COS!

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve written in here!  As my service is winding down, my technology has been slowly giving up as well, and my laptop has been in the process of being fixed for going on two months now.  Anyways, besides not having an easy way to type things like blog post up at home, I have been really enjoying the last few months since I have written in here! I went to Costa Rica again, I’ve finished my Stove/Oven grant and have continued to build ovens funded by other means, and have been overall enjoying life.  I’ve only been sick once since the last time I wrote in here (I’m still getting over a nasty cold/sinus infection), but being sick once in 3 months isn’t that bad for me here!  My sister Jessica came and visited, making her the 5^th member of my family to visit me (or in the case of my Uncle Kevin and Aunt Betsy, I visited them).  I’ve undergone PT on my bad knee, and have just spent a lot of time hanging out with people in and around my site!

         For such a long time today has seemed like it was far on the horizon.  I just got to the Peace Corps office for my COS conference.  For those of you who are not savvy on the government/Peace Corps acronyms, COS stands for Close of Service.  It’s the beginning of the end.  It’s when we have our final language proficiency interviews (I’m hoping for advanced), when we present what we have done during our service to the US ambassador to Nicaragua and PC staff, and get a whole bunch of post-Peace Corps information thrown at us.  They put us up in nice hotels, including 2 nights at a beach front resort (your tax dollars hard at work J ), and the sub-director has us over for dinner at his really nice house!  While I’m super excited to be spending time with all of my friends here, it’s signifies that my time here will be coming to a close in just a few short months.  I was even tearing up a little on the bus ride down here this morning.  I’d love to write more, but I’m in an office full of people in my group I haven’t seen in a while!  So I’ll end this with a few pics!

Traveling with Jess!

San Juan del Sur!

 

Sloth!!

Costa Rica with my friend Jen Rowley!

 

MAY!!!!

It’s been a pretty eventful last month or so!  Regardless of some of the things you will read in here, like my getting sick, having things stolen, getting into heated arguments in with guys on busses, etc, I am still riding on the Peace Corps high I’ve been on for the past several months.  With that said, here are some of the noteworthy things that have happened this May:

1) I met a super progressive and awesome family when I went on a trip to build an oven on their farm.  They own a really large farm, and pretty much everything we ate was raised or grown on their land: rice, beans, corn for the tortillas, milk for the cheese, steaks, jalapeños, veggies, coffee, and the oranges for our rum.  The rum, however, was made on the other side of the country.  They are converting, or have converted, the rest of their land into a biological reserve.  Not for tourism or to make money.  Just to be.  It’s a pity Peace Corps Volunteers usually can’t go to this part of the country (I had to get special permission)! It really is any environmental volunteer’s paradise, and I already have plans to go back and bake there next month.

2) A minute and a half after texting the security director of Peace Corps that I was back in my department from that trip to build the oven and that nothing had gone wrong, my iPhone was stolen from my backpack.  I didn’t realize it was gone until I was on my other bus, but I know exactly who took it.  While it sucks, it was old and starting to get really slow, so it’s his problem now.  I was actually happier that he stole the iPhone and not my cheap Nica phone.  It would have sucked to get all my contacts back!

3) My Mac crashed.  It was a pretty bad week for my outdated iProducts.  I’m glad I had backed it up a few months before it crashed, and I only lost a couple months of pictures rather than them all.  It’s since been fixed, but she’ll never be the same.

4) I turned 24!! Never has the statement “never trust a fart” been so true as it was on that day.  I guess there’s a reason the told us that in Washington, D.C. the day before coming to Nicaragua.  First time I had been sick in months though, so I couldn’t complain. 

5) Several friends came to visit me in my site a few days after my birthday (when I could confidently venture away from a latrine).  We went up to the ecolodge near my site, went swimming under the waterfall, and they even bought me a really great cake.  It was great!!

6) I started getting tutored in math.  I used to be really good, but after 6 years of no classes my math skills are bordering on embarrassing.  I had met someone in the park in town waiting for a bus a couple of weeks ago that is studying to be a math teacher.  So naturally I tracked him down in his house across the valley the next day to ask if he could help me study for the GRE (which I may or may not be taking before I finish my service).  Is that weird?

