PeasCorps: NicaRagans

The COS Bell

2009-06-16T08:00:00.002-05:00

Every time that someone finishes his or her Peace Corps service in Nicaragua (called "COS" or close of service), he or she rings this bell that's in the middle of the office. It's a tradition that started right around the time that we got here, and today is finally our turn to ring the bell and become RPCVs, Returned Peace Corps Volunteers.

Romel and Azalia

2009-06-14T11:23:00.001-05:00

Whenever TEFL volunteers get together, an inevitable topic of conversation is difficult counterparts. It always made me feel a little smug that I never had anything to contribute to those chats since my counterpart, Romel, has been a really great teacher and friend over the last two years. Even though my official job here is to help him improve his English, I think he has taught me more.

I can't really say enough nice things about Romel: he works really hard to support his family, working 10-hour days teaching at two different schools. He's a really affectionate and kind father to Jeycob and Natalia, and he and his wife, Azalia were always there to remind me that the odioso Nicaraguans that want our dog dead or to kick us out of our house are the exception rather than the rule.

Romel and Azalia are two people that I know we'll stay in touch with and they're a big part of the reason that we will continue to come back to Nicaragua to visit.

Romel and me planning a lesson:

Jeycob:

Azalia and Jeycob:

Natalia:

The family at Natalia's first birthday party:

Romel with a gigantic mutant mango:

The family motorcycle (I worry every time I see them get on it):

Romel and me on my last day of school:

Carmen

2009-06-13T23:17:00.001-05:00

Carmen has been my counterpart at school since the very beginning. Here in the English program, we are required to work with Nicaraguan counterpart teachers so we're not taking a job away from a Nicaraguan, and so our work will be more sustainable as our counterparts improve their English and their teaching methodologies. So we plan for all of the classes together on the weekends, then teach together during the week.

The first time I met Carmen was at our Counterpart Day during training, and I honestly found her really intimidating and I thought she hated me. I was even more worried because we had to live with Carmen and her family for the first six weeks that we were in Masaya. Fortunately, my first impression was wrong and Carmen turned out to be not only my colleague but also one of my best friends here.

Carmen is unlike any other Nicaraguan I've come to know; she is a really tough lady and has a strong sense of fairness and right and wrong. Carmen is very different from the Nicaraguan women I met in training: she's independent and raised her daughter by herself and cares for her granddaughter while also working as a teacher. She's one of the only people that doesn't continually ask when Paul and I are planning to have kids, and she stands up for me when others ask by saying that we're still young and it's better for us to complete our educations and have jobs and establish ourselves before rushing to bring kids into the mix. Though that's not revolutionary idea to have in the States, it is quite atypical here, and is one of many examples of Carmen's modern thinking and willingness to disagree with the majority.

I've come to trust Carmen a lot and can talk honestly with her about any subject. Carmen and I have a lot of free time between classes, and we use the time to talk about just about anything. She's probably the only Nicaraguan I feel comfortable talking to about the things about this country and culture that I dislike--the sexism, the way politics influences all decisions, and the way people are mean to dogs, for instance. In Nicaragua it's pretty risky for Americans like us to discuss topics like politics because people feel very strongly about those issues and are often biased by their loyalties, but Carmen is always honest and open about her opinions and she is never afraid to call it like she sees it, always while thinking critically about each topic. Carmen and I are also very similar in that we enjoy complaining and finding the irony in things, so we really were a perfect match.

During the last two years I've also gotten to know Carmen's daughter, Lizayara, and her granddaughter, Natalie. Lizayara has been studying English in Managua on Saturdays and I'm amazed at how well she speaks after a short amount of time. She's one of the most studious people I've met here, and though she doesn't yet know what she'd like to do as a career (engineering and medical school are a couple of her top contenders), I know she'll find success and grow up to be as smart and independent as her mom. Recently Lizayara invited us to her 16th birthday party this spring:

I'm amazed at how much Natalie, Carmen's granddaughter (also in the picture above), has changed over the last two years. When we first moved in with Carmen, she was living with her son and helping care for Natalie because Natalie's mom was killed in a motorcycle accident the year before. Natalie was very shy and quiet and I'm pretty sure she found me really annoying. Now when I go to Carmen's on the weekend and Natalie is visiting, she's a lively little girl who is always scheming to get cookies and is willing to talk with me and let me help her study for her upcoming tests, and is even eager to show off the English she's learning in school.

On my last day at school the teachers threw me a despedida, a going away party. I had to say a few words, and as I was talking about how much I appreciated Carmen, I started to tear up, the first time since we've started saying our goodbyes. Tomorrow Carmen, Lizayara, and Natalie are coming over to have lunch with us, and we're also going to make sure that they have e-mail accounts and give them a crash course in how to use Skype so we can stay in touch. Carmen really has meant a lot to me during these two years, and it's going to be tough to say goodbye.

Peace Corps Office

2009-06-12T13:25:00.002-05:00

The Peace Corps office in Managua has a lot of functions: it's (obviously) an office where people go to work, a meeting point for volunteers from all around the country, a doctor's office, a library, and an air-conditioned refuge for volunteers. It is especially easy for Holly and me to get to the office because it's right off of the highway that we have to take to get to Managua, so if we have a lot of work to do, it's worth the $1.50 roundtrip to go to the office and do the work in air conditioning and with free internet since there's basically no place in Masaya with air conditioning.

Here is the outside of the office. Up the stairs is the entrance into the security guards' office; they are always really friendly as we sign in, and always on guard for stray cars parked in front of the office or terrorists that may be passing through (the FBI's most wanted list and various terrorist pictures are prominently posted in their guard station, just in case) :

The fleet of Peace Corps Landcruisers that are ubiquitous in international development circles:

The front door:

Mimi really deserves her own entry; she is the receptionist at the office, but you can tell by the cards hanging around her office that she means way more than that to the volunteers. She has lots of responsibilities and is always busy, but she is on top of all of her duties and is never too busy to say hi when you walk in and to ask how everything is going. She also seems to recognize all volunteers' voices when she answers the phone, even if you're really sick and mumbling that you need to talk to a doctor. We really appreciate Mimi and will miss her very much when we leave. Gracias por todo, Mimi!

Karen started working as the project specialist for the TEFL sector just a couple of months before we arrived in 2007. Before that she was a Spanish teacher in the Peace Corps. During our two years, we have had three separate APCDs (the sector boss), but just one Karen. She has been wonderful and we can't thank her enough either--especially for those months when there wasn't an APCD to help shoulder the work load.

Here is Karen with her really adorable son, Ryan.

Here's the entrance to the Peace Corps medical office, a place we visited far too many times. Marva was responsible for making all our appointments, filling our prescriptions, and keeping everyone on schedule (a nearly impossible task), and Maria Elena, Mariano, Marta, and Ximena were the four doctors charged with keeping us healthy and sane.

The books in the PC library are all donated, and since no one is really responsible for upkeep, they usually look about like this. That said, there are always good books to read in there, and it's definitely part of the reason why we both read more than usual during our two years.

The bulletin board is also a little on the Laissez Faire side, but it lets volunteers find out about important new events, like who was elected president. There are also glimpses of the volunteer computers; there are supposed to be two in the lounge and two in another room, but at least one is almost always broken or missing.

INJOCRUM

2009-06-11T16:15:00.002-05:00

Today is my last day of classes at my school, INJOCRUM (Instituto Nacional José de la Cruz Mena). I’m actually pretty sad to be leaving the kids… though at the beginning of my service I sort of dreaded going to school, by the end I finally found my groove as a teacher and going to school became the only thing that I really enjoyed about being here.

Here’s where I walked daily to get from the market where I got off the bus to my school. This is also where Marvin and company always harassed me:

This is the outside area of my school; this is before first hour when kids are just hanging out, playing soccer, and buying snacks:

Here’s the marching band at a competition my first year at INJOCRUM. I never liked all the class we missed for the band to practice, but I did like their cheese grater instruments.

I spent many, many hours in the teachers lounge since my teaching schedules always had a lot of free hours in them. The barred doors in the first picture go to the principal’s office, the secretary’s office, and the vice principal’s office. The painting in the second picture is of José de la Cruz Mena, the musician for whom the school is named.

These are some of the students I had my very first school year here, in first year (7th grade) in the morning with Francis. The one in the middle is Eddyson, and he was one of my favorites:

This is my IV E (fourth year, section “E”) class from last year. This class first made me enjoy coming to school, and I was legitimately sad when I no longer got to teach them. They were all good kids that participated in class, did their homework, and laughed and my corny attempts to make jokes.

Here’s III G (third year, section “G”) from this year. In the first picture they’re learning directions. I had many of these same students last year in second year as well.

This is Rafael, one of my favorite kids that I had both last year and this year. He loves to ask me how to say new phrases and then practices them on me later (like, “Teacher, welcome to our class!” “I am finished!” and “See you tomorrow, teacher!”). Here he is showing off the chicken skeleton he made for science class. They asphyxiated the chicken so as not to break any of its bones, and then he carefully disassembled it and glued it back together. I think it’s really gross, but also pretty interesting.

Here’s Rafael’s class, III I, learning prepositions of place.

Finally, I’ll also miss the teachers. This picture is from a staff meeting where we also had a dance competition to practice our solidarity. This is Lila, who is an amazing seamstress and sews most of her own clothes (and also brings clothes and purses to school to sell to other teachers). At the far left is Iris who took a long time to warm up to me, but eventually she learned my name (“Holly Regan, but not like Ronald Reagan, that’s it, right?”) and we became friends.

When the last bell rings at 5:45, the kids come pouring out of the gate to the school. I rarely get out of school quickly enough to see the whole mess of students leaving to go home; these are a few stragglers that took more than 30 seconds to get out of school.

I never thought I’d say it, but I’ll actually miss being a teacher here.

Botellón

2009-06-10T21:55:00.001-05:00

One of the many chores that I get roped into just because I'm a man (see also taking the dogs out late at night, talking to strange people at the door, and cooking) is the weekly water bottle run. In our old house there was a pharmacy with water just down the street, but once we moved the closest place with water was the supermarket in the park, so I had to balance it on my bike. I'm pretty sure that by now with all of the frescos and helados we've had we are more or less immune to whatever is floating in the water, but it's nice knowing for sure that the water is clean.

Now we're living close again to Farmacia Carolina, but only for a short time to take advantage of the close access to clean water. I'm not sure we'll be able to find a place to live in the US that has 5-gallon jugs of water easily accessible by bike and/or foot. I guess that's just another sacrifice that I'm willing to make.

P.S. 1 week from today we'll be back in the States (and with any luck, we'll have Dorita in tow).

Nicole

2009-06-09T21:35:00.002-05:00

We’ve said before that you don’t really choose to become friends with other PCVs—it just happens. Nicole is one of the people in our group that we probably would have been friends with anyway. We’re usually the ones that stay at home rather than go out and party, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, but we’re all a little boring.

Nicole and I lived on the same block during training and since her Spanish was already pretty perfect when we got here, I would go to her for homework help, and during the week we would make frequent trips to Eskimo.

Even though now we live 5 hours apart, we still see her pretty often because she can stay here when she needs to pass through Managua or just needs a rest from San Dionisio. We went to visit her once, and that was enough for us. She and Dora are best buddies, too, and Dora treats her just like family by eating her underwear.

I think one time Nicole came to visit us and asked, "So... where are all of your friends?" I know she didn't mean anything by it, because that's just the way Nicole is. She makes friends with everyone everywhere she goes. We tried to explain that it's different being married in a big city, but ultimately she was a pretty good example of how to be a good volunteer. Everyone in San Dionisio will remember Neeecole for years and years, and if the goal is to give people in the host country a positive impression of Americans, the Peace Corps couldn't have chosen a better volunteer than Nicole.

Nicole is moving back home to Florida, and since everyone here assumes that everything not Nueva York or Virginia is just a part of Miami, we liked knowing someone that came pretty darn close to coming from the real thing. The whole family will miss her visits, and our tijera just won't know what to do without her. Even though Palo Alto and Lake Worth are pretty far apart, Palo Alto and Miami are just a short drive away (or so my neighbors just told me).

9. Ten Things I Love about You (Nicaragua)

2009-06-08T20:55:00.000-05:00

Though I listed yesterday the things I won't miss about Nicaragua, that doesn't mean it was all bad; there are plenty of things I already begin to feel nostalgic about, and we still have a few days left here! In fact, the things that I disliked yesterday are exactly the same things I like and will miss about the place:

10. Daily Life – For the last two years we haven’t had to worry about jobs, health care, or (until recently) housing. In the economic security sense, it will probably have been one of the least stressful periods of our adult lives. Our main teaching duties only require about 20 hours of actual work a week, and if we wanted to, we could just do that and spend the rest reading books or playing bocce ball.

9. The Weather: While six months of the year are a little too rainy or hot, the other six are pretty nice. In December through February you can be guaranteed sunny, warm (but not too hot) days with a nice breeze. It goes without saying that we never have to worry about snow or ice or being too cold, and it’s been nice not to have to worry about heat or air conditioning in our houses during this time. We’ve become very finely tuned thermometers; I feel comfortable between about 82 and 88 degrees; any cooler and I feel cold, and any warmer and I feel hot.

8. Food – We’ve eaten our share of gallo pinto, tejadas, and arroz de leche; we can’t honestly say we don’t enjoy the food here. It’s also so much more convenient here—there are helados and ice cream and snacks for sale in nearly every house, and people go door to door selling other goods or come into buses to sell cheap, yummy food while we’re traveling.

7. Inexpensive Wares – I think it goes without saying that on a Peace Corps volunteer’s budget, cheaper is better. Beautiful hand-woven hammocks cost $10 and original paintings can be had for $5. Additionally, people go door to door selling most things you could ever need, from food to universal remote controls to pillows.

6. Transportation – Public transportation is inexpensive and prolific. We’ve been without a car for two years, but we only really regret it occasionally. Taking the bus is inexpensive and convenient to and from Masaya almost all waking hours (and several hours before waking). Additionally, we can take a cab anywhere within our town for 50 cents or a ruta for 15 cents—I am quite sure we’ll never see such cheap transportation again, especially not in Palo Alto.

5. The Critters – Obviously Dora has earned a special place in our heart, along with other neighborhood dogs, little lizards, and Dora’s friends like Brown Dog, Luna, and Colacho.

4. Culture – It is still kind of a shock to meet grown men living with their mothers without shame, but it is nice that strong family ties are important in Nicaraguan culture. There’s also a distinct culture here in terms of holidays and celebrations, food, music, and beliefs—it’s very different from the States but sort of comforting at the same time.

3. Being Different – It’s always easy for our friends to find out where we live once they get close enough because they can just ask the neighbors where the gringos live. Being different also gives us a chance to share our culture and ensures that no taxi ride passes in silence.

2. Spanish – It’s great to know another language and we’ve learned a lot. Over the last week with the landlady drama our Spanish seems to have improved greatly. Also, English lacks some really useful phrase and words; some things like como no and fachento are just better in Spanish, and (with each other at least) I think we’ll continue to use them long after we leave here.

1. People – We have made great friends in Nicaragua that we’ll be sad to leave, especially our counterparts, neighbors, volunteers, and Peace Corps staff. We’ll be talking more about some of our closest friends and Nica family in our last few days here.

10. Ten Things I Hate about You (Nicaragua)

2009-06-07T09:30:00.006-05:00

One of the things I think I fear most about returning home after Peace Corps is having to answer the inevitable question, "So did you like it?"

