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.

Free at last!!

On Wednesday I finally tracked down the counterpart I´ve had problems with since the beginning and, prepared for an argument once again, told her that I didn´t think we should work together any longer. Much to my surprise and complete happiness, she agreed! She said she´s too busy to plan, but she really wanted to work with me, but she´s busy with church stuff, but you know, she really wanted to work with me, but yeah, it´s better if we don´t work together anymore…. even though she reeeeeeeaaaally wanted to work with me (that's basically how the conversation went).

Thursday I had my second site visit, our Project Specialist, Karen, came down for the day to speak with the principals, my counterparts, and the woman in charge of the Ministry of Education in the municipality. Everyone was really positive and the visit went really well and hopefully no one from Peace Corps will have to come down here again until my final site visit in a year.

I was happy to have Karen here when I told my principal that I am finally ending my working relationship with the one counterpart. This particular principal likes to think she has complete control over my work and what I do. Mostly she just really wants me to spend all my time at the instituto so when I started working out in the comunidades I could tell she wasn't happy. In fact, she told Karen that she had given me permission to work at the other school when in reality I hadn't asked her anything and told her only after the fact. Anyway, I knew that hearing that I would be working even less at the instituto wouldn't be welcome news. She tried to tell me that she had to speak with the counterpart because she had a compromiso (basically a promise) to work with me. Karen spoke up and defended my right to drop a counterpart and the issue hasn't come up since.

I spent the weekend in Granada, catching up with some volunteers I haven't seen in ages and got to spend Sunday afternoon chilling on the shores of Lake Nicaragua at a nice little vacation house of one of the volunteer's girlfriend's family:





And when we got back home, we happened to catch the tail end of the hipica (the big thing with horses and beer that I always talk about)! I love hipicas, but at one time had been told that there wasn't one here, then I was told it was down closer to the coast and wasn't any good, but what I saw was pretty nice. Lots of people all done up in their boots, nice horses, and a sound system that pumped music clear to my house for most of the night:

Do not leave the dirty clothes you could wash today while there's water until tomorrow, because there won't be any water!!

I have discovered that water distribution in my town is ridiculously unfair. I had intermittent water last week till about Friday and then not again until Monday from sometime in the afternoon till about 6am on Tuesday and it hasn't come back since. Unfortunately I was having some stomach difficulties Sunday night and Monday so when the water finally did come on I didn't have the energy wash my clothes. I say it's unfair because up where my landlord lives they've had water every single day almost all day. Of course this morning when I finally called to see if I could just bring my monumental pile of laundry up there to wash they don't have water either. Figures.

In other exciting news, Nicaragua's phone system is overloaded so today all cell phones add an 8 to the front end and all land lines add a 2. Some volunteers have mentioned that maybe this will mean it'll be easier for international calls to get through, I guess we'll see.

Yeah, I don't have a theme for this week's post.

I've received a couple inquiries about a photo from my last post where I'm holding hands with a person of the male persuasion. In my tunnel vision I didn't consider the fact that not everyone in the world knows that that's my gay friend Moises and not my latin lover. Sorry!

Moment of the week: On Sunday I went with some friends to a river outside of town, in order to get to the farm and intended river we had to cross another river- as in drive through the river, not cross a bridge. (I guess I really shouldn't complain too much about my lack of water because just outside of town there are lots of people who have to haul their laundry down to the river to wash - though it might come to that point for me soon.) A couple guys had parked their truck in the middle of the river and were sitting in their underpants enjoying the cool water. My friend Bernd snapped a picture so I'll try to get a copy to share with you all.

That's all I've got this week, here are some pictures of a cool crab we found during Semana Santa:

I had so much fun it made me sick....

I have officially survived my first Nicaraguan Semana Santa. The first half of the week was pretty normal because most people were still working up until Thursday. Wednesday I went to the beach with a local NGO where I teach English. We fished, we cooked, we laughed, and I even played some soccer. It was a thoroughly awesome day.

