#47 An Ometepe Vacation

Thanksgiving Day Crew :)

Just a few days after the marathon ended, I was to have my first visitors to the island for a nice long weekend vacation. Matt and Jake came for Thanksgiving weekend and the three of us, along with our friend Julian and his parents who flew in for a week’s vacation, went out for a filling Thanksgiving brunch at the one and only Cornerhouse Bed and Breakfast where we feasted on delicious sandwiches, salads, and breakfast foods. Being the first Thanksgiving away from home, it was as nice of a meal as I could have asked for, being surrounded by my new close friends and even meeting one of their parents.

Soon after, I hopped on Skype and got to video chat with all my family members enjoying my mom’s award winning Thanksgiving meal. I felt myself on a high after Skyping with them, reminding myself just how thankful and lucky I really am to have such a wonderful family :D

This weekend would continue with just Matt, Jake, and myself and it would amount to be, far and away, the best weekend I’ve had in my 7 months being in Nicaragua. We slept at this awesome hostel where the dorms and buildings are all built in a tree-fort style- some up to three stories high, that, from the top story, you can see a beautiful panorama of the two volcanoes that make up this bizarre majestic island on which I live.

On Thanksgiving night, at the hostel, the kitchen cooked a freshly killed turkey, roasted some tasty stuffing and, my favorite, .mashed.potatoes.  The night got better and better as we made lots of friends, got rowdy dancing, singing, and just acting like goofs for we finally were able to let our guard down and truly enjoy the present.

Little Morgans for Thanksgiving

No Mercy Mateo

In the same weekend we managed to hike to a coffee farm and through the woods behind it seeing ancient artifacts scattered around, enjoy the Ojo de Agua (natural spring pool), meet more fun travelers, had some great talks, and reflected on our experience thus far in the Peace Corps. It was during this talk that I had my biggest revelation.

Mateo, facing his fears, a girly screech followed very soon after this photo was taken

This would be the first moment in my life that I felt a real sense of pride and accomplishment in myself. Talking with my new friends (it’s true that you do meet awesome people in the Peace Corps), who I now really consider family, I realized all that I’ve been through in just 7 months. I have left all my friends and family to volunteer abroad in order to use my years of education to help those less fortunate, while all at the same time, having to learn and embrace a foreign culture and language. The wave of pride that crashed down on me in that moment was that feeling that I imagined a high school or college graduation to feel like, but for me never came. Those felt to me, things that were expected of me, that I knew I would accomplish without difficulty, but this experience was/is something new, something in retrospect I now realize has challenged me in new and unique ways and I now feel an immense sense of satisfaction and pride in myself for being here doing all that I am doing :)

Last, but certainly not least, we woke up early the following Saturday to finally conquer the big Volcano Concepcion. Jake, Matt, my two sitemates Andrew and John, and myself took nearly the whole day to climb up to the top and back down. It was an extremely grueling and, at times, dangerous trek, especially near the top where you are steeply climbing up gravel to the crater in very heavy and cold winds and then close to the end on the way down when your legs have turned to jelly, your blisters are killing you and the jagged stones threaten your life at every step. No matter what, if/when you visit me here, you must make the climb for the view was incredible and the sense of accomplishment I now feel every time I look at the towering volcano made it all worth it. Also, Andrew’s 7 pounds of delectable spaghetti we ate right before the final stretch to the crater definitely didn’t hurt.

Incredible views the whole way up