7) I got into arguments with two different cobradores (the guys who charge you on busses) over the equivalent of about $.19 within an 18-hour period.  I usually take the same busses when I travel around my sites so the cobradores know who I am.  Every once in a while, however, I take a different bus with different cobradores.  In both cases they tried to overcharge me C$5 for a “gringo tax.”  They didn’t say this of course, but I made sure they knew I knew what they were up to.  While I’m of course arguing over principle, I’m pretty sure I’m getting a reputation as being super cheap by those watching me on the busses.  To be fair though, that $.19 can buy my morning sweet bread.  I’ve since come up with a battle plan for one of the cobradores for next week, so let’s see how this goes.  Maybe not the best idea, but I hate being discriminated against, taken advantage of, and lied to.   I’m also one of the few people that actually stands up to them.  In both cases, however, I got my money back after constant pestering.

8) I took a hot shower last weekend!!!!

9) I had forgotten how awesome microwaves are.  I was able to heat up the rice and beans for lunch that my host mom had prepared for me that morning!!!  It was amazing!  It was my first time using one in quite a long time though, so I couldn’t exactly remember/figure out how to use it.  I ended up having to ask for help. 

10) I just about finished my stove/oven project.  I’ve even built 4 more ovens than I had planned on building.  The extra 4 ovens were not part of my grant, which means less paperwork for me!  I’ve also finally started teaching how to bake again!

Nica Hospitality

I would like to dedicate a blogpost here to “Nica Hospitality”.  I have mentioned how nice many Nicaraguan’s are in several previous posts, but I feel that it is about time I formally come out and say that southerners in the US have some competition!  While there will always be those that like to take advantage of foreigners and would rather try and overcharge the gringo than be hospitable, I have found that not to be the case in most instances. 

         Regardless of varying financial situations, I have found that most people will offer a fresco (some sort of drink), coffee, bread, a full meal, or something else when I am visiting their homes.  I can stop by someone’s house for what should be a minute or two and end up being there for half an hour or more, usually not getting to the main point of my visit until then end.

         To keep this semi-shorter, I’m just going to highlight some examples, mainly from the past week or two.

         1) The owners of the “pulpería“ (local store) in my rural site                     regularly feed or at least offer me lunch and gift me my favorite type of sweet bread, even if I just stop in to say hey and don’t buy anything.  

         2) A few of the families I’ve helped build ovens for regularly give me baked goods for free no matter how much I try and pay for them.  And even when they allow me to pay for things, they give me more than I ask/pay for.

         3) Someone I help with English has started buying me the sweet bread he knows I like, despite the fact that he sometimes has to walk up to 2 hours because he cannot afford the bus (he saves most of his money for his formal English classes to become an English teacher).

         4) A friend in my training site let me stay the night in her house and fed me for free.

         5) I stayed two nights with a Nicaraguan friend I made at that  crazy race I ran in February.  He lives with his girlfriend and her family very close to the center of the beautiful colonial town of Granada, which is relatively expensive.  Not only did they let me stay in their house and feed me for free, but they also paid for me when we went out for pizza and drove me around the area.  He offered to cut my hair ‘Nica-style’, and both him and his girlfriend (who I now consider a friend as well) helped me out with the details of my tattoo. I had originally planned on getting it in the States, but they vouched for the tattoo artist/their friend, and I’m super thrilled I got it with those two present. It also only cost me C$500, which is less than $19!  I paid more for the tip on my first, much simpler tattoo I got 3 years ago. 

         6) I took the bus to a former friend’s house a bit further into the          country from where I live to talk about an oven I’ll be building with them (the friend has since moved to the city).  After chatting with the cobrador in the bus (the guy who walks up and down the isle charging people) for about 10 minutes, he refused to let me pay the C$15, or about $.60 for the trip.  Relatively not a lot of money, but it was still pretty cool of him to do that.           Once I got to the house, his mom showered me with really great tajadas with cuajada (fried plantain chips with a type of cheese on the side), and a cantaloupe smoothie.  I sat there and talked for a while with some other family members, and before taking the bus back to site his mom gifted me several          large bananas and at least 2 lbs of red beans, both grown on their farm. 

                  I could go on and on with examples of how awesome people are here!  I have learned not to visit people before runs, as it is usually pretty difficult to say no to free things.  Most of the time the coffee I am given is local if not grown and/or processed by the community members themselves.  No wonder I went from never drinking coffee in the States to having a slight addiction here!