This is the director, Rafael, wearing a ridiculous hat and showing off the catch of the morning:


Some shots of the fishing net:




Cute kid:


and the BBQ (this NGO is partnered with an organization in Germany so we even had super tasty German sausages, mmmmm):


Thursday I met up with some friends from Managua and we headed to the center of all things Semana Santa: San Juan del Sur. We spent the day on a nearby beach watching surfers and then enjoyed some of the night life.

The group at Playa Maderas:


A beautiful sunset on the beach:


Friday through Sunday was all spent running around the local beaches not far from my house. At one point I actually saw a temperature gauge and it was 40 degrees celsius which is, bum ba da bum, 104 degrees! Holy crap was it nice to be at the beach. More highlights:

Chillin on my back porch:


Lots of people at a beach that's normally deserted:


Out with friends:


Overall it was quite the week of celebrations. So much so that virtually no one showed up to school on Monday so we gave one class to a group of 8 students and then left. I also now have a cold. The week also ended on a bit of a sad note because one of my neighbors passed away on Saturday night, supposedly he fell and hit his head but that doesn't sound like the whole story to me. This guy lived next door to the NGO I mentioned above about a block from my house, he was always a little off his rocker but definitely quite the character. My first conversation with him went something like this:

Mario: German!!!
Me: No, actually I'm American.
Mario: Welcome to my country, here's a gift to remember it by (gives me a rubber band).
Me: Thanks.
Mario: Would you give me your ring to remember you by?
Me: Um, no, this ring is very important to me. I'll give you your rubber band back if you want though.
Mario: No, keep it.

That was quite some time ago, recently he took to simply yelling "Hola, Chela" (Hello, whitey!) at me when he walked past my house. He shall be missed.

Semana Santa

We are just beginning the big holiday week of Semana Santa (Holy Week) here in Nicaragua. School's are out all week (woohoo!) and pretty much the whole rest of the world (minus the service industry of course) will go on vacation starting Thursday. Almost everyone heads to the beach and I'm excited to see my local one llena de gente (full of people). I will write more next week when I have a good story or two and lots of photos, or at least I hope I will. For now, I'm on vacation!

Step into my aula....

A couple anecdotes, positive and negative from my various classrooms (aulas):

I'm pretty happy that my students have gotten comfortable with me and call me over to help them with the various exercises we do in class. Unfortunately that also means that when I'm working with one student I sometimes have two or three yelling "Profe! Profe! Profe!" (Teacher! Teacher! Teacher!) at me despite the fact that I'm clearly occupied. Usually I find myself saying, wait! wait! wait! right back at them.

This week, that manifested while we were trying to play a game that my counterpart suggested on the spot so it wasn't super organized on our parts. So I had the class in two teams playing charades with different emotions- each team had five minutes for people to come to the front, draw an emotion, and act it out, one team would go and then the second. I guess that part wasn't clear because these two girls on the team that was supposed to go second kept jumping up and yelling that they wanted to participate. I tried to explain a couple times, in Spanish, to wait until it was their team's turn but they just kept doing it! Finally, I got exasperated and yelled dramatically, in English, "For the love of god, wait!!" and they laughed and actually sat tight till it was their turn. Strange how that works out sometimes.

The other week we were teaching prepositions of place (in, under, next to, etc) using various objects in the classroom and had gotten to the point of asking, for example, "Where is the notebook?" and answering with "The notebook is on the desk." So I was trying to help this girl with the practice exercises in class which were to write maybe five questions and answers about the classroom. I offered a lot of help on the first one so I wanted her to pull her weight on the second. We got the question written but the answer was hard for her to understand and I was getting frustrated myself because I was running out of ideas of how to explain it. Finally, I asked her the question in Spanish and told her to answer me in Spanish and we'd translate to English. Very much to my dismay she just looked at me blankly, and despite all my encouragement and leading questions she couldn't even tell me "The window is next to the door" in Spanish. Then I had a very unteachery moment as I stood up and told her I wasn't giving her the answer and that she would fail if she didn't put in a little effort of her own. That didn't seem to phase her at all.

