Peace Corps Roller Coaster

I have no excuses other than avoidance and pure laziness for my lack of blogging. Although I have been busy recently, I have had ample time to browse reddit, facebook, youtube, read books, and do other non-peace corps related activities. This post is about to get real personal.

But before it does, here are some photos from a rural tourism group I have been working with:

Holding a chicken leg proud in front of her kitchen

Left to right, chicken batter for frying, fried plantains and potatoes, beans, and fried chicken

Flipping rocks in search of crabs to be used as bait for fishing

Caught a few of these little guys. A piece of fishing line and hook are all you need.

Children riding horses and bulls

Clients of the fishing tour go out fishing in these authentic vessels

Since my last post I went through an intense low point of my service followed by a creeping rise then a necessary break back home for a few weeks. I'm now back on my island of Ometepe and feel like I'm finally doing great again. Recently it's been a strange roller coaster and now I'm going to do my best to explain what I think is going on!

Let's start with the low point. At about the one year mark in service many volunteers began feeling a sense of boredom and disappointment with their service. It was a strange feeling waking up and not being excited for the day ahead. One year had passed and the challenges that I had been facing had since ceased to be challenges and boredom set in. I was feeling accustomed to the Nicaraguan culture, comfortable enough with my Spanish, and just tired of trying to support the, in my opinion, weak educational system. My secondary projects were coming to a crawl and I would pass most of the day in a hammock with a book or online. And then I felt weird personally/culturally as well.

I could feel myself changing in comparison to all my friends back home. Facebook makes it so easy to keep track of everyone's lives and I had been getting my stalking on as I wasted my days, bored, in front of my laptop. I could see that many of my friends were working jobs they did not enjoy solely looking forward to weekends where they could go out to bars and drink and dance and get dirty. Literally 2 months before the Peace Corps and you would have found me right there, but now I look at these photos and status updates and think about how I can't be complaining as I climb volcanoes on weekends, milk cows, and speak a foreign language. The whole nightlife, bar/club scene has come and gone for me and I now find solace in getting sleep and enjoying my days. It may be that the nightlife-scene is slightly different here and I don't have a close group of fun friends to go out and enjoy my nights with, but I just don't see paying $8 for a beer to be fun anymore. So here I am, stuck on an island, lacking a strong social network to hang out with, feeling disconnected from my close friends back home, and spending large majorities of my day laying in hammocks or in my room on my laptop.

Sitting on the edge of an active volcano

Luscious mango hunt

Outdoor kitchen

Mangoes and a hammock 

This was about mid June and school vacation was coming up in July. About one week before these vacations, with no plans made, I decided to book plane tickets to go back home for about 10 days. As soon as I booked the tickets, some of my side projects and business advising took a turn and people I had written off came back asking for help. It was a weird turn of events and I was excited to return to the country to do the work I had been looking forward to doing since applying.

Soon, I was back home enjoying the company of family, friends, and our little puggle Riley. I spent a long weekend with my Peace Corps buddy Sam at his home in Martha's Vineyard as he too was home on vacation. I took a day trip with my mom down to south Jersey to visit grandma Phylis (g-phyl) and spent another long weekend in New York City with friends from University of Maryland. I had invited most of my close friends from UMD to come not really expecting a strong turnout as everyone has jobs spread out between Boston and Virginia, but almost everyone made the trip. I was able to see almost 20 of my closest friends from school and it was just incredible to see everyone so happy and thriving in their post-college lives. I spent plenty of time with my family back home continuing to enjoy my parent's company and eating 'un monton' of delicious food. It was great having a fully stocked fridge and pantry, nice family room with a sofa, big comfy bed, walking around barefoot while staying clean, hot showers, throwing toilet paper in the toilet and not the trash bin, driving a car and listening to music,  and of course playing with Riley! My trip back to sunny Nicaragua was delayed a full week due to Spirit Airlines being the worst airline in the world, causing me to miss meetings and work, but allowing my to spend an extra week with my family. Could be worse, I suppose.

First night with friends 

Strolling through High Line park

Afternoon rooftop fiesta

Family came in too to hang out!

Going home reminds me of my change in perspective and how intense this experience actually is. I am at ease with the fact that there is dramatic differences between wealth among countries, but it is very strange becoming accustomed to one and traveling to the other, and then doing the same in the opposite direction. You recognize things you'd never before recognized nor appreciated - example, the diversity among businesses in the US and creativity in the names or logos (obviously it helps that Americans have more disposable income for these activities, but nonetheless a new observation), or how no one gives a friendly hello or smile to strangers on the streets like they do in Nicalandia (something I really love about living down here).

After a long three weeks, I returned to Nicaragua. I was blasted by heat and soon made my way out of the polluted capital to my volcanic island. My Nica friends and family thought I was never going to come back and gave me a very nice welcoming upon my return. I brought back some gifts and everyone was very grateful and happy - including myself. I quickly became busy with all those projects waiting for me and got over that slump I had been feeling just a month or two before. As I posted somewhere before "this too shall pass" and it always does.