Friday, November 30, 2007

A day in Tonala

Well everyone, i hope that your thanksgiving went by well. I spent it at the house of the Peace Corps director in Nicaragua. It was awesome! Right now i am in the city with my host sister visiting her family. It has been a long week, and together with a stomach ache and cockroaches in the latrina, it has been interesting. But all in all i have no complaints. Yesterday was the hardest and funnest yet. They had the promocion for the 6th graders and it was soo cool to see them all so proud and the teachers proud as well. They decorated the school, and they had important people sit on stage to congratulate the graduates as they received their diplomas. Apparently I am an important person, b-c i just went to watch, but little did i know they invited me to sit on the stage with the school director and delegada to the ministry of education. and then there was a party after wards. the thing a learned this week- you can never be overdressed, so if you are questioning what to wear, go for more. and nicas love to dance, from age 2 they can shake-it faster than you can imagine!!!!!

Saturday, November 17, 2007

I´m off!

Well as of yesterday I am officially a Peace Corps Volunteer! yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i know you are jealous. hahaha Wow it´s finally happening. I feel like this whole process has taken forever, and finally FINALLY i am gonna get to see what it´s really like. I am going to be leaving from managua today to go to my site! It´s up to me now, no training staff, no group charlas twice a week, no mandated schedule of events to do. I have to find my own stuff to do now. Well that is not entirely true. I do know that I will be working in 4 schools with a minimum of 2 teachers in each school. they are all multigrado and i will have to bike to all of them but one that is located roughly 4 blocks from my new host family´s house. for the first 90 days we cannot leave our site but for day trips to the market and to do errands, and for EITHER la navidad o el nuevo año, not both. so that totally stinks, but i´m sure the time will go by quickly. i was reading interviews yesterday that the volunteers who have just left wrote and according to all of them the times goes by quick.
My first three months in site are doing to be different. school ends in 2 weeks so i am not going to be working in the schools yet, but iwill still have a lot to do. i have to get to know my town and the people and hopefully some kids too. maybe i´ll even get to play some soccer with the kids around town. vamos a ver.
so please don´t get worried when i don´t write often. i will have a phone that you can always call if you are worried about me. but i´ll try to continue to keep in touch.
take care all! and wish me luck!

Saturday, November 10, 2007

6 days!

In 6 days I am going to be an official PCV (peace corps volunteer)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am so excited and so proud of all the people in my group that have stuck it out and will be there with me on friday to swear-in. Unfortunately we have had 2 people leave the group, but our group is awesome and ready to get to work.
I have been uber-busy lately. We had to wrap-up stuff at our schools and the three of us gave a capacitación to the teachers in our school over the guía that we use, b-c we gave them one as a gift to say thanks for letting us work in their aulas, and having patience with our spanish. Speaking of spanish, i had my final interview yesterday. I am not worried about being at the level you have to be at to ¨graduate¨ training, but I am anxious to see how i did, vamos a ver! I don´t think i could count the number of times i use that frase daily (or have used that frase since starting the peace corps process).
So for those of you that don´t know, i got a cell phone, but it´s not cheap, and right now i have no choice but to be pinche (cheap) b-c i have no money' lol, after all i am v-o-l-u-n-t-e-e-r-i-n-g. no worries, have enough to get me through, just not to talk for hours on the phone. feel free to call me b-c that is free for me, but i will probably only be calling the states after 8pm, and not frequently.
So monday will be my last day and night in the house that i have called my home for the past 10 weeks, and with the family that has taken me in and showed me how to do everything from flush the toilet (i´m telling you it is not as easy as just dumping the balde into the toilet bowl, there is a science to it) to wash my clothes and ride the bus. They are amazing, and i hope to visit them soon! my niece is obsessed with strawberry shortcake, chiquita fresa, and could talk about her all the time, my sister loves to sew and is attending classes to become a costurera (i think that´s how it is spelled) and my mom is awesome, can´t understand her some times, but has more patience with me than i probably have with her. my other sister is hilarious, is much smarter than she appears, and is a great mother to her two daughters. and my little sobrinita, adorable! she´s two and i have taught her to walk like a model with her hands on her hips, and she calls me Memoli. I will truly miss them. And i just made them french toast & bacon, over a fire, with a TINY pan, and believe me it was not easy, and i really don´t know if they liked it, but i did! tasted like sunday morning when dad used to make us the french toast out of the special cinnamin swirl bread (well didn´t taste exactly like that, but close enough that it made me remember it).
But i am totally excited to get started with work. I have so many things that i want to do! I want to make school veggie gardens, and work with the farmers to do worm boxes, maybe even the kids too. I want to hopefully work with the alcaldía (mayors office) and the centro de salud. but those are big dreams, so vamos a ver!
I am planning on living with a family for probably more than just 6 weeks there, depending on available housing, and cost. I´d rather spend more money traveling and more time working than worrying about keeping up a house and cooking all of my meals. but i don´t know, just depends on how much freedom i feel like i need. the new family seems really great tho. gotta build that confianza, but i know it will come with time. (as hopefully my spanish will to)
And for all of those that don´t know, i am going to be living close to the beach, and even closer to...manglares! (mangroves) i could not be more excited. i know that we have some serpientes peligrosos, like boas, but i still have to do some exploring. i have already established with my new family and counterpart that i am allergic to shellfish, and i feel like in that sense i am lucky, b-c i can use it as an excuse not to eat a lot of stuff, but also need to be aware of what i am eating b-c chinandega has a lot of shrimp-packing plants (and shrimp farms as well) but they cultivate other types of shellfish, and the people that work there often bring it home for their families to eat. Not to mention the lovely road that i get to take from Chinandega to my site. It´s a peach, but good news for me and the people that live there, the road is getting paved! But this is one of those processes that can take years in the states, so i´m just hoping that by the time i am COSing the road will be paved. who knows. but for me this is important, you see b-c it takes 1hr and 15min to travel roughly 15km.(i´m debating if i could ride my bike faster) and well after that long on a bumpy road in a hot bus with the lady sitting in front of me transporting her freshly (or not so freshly) cut meat, well i was not feeling so well. luckly i returned to managua from chinandega with my friends, and we stopped in léon to eat at a hostel (which apparently serves amazing pasta but i wouldn´t know b-c i was throwing up in the bathroom most of the time) and then from léon continued onto managua, in a bus that decided to break down well before we pulled out of the mercado, as well as got in roughly 3 accidents on the trip, and i swear at one time we broke 80mph. all i can say is thank-goodness for the sturdy plastic bags that our cellphones came in. Next time i´ll pass on the warm milk and sweet bread for breakfast.