I have to say, though, that I had one of my prouder moments last week when I overheard one of my first year students telling my counterpart that when I'm not in class it's boring. That was pretty gratifying to hear after I had spent the better part of a one and a half hour class block (that's two 45-minute classes) bouncing around the front of the classroom doing goofy actions for them to repeat after me in order to learn things like open your notebook, silence please, and raise your hand. It can get really tiring teaching like that sometimes, but when the kids respond to it it's totally worth it and feeds the energy right back to me.

and some more pictures from the beach a couple weekends back:

A little more each day....

It's getting hot. Like so hot that I can't even find refuge in the afternoons by chilling in my hammock in the shade. And so begins the really hot time, awesome.

I received some truly sad news last week: it was in the national paper that a student at my school had been sexually molested by her uncle for at least the past year. My counterpart was the one who told me and he kept saying it was one of our second year students, but when he told me her name my heart fell into my stomach and I got a shiver in the afternoon heat because it was one of my favorite and best students who I've taught since I came here 8 months ago and now it sounds like she won't be coming back to school.

My most poignant memory of this girl, her name is Jasmina, is from one of the worst weeks I had in the beginning of my service, I was doubting what I was doing, not motivated, and feeling like the kids weren't even trying to learn so what was the point. Jasmina was always one of the smarter students in class and so one day I called on her to read aloud the paragraph we had been working with. What I didn't know at the time is that she also had some health problems and so when she stood up to read and got nervous, she looked like she was going to faint. We got her sat down and I told her not to worry about reading the paragraph, but once she was recovered she stood right back up and read the whole thing. I was so proud I was literally speechless. That little event helped me get out of my funk and remind me that even though some of the kids could care less about learning English, there are those who do care and will work hard for it. I just hope that even if she doesn't return to my instituto that Jasmina finds another school to attend and that maybe this horrible event in her life won't keep her from finishing her education.

As to not end on a sad note, here's a picture from Playa Coco which is where I spent part of last weekend in a big house with at least a dozen people from six countries. It was a good weekend:

Nica Tidbits

Last week my counterpart, Axel, came to class with some photos from the newspaper for the kids to describe in English. Several of my students, and Axel, agreed that I look like this exactly photo of apparently Nicollete Sheriden (needless to say I laughed pretty hard):



I have come to terms with the fact that in Nicaragua, I am every blond woman ever because in their eyes we all look alike. I've gotten pretty used to being mistaken for these Canadian twins who live here as Jehovah's Witnesses because they're blond - even though to me we look nothing alike because their hair is much lighter than mine and they don't wear glasses. But I hear they're leaving at the end of the month so maybe when that happens people will figure out that I'm not a Canadian Jehovah's Witness.

Just to change the topic a smidge, here's a bit about names in Nicaragua. Everyone here has the equivalent of a first name and a middle name followed by their father's first last name and then their mother's first last name- I get really confused sometimes when I ask kids their name and they rattle off four names at high speed. They also get confused because I only have one last name and no one can say it (of course I tell them that lots of people in the U.S. can't say it right either so don't worry). Luckily for me both my first and middle names are vaguely common here, just pronounced a little differently so even I find myself introducing myself as "Yenneefur."

Here are some of the more interesting first names (and spellings) I have come across in Nicaragua:

Milady
Elvis
Harlington
Jackson
Ingrid
Bertha
Elvira
Axel
Zuinglio
Ugeykar (even my Nicaraguan co-teacher thought that one was a little odd)
Hazel spelled as Heyzel and Hassel
Michael spelled as Maycol

But my personal favorite I came across very recently, and that is "John Kenedis" (slightly recognizable as John Kennedy) as a first and middle name. Maybe some day there'll be a little Barrack Obama Baltodano Gutierrez running around.