         The reason I chose to get the national crest of Nicaragua permanently tattooed on my body has a lot to do with what I’m talking about here.  I mean, I got it to help me remember how much I’ve changed if I ever were to forget in the future, but also to remember how amazingly hospitable and caring most of the people are here.  I have made so many cool and meaningful connections, and am going to have such a hard time saying goodbye when I leave not knowing when I’ll be able to make it back again (damn student loans!).  At least now I will always have something that, to me, symbolizes how unique of an experience this has been and how lucky I am to be surrounded by so many caring and thoughtful people.

And for those of you that don't have facebook, here are some pics of my tattoo of the national crest of Nicaragua.

Oscar and I (the tattoo artist)

My friend's and I right after getting my tattoo

NATURE!!!

I have to say, Central America is pretty great when it comes to wilderness sightings.  There have been many times I’ve spotted animals like sloths and keel billed toucans and simply just haven’t had a camera to capture the moment (I literally almost walked into a sloth last year), but here are some that I did capture.   I had a hard time narrowing down the encounters I did get on a camera, so there are a lot here!  I’ve already posted most of these pictures either on this blog or on facebook, but I figured it would be cool to have a bunch of them in one place!  So here’s to nature!!

A large moth!

The national bird of Nicaragua

Your guess is as good as mine (it's about 3 inches long) 

A cool leopard gecko in Costa Rica

The orange dots are eggs!

Look at those teeth! (Also in Costa Rica)

Blue Morpho butterfly at the Ecolodge near my site

A normal bird's nest...?

Nope! A hummingbird's nest

A cool caterpillar 

An awesome praying mantis that landed on my pants the other day

The Howler Monkey that woke me up every morning for a month or so

Another cool butterfly

Toucan!

Doesn't it just looks so warm and cuddly (also about 3-4 inches long and crawling around in front of my room)

Not an animal, but still pretty cool!!

I have a love/hate relationship with leaf cutter ants...

He's actually really tiny!

Looking back

         Time really flies by.  I know that’s such a cliché thing to say, but it’s true.  At the beginning of my time here I hated it when volunteers would say this because that’s all I wanted it to do.  Instead it just stood still.  During my first few months in site I found myself thinking how I wouldn’t be disappointed if something came up that made me have to head home.  In fact, I kind of wanted it.  It was getting sick all of the time, wasn’t able to communicate with people in my town or the outside world due to poor Spanish skills and low/no phone signal and internet, as well as a handful of other issues that just left me feeling as if I were climbing a steep and endless mountain that I’d never completely summit.  That being said, I knew I would never be able to live with myself if I quit, so I kept on going trying to concentrate on the positives and just look 

forward.  Luckily, those positives are what kept me going through the hardest times.

 

            I now find myself with only 8 months left of service and looking back on all of those hard times.  Thinking back on the times I posted about all the great things I was doing on this blog to try and put on a positive front when I was actually struggling.  The times I’d joke around with other volunteers about the number of bacterial infections, parasites, and skin reactions I had had.  On all of the times I’ve stressed out over any number of different issues.  I’ve figured out so much about myself over the past year and a half, and it’s been quite the roller coaster ride of emotions.  But as I’m looking back on all of this, I don’t know when I started thinking of doing what I had once thought crazy: stay in Nicaragua longer than I need to.  I think it honestly just think it snuck up on me.   I haven’t been getting sick every other week, I feel competent enough in Spanish to hold a decent conversation, I’ve more or less learned to work with my cell phone/internet situation, and I have finally been making more Nicaraguan friends my age.

            Now that I’m looking towards the future and am starting the dreaded initial job searching and networking phase, I am figuring out I don’t want to leave just yet.  Nicaragua has becoming my reality.  I would love to extend a third year in the Peace Corps, but financial issues are making that look like less and less of a reality.  I guess we’ll see what happens.  Because while things still come up that tick me off and stress me out, I feel like I’m finally learning how to deal with it. 

            The past week and a half or so is a perfect example.  I learned that I under budgeted for my stove/oven project due to an “AND/OR” in our stove guide that should really just say “AND.”  A teacher forgot that I had co-planned with her and taught without me.  On two different occasions teachers accused me of not telling them something about a class that I had talked to them about days before.  I had finally figured out all of the details of, and planned out a field trip for next week that I was super excited about only to find out that the Ministry of Education just banned field trips.  And in general, my plans have just changed so many times that I can barely read my planner through all of the cross outs.  The difference is that this time I legitimately have let most of it roll off me within an hour or two.  Things that usually stress me out beyond belief haven’t been getting to me as much.   It is much easier to concentrate on the positives when I don’t have to consciously do it to try and forget the negatives.  With all that said, I’ve had a pretty cool week!!

