#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…