Peace Corps' motto is that it's "the toughest job you'll ever love." It was without a doubt tough, and we're still not sure what the experience meant to us, let alone sure how to condense it down to a sentence or two to explain it to friends and acquaintances. Part of the difficulty is that it's been quite a roller coaster, often with lots of emotions even within one day. We've celebrated little victories and felt helpless during little crises.

Now that we overcame our housing crisis, I feel much more at peace with my Peace Corps service; though it was really stressful at the time, I'm really happy it helped us get closer to Romel and Azalia, and I'm happy we are back in our old neighborhood with people we know well.

That doesn't mean I have a wistful, romantic view of everything that happened here, though; many of the things that I love most days are things that I hated on others. As our time here fades, I think we'll begin to forget many of the things that were so difficult about being here, or that made us want to pack our bags and head home. In case we're feeling sad about leaving, here are some of the things that we won't miss:

10. Daily Life: Even the simplest tasks are just much more complicated here. Seemingly pleasant things like going to a restaurant or ordering a pizza can be complicated, un-fun tasks, and these little things seem to happen nearly every day. Even venturing out of the house can be difficult as we have to avoid the crazy drivers of Ministry of Health trucks, people zooming down the streets in their motorcycles, and other everyday hazards.

9. The Weather: It's unfortunately that Nicaragua only has two seasons since one of them is decidedly annoying. It rains a lot during October. During March right as the rainy season is beginning, it is really hot and downright miserable.

8. Food: No matter how good food may look, there could be trouble lurking. We've imported more boxes of Kraft Mac & Cheese than I'd care to count, and even the most basic supplies can suddenly disappear. Outside the home, our options are limited to pizza or gallo pinto, both of which can get a little old.

7. Inexpensive Wares: Stuff here is cheap, mostly in the "poor quality" sense of the word. Most of our Nicaraguan possessions seems to have a two year lifespan and are now giving out: handles are falling off pans and pots now have holes, clothes we bought here (even from the nice mall in Managua) are falling apart, and most recently our prized plastic furniture started giving out:

6. Transportation: I will never miss being stuck in a tiny microbus intended for a dozen people that has 25 people in it with no ventilation because all the windows are closed because it's sprinkling. During the strike there was no transportation and we were stuck, and we also really hate being overcharged in taxis or buses.

5. The Critters: We've had a lot of critter encounters during our time here. Lately our most vicious enemies have been scorpions, culminating with me getting stung by a scorpion in my arm pit at 2 in the morning a few weeks back. Eww.

4. Culture: It's hard to live in a culture that's not your own, and as much as we try to integrate and accept it, about some things we just have to agree to disagree. The machista culture that's so accepted here just isn't cool, I don't like that people make things up instead of just saying, "I don't know," and politics here caused a lot of uncomfortable situations. Another thing we never came to accept is the different views on personal space and privacy--it's perfectly acceptable for people to blast their music any time, even if it's the Alvin and the Chipmunks birthday song over and over at 5 in the morning.

3. Being different: Missouri isn't known for its striking diversity, and I looked just like everyone else there, so coming to Nicaragua was a double whammy: we came to a place even more homogenous than our own home, and we were totally different from all those other homogenous people in appearance, culture, and speech. People make lots of assumptions about us (like that we're rich, stupid gringos that can't speak Spanish) and it's impossible to blend in and do anything anonymously.

2. Spanish: Related to number 10, any little thing becomes more difficult when it has to be done in a different language. I am not a fan of the usted/vos distinctions or preterit and imperfect split, and a lot of people pretend not to understand what we say even though we're pronouncing the words just fine.

1. People: Some people I just won't miss. We won't really miss the people who tried to take advantage of our volunteerism, people who throw rocks at dogs, the cobradors and other vendors who charge us more because they think we're rich and/or don't know any better, or people who steal stuff from us, and I don't think we'll be sending "We Miss You" cards to our landlady anytime soon.

The bad things are often easier to list and recall because they happen every day and stick out in our minds, and I don't think it would have been fair for anyone to expect that we would love everything about this place and our time here. Overall, though, I think the good probably outweighs to bad. I don't want to end on a negative thought, but I promise that tomorrow I will have a list of the 10 things we will be sad to leave behind.

With only ten days left, I think we'll make it!

Funny Money

2009-06-06T22:31:00.004-05:00

The other day as Paul and I were in a taxi, we saw the driver give a woman some weird-looking Monopoly money. It turns out that Nicaragua got new money overnight:Since then we've decided this money is really cool so we've been trying to collect it. Today, for instance, we just got this C$200 bill ($10 USD):It turns out that might not have been such a good idea, and we plan to spend it first thing in the morning to get it off our hands. Time Magazine talks all about it here:

Most of the criticism, however, seems to indicate an underlying lack of confidence and trust in the government. There are many who remember the first Sandinista government's inventive monetary policies and the resulting mega-inflation of the 1980s. As a result, some people are now treating the new plastic dinero as if it were a hot potato. "Many people don't want these bills because they think they are valueless and they're going to get stuck with them, so they're spending them as fast as they can," says clothing vendor Fabiola Espinoza. It has unintentionally created a bizarre stimulus effect on Nicaragua's beleaguered economy. "As soon as I get one of the plastic bills, I try to pass it on right away to someone else," says shopkeeper Gloria Romero.

Apparently the money is also illegal and worthless (read the Time article for more details), so let's hope we can pawn our bills off tomorrow morning. Yikes!

Marvin

2009-06-06T15:36:00.000-05:00

To have been posted Thursday June 4, 2009.

A daily occurrence for women volunteers here is that we will be catcalled by random men on the street. These calls of “¡Gringa! ¡Chelita! ¡Hermosa! ¡Mi amor!” really bother some women, but I usually never let it get under my skin. On my daily walk to school from the market where I get off the bus, though, there are a couple of men in particular that have yelled to me every single day I’ve walked by them on my way to school even though I shake my head fiercely and refuse to acknowledge their existence.

After my trips to the States this past spring, my first day back to school the cat calls started anew: “¡Mi gringita! Where have you been? We thought you were lost! We’re so glad you’re back!” It was at this moment my heart softened a little bit for these guys… at least they had noticed my absence and seemed to miss me a little bit. More recently, I’ve been going to school in taxi because I don’t leave the house in time to catch the ruta, so when I passed by them on Tuesday they said, “¡Mi gringita! I know you’ve been passing by in cab so you can avoid me! I’m glad you’re back!” and at that moment I decided that perhaps I should try to reach a truce.

Yesterday I went shopping for souvenirs during my free periods at school, so I had to walk past them to get from school to the market. Normally when I approach the men I look straight ahead and keep walking, but yesterday I walked up to them and said hello… this alone was enough to preempt the catcalls for that visit. I explained to them that I have been ignoring them for all of this time because to Americans, those catcalls are very rude and offensive. I told them I now realize, though, that they don’t say those things to offend me, but rather because they think it’s nice. They agreed and said they meant no offense, so we introduced ourselves and agreed that I will stop ignoring them and will say hello to them when I pass, and they will stop catcalling me and say hello instead.

In the end they told me I needed a picture of them to remember them by, and it just so happened that I had my camera with me yesterday. Here’s their picture:

The big, jolly guy is Marvin and he’s the one who led the catcalls, the one sitting on the curb is Alberto, and I don’t remember the names of the other two. Marvin told me that I need to tell everyone who sees the picture, “These are the men who fell in love with me and bothered me every single day.” There you go, Marvin.

TEFL 44

2009-06-05T18:45:00.000-05:00

To have been posted June 5, 2009

In May, 2007, the Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) group came to Nicaragua as its 44th training group. Each training group is referred to by its number, so we're TEFL 44. We started off with 20 and lost a few here and there and are now down to 13.

June 7, 2007 at Volcán Masaya during training. This was before anyone "ETed" (early terminated) but three people are missing from the picture.

Here we are at swearing in on July 20, 2007. At this point two had left, so we were 18.

This is from the despedida (farewell party) for our first boss, Deepa. We had three bosses while we were here--Deepa, Lizzet, and Joayne, and for about 6 months had no boss (though Karen did a great job doing her job and the boss's job during that time):

Finally, here we are near the end at our Close of Service conference in April, 2009.

It's hard not to compare other PCVs to family: you don't get to choose who else is in the group, you have lots of forced quality time, and they're the people that you'll probably spend most holidays with, so you end up liking each other despite pretty big personality clashes. We also know that these people are the only others that will really understand what our time was like here, understand the drama and chisme that comes along with being a Peace Corps Volunteer, and for with it is totally normal to use words like chisme, pinche, como no, and fachento in an otherwise all-English conversation.

Today was our final Close of Service presentation to the Peace Corps staff, and the last time we'll all be together. We had a nice dinner and began saying goodbyes. Fortunately it's not too difficult to stay in touch now with email, text messages, Skype, Facebook, and $29 flights, but we'll be sad to anyway and we're looking forward to seeing everyone again soon.

Souvenirs

2009-06-05T12:08:00.001-05:00

To have been posted June 3, 2009.

Now that we’re about to leave, we’ve been thinking a lot about what sorts of souvenirs we’d like to bring back with us to remember Nicaragua by. Masaya is the undisputed capital of arts and crafts in Nicaragua, so we have a lot of things to choose from, all right under our noses.

Masaya’s Old Market is its tourist market and it housed in an... old market that looks like a castle.

It’s really nice and clean and well lit, but it’s also a lot more expensive because it caters to tourists. We generally took our visitors here to get a feel for things and to pick out what they want, and then we took them to the other market. They do have a large selection of the wide variety of goods available here.

The New Market is Masaya’s main market where Masayans do their shopping for nearly all goods, but it also has a separate artisan section for the brave tourists. Here’s the parking lot of the market and some outside shops. The entrances to the actual market are past the big tree on the right:

This market is closed in and is therefore dark, dirty, and provides a fairly overwhelming experience. We don’t have many pictures of the inside because it’s too dark and there’s just too much stuff crammed inside to be able to take a picture that does it justice. Here are two attempts:

Finally, the city of Masaya isn’t the only place to find good souvenirs. The entire department is full of artisans, and each little town is known for its own type of work. Masatepe is known for its woodwork (and sometime in the future Paul and I plan to return and buy a nice set of rocking chairs), Catarina has tons of plants and gardens, and San Juan de Oriente is known for its pottery:

We will probably make a couple more trips to the markets to scout out the wares we’d like to buy and bargain to get a good deal on them. We’ve decided to take some art home with us so that we can display it in our home as a recuerdo of Nicaragua and of our markets here.

Taxi

2009-06-05T11:44:00.002-05:00

Taxis are way more common in Masaya than privately-owned cars. It's how we get around when where we're going is too far, it's raining, or too hot. Taxis don't have meters or anything--in Masaya you know that no matter where you go it's supposed to be C$10. In Managua you have to negotiate a little bit before you get in. No ride costs less than C$20 ($1), and the most expensive taxi I've taken was around C$50 per person from one end of Managua to the outskirts where the airport is. Holly and I realized recently that in an effort to avoid getting ripped off, we drive an exceptionally hard bargain. Most Nicaraguans accept the first price that the taxi driver gives them... we usually negotiate it down at least C$5.

Taxis are supposed to be highly regulated, but anyone with a car can try to turn it into a taxi for a while. The white car below is a non-registered taxi, or a pirata. The one behind it has the official red and white taxi plate.

The bane of our existence, the announcer-taxi: it's pretty self-explanatory, but those speakers are so loud that when they pass our house we can't hear anything else.

Taxis are usually really old, barely maintained enough to run cars, but it's a pretty inexpensive way to get around (and we don't have any other choice). It's unlikely that we'll be nostalgic about that time that we fit 8 people in a taxi, but maybe after taking a few taxis in the US our pinche halves will miss the prices.

Paul's Book List

2009-06-05T11:01:00.002-05:00

Here is my book list starting at the beginning. At least 75% of these I read in the first year before I got too busy with work (and TV). Going over this list, I remember what else I was doing while reading a certain book or I tie a memory of a person to a book. I read Underworld during my first weeks of training when I didn't have anything better to do than read an obscenely long book. Sputnik Sweetheart I read on the plane going home for Christmas the first year. I know that Nicole gave me Three Cups of Tea and Danny loaned me Amerika.

I realized when I started to keep this list that a lot of the books I read were about people in unfamiliar places or circumstances. I'm not sure if it was totally a coincidence, but it was comforting to know that I wasn't the first to deal with being a foreigner and that people had survived much worse.

Like Holly, I'm really glad that I had a time that was relatively free of modern distractions that I could use to read. Some of my best reading got done in the hammock when the electricity was out. I'm not going to count the pages (because I'm lazy and have limited internet time), but with Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings, I'd say well over 4,000 pages were about wizards, vampires, and elves, and I'm not at all ashamed about reading about wizards and elves.

1. A Wild Sheep Chase, Haruki Murakami
2. Underworld, Don DeLillo
3. Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder
4. Empire Falls, Richard Russo
5. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
6. To Bury Our Fathers, Sergio Ramirez
7. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
8. Shalimar the Clown, Salman Rushdie
9. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
10. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
11. Dance Dance Dance, Haruki Murakami
12. American Gods, Neil Gaiman
13. Interview with a Vampire, Anne Rice
14. The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien
15. The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien
16. Raise High the Roofbeam Carpenters & Seymour, an Introduction, J.D. Salinger
17. The Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouac
18. The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Nifenegger
19. Einstein: His Life and Universe
20. Running with Scissors, Augusten Burroughs
21. Jitterbug Perfume, Tom Robbins
22. Naked, David Sedaris
23. Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer, James L. Swanson
24. For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
25. My Car in Managua, Forrest D. Colburn
26. Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
27. Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson
28. Sputnik Sweetheart, Haruki Murakami
29. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers
30. The Death of Ben Linder, Joan Kruckewitt
31. The Dante Club, Matthew Pearl
32. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Patrick Suskind
33. The Celestine Prophecy, James Redfield
34. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, Chuck Klosterman
35. Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert
36. A Million Little Pieces, James Frey
37. Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen
38. Life of Pi, Yann Martel
39. Ella Minnow Pea, Mark Dunn
40. The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq, George Packer
41. The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. After Dark, Haruki Murakami
43. Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller
44. A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini
45. Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, Ben Fountain
46. The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
47. The Third Chimpanzee, Jared Diamond
48. Haunted, Chuck Palaniuk
49. Between a Rock and a Hard Place, Aron Ralston
50. Law School Confidential, Robert Miller
51. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
52. The House of Spirits, Isabel Allende
53. A Dog Year, Jon Katz
54. Lamb, Christopher Moore
55. River Town, Peter Hessler
56. Dry, Augusten Burroughs
57. Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer
58. Marley and Me, John Grogan
59. Amerika: The Man Who Disappeared, Franz Kafka
60. The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
61. The Yiddish Policeman's Union, Michael Chabon
62. Straight Man, Richard Russo
63. Oracle Bones, Peter Hessler
64. Survival of the Sickest, Sharon Moalem
65. Oh the Glory of It All, Sean Wilsey
66. What is the What, Dave Eggers
67. The four Twilight books, Stephanie Meyer
68. Sex Lives of Cannibals, J. Maarten Troost
69. Getting Stoned with Savages, J. Maarten Troost

I'm sure that there are at least a couple of books that I'm forgetting about, and I have another 3 that I've been reading on and off for way too long. We just gave away our TV, so maybe in the 12 days we have left I can finish another couple of books.