But Nicaragua is great. Lately people have been asking if i really like it here or not. And the answer is without a doubt, yes. But it´s life, no matter where you live it, and in a developing country that life is harder, for a gringa maybe not that much harder, but for the people that are my friends, family, and co-workers here, it is. Also, no matter where you are, there are those things that just get to you, the trash on the ground, the neighbor´s repeatative blaring of the same 3/4 of a song over and over at the crack of dawn b-c the luz goes out at like 7:30 every morning (gotta aprovechar la luz!) or your neighbor that is so obsessed with his lawn that you don´t even dare to touch it, much less step on it. Here there is still the same drive to have money and be successful as in the states; but that is not necessarily the primary motivator. Here there are people with various (very passionate) religious beliefs, same as political. But there are challenges here that the majority of americans are not forced to face everyday back in the states. Lack of access to water (especially potable water), strong social norms i.e. gender roles, extremely high unemployment, little assistance for higher education, transportation system that is slow and at times dangerous, and education system that is struggling to accomodate a massive population increase and at the same time change itself for the better. Family here, is extremely important, what your parents, grandparents think is important, and there is much more obligation on the part of the youth to support their family. Nicaragua is poor financially speaking, but the culture is anything but.
I have definately learned a lot about Nicaragua, it´s people, it´s culture, and it´s history in the past 2 months, and I am excited to learn more. In order to conocer this beautiful country, it takes time, and that is something I am lucky enough to have.
and i was going to post pics, but my batteries in my camera keep dying. i dunno if there is soemthing wrong, but if someone who loves me wants to send me some rechargable batteries, i would not be opposed.
interesting nica details (they are not really facts, but commonly held opinions)
Chinandega is hot, not just like hot, but i mean HOT.
Shade will be more valuable to me in the next two years than my IPod.
The preferred way to drink gaseosa (soda) is out of a plastic bag with a straw.
Red beans have more flavor than black, and therefore everytime you make gallo pinto, or rice and beans (b-c they are 2 different types of comida) you have to use red. (with this i fully disagree)
Oil is needed to prepare all of the following, beans, rice, veggies, soy, tortillas, gallo pinto, soup well pretty much everything except for fresh fruit, and maybe steamed veggies, b-c that´s questionable.
It is considered slutty to have your bra strap show, but it´s cool to wear your black bra with your white lacy top.
You can carry anything with you on a bus, including (but not limited to) chickens (live and wing-flapping), meat, entertainment centers, baskets, pottery, mattresses, and anything that can be boughten or sold at the market.
Music can never be to loud.
Taking a shower in the middle of the day is dangerous, and if you happen to get a cold or sneeze the following week, the shower is to blame. (this one i´m on the fence with)
You cannot and i mean cannot drink milk when you eat a nacatamal. Only coffee.
Ketchup is a delicasy and makes everything taste good, including cold spagetti noodles. (i think they like it more than americans do! and definately with more sugar)


Friday, November 2, 2007

Back home again

So i realized that i have been MIA for a bit. I was on my site visit in... Chinandega! yes that is where i will be living for the next two years. not too far from the capital city, but not beachside. However, there are mangroves close by and its only like 2 hrs to the beach. and i got a cellphone finally! hope you all are doing well. i am fully recovered from the sicknesses, although i did get bus sick on the way back into managua. my road to my site is really bad. takes over an hr to travel 15km! yeah, it was not easy. but things are going well. we swear-in in 2 weeks! yay i'll finally be a real volunteer!