pool with many jets at various positions, and a couple hot tubs. The day we went the place was full of women of all ages and colors – clearly the Korean spa was not just for Korean ladies. After a while you get used to the fact that everyone's naked and just enjoy moving from jet to jet in the pool or steaming in up in the sauna.



We paid a little extra for a full body scrub (you can get massages, facials, etc) and I think it was well worth the money. They have a group of middle-aged Korean ladies clad in black lacy undergarments who direct you to a pink plastic table and the proceed to scrub off all your dead skin from head to foot (you can actually see the gross flakes of dead skin which is gratifying to know it's now gone but disturbing to know that your skin will eventually return to that invisibly dirty state). I'm pretty sure she scrubbed off much of the tan I had left from Nicaragua.

After lounging about in the spa area, we put on our little orange jumpsuits and went to the common area where men and women mingle amongst the seven rooms of various heat. If I remember correctly the hottest room was over 150 degrees so we started there and worked our way down to the ice room which was below 50. One room was full of little clay balls!



To finish off a day of converting our bodies to mush, we enjoyed a tasty Korean lunch before pulling our clothes back on over our now smooth-as-a-baby's-bottom skin and heading back out into the not nearly as relaxing world.

Photos were borrowed from various websites...

Distractions!!

I was working on a blog post this weekend but I got distracted. Therefore, I'm going to post the thing that I got distracted by which, quite frankly, is way cooler than the thing I was gonna write about anyway. So I give you: the nearly 3 hour breakdancing competition I watched Saturday afternoon....(it's a yearly event, I went in 2006 and 2007 too)

Luckily Katie was as excited as I was and didn't mind sitting on the pavement all afternoon:







We called this guy Pirate B-Boy, I hope you can see his amazing facial hair:



During the warm-ups this kid was hiiiilarious, I think he was up after every other person to practice and usually fall down:







I had a really awesome video to post but I'm getting error messages and just want to go to bed, so that'll have to wait for another time!

Worlds Collide

I used to really enjoy writing about Nicaragua because I felt like I was sharing new and (at least to me) interesting knowledge about something very few of my readers knew much about. Now I live in DC and a quite a few of the people who read this live here too, or used to, or probably know something about it. But I'm going to write about it anyway because I find this city fascinating and there was a lot that I didn't know about it till I lived here and I'm sure much more that I'll learn about it in the future.

That said, the primaries for the mayoral election were on Tuesday. There might as well not even be another election in November because DC is so overwhelmingly Democrat that whoever wins the Democratic primary is basically the new mayor. In fact, I don't even know if there is a Republican candidate, although I'm sure there is one, let alone his or her name. Although most people polled thought that the present mayor, Adrian Fenty, did a good job in the last four years, the challenger, Vince Gray, won the primary and Fenty has conceded.

So for some reason, Tim Pawlenty - the governor of my dear state of Minnesota & a probable 2012 Republican contender for the presidency - chose this as an issue he should weigh in on?! I was surprised to see this article this morning in the Huffington Post with T. Paw's comments on Fenty losing the primary! I do enjoy when my worlds find new and strange ways to collide, but really?? Personally I enjoyed this line: "Pawlenty has proven to be quite adept at finding the epicenter of the spotlight of hot-button policy debates."

(If you don't want to read the article, the policy debate in question is the firing of a bunch of DC public school teachers by the chancellor of schools who Fenty brought in and backed up so the teacher's unions backed Gray & probably played a role in the demise of Fenty as mayor.)

Here ends Lesson One in DC politics. Stay tuned for someday in the future when I'll inevitably rant about the fact that DC does not have a vote in either the House or the Senate and why it's a big political uphill battle the change that.

Surgery #3 in Three Years

After a few hurdles, including the Department of Labor itself and getting the stupid IV in my arm, I had knee surgery on Thursday last.

My surgery was supposed to be covered by a workers compensation program which is administered by the Department of Labor (DOL). The scheduling lady who handles DOL claims at the doctor's office assured me that it usually only takes 48 hours for approval from DOL so the one week window I had before my surgery was fine. Well, I talked to her on Monday and my authorization still hadn't come though. Tuesday: same. Me: Freaking out. Wednesday I made some phone calls and got my case examiner and on her computer it said I'd been approved so she faxed a copy of that to the doctor's office and I was told I was good.