Holly's Book List

2009-06-04T15:15:00.001-05:00

Peace Corps has certainly given me a lot of free time to read books. Some books that I read were amazing and are now among my favorites, while others I read out of sheer boredom and desperation. Bold books are my top ten favorites, italicized books are the ten I ~~hated most~~ liked least. Here are, in the order that I read them, the books I read cover to cover during Peace Corps (skimming and quitting don't count):

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards (432 pages)
The History of Love: A Novel by Nicole Krauss (272 pages)
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder (352 pages)
Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert (304 pages)
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (352 pages)
A Million Little Pieces by James Frey (448 pages)
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (371 pages)
Marley & Me by John Grogan (304 pages)
A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel by Haruki Murakami (368 pages)
Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami (416 pages)
Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer by James L. Swanson (496 pages)
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (336 pages)
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (336 pages)
Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins (352 pages)
The Dante Club: A Novel by Matthew Pearl (464 pages)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel by Haruki Murakami (624 pages)
Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu by J. Maarten Troost (256 pages)
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (320 pages)
American Taboo: A Murder in the Peace Corps by Philip Weiss (384 pages)
Naked by David Sedaris (224 pages)
Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace... One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin (368 pages)
Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn (224 pages)
My Car in Managua by Forrest D. Colburn (148 pages)
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind (272 pages)
The Freedom Writers Diary by Erin Gruwell (320 pages)
Running with Scissors: A Memoir by Augusten Burroughs (352 pages)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling (784 pages)
Atonement by Ian McEwan (368 pages)
Good Owners, Great Dogs by Brian Kilcommons (288 pages)
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (560 pages)
Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert (352 pages)
Water for Elephants: A Novel by Sara Gruen (350 pages)
How to Be Good by Nick Hornby (320 pages)
The Dog Whisperer: A Compassionate, Nonviolent Approach to Dogtraining by Paul Owens (256 pages)
Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua by Stephen Kinzer (450 pages)
The PowerScore LSAT Logic Games Bible by David M. Killoran (402 pages)
The PowerScore LSAT Logical Reasoning Bible by David M. Killoran (541 pages)
LSAT 180 by Kaplan (368 pages)
The Official LSAT Superprep (405 pages)
Law School Confidential by Robert H. Miller (352 pages)
Graduate Admissions Essays: Write Your Way Into the Graduate School of Your Dreams by Donald Asher (256 pages)
River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze by Peter Hessler (432 pages)
The Ivey Guide to Law School Admissions: Straight Advice on Essays, Resumes, Interviews, and More by Anna Ivey (324 pages)
A Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs, and Me by Jon Katz (240 pages)
The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeanette Walls (288 pages)
How to Get Into the Top Law Schools by Richard Montauk (560 pages)
Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs with a Film or Digital Camera by Bryan Peterson (160 pages)
The Digital Photography Book by Scott Kelby (240 pages)
The Elements of Photography: Understanding and Creating Sophisticated Images by Angela Faris Belt (384 pages)
The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby (448 pages)
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (544 pages)
New Moon by Stephenie Meyer (608 pages)
Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer (640 pages)
Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer (768 pages)
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach (336 pages)
Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins (320 pages)
The Dogs of Babel: A Novel by Carolyn Parkhurst (288 pages)

That's a total of 22,689 pages, for an average of 30 pages a day (though 3,888 of those pages were about wizards, vampires, and werewolves). I don't think I'll ever have time to do this much reading again over a two year period of time, but I think I'm okay with that.

Mother's Day

2009-06-04T14:37:00.001-05:00

To have been posted May 30, 2009

May 30th is Mother’s Day in Nicaragua, one of the biggest holidays of the year. School is canceled the Friday before, and the Thursday before is a big assembly for all the moms to come and be celebrated. Here’s one of my school’s many murals dedicated to mothers:

Last weekend we finally traveled back to Carazo to visit our Nicaraguan moms and catch up with them one last time. It really didn’t feel like more than two years ago that we first arrived at their houses for training and started our service here, and we were shocked to see how much our host siblings had grown. Here were Williamcito and Claudia in June 2007:

And here they are now with some bubbles we gave them:

Here’s Paul’s host sister Alejandra two years ago:

And here she is with Paul now:

Happy Mother’s Day to our Nica moms… we really do appreciate all the work they did for us, all the patience they had for us, and everything they taught us. We will miss them a lot!

A limerick

2009-06-03T20:13:00.003-05:00

We know we’ve neglected our blog and our “40 posts in 40 days” commitment, but we think it’s been justified… we’ve had a pretty crazy week. Here’s what happened:

This week gave us a crazy story to tell
when our landlady said, “Here no more you can dwell!”
She kicked us to the street
in a manner not very discreet
So we said, “With 16 days left, that’s just swell.”

But this story has a happy end.
Our friends came to help and us they did defend.
We found a new house
containing not even one mouse
And here we’ll be until home the plane us does send.

The story is much more complicated, but I think the limerick does it justice. If you want to hear more, the prose version of the events is free, but the epic poem and iambic pentameter versions come at an extra charge.

Alo, last week this blog had is 10,000th visitor! Thanks so much for reading, and we promise we’ll catch up with our neglected posts soon.

Tacos La Salle

2009-05-29T10:51:00.002-05:00

Another dining option for those days when we don't have any dinner ideas, are too tired to cook, or are too poor to order pizza is tacos. There's this adorable little taco ~~truck~~ motorcycle in the central park that makes delicious chicken tacos for C$15 (75 cents) each. They're not the typical hard shell tacos that we were used to, but they're pretty yummy.

When I first discovered Tacos La Salle I would ask first if they had tacos, and then if there was chicken. I eventually figured out that they don't sell anything other than chicken tacos, so now I just ask for "two." They also know me well enough to leave off the ketchup and crema from our tacos.

The chicken is sort of sweet, and while I like to eat my tacos with some chile (a mix of onions and vinegar) and cabbage; Holly prefers to eat hers plain.

20 - Palí

2009-05-28T08:48:00.000-05:00

We could do most of our grocery shopping in the market... it's a little bit cheaper and the produce is a little bit fresher, but it's also an inconvenience and disgusting. Instead, we go to Palí, the Wal-Mart-owned grocery store that is found in most cities throughout Nicaragua. As far as grocery stores go, it's pretty shabby, but it keeps us supplied with the staples most of the time.

Here is the refrigerated vegetables section. I haven't really been adventurous enough to try most of the veggies in here. I can recognize about half of them, but sometimes when you think it looks familiar it turns out to be flavorless chilote:

Once you pick out your vegetables, you have to take them to the one scale at the back of the store to be weighed. Forgetting to weigh your vegetables before you check out is the biggest faux pas you can possibly make at the grocery store. Yet, I try to put it off because most of my fellow shoppers have no sense of line-making or first-come-first-serve, so you have to fight to get your vegetables weighed along with anyone buying rice, sugar, or beans in bulk. This was a slow day at Palí, but trust me, it can get pretty heated.

Most of the food in Palí I just pass by without noticing. There's no way that we're ever going to be desperate enough to buy sardines, spicy vienna sausages, or whatever other abundance of canned meats are deemed worthy of an entire aisle:

Here's a cross-shot of the store. Note the weird prices: I'm convinced that it's a scam because the cashiers don't have exact change to give you so you end up losing 3 or 4 cents every time that you check out. If you buy that 3-liter of Pepsi for C$26.30 and pay with with C$27 you're lucky to get C$0.50 back, but best case scenario is that you lose out on C$0.20 (Palí accepts cash only, by the way). Also, since there's no better place to say it, I'll point out that you have to pay for your plastic bags. There is absolutely nothing "green" about this--it's just the store being super cheap.

About a quarter of the small store is devoted to food. Half is cleaning supplies and toiletries (which is really just a subset of cleaning supplies) and the remaining quarter is rum:

You might imagine that taking pictures in a grocery store was exceedingly awkward. It was, but it was worth it for posterity.

Showtime: The Small Screen

2009-05-27T08:59:00.002-05:00

Though we love our visits to the movie theater, it's not convenient for frequent visits and is too expensive. That doesn't mean, though, that no one here gets to see the latest movies. Though there are no Blockbusters or Netflix, there are pirated movies for sale on nearly every street corner, either in wooden display stands or laid out on the sidewalk.

It's important to ask about the quality of the movie and if it's dubbed or subtitled. The very newest movies are always really bad quality, like handheld camcorders in movie theaters where you can hear people coughing or laughing and someone's head covers part of the screen. I think that out of this picture, Angels & Demons is in that phase. Of similar quality are the combo DVDs that might contain three or four movies. Popular combos are Steven Segal movies, the Harry Potter movies, or other animated children's movies. Though they're really fuzzy and often hard to hear, four movies in one is a pretty good deal.

After a movie's been out for a while, its quality increases to like an award show preview so every once in a while a notice will come up on the screen saying, "For Awards Consideration Purposes Only." These pictures are good quality, but I don't understand how non-English speakers can watch them: the subtitles are always comically bad and often make no sense at all.

The jackpot is when it's a DVD "con menú" and sometimes they even include the special features and deleted scenes. Most movie salespeople are pretty honest when you ask about the quality, and many even have portable DVD players so that you can preview a movie before you buy (movies always cost C$20, or $1).

The movie sellers also keep big stacks of movies that they'll hand to you to browse through, or they'll hand us things they think we might like. Normally, their guesses are way off and they try to convince us to buy the newest Bratz movie or Anime Combo 2 en 1 or something like that.

We've seen most of these movies and many volunteers trade movies when they come across a good one ("good" in terms of cinematic value and/or good video quality):

Obviously, we would never condone the purchase or viewing of pirated films. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

My worst day here

2009-05-26T20:10:00.001-05:00

Normally we try to keep our blog relatively positive and censor ourselves from saying a lot of the things we really want to say, not posting on the blog when we're too angry, etc. In the (distant) future I'm sure I'll look back fondly on Nicaragua and might even miss being here, but this is not one of those times.

I may regret writing this post and delete it when I feel better in the morning, but until then I need to vent and get my frustrations off my chest.

I've been working really hard for the last few months on a manual of lesson plans, games, and classroom strategies to accompany the new national English curriculum. We've been working on it in a small committee and asking for the input of all the English volunteers here. The committee members have been working, but I've been especially stressed that very few of the other volunteers agreed to help us, and most of those that did agree backed out because they're "too busy" or it's too hard, leaving the few of us with even more work to do. I spent the day today in the Peace Corps office working on the manual, and that always leaves me exceptionally stressed as I realize how much work there is to do and how little time there is to do it. Peace Corps (Cuerpo de Paz) is often jokingly called the "Cuerpo de Paseo" (hanging out corps) because people don't actually work, and that seems to be the case with many in my group--they no longer even go to school, let alone help with any extra projects.

After traveling home I took Dora outside since she had been cooped up in the house all day by herself. She went about her business like she normally does, and happened to stop to poop in the street in front of a house where people were sitting outside in their patio. As she started going to the bathroom, they started yelling at us and picking up rocks to throw at Dora even though I had my plastic sack in hand to pick up the poop. Though I told the people to stop yelling and not to throw anything since I was going to pick it up, they continued so I ran Dora home to get her safely inside before they could hurt her. I went back with the bag to pick up the poop and calmly tell the people that it really wasn't necessary, that we're responsible dog owners, and that Dora's poop being on the ground for 15 seconds is nothing compared to all the street dogs that roam around freely.

I had hoped for an apology, but didn't get that at all. They told me they were going to call the mayor's office and report me because a dog pooping is prohibited (?), they started laughing at me for being upset, and told that they'll throw rocks at Dora to kill her if they see her again.

I don't really know what we're going to do for our last 22 days here, but I do know that I hate being here and just want to go home.

Showtime: The Big Screen

2009-05-26T09:33:00.000-05:00

One of the best escapes from the heat and the stresses of everyday life is a trip to the movie theater. In Managua there are several movie theaters that are pretty darn similar to theaters in the US: air conditioning, popcorn, comfy seats, (relatively) overpriced sodas, the whole works. Managua has two theaters that we've visited, Metrocentro (which is near the Peace Corps office) and Galerias (which is on the highway to Masaya). Here's Galerias' movie theater:

And Galerias at night:

We saw our first theater movie in Nicaragua about a month and a half into training. For those two hours during Pirates of the Caribbean 3, the four of us (Paul, me, Kelly, and Nicole) completely forgot we were in Nicaragua; I won't lie, we were all a little sad to walk out of the theater and realize we were still here. Paul's host mom threatened to spank us for getting home so late (about 7:00), but it was completely worth it, though at that moment I wasn't quite sure we'd last the full two years.

Since then, we've gone to see a few movies that we legitimately wanted to see, but we often just need a break from reality and see the best thing that's playing and that's subtitled (some movies are subtitled and others are dubbed). I think this is a complete list of the movies we saw in the theater while we were here:

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Ocean's 13
Gone Baby Gone
Beowulf
Sex & The City Movie
Gran Torino
Changeling
Fast and Furious

Tickets cost about $2.50 a person and refreshments actually aren't that expensive; we usually go for a popcorn and soda (though no free refills here), but recently have tried nachos and hot dogs to make the experience that much more authentic. Finally, most trips end with a visit to the (also air-conditioned) La Colonia Hyper supermarket that's next door to the mall to buy other fachento goods like supplies for mini pizzas, cans of Dr. Pepper, cookie mixes, and pickles.

Coyotes

2009-05-25T10:55:00.000-05:00

Before we came here, I thought coyotes were just the predatory canines found throughout North America and the guys that smuggle people across the US-Mexico border. It turns out that coyotes are also guys that hang out in the park and change dollars for córdobas and vice versa.

We have to change money every month because we earn córdobas and pay rent in dollars; the first 10 or so times that Holly and I employed the services of a coyote we were convinced that they would rip us off. There's no regulatory agency or any avenue for complaint, but they are unfailingly honest, which is surprising for guys that pack heat and carry around a huge wad of cash. In the US someone that fits that description would definitely be a shady character.

You can't see it in this picture, but coyotes always wear fanny packs. The fanny pack contains a gun and their trusty mini calculator.

Here's Nicole changing some of her hard-earned córdobas for dolares. When we first got here the exchange rate was 18:1 but now it's a little over 20 córdobas to the dollar. Also, coyotes offer a slightly better value over banks and bonus drive-up service.

Rutas

2009-05-24T09:29:00.008-05:00

In addition to the buses and micros that go from city to city in Nicaragua, larger cities like Managua and Masaya also have rutas or urbanos that are neighborhood buses within the city. In Masaya, for instance, there are rutas that go from the market to the neighborhoods of Monimbó, San Carlos, Sacuanjoche, La Villa, and El Estadio. All the rutas in Masaya cost C$3 (15 cents) no matter where you get on or off. I never ended up getting a bike, so I took the urbano to school every day (Paul always tried to make me feel guilty by saying a bike would be cheaper than the cost of the urbanos every day, but after doing the math, I realize my daily commute over these two years cost less than the three bicycles he bought).

The urbanos that go to Paul's school just got upgraded so they're now really nice charter buses, but most of them are just obnoxiously decorated school buses like the one I used to take to school when we lived in Monimbó:

When we moved to the stadium, my daily commute improved significantly (though it really wasn't bad to begin with). In Monimbó, there were only two urbanos and they stopped running to eat lunch between 12:15 and 1:00, which was exactly when I needed to go to school. Now in San Juan (our neighborhood) there are three urbanos that run all day; I can count on one to pass every eight minutes like clockwork, and I only have to walk a few steps from our front door to catch it. Here's the route our ruta takes (P.S. I'm proud of this map, and think I'm probably the first person to put a Masaya ruta's route on the Internet):

Here are our neighborhood rutas. This one is my favorite because there is more leg room, the seat covers aren't ripped as badly as in the others, the the cobrador (the guy who takes the money, standing in the second picture) is nice. It's parked in front of the market, and I always get off there then walk the block to school.