5 things that stand out from this week:

1) Made another oven

2) Was able to help someone from the States on his PhD. thesis by introducing him to people in my communities for his interviews.

3) Got to listen to a new teacher I’m working with go off on a 10 minute rant about equality and respect regardless of sexual orientation when a student used the Nicaraguan equivalent of the word “fag” in class.  It was great!!

4) Went on a few really good runs!  The view is so great in the afternoon!

5) The library in one of my schools that was built 2 years ago finally get a truck load of donated books!  It felt like Christmas! 

It's that time of year again!

            Well, it’s that time of year again.  While August usually marks the beginning of the school year in the States, the beginning of February is that dreaded time where school vacations are over, thus beginning 10 months of classes.  But rather than talking about classes, I’d rather talk about how celebrated the last month of school-less freedom.  As a Peace Corps Volunteer, we’re supposed to be prepared to be “on” 24/7, meaning that we are always technically working, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a good time doing it!

I helped lead a summer camp in the beginning of January with some Peace Corps friends.

Re-learned how to make tortillas thanks to my friend Jen (from the Chicago ‘burbs as well) visiting and asking my host mom to teach her how.

I made this sign!! (It’s for my host niece)

Had a lot of money (the equivalent of about $650) only to spend it about 15 seconds after I took this picture on buying materials and transport for my oven and stove project.

I’ve been baking with community members and friends a lot! In this picture we baked the bread for the soy burgers we made from scratch.

I was missing home and blizzards/snow when I saw this picture of my dad shoveling.  But then I thought about it, and…. 

And……. I ran (and walked) a crazy race.  I signed up for a 25k up a volcano on La Isla de Ometepe, which changed several times before the race date.  It finally turned into a 33k by race date that only climbed a total of about 1,400ft, with several options to make it longer thanks to some poorly placed markers.  The 21-miler in 90-degree heat and humidity that started at 10am was tough, but the view was absolutely amazing and I’m really glad I did it.  I even got 11^th place!  I may have been miserable a good 40% of the race and couldn’t walk normally for a few days afterwards, but I’m already starting to plan my next race.  I’m thinking either the 21k (half marathon) in March that I ran last year, and/or possibly even a 25k in May in the same national park in Costa Rica that I’ve visited twice.  That is if I can track down the Costa Rican who told me about it near this finish line (putting my creepiness/facebook stalking skills to the test).  Only time will tell!  The picture is my PC friend Kelsey and I with our participant “medals.”

And finally, pictures of Volcán Concepción and Volcán Maderas, the two volcanoes that make up La Isla de Ometepe in the middle of Lake Nicaragua.  Volcán Concepción is the ominous, larger, active one.  They are both such beautiful volcanoes, but I did feel a bit like I was staying a few nights in Pompeii.  I’ve been a bit obsessed with volcanoes since I was little, so being able to see 6 volcanoes in one day was pretty darn cool (the day I traveled back to my site).

  

Tourist is my own town

            Well, I can now say I’ve been a tourist in my own hometown.  Anyone who saw me during my 11 days home for Christmas and New Years can attest to the fact that I had my camera with me pretty much everywhere I went.  I brought my camera to the zoo that I worked at and went to several times a month growing up.  I brought it to downtown Chicago, and even took pictures of my elementary school and the parks near my house.  While having these pictures and video will be nice in times of homesickness, I was actually working!  Peace Corps Goal #2 is all about sharing American culture with host country nationals (aka my host communities).  Soon after getting to Nicaragua I realized that I did not have many pictures of where I come from and the places that mean a lot to me.  Why would I be a tourist in my own town?  It was a bit problematic, however, when I wanted to share things about where I come from without pictures.  From videos of me boarding a train (they don’t have trains here) to cracking ice on the Des Plaines river, I was hoping to capture just a little bit of what my life was like before coming here.  So, while these pictures may be old news to you reading this, try and imagine seeing them through the eyes of someone in my host family, or friends here in Nicaragua.  

 

My Dad and I visiting the zoo in my town

Me walking around the city

There are no trains in Nicaragua

There are also not many tall buildings after the 1972 earthquake, so I made sure I go a picture 103 stories off the ground

IT´S COLD IN THE US!!!

ICE!