Thursday I arrived at the George Washington University Hospital (same place I went to have Betty removed) at 6am for my 7:30 surgery and was told they didn't have my authorization. Worst fear confirmed. I sat there waiting till about 6:50, slowly preparing myself to have my surgery canceled. Miraculously they got whatever they needed (some guy tried to explain it to me, but I was too busy finishing my paperwork to really pay attention) and off I went to have a resident and the head of anesthesia treat me like a pin cushion because of my tiny veins (I still have a bruise from one of three attempts to insert the IV!). At one point there were four people standing there watching and the resident said "I bet you've never had four people watch you get stuck with a needle before!" So it's not all seriousness all the time.

The most intriguing part of the whole surgical process for me is that every staff person asks what I'm having done and to what body part and then having the surgeon come in and write his initials on said body part so they don't screw it up. Obviously I'd prefer to repeat myself eight times than come out with the wrong leg operated on, or worse.

I think I confused the nurses or whoever was around as I was waking up afterward when I said (and I remember this vaguely) "I can't believe I fell asleep!" One of my finer moments of sleep talking.

So far so good on the recovery. They even gave me this nifty Cryo Cuff thing that I remember another medevac having after her ACL surgery:



You wrap it around your knee like so and use the cooler, which is filled with ice and water, to fill and empty the blue thing to reduce the swelling! I still don't really understand how it works, but to empty it you just connect the little hose and the water drains out, then you lift the cooler part above the brace thing and it refills it. Fancy!

I'm able to walk now, but for long distances (like to work) I crutch-walk and get funny looks from everyone along the way. I saw the physical therapist yesterday and have started some basic exercises to get the old girl working properly again in 4 to 6 weeks.

Reintegration

Lately I’ve been trying to approach my re-integration into US society like I approached integrating in Nicaragua. The advice I was given when I spent a couple days with a volunteer during training was to accept every invitation to dinner, birthday parties, whatever and go, regardless of how tired or freaked out I was. The past couple weeks I’ve made myself do something I’ve never enjoyed: go to gatherings where I pretty much only know the host. A lot of my friends in DC are random acquaintances so when they invite me places I used to either drag someone with me or not go. But I figured it was a good opportunity to expand my friend circle and put my small talk skills to work.

First I went to my college friend Emily’s End of Summer Barbecue. There was a possibility of other folks from our school showing up but no one did. I spent a surprising amount of time brainstorming ideas for one girl’s food truck vision (food trucks are the new lunch fad in DC, I haven’t tried one yet) for her amazing canned preservatives and other random food ideas. Later another girl and I tried to explain to a guy why asking girls out on the Metro isn’t such a good idea.

Next my old roommate Melanie organized a karaoke night so I met up with her and some of her mostly work friends early at a bar that was having trivia, but we didn’t play and instead got a lot of dirty looks and a couple comments because we were talking during the game. Beware of trivia geeks, they take that stuff seriously! I didn’t last long at karaoke itself mostly because my usual karaoke partner is in South Korea.

Lastly, I went to an iftar, which is the breaking of the fast at sundown during Ramadan. The group was almost entirely women, mostly lawyers actually, and they were fun to talk to and I didn’t feel weird being the only non-Muslim there. It also made me realize that Peace Corps has made me very practiced at being in new situations so I no longer really feel that awkward when I’m kind of the odd one.



I’ve also been packing in lots of social time because a) summer in DC is beautiful and come winter I may not want to leave my apartment and b) my knee surgery was just scheduled for this coming Thursday so I won’t be able to get out and enjoy the beautiful weather much for a little while. I’m having arthroscopic surgery to repair the meniscus (cartilage) in my left knee. I’ll have the long Labor Day weekend to recover so I should be fine to return to work the following Tuesday, hopefully without having to crutch the four blocks to my office. I’m not too nervous but any happy thoughts you feel like sending to my knee on Thursday at 7:30am EDT would be appreciated.

My Triumphant Return to DC

It really wasn't that triumphant, I flew in last week right after a pretty serious thunderstorm (got to fly through part of it, that was fun) to a welcome party of one: my now roommate Emiko. Lots of people have asked me what it feels like to be back in DC and back working at my old job (I started on Monday) and the best way I can describe it is to say that it feels like I never left, which is both comforting and creepy.

I've returned to my little office with a view of another office building to continue on as a research assistant to a rural housing nonprofit. A rural housing nonprofit in Washington, DC??? you may say... well, yes. The organization acts as an intermediary between the government and local, rural organizations. We get mostly government money to support our activities which are a revolving loan fund, technical assistance and training, and research specifically to organizations working in rural areas around the country. There are several organizations that do this but my organization is the only housing intermediary that focuses solely on rural areas.