This is my second favorite ruta. Its driver doesn't really like to come to a complete stop for me to get off, so I always have to jump out really quickly.

This is our arch enemy ruta, though I've never been willing to wait the extra 8 minutes for another one to pass in order to boycott it. We hate it because the cobrador is mean and won't let Dora on; he tells us that dogs are prohibited, but this is clearly a lie since Dora has ridden on dozens of other buses in this country. Once I did spill a bag of dog food on this ruta and maybe that's why he's mad, but Dora had nothing to do with that. Besides, if he would have relaxed his no-dogs-on-the-bus rule, the spill would have been a non-issue, anyway.

I can only hope to find public transportation in Palo Alto that's both as convenient and cost-effective as the urbanos here. I'll keep you posted.

Economics of Dog Food

2009-05-23T09:39:00.003-05:00

Note: Holly and I realize that the last week of posts have really centered around our cuisine, and that this is unfair to Dora, so I hope this corrects any unfairness.

Since she was a puppy, we've fed Dora Pedigree because it was the only brand we had heard of before (the second most promising brand is called Dogui). When we took Dora home last year, we found the exact same Pedigree puppy food that we buy here, but she loved it. It took us a while to figure out that the difference is probably that the food came in a sealed package and wasn't stale like the food that we buy her from huge bags in the market here. You can find full bags of dog food here, but due to some awful economic decision it is cheaper to buy individual pounds of dog food than it is to buy a whole bag; we would end up paying 50% more if we bought a 25 lb bag instead of 25 individual pounds. I'd like to introduce you to Nicanomics.

Though prices for Pedigree are pretty much consistent throughout Masaya, it's a little risky to buy it from unknown vendors because the less scrupulous ones mix it with lower grade foods. Dora will be shocked when we get to the US and not only is there fresh Pedigree, but there's also a much wider selection of dog food, up to and including free-range organic vegetarian human-grade prime rib-flavored tofu dog food. I hope she'll share with us when we fall on hard times.

Then again, Dora also likes horse poop, so maybe Pedigree is all she needs.

Hammocks

2009-05-22T09:07:00.001-05:00

When we moved to our new neighborhood last September, we were devastated that our new house (with its drop ceilings and lack of exposed wooden beams) has nowhere to hang a hammock except outside in our garage. To pour salt in the wound, our new neighborhood is the heart of the hammock industry in Nicaragua, and I would venture to guess in all of Central America (see picture below of the souvenir "Panama" hammock). There is quite a variety of hammock styles: hammocks with a wooden beam, hammocks without the wooden beam, hammock chairs (like the Panama hammock), baby hammocks (like the neon blue one in the picture below), lazy hammock chairs, and banana hammocks (seriously, hammocks to hold literal bananas). Add to that that hammocks can be ordered in any combination of colors and materials (most hammocks are made out of colored string, manila, but others are made from fabric or plastic) and you quickly realize that the possibilities for relaxation are endless.

Training Youth Group

2009-05-21T12:42:00.001-05:00

One of the rites of passage to become a Peace Corps Volunteer in Nicaragua is creating a youth group and doing a project with your youth group during training. I posted a long time ago about my youth group, but never posted the pictures to prove that we got our project done. At long last, here they are!

Here was our first youth group meeting:

One of the requirements for training is that we give two charlas, or workshops, to the kids on issues relevant to them. They wanted a charla about how to prepare for a job interview. The night of the presentation, the power went out, so we did it by candlelight.

The youth group also played a lot of games like Uno.

To raise money for our sign project, we had a soup sale where we made soup, sold buckets of it to people in the town, then delivered it to them for lunch.

It was a success, but I think Shannon and I did more than our fair share of vegetable chopping.

Here's the old sign; the plan was to dig it up and put the new one in its place.

But it was quickly decided that they'd just put the new sign in front of the old sign, then remove the old sign later. As far as I know, the old sign still stands directly behind the new one.

At the end of training, we had a presentation and celebration for all the youth groups from our five training towns. Here's our group giving its presentation:

And here's our official youth group portrait:

Repostería Castro

2009-05-20T10:52:00.000-05:00

Repostería Castro is right next to where I wait for the bus to take me to school. Sometimes that's a long wait, so I make my way down there to get some Torta Combinada (chocolate/vanilla swirl cake). Holly is a big fan of the galletas de colores (sprinkle sugar cookies) so I'll usually pick up some of those, too. They have lots of decorated cakes and other deserts, but I haven't really had much reason to buy Sponge Bob or Rosita Fresita birthday cakes... we usually just eat pizza.

Cashews?

2009-05-19T08:39:00.000-05:00

Cashews, or semilla de mariñon, are grown in Nicaragua and are sold pretty much everywhere. Most of the vendors in Masaya have learned the word "cashew" and are really proud of it so they like to find gringos to practice. The cashews are unsalted and really good; I'm sure if we find something like it in the US it will be $10 a baggie, but here they're just 50 cents.

30

2009-05-18T09:00:00.011-05:00

When people ask me (and they often do) if I have children, my response is usually, "No, but I have a dog and she's like my baby." It generally makes people uncomfortable enough that they don't push the issue further, but it's not that far from the truth; Paul and I have definitely turned into "dog people" and have realized that whether or not people like Dora or dogs in general is a pretty good litmus test by which to judge them.

Before joining Peace Corps, one of the things we read was that many volunteers get dogs during their service, and we had this same plan long before we even knew we'd be coming to Nicaragua. Once we arrived I had some cold feet, but I finally relented and we wound up with Dora. Though having a dog isn't always easy--the late-night potty breaks, keeping her from eating horse poop, fretting about her broken leg--it's definitely been worth it and Dora has been one of the best parts of our Peace Corps service.

Though her first impression of America wasn't quite ideal, she's agreed to come back with us on the condition that there will be lots of car rides, an endless supply of liver treats, and no monkeys.

February 10, 2008

February 26, 2008

March 1, 2008

March 4, 2008

March 19, 2008

March 31, 2008

April 2, 2008

April 19, 2008

May 25, 2008

December 18, 2008

December 26, 2008

May 16, 2009

P.S. My brother graduates high school today, valedictorian of his class and a graduation speaker. I wish I could be there! Happy graduation, Jake... I'm proud of you!

The New Cathedral

2009-05-17T08:29:00.000-05:00

After the 1972 earthquake that destroyed 90% of Managua, the cathedral was condemned, and the Catholic Church decided to replace it with the Ugliest Cathedral Ever.

It was finished in 1993 and is understandably controversial. It's supposedly the most recently built cathedral in the world, but sometimes people play fast and loose with their facts, so there's my disclaimer.

Helados

2009-05-17T08:22:00.002-05:00

Choco bananos are, well, chocolate-covered bananas and helados (or caritas, depending on geography), are really delicious frozen treats that come in plastic bags. Like soda and other beverages you just bite off a corner and eat it through that hole. You will find them in a variety of flavors: fruit, peanut, milk, banana and milk, coconut, nancite, and some others that I can't remember. The quality and contents vary greatly because they're sold and made in any given person's house. Sometimes the fruit helados have papaya or watermelon, but the ones that I got today only had pineapple and banana. Regardless of the contents, they're delicious (and cheap--5 cents each).

León at Night

2009-05-16T14:13:00.001-05:00

This was one of the first pictures we took with our new camera; I was experimenting with the long shutter speeds at night in León. I'm fairly sure there were some motorcycles and cars missing a headlight that passed, which explains why some of the lights don't match up exactly.

Pizza

2009-05-15T08:03:00.042-05:00

Whenever we're I'm too lazy/tired to cook, we sometimes like to play pizza roulette. It works like this: you call up Telepizza or Pizza Gold (the two Nicaraguan pizza places in Masaya) and you request whatever toppings you want. Two times out of three you will get a pizza with missing ingredients, added ham, or both.

This is a pizza we ordered a while ago; we asked for tomato (check) and garlic (missing) but not ham (it came with ham). The default pizza here is ham and ketchup, so we're at a big disadvantage if we want something else. This was a lot more frustrating when I was a vegetarian and was a leading reason why I switched back to eating meat, but it's still annoying now.

This was temporarily solved when we ordered a lot from Pizza Gold. They got to know me as Don Paul; I would call, start talking, and they would cut me off and know immediately who I was, what we wanted, and where we wanted it delivered. When our sitemate John moved into our old house and ordered Pizza Gold, they were really confused why a different gringo wanted a different pizza delivered to Don Paul's house, but they eventually allowed it.

It's kind of sad to admit, but one of our favorite restaurants in Masaya is Papa John's... okay, it's our favorite, but there's not much else to choose from! It's a little pricey, but when we're ready to splurge, there's no better use of $15 than a large pepperoni from PJ's. It always comes exactly like we order it arrives right when they say it will on an awesome pizza moto.

A picture isn't even really necessary since it's exactly the same as in the US, but here it is:

Even though Papa John's isn't healthy, Nicaraguan, or cheap it's been a good comfort food for us and has been there to celebrate election day, Christmas, Easter, birthdays, and many other milestones during the last two years.

Sickness

2009-05-14T08:53:00.008-05:00

This is the Peace Corps-approved laboratory in Masaya; I'm sorry to say that we've both (though Paul more than me) made many trips here to drop off a variety of, um, samples.

We were just realizing the other day how tough Peace Corps has been on our health and well-being. We've had our fair share of bacterial infections, parasites, sinus infections, and other mysterious combinations of symptoms. Though we're not always sick enough to call the doctor or start a round of antibiotics, there have been many days where we are battling a cough, runny nose, stomach ache, or just don't feel good; it seems that on any given day during these past two years, one (or both) of us is beginning to feel ill, in the throes of a sickness, or recovering from an ailment.

I think there are a lot of factors that made our Peace Corps service so rough. Good nutrition has been really difficult for us; our diet consists mainly of rice and beans, macaroni and cheese, Corn Flakes, pizza, and pasta--a carbohydrate lover's paradise. Better food is available in places like Granada or Managua, but it's far away and not feasible on a Peace Corps Volunteer's budget.

Similarly, sanitation issues are an ever-present concern. The water here is not clean, and though we buy and drink five gallon jugs of water at home, we also drink drinks made from tap water when we're at school or a friend's house. This is a risk since any food or drink that we don't prepare ourselves (including at restaurants) could very well be a bacterial infection or parasite waiting to happen, but it's not very practical to go two years only eating things we prepared from start to finish. Add to that the normal risks of handling dirty money, using public transportation, and a lack of running water and sinks to facilitate handwashing, and it's no surprise that we've had our share of sickness.

The climate and weather also contribute to our illnesses. During the dry season it's dusty and easy to have respiratory problems, and during the rainy season the always-present puddles are havens for germs and gross stuff like leptospirosis. It's also really hot. Even though the heat may not cause diagnosable illnesses, it doesn't help our energy or make it easier to recover from other ailments.

I just finished a round of antibiotics two days ago but I'm sick again (which is why was I was at the lab yesterday to take a picture) from a combination of any or all of these factors. Keep your fingers crossed that it's another bacterial infection and that I won't have something new--malaria, dengue, or swine flu--to add to my list of Peace Corps illnesses.

Public Service Announcement

2009-05-13T07:37:00.001-05:00

Look. You might think it's cool to pee on the side of someone's house, or you might just be too drunk to find your way home, but either way urine trouble. No orinar aquí.

The More You Know.

Eskimo

2009-05-12T08:22:00.003-05:00

I've recently been looking through our blog's archive to find things that we've neglected to post about, and I was shocked to realize that we've never devoted a post to Eskimo. Eskimo (pronounced eskEEEmo) is Nicaragua's main brand of ice cream. What Eskimo lacks in quality or tastiness, it makes up for in availability; I imagine that every town, no matter how small, has at least one cooler with Eskimo popsicles for sale in some pulpería somewhere.

Even my small training town had an Eskimo freezer and it was the perfect way to relax and gossip after a long day of Spanish classes. We frequently ate Eskimo after our bigger group trainings, and when we moved to Masaya it was easy to keep the tradition alive since there was a full Eskimo ice cream shop just a block from our house:

One of Eskimo's most important characteristics is that the workers inside are always really mean. I feel slight pangs of guilt for painting all Eskimos with such a wide brush, but I've eaten at many Eskimos all throughout the country, and it's just true. If I receive a cup of ice cream after ordering a cone, that's just too bad. If I want a three córdoba (15 cent) popcicle but only have a C$5 (25 cent) coin, I'm out of luck--I'd better just come back when I andar sencillo (have correct change), because they don't have it and I'm silly for thinking that they should keep a few córdobas around to make change themselves.

Though poor service and melty popsicles in the States would certainly earn a place on my blacklist, Eskimos here know I have no alternative and that I'll keep coming back for more. Here's our newly-remodeled Eskimo:

And a payasito (little clown) we once got when we were out with Dora. She was thirsty and we had forgotten to bring her a water dish, so she drank water out of the cup when we were done.

Actually, it's not quite true that we have no alternative to going to Eskimo to get some ice cream; there are also Eskimo bicycles, Nicaragua's answer to the ice cream truck. Fruit, pillows, and universal remote controls salespeople pass down our street peddling their wares daily, so of course it makes sense for us to be able to buy popsicles as well. The difference, though, is that while the other salespeople charge the same price for their goods whether you buy them from the door-to-door sales or at the market, the Eskimo cyclists' prices are higher; that C$3 dulce du leche popsicle is C$5 from the man on the bike--a 60% markup!

Despite the surly Eskimo employees and the general complete lack of quality, the Eskimo treats like Tu y Yo, Grande con maní, sundae royal, and Cocoa will always have a special place in my heart and hips.

The Jungle

2009-05-11T08:04:00.002-05:00

The market is absolutely disgusting, and these photos do justice to all of its gross-out qualities. Once you get close to this area of the market the smell is overwhelming and you just want to hold your breath and power walk through it.

It goes without saying that in the open-air market there's no air conditioning or sneeze-guarded coolers. The most advanced disease-prevention technology used is the fly swatter. It should also go without saying that we don't buy our meat from here.

Moises, Katie, and Luna

2009-05-10T09:36:00.000-05:00

Katie is another volunteer from our English teacher group who lives about 20 minutes from us. She and her fiancé, Moises, are always there for us to babysit Dora when we have visitors or have to be in Managua, and they really go the extra mile--lots of walks, playing fetch, baths when she needs it, and even a blowdry. Now Katie and Moises are getting married and we couldn't be happier for both of them.
One day in November, Katie and Moises brought Luna to Masaya to play with Brown Dog and Dora. This was near the end of their romping and roughhousing, so they were tired enough to sit still (or collapse, in Dora's case) for a picture. Thanks to Kristel for the expert photography.

P.S. Happy Mother's Day to our moms!

Prepared

2009-05-09T08:11:00.002-05:00

About two months ago when I was at the grocery store to buy butter, I noticed that there wasn't any. When I got home I asked at the neighborhood pulpería if they had any. They did, and though it was a different brand than the Parmalat that we're used to, we were getting desperate. I took it home and it was rancid. I'm not sure if all La Perfecta brand butter is this gross or if it had just gone bad, but this was the beginning of the 2009 Butter Drought that has apparently scarred me. I asked in the grocery store where all the butter had gone, and apparently something was wrong with the machine that does the packaging. Fortunately, the shortage just ended, but I've been stockpiling butter as if preparing for a visit from Paula Deen, and I don't really know if we're going to be able to eat all of this butter in the 39 days we have left.

40

2009-05-08T11:40:00.004-05:00

As of today, we are forty days away from June 17, our Close of Service date and the day we come back to the States! We decided that we'd like to try and do a post a day for these last 40 days, and in particular we want to focus on pictures that we really like but haven't posted before, or on everyday sorts of things that may seem mundane to us now but that we'll want to remember once we're back in the U.S.

This was taken from our hotel's balcony in León. I love the tile sidewalk and steps that get really slippery when it rains, and I love that the woman selling her bagged refresco drinks is yawning.

We'd love suggestions for pictures to take or things to post about in these last few weeks, so please let us know if there's something we should take pictures of or something about our time here that you'd like to know more about.

We're in the home stretch and the rain just started this week, so I think we'll make it!

Stanford

2009-05-07T23:38:00.002-05:00

A few weeks after our trip to the East coast, I returned to the US for a trip to Palo Alto ("tall stick"), California to visit Stanford Law School. Though we needed to buy sweaters and mittens for our visit to the East, the only things I found myself lacking at Stanford were sunglasses and sunscreen; the weather was beautiful, in the middle 70s to low 80s every day.

If I were choosing a law school based on weather and asthetics, Stanford would have won hands down. As it turned out, though, Stanford would have been my choice even without those bonuses; it was the perfect mix of all the things I loved about the other schools: it is one of the country's best law schools and will certainly open up a lot of opportunities to me, it had beautiful facilities, a really welcoming faculty, and students that seemed genuinely happy to be there; and it just felt right even in the first few hours of my visit. After talking to Paul on the phone one of my last nights there, he finally confessed that he had been rooting for the bike-friendly, dog-friendly, warm weather, close-to-an-Ikea Palo Alto all along, and we came to the surprisingly easy decision that we'll call Palo Alto home for the next few years.

I can't really capture the sense of community or the academic opportunities or the gut feeling that I got there, but I can express the beautiful surroundings, so here goes. Palm Drive is the famous one mile stretch of road lined with palm trees leading into the Stanford campus and the quad:

Here's the Stanford Memorial Church in the quad:

Stanford has fountains all over the campus, and unlike Truman, Stanford both keeps its fountains full and allows people to enjoy them. On the weekday I was there, there were students in swimsuits sunbathing in the fountains and others wading in to cool off between classes. Over the weekend there were tons of families on campus riding bikes or rollerblading or having a picnic, and plenty of people there with their dogs playing frisbee or cooling off in a fountain:

The law school itself is in one U-shaped building just a few minutes' walk from the student union, bookstore, post office, and the heart of campus. The middle section has the law school café with a beautiful patio out in the back and some conference rooms upstairs, the right section has the classrooms, and the left wing has the library and faculty offices.

Here's the view from the second story of the law school building. The skies really were that bright blue.

Here's the campus bookstore:

And this is the old student union:

Stanford has a tall tower, the Hoover Institute, that houses a think tank, library, and visiting faculty offices (Condoleezza Rice apparently had her office there). You can also ride to the top and take pictures, so I did. Here's the view to the north with the San Francisco Bay in the background:

And here's the view to the south of the law school building and the mountains back behind:

After the three days of admitted students events, I was sold. To make the trip even better, our friends Keith and Erin made the trip up from San Diego to meet me, catch up, and explore Palo Alto and San Francisco. Though the 7-1/2 hour trip is enough of a trek by itself, Keith ane Erin deserve even more credit for coming considering that they made the trip with their dog, survived the LA traffic, and spent seemingly endless hours in Wal-Mart thanks to a tire blowout. They finally arrived, and we stayed up late catching up. They (understandably) spent the next morning sleeping in while I finished the admitted students weekend by having breakfast with a lot of my future classmates and observing a class. That afternoon, Keith, Erin, and I reunited and went into San Francisco to Fisherman's Wharf and took a boat ride around the bay. We went under the Golden Gate bridge:

Here are Keith and Erin with the Golden Gate Bridge behind them:

And we went around the island of Alcatraz:

One of my favorite parts of the day were the sea lions that camp out on the docks of Pier 39. They were pretty noisy, a little smelly, and I'm sure Dora would have lumped them into the monkey family, but I thought they were pretty cute.

More than a year after starting the law school process and beginning to think about post-Peace Corps plans, it's a great relief to know where I'll be studying and where we'll be living. After having no control over where we did our Peace Corps service, it's quite the change to have had full control over where we'll be living next, and to have picked a place that's so easy to be exited about. Just today Paul found a list of 103 things to do in San Francisco; I've got #56 covered, so only 102 to go!

9,055 Frequent Flyer Miles Later...

2009-05-03T17:07:00.006-05:00

In March, we made a trip to the US to visit many of the east coast law schools that I was considering. The schools I visited were having admitted students weekends in which they invite their admits to come and visit (most schools reimburse travel costs, which is why this trip was possible) and they talk about the school's strengths and give the admitted students the opportunity to sit through a million Q&As and panel discussions to try and make the law school decision a little easier. Though I had hoped that I would love one school and hate all the rest (and thereby have a really easy decision), that of course didn't happen and I liked all the schools for very different reasons.

After sitting in Managua's airport for a four hour delay, we finally arrived in Boston. Though our Google Map directions to our hotel didn't quite work out, we did get a nice tour of Boston at night.

We brought along all the pants and long-sleeved shirts that we had, but we still had to do a couple of emergency Wal-Mart and Target trips to get weather-appropriate clothing.

Our first stop was New Haven, Connecticut to visit Yale. The architecture was really pretty, but since Yale rejected me just a few weeks after the visit, no need to dwell much on the school (no hard feelings, though).

By far the most successful part of the Connecticut trip was our visit to its gigantic Ikea. We were like kids in a candy store looking at all the neat, cheap stuff they had on display. All potential law school cities were vetted that night to make sure they had an Ikea nearby (they all did).

After our night in New Haven, we went back to Boston via Providence, Rhode Island and met up with Dylan and Stefani, our wonderful Harvard hosts.

We had a free day before the admitted students weekend events began, so we went into Boston to do some touristy stuff like eat famous pastries, sample some awesome New England clam chowders, and take pictures of Barack Obama cutouts wearing Harvard t-shirts.

It was a remarkably nice Saturday for Boston in March (or so we were told) and there were lots of street performers out and about. This guy ran and did a flip over these five people. He cleared them easily--he probably could have made it over six.

After all the fun, I actually did spend three days at admitted student events to learn about HLS. Here's Harvard's Langdell Hall:

After Boston, we took the Bolt Bus to New York City (I'm quite proud that our two tickets were $11 total thanks to dedicated Internet sleuthing). Though we only had a couple of days there, we visited both NYU and Columbia's law schools and squeezed in a pretty impressive number of sites like Times Square.

Equally impressive was that we were able to squeeze into our tiny hotel room.

Rockefeller Plaza

Museum of Natural History

Here's Paul at Columbia--proof that we actually did visit the law schools along with all our touristing:

From New York City, Paul had to go back to Managua and I continued the law school tour on my own. I went from New York City to Ann Arbor, Michigan to see the University of Michigan Law, also known for its impressive architecture.

This is the reading room, though it could easily substitute for Hogwarts' Great Hall.

Apparently all the buildings on the law quad have to be built in the style seen above. When it was time to build the new law library, the stones were too expensive. Instead, they built the library underground with a strange, modern-looking triangle dug into the ground to let light in.

I really loved Michigan's campus and the city of Ann Arbor. Everyone was really friendly and there was a great sense of community. Even the squirrels were really welcoming:

After Ann Arbor, I got to go spend a few days in Springfield to catch up on laundry, replenish our dwindling mac & cheese supplies, and of course spend time with family and friends.

From there, I went back to New York City for a scholarship interview at NYU and their official admitted students day events. I couldn't get a flight back to Nicaragua the afternoon of the interview, so I had an extra afternoon and evening to fill seeing some of the sights Paul and I hadn't made it to on our first visit. I went to the Central Park Zoo and saw the polar bear and seal feeding show:

And I spent a long time just walking around Central Park. I must say, it has Masaya's Parque Central beat.

From there, it was back to the stifling heat of Nicaragua and the daily grind of school. I wasn't even close to being ready to choose a law school because they all seemed great, but in very different ways--Harvard has classes, clinics, and opportunities to do anything; NYU had beautiful facilities in the city that never sleeps, and Michigan had midwestern charm and people that really seemed happy to be there. I was becoming quite nervous about how to weigh these criteria and how to pick which school to attend, and I still had Stanford to visit... fortunately, in the end, the decision was an easy one.

731 Down, 47 Days to Go

2009-05-02T21:57:00.000-05:00

I would love to say that the two years have gone by so quickly that we haven't noticed, but that's not entirely true. It feels like it's taken forever. However, one perk is finally be able to tell taxi drivers that we've been here for two years and be telling the truth. Two years ago today we came to Nicaragua; we recapped our first year already.

In the last year we've had fun with all of our visitors. We survived a transportation strike, Revolution Day, a drug bust, getting sick and having stuff stolen.

We finally found a new house, and then tried to have things fixed in said house. We made a trip home and ended up with a broken-legged puppy, but she made a full recovery, fully able to wreak havoc again. We took in a street dog and tried to give her away, but she ran away instead. Dora got a brand-new (misguided) look and found a new BFF in Luna.

We celebrated the election of a new president in the US, Thanksgiving with friends, and survived the Nicaraguan mayoral elections.

We talked about how to do laundry, tried to channel supernanny, and got introspective about the value of our service.

Right now we have just 47 days to finish our work, say goodbye, and empty our house of 2 years' worth of accumulated junk. Right now we are ready to be home with family, friends, gringo food, and, we can't lie, air conditioning.

Our Final Visitor

2009-04-10T22:27:00.000-05:00

With every visitor that came down here, we went to at least one new place we had never been, and each trip had its own feel. On the Ragans' first visit, we went to Selva Negra in Matagalpa and regretted not bringing winter coats or avoiding the salad; when Laura and Nancy came, we enjoyed Pelican Eyes paradise; when my parents came, we braved the bumpy roads and one-way streets to visit León; and Danny's visit took us all the way to the Atlantic coast to ring in 2009. My brother Jake was the last visitor we'll host in Nicaragua, and his trip was the most laid back of them all. We knew Jake would be easygoing so we didn't really have a set plan or even reservations for where to stay during the trip. The (lack of a) plan turned out to be a success, and we wound up visiting volcanoes all over the country and finally making it to Ometepe Island.

We started by staying a couple of nights in Masaya and riding our neighborhood bus, visiting the markets and hunting for souveniers, and enoying the best restaurants Masaya has to offer (one day was more than enough time for the restaurant part). Here we are waiting for the bus:

We then made the journey down to Rivas to catch the ferry to Ometepe island, the large island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua that's the home to two large volcanoes. From the water's edge, the island seems so close that you could swim to it, but that's actually not the case. It's about an hour-long ferry ride that seems much longer when you're stuck with a lot of backpackers playing their guitars and bicycle enthusiasts wearing their padded shorts:

It gave us a great view of the volcanoes and the island, though, so we just tried to tune out Freebird.

We eventually made it to the island then took a taxi to our hotel, a nice little resort that was recommended to us by a Volunteer on the island. We made it just in time to catch a really pretty sunset:

The next morning, Paul and Jake woke up before the sun rose to celebrate Paul's birthday and Obama's inauguration by climbing Volcán Concepción, the big, active volcano on the island. My birthday present to Paul was that I stayed at the hotel instead of accompanying them to climb a really steep volcano.

The beginning of the path:

Taking a quick break on the hike up:

They couldn't go to the very top to look in because it was too windy, and the guide said it was too steep and difficult to be worth going all the way up anyway. Here's the view from the volcano:

And proof that they were there:

There were even some monkeys up in the trees (don't tell Dora):

They hiked back down and made it back to our hostel by the middle of the afternoon in time for Paul to watch some of the inauguration activities and Jake to enjoy Paul's Nintendo DS until the battery gave out. We went to the main city to have some dinner and explore and then left the island the following morning.

We unintentionally match a lot.

After a ferry ride back to the mainland, we took a bus up to Granada. Masaya is only about 45 minutes from Granada in bus, so when we go we normally make it a day trip and come back to Masaya. We had heard good things from other Volunteers about a hostel called Oasis, so we decided to give it a try and planned to stay there for two nights to be able to hang out in Granada without having to travel back and forth. Plans changed, however when we woke up after our first night covered in flea bites. We packed up our things, stored them in our little hostel lockers, and decided we'd spend the second night in Masaya where we'd at least know they were our own bed bugs biting us.

We decided to spend the day visiting our second volcano of the trip, Mombacho. This was the volcano that cemented my hatred for all paths inclined, but at least this time we were only going part way up to do the canopy tour.

On the very wire, you go from the platform to the ground and the guy at the bottom pulls on the wire so that you bounce. My favorite is at the very end of the video when Jake crashes in to the guy:

We made it back to Granada, had some lunch and picked up our stuff from the flea-infested hostel, and went back to Masaya. Jake's trip was quickly coming to an end, so we had to decide how we should spend his last day here: visit the old political prison? Go swimming at the Laguna de Apoyo? Visit Volcán Masaya? Go to the zoo? Go to the parakeet nature reserve? Play more Nintendo DS? We asked Jake for input, but he deferred to our judgment and said he'd be happy doing whatever. Now, Jake and I did our fair share of bickering as kids, and a few short years ago he would have not only voiced an opinion, but he would have made sure it was the exact opposite of whatever opinion I had. For him to be so darn agreeable was quite a shock, and it was nearly impossible for us to choose, even after consulting our guide books and telling Jake the pros and cons of each possibility. Eventually it became apparent that Paul and I were just going to have to make a choice, so we decided to round out our volcano tour with a visit to Masaya's volcano. Jake's response? "Oh, good. I was just about to say I wanted to go to the volcano."

Masaya's volcano has a nice, paved road to the crater at the top and lots of trails surrounding it. We went on the cave tour to get out of the mid-afternoon heat and to see some bats: mission accomplished on both counts.

We couldn't really take a lot of pictures in the cave because it was dark (we should have brought own own head lamps, because their flashlights were pretty weak), but the guide took a picture of us in the back of the cave. It took a few tries since he was just pointing the camera at darkness. Also, Paul and I have too many green shirts:

Here we are after the hike with the big crater behind us.

There was a lot of smoke coming out of the crater; the guide said the reddish color was because it was sulfur dioxide. It smelled really bad and burned our throats.

Apparently this cross was built in the 16th century to keep the devil away; people thought the volcano was the mouth of hell.

Paul and I both had a great week, and since Jake never expressed an opinion to the contrary, we'll just assume that he did too.

It's hot

2009-04-04T16:29:00.000-05:00

Masaya is probably in the middle of Nicaragua's heat spectrum, generally not as hot as Managua, Rivas, or Leon, but hotter than Matagalpa or Jinotega. Right now, though, it's hot everywhere--right in time for a week of vacation for Semana Santa and nothing to do but sit around the house where we just sweat unless there's a fan blowing directly on us.

Yesterday we took a trip to the mall in Managua just so we could sit in the air conditioning for a few hours and it was everything we expected it to be. We took our time browsing at the stores and the nearby grocery store. There aren't many places close to home where we can enjoy the cold, but we're thinking of some complicated banking transactions that we'll need to do next week in the bank that has AC.

Here's our clock that annoyingly will not let us forget how hot it is in the middle of our house:

Devil's Advocate

2009-01-31T08:13:00.004-06:00

Think Again: The Peace Corps
by Robert Strauss

The reason the Peace Corps is overlooked as a development organization has a lot to do with the youth and inexperience of the majority of its volunteers. Equally important is its unwillingness to decide if it is a development organization or an organization with a mission “to promote world peace and friendship,” as stipulated by Congress in the Peace Corps Act. It would like to be both, but finds itself falling short on both objectives because it cannot decide which is the more important.

Last week I discovered this article in Foreign Policy written by a former Peace Corps Country Director. It's a somewhat critical view of Peace Corps and its effectiveness, and asserts that many widely held beliefs regarding Peace Corps are actually myths.

Paul and I feel a little conflicted because we agree with many of Strauss' arguments, but also don't want to think our time here has been frivolous. We will leave Nicaragua in less than six months, so at this stage in our service we're beginning to think about the mark we'll be leaving on our community. This might not have been the ideal time for us to stumble upon this article, but it's worth thinking about and I wanted to share it here.

Trash

2009-01-29T19:50:00.000-06:00

In Masaya we're pretty lucky because we get regular trash pick up three times a week. Some of our friends in smaller cities have to wait a lot longer or just burn their trash like their neighbors. The truck usually comes in the morning, but we can't put trash out too far ahead of time or the dogs will tear it apart. There's really nothing worse than coming home to a ripped apart trash bag and your trash strewn all along the road for the whole neighborhood to see.

Several men walk alongside the truck all day long, picking up the trash and throwing it into the back of the truck. To alert people that the trash truck is coming there is a really loud bell that is rung as they're coming down the street, and Dora has learned that that bell means something exciting is happening. Usually we forget or are asleep when the trash truck comes, so we're always frantically running around trying to put everything in one bag, run to the front door, unlock several locks, and put the trash on the sidewalk. With my inferior human ears I sometimes don't hear it until it's already passed, but now Dora is quick to alert us and we don't have to worry about keeping stinky trash bags for an extra couple of days.

These guys just walk alongside the truck and pick up trash bags off of the sidewalk:

Danny's Guest Blogging: Part Three: Reflections

2009-01-28T08:00:00.001-06:00

Holly and Paul were two of my best friends in high school. We have kept in touch since then, but our AIM chats and emails about their life in Nicaragua could not accurately convey just how much their lives have changed while serving in the Peace Corps.

Holly and Paul, without even realizing it, have become quite proficient at Spanish. The moment that best illustrates this is when Holly and I were patronizing the fine establishment known as Tip Top. I stood alongside and watched as Holly and Tip Top lady discussed in Spanish the several different combinations of main courses and sides in the family meal, and after this two minute conversation, Holly turns to me and asks, "Does that sound good to you?"

Perhaps Holly assumed I was paying attention during my two Spanish courses in high school, but most likely, she didn't even realize that she was speaking in Spanish--ordering food in Spanish is commonplace, something she does every day. I doubt Holly and Paul realize how impressive it is to a uni-lingual observer such as myself that they are able to communicate with people in two different languages while I can barely do it in one.

The transportation system in Nicaragua was also quite foreign to me. I expected standing-room only, hot and sweaty Nicaraguan buses where roosters and people ride side-by-side, but I didn't expect that all in one day, we would utilize every mode of transportation ever invented: we took a boat back to Bluefields, a cab to the airport, a plane to Managua, and a school bus back to Masaya. It's not even the varying forms of transportation--it's also the entire system for making reservations. When I want to fly somewhere I go to expedia.com. When they want to get around in Nicaragua, they go to the airport or bus terminal or harbor and hope the plane/bus/boat isn't full yet. If it's not, they are awarded with their very own boarding pass, which I'm pretty sure was incorrectly taken literally by a Bluefields Airport worker at some point.

Nicaragua is an amazing place; it would make a great vacation spot or even a fun place to live if you approach the area with the right expectations. I visited expecting to see how the other half lives. Nicaragua is the second poorest nation in the hemisphere, and certain areas are debilitatingly poor and dangerous--places where trash lines the side of the roads, and bums sleep on every sidewalk. But there are comparable areas in every major American city too.

While Nicaragua does have impoverished areas, it also has beach areas and panoramic views that rival anything America's coastal cities have to offer. Still, though, Nicaragua will not provide you with the creature comforts of America--but, as far as I'm concerned, that's the entire point. If you're accustomed to eating McDonald's every day and having food brought to you (which, admittedly, I have been in the past) and going from one air conditioned place to another, then you're probably not going to like it. But if you're willing to step outside of your boundaries then you'll likely discover that not only can you get by with way less, you might even be happier.

It is possible that my one week stay does not give me the authority to speak on this matter. I had my own personal translators and photographers following me around for the duration of my short stay,
and they used their knowledge of the area to keep me out of trouble and show me the best that Nicaragua had to offer. My week in Nicaragua was a vacation--I knew the poverty, the cold showers, and the muggy weather were temporary, and once I left I'd return to a familiar and comfortable America. Holly and Paul don't have that luxury. Still, though, I feel that the Peace Corps experience--both the good and the bad, and I know Holly has a list of the bads--is invaluable and will pay meaningful if not financial dividends later in life.

Danny's Guest Blogging: Part Two: Poshing It

2009-01-27T08:00:00.000-06:00

Later in our adventure we left the East Coast and headed to San Juan del Sur on the West Coast.

The bus ride was something any Central American traveler must experience. Standing room only, roosters in bags, hot and muggy--exactly what I wanted.

When we finally arrived at San Juan del Sur I felt like I was in a completely different country. Geographically the city is quite close to Masaya and Bluefields, but culturally, it felt worlds apart.

Our time in San Juan del Sur was mainly spent exploring the city and swimming at the beautiful pools. We also ran into some other Peace Corps Volunteers on vacation and spent the night watching the sunset and exploring the city.

The rest of our trip was spent traveling back to Masaya, seeing the local sites, tasting the local foods, and reflecting on the best trip of my life.

Culture Awe: Masaya and San Juan del Sur

2009-01-26T16:11:00.002-06:00

After our trip to paradise in the Pearl Keys, it was time to return back to the Pacific side for the second half of Danny's trip. We spent most of my birthday in an epic Amazing Race-style journey in which the tasks were to beat the Swedes and make it home: Paul and Danny rose before sunrise to buy tickets on the earliest panga (boat) back to Bluefields, once in Bluefields we spent the morning looking nervously at the clock hoping we could make it off of standby on to the earlier flight back to Managua, and then took a taxi and a bus and a neighborhood shuttle to get back to our house. We eventually did make it home in time to unpack our sandy clothes, greet the dogs and dog watchers extraordinaire Nicole and Caitlin, and have the the fanciest birthday dinner that Masaya has to offer--Papa John's Pizza--before going out on the town to celebrate:

The next morning, we went to San Juan del Sur so that we would have seen both the Atlantic and the Pacific in the span of a day. Danny got the quintessential Central American bus ride, complete with a rooster in a sack in his feet and a bus driver that spent a fair amount of the trip sending text messages:

Surprisingly, we made it safe and sound to San Juan and spent the afternoon having lunch in a pretentious but lovely bookstore/cafe, walking along the beach, and exploring the new shops that had popped up since our last visit in April.

After our semi-rough accommodations in Pearl Lagoon, Paul and I mentioned to Danny that there were, in fact, nice hotels in Nicaragua. Easily the nicest place in the country is Pelican Eyes in San Juan del Sur, and Danny insisted that we go. Pelican Eyes is a beautiful resort built on a hillside overlooking all of San Juan del Sur and the harbor; its three infinity pools make for some pretty amazing views. Here is the uppermost infinity pool and the middle infinity pool:

Me overlooking San Juan:

In addition to really nice pools, the little villas are awfully nice as well, complete with their own private patio outside:

Paul mentioned earlier our criterion about places we visit having animals around that we can play with. Pelican Eyes has a non-profit veterinary clinic that rescues and cares for many animals in the area, and has its fair share of dogs and cats that call the various villas their homes. Our villa, we found out, is the home of Azerbaijan:

Azerbaijan was constantly scheming to get into our room, either by running in open doors or climbing in though windows. Unfortunately, he was not a friendly cat, and would bite any time we tried to pet him, pick him up, or disturb him in any way. Azerbaijan claimed the entire room as his own; when Paul climbed into bed for the night, Azerbaijan made it quite clear that the bed was his domain when he attacked Paul's feet from under the covers where he was hiding.

After our one night in Pelican Eyes' Pacific paradise, it was time to go back to Masaya. Danny had wanted to test out his intestines of steel by consuming Nicaraguan street food, but due to the negative effects parasites can have on vacations, only on the last day were Paul and I willing to let him take the risk. He started with a drink from a plastic bag, chicha:

Then moved on to some enchiladas and salad in the market:

And then graduated up to this unidentified meat (later identified as undesirable pork parts) made in this part of the bus depot:

And finally the night ended when we shared coconut milk out of a freshly macheted coconut:

We have come to regret tempting the intestinal parasite gods with much less, but much to our surprise, Danny never ended up getting sick. Aside from that glaring flaw, I think Danny got the quintessential Central American vacation he was looking for.

Danny's Guest Blogging: Part One: Roughing It

2009-01-25T16:25:00.001-06:00

Hola!

Almost one month ago I flew into Managua, Nicaragua to visit Holly and Paul. Our adventure started at the Eastern coast of the country where we celebrated New Year's Eve, got a little roughed up, and discovered that paradise and purgatory is separated by a one hour boat ride.

The adventure then took us to the Western coast of the nation where we explored a burgeoning beach town named San Juan del Sur and stayed in one of the nicest resorts anywhere. We experienced poverty and affluence in a country roughly the size of New York state. I returned home with a left ankle twice the size of the right, arms that are seriously scraped up, and a bandage circling my hand covering a quarter sized chunk of skin missing. I got the quintessential Central American experience.

On the first night we did a little exploring of Masaya, but we mostly just planned for what would end up being the best trip of my life.

Early the next morning we boarded our flight to Bluefields--a town on the Eastern coast of Nicaragua.

After a few hours of exploring Bluefields, we took a boat to Pearl Lagoon where we had reservations at a hostel.

Here's the walk to the hostel, the entrance, and our room.

While this might not look like much to you, it was exactly what I wanted when I visited Nicaragua--a glimpse into a real Central America that is vastly different than where I currently live.

That night we celebrated New Year's Eve at a place where I didn't quit fit in...

...but we all still had a great time.

On the next day we made an excursion to what the hostel workers called "Paradise." I was skeptical at first, but as our boat traveled further from Pearl Lagoon, the water became clearer and bluer, and finally this island appeared in the distance.

We had all day to explore our own chain of three private islands (we could have swum to the third). Paul and I tried and failed and eventually succeeded at climbing the coolest tree ever.

That left me with some cuts and scrapes, but if I could do it all again I wouldn't hesitate to say yes.

Culture Shock & Awe: The Atlantic Coast

2009-01-24T22:15:00.001-06:00

Our friend Danny told us that on his visit he wanted the quintessential Central American experience, so we tried to deliver and visit a variety of places during his week here. We went to pick him up at the airport around 9:00 pm on Tuesday (December 30th... we've been ~~busy~~ lazy), and after a brief visit to our house in Masaya, we were back at the airport less than 12 hours later to go to the Atlantic Coast, an autonomous region that makes up about half of the geographic area of Nicaragua. From Wikipedia:

About 9% of Nicaragua's population is black, or Afro-Nicaragüense, and mainly reside on the country's sparsely populated Caribbean or Atlantic coast. The black population is mostly composed of black English-speaking Creoles who are the descendants of escaped or shipwrecked slaves; many carry the name of Scottish settlers who brought slaves with them, such as Campbell, Gordon, Downs and Hodgeson.

For Volunteers, the Atlantic Coast is a magical land of mystery because of its distinct "English-speaking" (more on that later) culture and because travel there is highly restricted (and for good reason) by Peace Corps and the Embassy. It's possible to travel via land on a long, uncomfortable journey, but Volunteers are only permitted to travel by air after applying for and receiving special permission.

We got approval and trekked back to the airport to buy our tickets (reservations on the two small airlines that go to the Atlantic Coast seem informal at best) on one of the 12-seater planes for the one hour flight, but the pilot's inattention left us a little unsure.

Once we touched down in Bluefields we weren't quite sure what all of the hype was about--it looked pretty much like every other city in Nicaragua but some people had darker skin and spoke an English creole; we had imagined that the costeños would speak standard English with a charming Caribbean accent, but this was not the case. There were some words we understood but also with Spanish and Miskito words thrown in to a grammar that was completely unintelligible. Holly's inner linguist was happy to experience the the Miskito Coast creole (it is not "poor English"; it has a grammar all its own), but the linguistic beauty didn't make it any easier to find out what time boats left or to order a Coke. I'm sure after a couple of weeks we could have communicated, but instead we just spoke Spanish to everyone and people just assumed we were French, stupid, or both.

Bluefields was just a layover on our way to Pearl Lagoon, which was an hour away in the wildest boat ride we've ever been on, but everyone else seemed unimpressed.

We had read about Pearl Lagoon as being really nice, less populated, and more relaxed than Bluefields. While it was all of these things, we also expected a beach, but there wasn't one; instead, it was a small town with one newly paved road and brackish water at a dock. At dinner that night some Swedes came up to us and invited us on a boat excursion to "paradise" the next morning (New Year's Day). Holly and I had heard about the trip and wanted to do it, so we said yes. After that we went out to a pretty ruckus New Year's Eve celebration and I'm pretty sure that's when Holly's phone got picked out of my pocket (the phone got replaced when Danny got Holly a new phone for her birthday). We started back to the hotel a few hours after midnight, but those Swedes were still celebrating.

The next morning, our trip started to take on a charmed quality after a worrying start. At 7:00 when we were supposed to meet for the boat trip, we went to the front gate of the hotel and no one was there. No Swedes, no Miss Dell (the owner of the hotel), and we thought we had missed the literal boat. Instead, it turned out, the Swedes had gotten back only an hour or two earlier and were comatose and unable to go on the trip. When Miss Dell got back she told us that only seven people fit on this boat anyway so the three of us wouldn't have been able to go with the five Swedes, but she would be willing to forget about the Swedes (who were actually Swiss, but that's an unimportant detail) and take us instead. There was a cool British couple that was interested, so we all decided to go to island paradise.

Here's Miss Dell dealing with the tight security at the ocean outlet:

From the checkpoint it was another 45 minutes or so through the ocean to the keys, but this boat ride was relaxing in comparison. The water around Pearl Lagoon was all murky and brown, but the farther away we got, the bluer and prettier the water got. By the time the islands were in sight, we were patting ourselves on our backs for stabbing the Swedes in theirs.

There were several Pearl Keys scattered around, but we were heading to one of the most idyllic, and one with a tree hanging out over the ocean begging to be climbed.

The main thing I look for in quality Nicaraguan accommodations is the presence of least a few nice dogs, and this place fit the bill: it had several really sweet dogs (Daisy and her pups) that loved to walk around the island with us and swim in the ocean:

While convincing us that we should go on this boat trip without the Swedes, Miss Dell really emphasized the value of the trip because it included our drinks and sandwiches (sandwiches!). I was sort of worried about our lunch prospects when one of the kids that was hanging out on the island that day was trying to catch fish, but the only one he came up with was this poisonous fellow:

Miss Dell actually cooked a delicious chicken lunch, so maybe she had just been trying to lower our expectations... we never did get any sandwiches.

We spent the whole day on two little deserted islands and we ended up climbing that tree:

But Danny also ended up falling off. Twice. And skinning himself up quite severely in the process:

The day trip made the Atlantic Coast really worth it for us, and the boat rides, puppies, white sandy beaches, and beautiful sunsets were the perfect way to ring in 2009 before we went back home to Masaya for Holly's birthday celebration with friends.

Stay tuned for Part II: San Juan del Sur and Pelican Eyes as well as Danny's guest blog about the trip.

Danny's Visit

2009-01-07T21:25:00.000-06:00

Our friend Danny came for a visit and we're working on editing pictures and getting posts written about that, so stay tuned for updates. For now, here's the view from the hotel we stayed at in San Juan del Sur.

The Handyman

2008-12-29T08:32:00.001-06:00

Whenever we have a problem with our house, we call up our landlady and she calls her favorite handyman and he comes over. The following Sunday. He works construction Monday-Saturday, and his only day off is Sunday, so if we have a problem on Tuesday we're out of luck until Sunday.

This guy is really nice and shows up on time (or early!), but unfortunately he's not all that handy. He really only stays long enough to make the problem worse. We've been trying to get the light in one of our bathrooms fixed for over 3 months and even after coming most Sundays he still can't fix it. He just complains about the wiring and tells us all he needs is a part that he'll bring next week. Before it worked once every ten times we hit the switch. Now it just doesn't work.

Yesterday he was scheduled to "fix" the light but we had an emergency in the kitchen that was more urgent, so I asked that he bring his plumbing tools. There's a pipe sticking out of the ground that doesn't serve a purpose, but if too much water collects in the sink, water gushes out of the pipe and floods the kitchen.

He came to look at it and decided that the best way to attack the situation was to take the pipe out of the ground and investigate. It didn't help. It really only facilitated faster flooding. He couldn't fix it and told us he'd be back... next Sunday. Before he came we our kitchen would flood once every ten times we used it. Now it just floods.

In our old house we didn't have a kitchen sink, just the lavandero (like a washboard), but we've obviously become spoiled and don't want to wash dishes in our "washing machine" any longer.

We called the landlady and reportedly he's coming on Tuesday. We've decided that once he's here we'll lock the door and not let him out of our sight until the problem is fixed.

Magdziarz Family Visit

2008-12-28T21:05:00.004-06:00

At the beginning of December, my parents made a trip down here to visit us and finally see for themselves the things we've been talking and blogging about for the last year and a half.

We started the trip in Masaya, and the first day went to Coyotepe, the old political prison up on a hill overlooking Masaya. There were many dark passageways and a lot of bats, but if nothing else it made our house seem much nicer in comparison.

After that, we made a trip to Nicaragua's zoo. It isn't very big, but for some reason Paul and I are fairly fond of it and like to take our visitors there. The zookeeper gave us permission to pet the parrots that were out, and even the animals that are in cages are close enough to reach out and pet. So far I've been able to resist, but one of these trips I'm not going to be able to stop myself and I will stick my hand through to pet the adorable three-legged jaguar. We'll let you know how that works out.

One of the most, um, charming parts of the Nicaraguan zoo was the old lion that they had. We were shocked to find a new, spry lion with a mane and everything in his place. A zookeeper told me that the old lion died about 8 months ago, and that this one came fairly recently.

Paul and I got a nice new camera for our joint Christmas present and my parents hand delivered it, so all the pictures here are taken with that. My mom also got a camera recently, so we spent a fair amount of time fiddling with camera settings (this is her camera):

We also made the mandatory trip to Masaya's old market to look for souvenirs.

Our last stops in Masaya were to visit my counterpart, Carmen, and Paul's counterpart, Romel. We ate some really delicious homemade ice cream, and visited with Romel and Azalia. Their kids, Jeycob and Natalia, get cuter every time we visit:

After spending the first three days in Masaya, we went up to the northern part of the country to León. Paul and I had never been there before and weren't quite sure what to expect, but it turned out to be great. We started at Las Peñitas, a little town right on the Pacific. The hotel was really cute (though it did lack televisions in the rooms), had amazing seafood, and was right on the beach. Dora went with us (of course) and this time voluntarily let the ocean touch her a couple of times:

We had fun exploring up and down the beach and climbing on the rocks, and we came upon one section that was full of seashells. There were lots of kids on the beach selling shell necklaces, so they were looking for shells to replinish their inventory. They ended up giving all the shells to my mom, and even providing her with a sack to transport them all home in.

Obligatory sunset picture:

After leaving the beach town, we went to the city of León. León has the largest cathedral in Central America and the third largest in all of Latin America (after Mexico City and Lima, Peru). The legend is that the architect mixed up the plans as he was coming over from Spain, so León ended up with the much larger, nicer cathedral that was intended for Lima. I'm not sure if this is true, but it makes for a nice story. We climbed to the roof of the cathedral and got a nice view of León and all the surrounding volcanoes.

We ended the trip by passing through the Pueblos Blancos (white towns) and seeing the Laguna de Apoyo lookout in Catarina and buying nice pottery in San Juan de Oriente on our way to out last destination, Granada. We stayed at Casa San Francisco, which is probably our favorite hotel in Nicaragua. They also just opened up a roof terrace that had nice places to sit and watch the sun set or hang out and eat Eskimo ice cream, both of which we did.

We went on a boat tour of the isletas near Granada in Lake Nicaragua. There are something like 365 little islands, and the islands now house fancy weekend homes of wealthy Nicaraguans, regular homes of regular Nicaraguans, and monkeys! If you're interested, we saw a little island for sale that could be yours for the small price of just $400,000 (monkeys optional). Here's the boat we went on:

It turns out that Dora doesn't really like boat rides. She spent just about the entire time curled up like this.

The only time Dora was not hiding was when we saw the monkeys:

Dora does not like monkeys. In fact, she growled at the monkeys and then kept close watch for the rest of the trip to make sure that no monkeys were going to try any funny business.

Dora notwithstanding, the rest of us enjoyed monkey island and watching our tour guide feed them bananas. Normally they coax the monkeys on to the boat so the people can give them bananas and take pictures with them, but the boat driver was too afraid that Dora and the monkeys would fight. Unfortunately, I think the experience was a little scarring for Dora, because now she really dislikes babies and growls any time she sees one. We're open to suggestions about how to teach Dora that monkeys and babies are two different creatures.

We ended the trip by visiting the edge of the Laguna de Apoyo, but were disappointed that the water was really high so there was no beach. It was still nice to sit and relax by the water and wind down. Back in Granada, my mom and I climbed to the top of another church belltower and took some pictures of Granada's scenery.

This was my parents' first trip out of the U.S., and Nicaragua had louder fireworks, bumpier roads, slower restaurant service, and more scenic routes than I think they were expecting, but they were great sports and I think we all had a great time. We took a lot more pictures during the trip; you can check them all out (and see how we're doing with our new camera) at Flickr.

Thanks for coming, Mom and Dad!

Luna

2008-12-27T21:22:00.000-06:00

Our friend Katie, who came at the same time as us and lives about 20 minutes away, is spending the holidays in the US, so we've been watching her dog, Luna, for almost two weeks now. Luna and Brown Dog always loved playing, but they were a little rough for Dora. Now that Brown Dog is on extended leave without pay, she and Dora play together really well and have become good friends and partners in crime. Over the past couple of weeks Luna has really grown on us, too. Not that we didn't like her before, but it took us a couple of days to figure out the quirks in her personality. For example, she will only lay down on soft surfaces, she won't go to the bathroom on anything but grass or dirt (which is in short supply around here) and she is very talented at retrieving things from the kitchen counter. Now, though, I think we've come to a mutual understanding and get along just fine. Plus, she's really photogenic and a pretty good dancer.

Christmas

2008-12-26T12:09:00.004-06:00

Christmas in Nicaragua has been, well, different. Most volunteers are in the US visiting family and others have friends or family visiting. We're watching a friend's dog, so we couldn't really go anywhere more... festive. We put up a string of lights in our front window to add some holiday pizzaz, and I'm pretty sure it worked.

Here Christmas is celebrated on Christmas Eve, so that's when most people do their presents, Christmas meals, and (if they're not Evangelicos) their drinking. Fireworks increased in intensity and frequency all through the day, and then at midnight people just went all out--it was definitely wilder than any 4th of July or New Years fireworking we had seen, and was even more dangerous since fireworks are homemade and taxis continued to drive over the lit fireworks on the roads. We went outside to see (some of these fireworks actually sparkled, and weren't just the horrible bomb sounds) but had to plug our ears and come inside because it was so loud and there was too much fireworks shrapnel flying about. Dora and Luna were not happy. Things continued like that (with the addition of awesome music) until 4 am when everything became silent--just about the time that most Nicaraguans start waking up.

We bought a new camera as a present to ourselves that Holly's parents delivered, but since we don't really want to accumulate more cheap, low-quality stuff from here and we want to save our money for nice things when we move back to the US, we didn't really have presents for each other on Christmas day. Holly did have one gift to open from a former student, though (it was a shirt). We got a laser pointer for a neighbor friend, but it never even worked (see above about how everything here is low-quality).

We had been planning Christmas dinner for a while because we had to make a special trip to buy some supplies in Managua, so I was pretty ready for a good meal and it didn't disappoint. We had been hoarding some instant sweet potatoes that we brought back from the US when we were there in July, and the Magdziarzs brought some instant mashed potatoes. That along with some chicken, salad, and broccoli made for the best meal we've had in a long time (if you don't count Papa Johns).

We were hoping that Brown Dog would show up on our doorstep for a Christmas Miracle, but I guess she doesn't know about Christmas Miracles. We still haven't heard anything yet, but we're hoping for either a New Years Miracle or a Holly's Birthday Miracle (both well-established traditions).

We hope that everyone had a good Christmas--we definitely thought about and missed our families and friends and are looking forward to being home in plenty of time to spend the holidays with them next year.

Still Searching

2008-12-23T19:46:00.000-06:00

No updates on Puppy Search '08, but we did get the posters up around the neighborhood. Now everyone knows that our dog is missing and thinks we're crazy for wanting her back.

P.S. I tore that number strip off myself to give the illusion of interest :(.

Missing

2008-12-22T21:33:00.000-06:00

I guess Santa was all out of lumps of coal to give us so he just stole our dog instead. Brown Dog was out on Saturday to go to the bathroom and wandered away. Usually after a quick visit with all of the neighborhood kids she comes right back inside. We thought she would be even more eager to come back because her best (dog) friend Luna is staying with us while our (human) friend Katie is in the States, but she never did. We spent most of Saturday afternoon and Sunday looking for her but so far no luck. We printed up some posters to put around the neighborhood in the hope that she'll see them and come home.

We'll keep you updated.

Thanksgiving 2008: Getting Gnatsy [updated]

2008-12-06T16:27:00.000-06:00

[Edited with more pictures!]
We spent Thanksgiving with most of our TEFL group and a few people from the new group at a campground in Buenos Aires, Rivas, right on Lake Nicaragua. A map for your viewing pleasure:

We all met in Granada to do our grocery shopping, then a big group of us (people and dogs) staked claim in the back of a bus to Rivas. We met up with the rest of the group, and rode in the camp owner's van to the campground. Here's the whole gang (minus Cella and Nicole, because they were in the front seat). Shortly after this picture was taken, Luna vomited on the floor... thank goodness I packed a roll of paper towels.

We were soon met with a surprise when we stopped in the middle of the dirt road leading to the camp and had to get out; the road was flooded, so the van parked at the edge of the flood and we all traveled the rest of the way with luggage and pets in a horsedrawn cart. Here are Paul, Marcella, Katie, Dora (on Paul's lap), Brown Dog, Luna (Brown Dog's BFF), and me. This picture was taken just as the horse cart jerked into motion, so we were all a little shocked:

When I say campground don't be misled--we actually stayed in a brand new guest house that was 100x nicer than we expected.

When we looked out our window, this is what we saw:

We got to go horseback riding, though the horses could sense our inexperience and pretty much behaved as they pleased:

The wind coming off of the lake was super strong and so the waves of the lake made it sound like the ocean. The lake level is the highest now that it's been in something like 50 years, so the nice beach was covered with water. All along the lake this time of year there's a constant cloud of gnats that get into everything, but as long as you're in the wind it's not much of a problem.

We took the dogs with us and Brown Dog and Katie's dog, Luna really liked the freedom. Dora was mostly terrified by it and rarely left our side. Whenever we left the main house area the dogs would always follow along:

The two bigger dogs spent most of their time wrestling, but sometimes they would wander off and come back mysteriously scratched, sopping wet, or, in the case of Brown Dog, covered in horse poop. On the last morning there I found a mysterious dead chicken and can't shake the feeling that the dogs were somehow responsible:

The TEFL group that we came in with originally had 20 people and now we're down to 13, so now whenever we get together we pretty much forget the things that used to annoy us when we were in training together and just enjoy each others' company. Since the camp was in the middle of nowhere and the road out was flooded, there wasn't anywhere else to go and we were forced to talk and hang out. Surprisingly it wasn't awful.

It was Thanksgiving and everyone pitched in and got food for a huge feast. Everyone spent the day either preparing food or watching other people prepare food. The camp had a really nice industrial kitchen, so it was perfect for making a feast for 17.

When it was time to eat, I think there was a pretty impressive buffet. Turkeys are ridiculously expensive (at least 6x as expensive as in the States) so we ended up with chicken, stuffing, broccoli casserole, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, salad, and cornbread. Our boss also came with her husband and supplied us with pumpkin and pecan pies and wine.

Being away from family on Thanksgiving will definitely make us appreciate future holidays, but being able to spend it with friends is probably the second best thing. Plus, this view didn't hurt:

We Got a New Dog

2008-11-24T20:09:00.000-06:00

All right, so it's the same dog. But without complaints about having hair in her eyes!

Nica-Style Elections

2008-11-17T09:25:00.000-06:00

After all the excitement about the presidential elections in the U.S. we haven't really mentioned the Nicaraguan elections. On November 9th, Nicaragua held elections for the mayors country-wide. There is no state/departmental government here, so the municipal governments and mayors are quite important. Unlike in the States, campaigning here is prohibited for the last few days before the election, and the sale or public consumption of alcohol is also illegal during the 24 hours before and after the elections take place. We missed school the Friday before the election and Monday was a national day off so that the ballots could be counted and the results finalized. Peace Corps Volunteers aren't allowed to participate in any political events, and we normally just try to stay home on days that have a lot of political excitement in the air.

On Monday afternoon, we heard the familiar blaring horns and marching bands passing by the street, so we looked out the window and saw a parade of Liberal Constitutionalist Party members cheering as they passed, so we assumed that the PLC had won the election in Masaya:

A few hours later, however, there was another parade with the Sandinistas claiming victory. We knew, then, that someone was either very confused or that there was trouble brewing.

In the last week, there have been widespread protests in Managua with at least two dead and lots of smashed car windows. Here's an excerpt from a Time article about the elections and the causes for the protests, "Why Nicaragua's Capital is in Flames":

The last time rival political forces fought one another street by street for control of the Nicaraguan capital was three decades ago, in July 1979, at the culmination of the Sandinista insurrection that overthrew the Somoza dictatorship. This week, the streets of Managua were once again aflame amid the boom of mortar rounds, as the Sandinistas and their rivals battled for control — but it was the erstwhile revolutionary movement that now stands accused of being a dictatorship.

Our travel in Managua has been restricted and I haven't seen any sort of violence in Masaya, so we've all been safe here. We'll keep you updated on the recounts and the upcoming final results.

Supernanny Part II

2008-11-16T17:04:00.006-06:00

Discipline: Students need consistent discipline and consequences that are carried out.

In addition to a lack of a routine, Supernanny would probably take issue with the discipline that takes place at my school and, in particular, the consequences for bad behavior. Students are constantly being threatened that they're going to "lose points," but this never actually happens. Many teachers like to say that students are mal educados, literally meaning badly educated, but it implies something more like poor manners or being poorly raised. Really, though, students are really quite smart--they realize that there are no consequences for bad behavior, so there's no reason to stop.