International Women's Day

As you may or may not be aware, Sunday was International Women's Day. I have no idea if this is celebrated in the U.S. but here in Nicaragua it was recognized in the schools and gave me yet another opportunity to see machismo rear its ugly head.

Machismo refers to the macho attitude of many men in Latin America which obviously can lead to gender inequality in these countries. Machismo can be anything from the large amount of catcalls I get whenever I walk down the street to women doing all the cooking, cleaning, and housework to just the general way that a lot of men walk around like they own the place and many women are simply trying to find and keep a man who may or may not actually do anything at all. Initially I was impressed to see how many women worked outside the home and/or were attending university, but more and more I realize that that's not necessarily the majority and for many women here their lives revolve around traditional female roles, whether or not that's what they want to be doing.

Friday we had a little lunch at school to welcome the new principal and also to celebrate International Women's Day a little early in the small town where I started teaching this year. In general I consider the counterpart at this school (his name's Axel- I need to do a post on the names I encounter here) to be somewhat more intelligent than the average Nicaraguan male. However, on this particular day we got into a discussion about what women can and can't do. When asked what men can do that women can't, Axel's two examples were driving a car and managing a company.

I told him that in the States everyone drives and tried to explain that it's not that women can't manage companies, it's that here in Nicaragua they haven't been given the opportunities men have to attend university and learn the skills they need and that in other countries plenty of women manage companies. He didn't say much to that but I'm hoping that maybe he thought a little bit about what I said, especially because he's a teacher and I would hope he encourages the female students as much as the males. When Axel asked me when International Men's Day is I told him "everyday is Men's Day in Nicaragua."

Si Dios Quiere Parte II

As much as I hate hearing people use the phrase "si dios quiere" (if god wants it) because it tends to imply a sort of hands-off, the lord will provide so I'm not gonna do anything kind of attitude, sometimes I think it can be right on. I have always felt that I had to work sooooo hard for stuff that for some people just seemed to fall into place. Now I can count two times that things have just fallen into place for me, or rather, stopped me on the street and changed the course of my life here.

The first time happened waaaaaay back in October when I had just started me search for housing. I had very few prospects despite having asked everyone I knew if they knew of a house for rent. Then one day a German volunteer I knew was stopped on the street by a woman asking if she was looking for a place to rent. Luckily my friend wasn't but knew I was so she brought me the woman's number. I have a tendency to put things off but for some reason I called up this lady right away that night and went to see the house the next day and it was perfect. That is how I found my house that even Peace Corps said was perfect. That is also how I became friends with my landlord and her cousin who I visit at least every other day for a chat or a meal. I was chatting with Linda, the cousin, one day about how lucky I was to find the house and she told me that god wanted it. I said yeah, I think you're right.

My second story happened only a couple weeks ago. I had been wanting to send an email to Peace Corps staff about a problem I'd had in my site but first the wireless on my computer went out and then the internet in the school wasn't working. I was starting to think I wasn't meant to ever send this email but I made one last attempt and walked up to the neighborhood cyber. On my way a young woman came running up to me and asked if I was the one who gives English classes at the high school (this is how a lot of people know me, not by name or organization but just that I give English classes at the instituto). She explained to me that she'd be going to Canada in June to work and wanted to learn English. I had recently decided that I needed more girlfriends so I said I'd do what I could.

I knew some other folks who had been asking for classes since January so I invited the people I knew and told this girl, Anielka, to bring a couple friends if she wanted. On Sunday night I scheduled an introductory meeting to talk to everyone about the class- Anielka showed up with seven friends and no one else I had invited came. We had our first official class last night and it went really well, it's a good group of people and I feel so lucky that it all just kinda fell into my lap.

And the counterpart I've continued to have problems with actually showed up at my house to plan for class! Granted she showed up about 4 hours late and in the middle of my class last night, but I still call that progress.