The biggest adjustment to returning to work has been sitting .... all day ... at a desk ... staring at a computer screen. So far I've been doing the usual editing stuff I used to do, we're waiting for the research agenda to get final approval from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which is where the money comes from. The one thing I do know is that I'll be working on a big report done after each decennial census. I love the census so I'm pretty psyched about that.

I had four days before work started, during which I had originally planned to run errands and buy clothes and other stuff I'd need for work. But I had Peace Corps friends in town (can't stay away for long!) so I hung out with them instead. My friend Dianne is from Northern Virginia so she came home with her site mate, Liz, and we went to Great Falls:

Dianne's mom had warned her to be careful, and it turns out she had a point - "The river has claimed another victim, don't be its next, if you fall in you will die."


I'd always heard about Great Falls when I lived here before but since you can only get out there in a car, I never went. It's very pretty!



With Liz:


Sunday we moved into our apartment (if anyone wants the address or my phone number just let me know). My plan was to buy a bed the way I did the last time I moved out here: Craigslist! But upon arrival I learned that DC, much like New York, is experiencing a bedbug infestation so buying a used bed was very much discouraged. I ended up at Ikea on Saturday trying to figure out how to buy a decent bed for less than $500 when Emiko texted me and said that her current roommate was looking to sell her nice, Certa bed fast and for less than $500! What luck :) So I'm mostly all settled, just waiting for my boxes to arrive, and as I type there are three guys building a wall to separate my room off (we have a one bedroom so my room is technically the living room). Once all that stuff is done, I can settle myself for real.

My last news is that I got the approval to move forward on getting my knee fixed. If you remember, when I was last in DC I discovered that I have a torn meniscus but opted to return to Nicaragua in order to get part of my Perkins loan canceled (which has also been confirmed!). When I got back last month I sent in paperwork to get knee surgery as covered under a part of workers comp and I just got the approval. This morning I scheduled an appointment with the same orthopedist I saw before for a quick follow-up and then I should be able to schedule the surgery.

Musings from Minnesota

Once my feet hit American soil I went right back to my busy ways, visiting friends and family and trying to ignore culture shock. It really hasn’t been too bad, and a lot of things that catch my eye are things that I would notice when I visited from DC as well: really big trucks, all the space, and mullets. I haven’t seen a huge number of mullets but this is rural Minnesota, they’re around. I’ve also found myself staring at shelves in stores trying to determine which of approximately 359 different types of toothpaste I should buy. The options in this country are mind-boggling.

But overall it’s been nice to be home, I’ve run into lots of familiar faces and enjoyed the loveliness of a Minnesota summer. I got out on the Mississippi not once but twice.



And ate smores fresh from the bonfire



And enjoyed a Minnesotan potluck. I know people do potlucks all over the country, but there’s just something unique about the hot dishes and salads and bars you find at a Minnesotan get-together. Unfortunately at our family picnic/potluck the tater tot hotdish got left in the oven on a farm a good 20 minute drive away (I still think it was intentional so they could keep all that tasty hotdish to themselves), but we had plenty of food anyway.

Beautiful afternoon except for some flies


I’ve also been spending a large amount of time indoors performing round two of Throw Away All the Crap! Before I left for the Peace Corps I tossed and donated tons of stuff. When I got home I was horrified to see how much stuff I still have so I’m again removing a decent amount of things from my possession, with much more brutality than before. I’ve chucked a lot of my school assignments but I’ve uncovered a couple interesting things that I want to share with the blogosphere before I share them with the dumposphere.

Dated January 7th, 1998 - which places me smack in the middle of 8th grade - I filled out an inventory in order to determine which career path would be best for me and my result was….. Science, Professional. Sample occupations include botanist, statistician, archaeologist (which was my chosen profession at age 10), and geographer! I also chose “Being famous and known for what I do” as one of the three job aspects that would be the most important to me.

Next I have some weird collage thing that is dated May 29th, 1996 which would be the very end of 6th grade. At age 12 I wanted to visit Washington, DC (check), Washington state (not check), and see some Mayan temples (check). I also wanted to be an archaeologist (not check) and do some writing (check right now!). My pet peeves were Jonathan (my brother), Heise (Jonathan’s friend), Spam (one of Jonathan’s obsessions that I had to eat occasionally), zits (no explanation needed), and chewing loud (still drives me nuts).

I’ve been told by a few people that I should keep writing in the blog, so I’ll do that either until my readers get bored or I get bored. Whichever comes first.

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: