#40 Leon Reunion

For weeks now, the small business group had been planning a trip to Leon – a big city about 5 hours north from me here in the southern area for a reunion and celebration of Ben’s birthday. I originally couldn’t make it because we had been planning to have class this Friday, making it my first class at one school and second at another, but then I received notice on Thursday evening that class was cancelled the next day so my plans changed for the better immediately. 

After our meeting Friday morning, Noelle and I were on our way to Leon to reconnect with all our close friends who we hadn’t seen since training ended 2 months ago. After 7 hours of various busses, boats, and taxis, we arrived at our hostel in Leon. Everyone was in such great spirits and so happy to see each other again, making us completely forget about the uncomfortable journey. It was wonderful to be with the other volunteers again and when we finally were able to reconnect, I was reminded how close we really have become in just a few months.

The night continued with watching a parade in the central square in front of the largest cathedral in Central America for Leon’s Fiesta Patronales (yearly religious party/holiday of the town – same thing as the fiesta in my training town with the bull penis fighting if you remember that), followed by a huge dinner, and concluded with some fun and dancing discotecas.

A hungover Saturday morning breakfast burrito, Julian arriving from Masaya to a surprise Frost at 9am, and an 11am shuttle to the beach. Hot weather, big waves, cheap everything. Spent the day relaxing on the beach, tossing back some Toñas, beach football (Americano), etc…

Matt Wood  

Do you see that character on the far right on the bottom on his knees? That is 23 year old Matt Wood. This picture is absolutely hilarious and essentially summarizes Matt Wood to the tee. Over the past few weeks, our business group has been secretly photoshopping this photo of Matt into awkward situations.

That night, we finally shared with Matt what we had been doing. All of a sudden, Chalin surprises everyone and brings out a piñata he had made of Matt’s pose. 

We all absolutely died of laughter. Tears streaming from our faces. I can’t describe how absolutely hilarious these were.

Mateo has now lost more than 30 pounds and isn’t the only one. The Peace Corps seems to be a great way to lose those unwanted pounds or get in shape. Several volunteers have lost over 20 pounds for both the better and, unfortunately, one for the worse. Poor Pedro has spent the majority of the last 5 months fighting parasite after parasite making him join this weight loss group. He remains in good spirits and has my props for being quite tough, never once complaining. I too came in quite scrawny after months of taking the gym lightly and now have been going to the gym routinely and have noticed huge improvements. Goes to show you how much the Peace Corps really helps everyone (except Pedro, sorry bud).

#39 No Hay Clase

This past week included more school cancellations, meetings, and a nice reunion with most of our small business 56 group in the city of Leon and a beach city nearby.

School is cancelled often here. So often in fact, I have been here for 2 months and have yet to have class in one of my four schools because every time class is cancelled for that day. It is commonly not decided if they will cancel classes until the day before or, more commonly, the day of. For example, on Tuesday last week school was cancelled because the parent of a teacher in a school in a town off of the island died Monday (think a school within the district or so, but the school is 45 minutes away – Like Trumbull to Westport or College Park to Rockville). Then on Friday school was cancelled again for a parade on the island. That left me with one class on Wednesday and one on Thursday. Due to my ever increasing down time, I have continued to focus on how I can become more involved in the organizations on the island.

I had another meeting with the marathon group on Tuesday; things are starting to pick up and more activities are being planned each meeting. Progressing slowly but surely.

My sitemate and I went to two other organizations on Wednesday morning, one for a follow up and the other to introduce ourselves. At the first, we were invited to a women’s group meeting on Friday that turned out to be their first meeting and was more of an introductory meeting for the purpose of stimulating and encouraging the women to take action in their community.

The second meeting of the day was at an organization called Triangulo del Sur, owned by one of the wealthiest families in Nicaragua – Las Pellas. They are currently working on several projects, and were super enthusiastic to have our support and tell us all about their business. Briefly, their main project right now is to review and help local business owners put together professional business plans. After the plans are made, the businesses can then earn up to $3,000 for various projects that would improve their businesses. They are working with nearly 200 business owners in three locations in Nicaragua with a budget of $4 million for the next year or so. There is no shortage of work to be done here and, once school is over for the year at the end of October, I will easily be shifting my focus here. 

#38 Independence Day/Week Vacation

The past two weeks, regarding work at the school has been non-existent. Two weeks ago were the ‘mid-term’ type exams, meaning no class, and this week the students were on vacation due to Nicaragua’s Independence Day. So what did I do all week you ask?

My big accomplishment of this past week was finally getting business cards made. A simple feat – yes, but it took me nearly a week. Having to leave the island to go to the biggest local city to buy thicker construction type paper then the cyber’s power managed to shut off twice mid-edit, and finally finding a ruler and razor blades to make even cuts I now have my business cards. Now I just need to find people to solicit myself to. Yes solicit myself.

This week, I attended two meetings regarding the marathon/race type event that I’m helping plan for November. One meeting was for the election of an exec. committee board and the second was to plan a potluck dinner type event. I lucked out in two respects here.

The first being that I don’t need to cook and just need to bring a bottle of rum, and secondly, I’m getting private Merengue dance lessons from the best looking 20something chica I’ve seen in Nicaragua. As I explained in a previous blog entry, Nicaraguan men know how to dance and they do so with suave, grace, and flare – College bars and nightclubs in The States generally don’t stress such quality dancing. This lucky smokeshow is burdened/gifted with the task of teaching me how to dance the Merengue in the few dance-practice dates we have set up this week.

Some fun events from this week include a trip across the island to go to ‘Ojo de Agua,’ a natural spring pool to play around for the day with my host siblings and their friends.

Fun swing at the Ojo 

Each of the schools on my side of the island celebrate Independence Day with a parade performance in the center of my town.

Parade in Action - also note the kids in front doing the 'Palo de Mayo' a traditional Nicaraguan dance, the girls here can shake it ; )

Then, Saturday, a host cousin about my age invited me to go to a beach bar with him and some of his friends from university. We spent the afternoon there hanging out and messing around on the beach. By far, the biggest change and challenge has been developing a social life. My religious host family doesn’t do the whole bar or party scene, so my main source has been making friends through the gym, befriending 3-day long backpackers, and through less religious, fun-loving, host-cousins. Drastic change from the college atmosphere I was living in just 5 months prior, but just recently things have been going much much better – think exponential curve.

Every weekend on the island a town is designated to throw a party for the weekend, and this weekend was my town’s turn. During the day it is like a horse parade for the farmer crowd, and nighttime is for the party-type crowd. On Sunday night I went with a guy I met at the gym and some of his friends to the party then to the discoteca in my town afterwards.

Then yesterday, 2 volunteers close by, Leslie, Caryn, and I went to San Juan del Sur, the main tourist/surfer’s/beach destination besides my island in Nicaragua, to hang out for the day.

This last story involves a big juicy tarantula. I hate spiders. At home in CT with my family, I would yell for my mom to come and kill them because they freaked me out so much. I’m a baby, fine, but all those legs just make me cringe. WELL, I found and killed – all by myself without crying or peeing in my pants – a huge tarantula right in my bedroom. Very proud moment in my life, but just wait… It was late at night when this went down, so I didn’t have the guts, yes pun intended, to clean up the mess I made. I went to bed planning to clean it up in the morning, only to find that the squashed creature had vanished overnight. There are only so many possible explanations, all of which equally frightening. Maybe the spider wasn’t fully dead, no not possible, I made sure that it was as dead as possible, stepping on it three times and witnessing colorful insides. Maybe it was a super spider that heals quickly or can’t die, that would suck. Maybe something else ate it over night. That means I have something bigger than a tarantula in my bedroom which is just as/more awful and frightening than having a tarantula in the first place. Actually those are really the only options in a closed room, but either way they all are anything but ideal.

Oh well, it’s all in the job right? Right…  

#37 Getting to Know the Community

The 5:45pm ferry to the island provides the best colors

I mentioned that I'm going to work harder to maintain this blog, so I've decided that every Monday I'll do my best to post about my activities from the prior week.

Last week, all the schools had their midterm type exams, therefore all my classes were cancelled. I went to a few of my schools during their exams to help proctor exams and prevent cheating, but my presence did very little to counteract the cheating ingrained in the classrooms. I kid you not when I say that 90% or more of the students blatantly copy or talk during whatever exam. They understand it is wrong because when I make eye contact or say something they stop or pretend they weren’t doing anything. Advice from my Ms. Abby was to explain to the students why copying is wrong and cheating is bad because (from my Ms. Abby and I agree) it is likely that no one has taken the few minutes to simply describe to the students why it is wrong to cheat. What may be obvious to some may be oblivious to others.

Because of my extremely lax week, my increased comfort level in the community and speaking in Spanish, coupled with the need for more rewarding and stimulating work, I walked around and presented myself to a few of the local organizations to explain my role as a Peace Corps Volunteer in my community.

• I stopped by the Mayor’s office to chat and am expected to return later this week to talk with the Director of Tourism about projects they hope to start.

• I went to a major organization on the Island that seems to have its feet dipped in several projects including a rural tourism project. In this project, the organization has 10 groups each consisting of roughly 20 women who hope to start tourism businesses from their home. The organization is working to help the women make business plans, learn basic business principles, and communicate in basic English. I attended a second meeting on Friday morning with my small business sitemate to discuss how we can provide support and they were enthusiastic about having our involvement and invited us to meetings with the various groups. Unfortunately for me, my calendar was booked, so I will have to wait until after this month to attend.

• This next meeting would prove to be my most promising and fastest moving project. On Wednesday night, a gentlemen from the main umbrella organization (ROCO) on the island that works with essentially all the other established organizations invited me to a meeting for the following Thursday night. That Thursday night, I learned of the existence of this used-to-be youth group (JEO) that was founded in 2003 by a former Peace Corps Volunteer and they have gathered some ex-members (some now close to 30 years old) to organize a short marathon on the island. They hope to promote healthy lifestyles, organized sports, get local businesses involved, and raise awareness for the projects underway by local organizations. We have scheduled the first main meeting for tomorrow, Tuesday, night where more detailed discussion will take place. It is my assumption, that I will be able to help with event organization, raising funds, and promoting the event throughout the island and across the Peace Corps network in Nicaragua.

In other news, this Wednesday/Thursday is Nicaragua's Independence Day(s) and class is cancelled yet again from Wednesday through to Tuesday. They will have parades, dances, and bands from all the surrounding communities so I have some more culturing to do this coming week. 

My parents and I are going on a vacation to some Caribbean island in January for a week or so :) Details to be determined but I'm already excited to see them after just 4.5 months!

#36 Party Nica Style

I received a surprise phone call one Sunday evening from the Director of the Peace Corps in Nicaragua and she was visiting the Island with her daughter and her daughter’s friend and invited myself and another volunteer close by out to a local town’s party. Each month one of the nearby towns is responsible for hosting the parties every weekend for that month. These parties often include: a rodeo where often drunk men try to ride very angry bulls; a DJ with an unnecessary amount of speakers and lights gets people dancing; restaurant stands all cooking the same food – fried chicken or carne asada; staggeringly drunk people; and occasionally cock fighting.

[BULL RIDING VIDEO]

We watched the rodeo for about an hour or two while men had their go at riding the bulls (I may give it a go within my two years here, although it does look quite scary and sometimes painful) and the drunkest of men picked fights in the ring. Soon I found myself watching my first cock fight and now know far more than I ever thought I’d know about it. I found out my host father participates in these fights every Sunday at the parties and watched him in action.

Fun for all ages

Firstly, it costs a staggering 3000 cordobas ($150) which is probably the equivalent of around $1000 or $2000 given the economy and all that just to have your Gallo fight. All Gallos are left handed, so a small razor claw between 1/8 and ¼ of an inch are attached to the left foot. 2 roosters enter and 1 rooster – the victor – leaves. It is very similar to a boxing match, so when the roosters stop fighting over being tired or hurt, they take a 20 second break while the ‘coach’ mouths the rooster’s heads and breathe into the rooster’s mouths to give them more air. The ‘coaches’ also use their tongue to clean off the eyes and get blood all in their mouths. Not the most hygienic of sports. 

[COCK FIGHTING VIDEO]

In the end, after 20 minutes one is supposed to be alive and the other clawed to death. The match I saw ended in a tie where both roosters were bloodied barely alive, but breathing nonetheless. Everyone recieved his or her money back and the next fight began preparing. All in all, each fight takes about one hour from deciding the length of the razor claw to attaching it to getting the roosters in attack mode then to the 20 minutes battle.

Attaching the 1/8 to 1/4 inch razor sharp claws

Action

Some mouth to mouth on the rooster

I'm also bringing this truck home with me

#35 Coffee Farms and My First Night in San Juan del Sur

The other day, one of my sitemates, Noelle, and I went for an excursion to a local coffee farm and had a delicious cup of coffee. You would think this would be common as Nicaragua is known for their coffee, but unfortunately (for me), all the good coffee is exported and instant “Presto” coffee is hands down the preferred coffee in the country. It is enjoyed so much that I have heard of families giving their volunteers Presto as gifts to bring back to home because it is just that good. I’m not a fan and one of my first purchases was buying a coffee machine and some fresh coffee as well.

While at this farm, we met two men filming a travel show for China where they start in Alaska and finish at the southern most point in Argentina. One guy from New Zealand and the other was a Chinese man born in America. Strangely enough, the Chinese man had lived in my home state of Connecticut for a few years and worked with my Dad at GE for those years and was shocked when he heard my Dad’s name. I used to think wow what a small world, but really after traveling so much I’ve realized that the world is actually enormous and coincidences like this are that much more wild.

After a remarkable cup of coffee, Noelle and I went for a hike from the farm into the depths of the forest of the southern volcano. This area is famed for its petroglyphs and every now and then we’d stumble across a petroglyph or 10. I don’t know really anything about these pre-Columbian pieces except for that they are before Columbus’ time… that narrows it down to a few hundred thousand years.

One of the other very popular tourist destinations, San Juan del Sur, is about 30 minutes from the port on the mainland.  The other weekend, Chalin, Sam, and I took a little 24 hour vacation there. The place is absolute mayhem. It is the quintessential backpackers bar scene with backpackers from all around the world partying, enjoying the cheap drinks, getting quite sloppy, and taking advantage of the lack of drinking laws most developing nations possess. Imagine your wild college tailgate without law enforcement. After going to bed routinely at 9:00pm, this was a very different change of pace for the three of us and a much appreciated break from the past 3 or 4 months.

The next morning, we went to the beach for a little then Chalin and Sam ended up buying surfboards because their sites are only a few minutes from surfing spots on the west coast. This same day about 30 minutes away, Nicaragua was hosting one of its first international surfing competitions, so most of the tourists left San Juan del Sur. This country has a lot to offer and are just beginning to take advantage of its resources. You’ll see this country becoming a stronger and more popular tourist destination over the next 10 years – I promise. In fact I just read an article in a travel magazine about tourism in Nicaragua including all there is to do, and promoting how incredibly safe it is (safest country in Central America by the way). 

#34 Weddings, Farming, and Pirate Parties

I’ve usually always been a sort of ‘Yes Man’ as in I am most always down to try something and do anything. But here in Nica, I’ve raised that to new levels. I may say Yes to one thing only to find myself doing things far and above what was originally planned. This makes for more wonderful and unique experiences that sometimes I have trouble believing.

My host family invited me to a friend of the family’s wedding one Friday night. It was relatively similar to a wedding in The States just with a lot more Latin music. The event was held in a local restaurant/disco place up the street from my house and we arrived as the ceremony was beginning. About 10 minutes later a couple roughly 20 years old were married and food was brought out for the guests. I was soon eating my family’s pig who was sold to the wedding family the night before and had been slow roasting for the past 15 hours or so. I’m also not a vegetarian any more.

The family I’m now living with absolutely loves to embarrass me and throw me under the bus as often as possible so they weren’t hesitant to invite me to dance with the bride in the middle of dance floor. Normally I would have no problem with this, but in Nicaragua it’s a little different. Spanish people know how to dance and they dance with such suave and flow moving all parts of their bodies at just the right time. I start dancing the best I can as the rest of the family (and possibly the whole room) laughs because I can’t dance the merengue or tango or salsa whatsoever. I have since found out that some of my counter-parts in the schools offer dance classes during the week, so I will be returning home a pro. If anything will motivate you to learn, it’s looking foolish in front of 200 people.

The next morning, I got up around 5am to head out to my host family’s cousin’s farm to milk cows, ride horses, and even brand some lucky cows getting sent to death row the following day. After herding and tying up the cows for milking, it was my turn to give it a go. You grip the udders as a fist with your thumb on the inside and squeeze and push/pull the milk out. I could barely do it, but the thing that was the most surprising was that the milk came out warm. Obviously it would be warm, I don’t know what I was thinking, I just always imagine my milk cold in a gallon jug and never from the source.

We filled up a few gallons of milk from all the cows and later that day delivered some to the local police station and sold a gallon here and there. Some of hippie people are all about seeing their food go from the plant to the plate, but I am not one of those people. Later that day when I had my café con leche (Coffee and milk), and I could smell that milk odor I almost vomited imaging that this was just inside of those beasts a few hours prior.

Back at the farm, after a quick branding of 4 cows, my host cousin and I mounted two horses bareback with a hooped string going through the mouth for steering and herded the dozen or so cows about a mile or so to a different farm for grazing. The horses here are very skinny and I remember the bony spine of my horse sharp against my butt crack.

There is a natural springs turned tourist spot about an hour from my home on the island. Noelle (sitemate) and I were invited to a party held there by all the expats living on the island. This party would, as usual, turn into something completely unexpected. We arrived early on a Saturday, had some lunch, went swimming, and played around until at about 2 the party started. Some big speakers and DJ equipment appeared as well as lots of building supplies… Unbeknownst to us, this party would be a pirate themed party, rafts would be built, costumes would be donned, and rum would be a priority. The party and music ran from about 3 in the afternoon to 1 in the morning with roughly 100 people in attendance. We both got to meet lots of people, especially several of the hostal/hotel/restaurant owners around the island from places like Germany, Australia, England, Israel, Canada, etc…

#33 One Month In

I’m a little over 100 days in. I’ve been living on this beautiful volcanic island for about a month now and already have stories ranging everywhere from Nica weddings to cock fights to pirate parties. I have to do a better job at maintaining this blog and will try to blog weekly from now on. Overall, everything is going relatively smoothly; some days are better than others, but the challenges were expected (although not truly realized until they occur).

I think I’ll just talk about life in general during this blog and save some of the interesting stories for the next blog. That's not to say (in any way whatsoever) that my life in general here is not interesting..

My main job is working at the schools teaching business classes to juniors and seniors in high school. I will have a separate post about this because it easily dominates my weeks and is so drastically different from anything I have ever experienced, that I have heaps to say about it. Imagine sitting in class everyday of high school only to be dictated to and forced to copy down everything without interactive activities, any dynamic exercises, not even a “read it back in your own words.” Just listen and copy – word for word. How boring.

The volcanoes, beaches, sunsets, vegetation, and local animals (sans insects) make up the incredible natural beauty of this island. My house’s proximity to the west-facing port guarantees jaw dropping sunsets every single day.

We went to visit a coffee farm for some of the best coffee I’ve ever had and met this little playful/aggressive guy.

[VIDEO]

My host family and I occasionally take walks or rides to some of the close by beaches and play for a few hours in the water. This one beach near my house call The Jesus Mary Point (seriously) has a long strip of land just below the surface of the water (I forget the name of those things) and you can walk out, sometimes, up to 300 yards. 

In these first few months, we have a lot of down time as we are supposed to just be getting acquainted with our community and meeting people, so I have been doing just that. I have been going to a gym (not what you are picturing) that just opened a few days prior to my arrival and have met a bunch of people through that. It is also fun living in a tourist destination because at anytime I can find myself talking to people from all around the world traveling here on vacation. Most of the time I am spending time with any number of family members or neighbors that live/roam through or near my house. During all this downtime, I find myself spending a fair amount of time reading on a delicious hammock that hangs on my porch and have decided that no house of mine in the future should be deprived the luxury of a hammock. Just make sure you have your bug spray.

There are a lot of bugs here. The mosquitoes are hands down the biggest assholes. Yesterday, I had 9 bites between waking up and finishing my morning coffee. I have learned (often forget) to apply bug spray and/or carry around an itch-away marker everywhere I go. Other times, I find little bugs on my plate knowing that any number of bites I hadpreviously taken definitely had bugs in them. I’ve had a few too many encounters with rats scurrying around and everyday have small salamanders hanging out on the ceilings/walls/windows. But really the mosquitoes are the only ones that irritate me. I am getting heated just thinking about them.

Now let’s share some stories…