Consequences

I am a very big believer that decisions and actions should have consequences, and that people should follow through with the consequences that they set. This simply doesn't happen at school, and the students all know it. In Nicaragua, students are assigned a classroom and the teachers move from class to class. The students, therefore, are responsible for sweeping and mopping their classrooms before school begins and during recess. This rarely happens. Sometimes the vice principal will come into the classrooms that aren't clean and tell the students that they're all losing five points off their grades, but everyone knows this is an empty threat.

What happens, then, is that the students do their cleaning during my precious class time. It's impossible to teach class or even have students copy an exercise in their notebooks because they have to scoot their desks around so that the whole room can be swept and then mopped; we normally lose about 30 minutes of our class time from the first class of the day and the first class after recess because the students haven't cleaned. And why should they? They can either spend their coveted recess cleaning the classroom, or they can enjoy recess and then be rewarded for it by getting to spend class time chatting and scooting desks instead of taking notes or learning.

I think the whole cleaning process is silly to begin with; this is a dusty place, so the classrooms are going to get dusty. There is a lot of trash that gets thrown onto the floor, but I believe the focus should be put on teaching the kids to put their trash in trash cans in the first place. I became very tired of wasting so much class time with the cleaning, so I convinced my reluctant counterpart that instead of rewarding them for having a dirty classroom by letting them clean (they really do enjoy it--they all fight over who gets to sweep and mop), we should instead tell them that they have to clean before school and during recess like they're supposed to, and just make them suffer through a dirty classroom if they don't. I really thought this plan was going to work and, even if it didn't, I can teach just as well with a few wrappers on the ground. The plan lasted only about two days, however, before the principal came into the classroom and said they had to clean right that minute; I suspect that my counterpart asked her to come.

Grades

The grading systems that are used here are a big part of the problem. Teachers are not able to decide how to distribute their grades; instead, this is determined for them by the Ministry of Education. For the final grades, 37.5% of the final grade comes from the August partial exams, 37.5% of the grade comes from the October partial exams, and 25% of the grade comes from the final exam. So teachers have no way to actually enforce attendance, participation, or homework for the last month of school or for any of the grades that actually go on the permanent record.

For the rest of the year, the partial (quarterly) exams must compose 60% of the grade with 40% of the grade that can be determined by the teacher. There's no syllabus, so this last 40% can be determined in any arbitrary way. Teachers usually take attendance every day, though it's never figured into final grades. Participation is also not very common. Homework is supposed to be a large part of this last 40%, but I have never seen a teacher collect homework to grade it. Instead, the students take all their notes, do all their classroom exercises, and do all their homework in their notebooks, and then my counterpart generally does a "notebook check" about once every two months to determine their homework grade. Obviously, it is impossible for her to check two months' worth of work in 50 notebooks and precisely record how many of the assignments have been done and if they have been done well all in the 45 minute class period, but that is what she pretends to do. Students figure this out and know that they only need to scribble a few notes and do a couple of the exercises to get their points.

This frustrated me to no end, so I decided to hold students accountable for the homework I assign. At the start of class, I would go around to each student, check their homework assignment, and write down their name and student number if they had actually attempted to complete the homework. I then gave my piece of paper to my counterpart to record in her gradebook whether they had done the work and should get the points. The first day I did this, about 10 of the 45 students completed their homework. After assigning a little bit of homework for every class for about a week, I was up to about 35 of the students actually making an attempt to do the work. This proved to me, at least, that students are capable of doing the work and will do it if they know that they will be held accountable.

Copying

Copying here seems to be as much a part of the culture as gallo pinto; students do it all the time, and teachers are either unable or unwilling to make it stop. The copying is shameless and poorly-executed; students normally just give their notebooks to another student to copy from, and make no effort to even hide it if a teacher comes by. Paul and his counterpart once assigned students to physically describe their family members; a large number of students chose to write, "My sister is short, fat, and handsome."

When I made my homework reforms, I also instituted a rule that if I saw students copying or loaning their notebooks to another student to copy, neither student would receive credit. I am sure they all assumed that this was another of the countless empty threats, so they proceeded to shuffle notebooks around and copy. As I was making my way through the aisles of desks and recording homework on the first day, I saw one student copying from another student's homework, drew a sad face by both exercises, and wrote that they had copied. Students were shocked when I refused to write down their names and student numbers so that they would get credit for the work. After word got around what I had done and that I was serious, I never caught students copying homework during class again.

Copying is perhaps worst on tests. With 50 students pack into a small classroom, it's impossible to situate desks so that students cannot see each others' papers. All the teachers tell students not to copy, but none follow through and do anything if they see copying taking place. When I have to proctor exams, I tell the students that they cannot talk, that they should look only at their papers, and that they should guard their papers so no one else can see. I also tell them that if I see them copying, I will give them a warning the first time, then take the test away the second time it happens. Again, being used to hollow threats, the students normally ignore me until I take a test away from the first student that won't stop copying. Then they realize I'm serious and that there will be consequences for not following directions. This always seems to shock the students and even my counterpart, but I would happily agree to stay at home during test time if enforcement of the rules poses too much of a problem.

Supernanny says that "positive attention and praise are the most effective rewards for good behavior, but sometimes it's important to give your child boundaries and let them know that certain behavior is unacceptable." Students aren't mal educados for not following the rules, they're smart for knowing that rules will never be enforced with the stated consequences. Each time I made it clear to students that I would follow through with enforcement of my rules and that I don't make empty threats, their behavior improved markedly. I think the problem here is that this is the way things have been for so long that no one is willing to change and try something new, even if it might improve the classroom conditions or the education students receive.

This is my fourth year class along with my afternoon counterpart, Carmen. They're by far my favorite students, and none of my above complaints apply to them. Carmen is also always willing to go along with any of my weird ideas, and then is actually willing to admit if they work. I'm actually a little sad that the school year's ending and I won't have this section anymore.

Our Neighborhood Park

2008-11-11T18:33:00.000-06:00

We try to go to the park or on some sort of walk every day so that the dogs can work off some of their energy and be admired for all of their cuteness by all of the onlookers. Yesterday the park that's very close to our house was full of people swinging, playing soccer, and spending time with their families.

Supernanny Part I

2008-11-09T16:42:00.001-06:00

I'll admit, one of my guilty television pleasures is that I like to watch Supernanny on Friday nights. I love how Jo is able to manipulate the kids into doing exactly what she wants, and that she isn't afraid to let the parents know when they need to shape up. It's almost the end of the school year here (everyone is ready for summer vacation!) and I realize that my school could use Supernanny's tough love. I try to channel Supernanny myself to varying success, but here are two lessons that my institute still needs to learn:

Routine: Students (and teachers) need a routine to be able to thrive.

Exams

One of the most difficult things for me about being in Nicaragua is that seemingly no one here likes to plan ahead. As a student, the first week of school I always looked at my academic calendar and wrote into my agenda our days off, exam days, and other important dates, and then I was always looking and planning ahead. I realize that I fall at one extreme end of the spectrum, but Nicaragua falls on the other; there is no yearly calendar, and most decisions about schedules happen the day before.

The exam schedules here are sort of strange. Teachers don't get to choose when they have tests in their classes, or how much their tests are worth. Instead, about six times a year we have exam weeks where each day every student has one exam at the exact same time; the English exam may be Tuesday during 3rd hour, and every teacher administers the English exam to his or her third hour class. There are "partial exams" about every two months, so in April, June, August, and October, which cover the previous two months' worth of material. Then there are semester final exams that occur in July and November. We just finished our October partial exams last week, and teachers are still working on getting their grades submitted. The last day of the semester is already set for either November 21st or November 28th (depending on who you talk to), and teachers will need time before that date to get all their final exams graded and grades figured. That leaves a maximum of three weeks to finish any outstanding topics for the class (the topics that must be covered are dictated by the Ministry of Education), review for the final exams, conduct the final exams, and compute grades. And, remember, we just completed one set of exams last week.

I had been worrying about the end-of-year schedule for weeks now because there just isn't enough time to get everything done. On Wednesday, the principal's office finally decided that it needed to make some decisions, so they announced that all teachers' final exams must be submitted for approval the following day... not a lot of time considering that many teachers teach five different grade levels. They announced that the final exams will begin on Tuesday, but they had not yet announced the schedule for the exams, though this is usually posted a week or so in advance. Further complicating matters, school was canceled Friday and is canceled on Monday for the mayoral elections nationwide. I don't have class on Thursdays, so I didn't see if they finally did post the finals schedule for students, but I suppose we'll all find out on Tuesday.

Days Off

As I said before, there's no academic calendar that says when there are days off. Some días feriados are easy to predict, like for Nicaraguan independence day, but even then you never know exactly how many days off you'll have before and after the actual celebration. Many other days, though, just show up out of the blue. Two weeks ago, we were about to begin our partial exams on Thursday. At the same time, there was a big band competition coming up on Friday. Band here is really the only extracurricular activity, so it's a pretty big deal; the whole school was already on an emergente, shortened schedule so that the band could have time to practice; though I was trying to take advantage of what little time we had left to review for the tests, the classes were all shortened from 45 minutes to 30. Then on Tuesday, they decided to cancel school on Friday so that everyone could attend the band competition. This meant that all the exams had to be moved up a day, so I lost yet another day of classes that could have been spent reviewing.

Other times, we don't even get a days' notice of a day off. One day in September, I went to school and found students playing outside and several teachers just sitting in the teacher's lounge. It turns out that there was some activity that had caused school to be canceled, but neither the students nor the teachers had been informed that they didn't need to come.

Even if there is school and it isn't raining and the teachers come and the students come, that doesn't mean I can actually be teaching English. On Tuesday a teacher came into my class about ten minutes into it and told all the students that it was time to walk to some sort of cultural activity across town. Other times we waste a ridiculous amount of time as my counterpart collects money from all the students to make photocopies for their exams, and still other times random people (unaffiliated with the school) might come in to make announcements, advertise their computer classes, or ask for money to help care for a sick child. I had a teacher in high school that hated school assemblies or other activities that took away her class time; then I thought she was overreacting a little bit, but now I understand completely.

Class Length

Classes here are supposed to be 45 minutes long, and we have English class three times a week. The bell in my school isn't automatic, so its ringing depends on a secretary or teacher remembering that class is over. Sometimes the bell ringer gets a little too enthusiastic and class is only 20 minutes long; other times, no one remembers to ring and class may be nearly an hour. This makes it impossible for us to pace the class and make sure that we're at a stopping point when the bell is about to ring.

We also frequently use the emergente schedule, which allows for the school day to finish early. These classes are supposed to be 30 minutes long, but can range from about 15 minutes to a full hour, depending on who's there to ring the bell. The shortened schedule can be used for anything from giving the band extra time to practice to allowing for a staff meeting. Often, for really important events like teacher parties, the school uses the double whammy of a shortened schedule, and then cancels the last few class periods just for good measure. The shortened schedule is most popular during exam times. Your guess is as good as mine why we would be shortening and canceling classes during the last few days that teachers have to review with students.

Supernanny says that "sometimes, all a family [school] needs is some structure and some practice at working together to get them back on track." If the teachers can never know if we're going to have class and how long it's going to be, it's impossible for us to plan activities and make sure that we cover all the topics that we need to. I rarely have time to assign homework, because either there isn't enough time for students to copy it off the chalkboard or because they have too much time and everyone completes it in class. Similarly, students and teachers need to know when they will have school, when there is no school, and when the exams will be so that they can at least pretend to care about studying.

From the very first days of training, we've heard over and over that we must be patient with different cultures and that one culture isn't "better" than any other. Most of the time I buy that or at least understand it, but this has been beyond my comprehension. Even after just one year here, I already know that we miss days for independence day in September, that we have band competitions, and that we have shortened classes during exam times. I can't figure out why no one sits down and establishes an official calendar with dates so that everyone can plan ahead.

Stay tuned for Part II, Discipline and Consequences.

Yes, We Did

2008-11-08T23:12:00.004-06:00

From Slate.com

Even a few days after the polls in the U.S. closed, we're still a little in shock that the election is over and that Obama won. I think because we were so far away geographically from the campaigning, we paid particularly close attention to what was going on. We woke early up on (most) Sundays to catch Meet the Press, watched a lot of Anderson Cooper 360, and were always reading the latest blogs about what was happening in the campaigns. Since January, we've always had some caucus, primary, debate, or interview to be looking forward to, and now it's a little sad that the whole thing is done. Needless to say, we were holding our breaths until the election was officially over, but now are extremely proud of Obama's historic victory; we're now even more excited to return to the States eight months from now.

After conducting informal exit polls Obama garnered approximately 100% of the votes cast in Nicaragua. All of the norteamericanos I know sent in absentee ballots and even all of the Nicaraguans that talked about it were big Obama fans; in our classes when we asked if students knew what big event was happening in the U.S., all of them knew about the election and many even yelled out "Obama!"

To gear ourselves up for election night, we ordered some all-American Papa Johns:

It was at 11:00 when they officially called the race for Obama, though we were pretty sure what was coming after Obama won both Ohio and Pennsylvania. Dora celebrated after the race was called:

She simply could not contain her excitement:

Hooray!

Brown Dog

2008-11-07T17:51:00.000-06:00

One of the most noticable differences between Nicaragua and the US are that there are street dogs everywhere. Most are very skinny and malnourished, and the female dogs almost certainly have a litter of puppies hidden somewhere nearby. Dogs here play a very different role than they do in the US--while our pets are members of our families, here pets are, at best, animals fed scraps in exchange for guarding a home or hunting mice. People don't hesitate to kick, run over, or throw rocks at dogs, and so most dogs are, quite understandably, very timid or overly aggressive.

Last Tuesday I was in the teacher's lounge looking at my calendar to count down the days to the end of school (about 5 days left!). A street dog came into the lounge and jumped up on my lap, trying stealthily to lick me on my face. Most of the other teachers were shocked and perhaps even disgusted when I started to pet her. I had some free time before my next class, so I went to the market to buy her some food, which she quickly gobbled up. She stayed nearby, either laying on the floor or making attempts to hop up in my lap. When I went off to class, she stayed in the teacher's lounge snacking on her food, and she was off exploring somewhere when I finished my classes.

That night I told Paul about the sweet dog I had met, and on Wednesday brought back the remaining dog food. The dog came back to school that afternoon, and hopped like an excited gazelle as I started getting her food back out. After she had eaten her lunch, I went off to class and she followed me into the classroom, where she layed down in the corner as I taught. When I left at the end of the day, the dog followed along, sometimes staying behind to sniff or explore, and sometimes running ahead and waiting for me to catch up. I didn't intend to take her home, but must admit I stopped to make sure she crossed the big streets safely.

So, we now have an additional four-legged friend at our home. She's not very old (she hasn't had any puppies yet, and still acts like a puppy), but has already had a tough life. She has several cuts on her face that are healing, and a big scar on her back that we suspect came from a machete. We didn't really have a plan for what to do with her, but the first day we had her we realized we can't send her back to the streets: we took Dora and Brown Dog (as we call her, for lack of a better name) to the baseball stadium nearby to play and run. As we were walking back, Brown Dog (who behaves wonderfully off-leash) bent to urinate in a grassy patch near a park. There was a sanitation worker scooping up leaves nearby, and he promptly threw a rock at her. We were a few steps behind, and yelled at the man to stop; his only response was that he thought she was a street dog. A few hours later, Paul was outside with Dora and Brown Dog, and a neighbor purposefully swerved to run into her with his bicycle. When Paul yelled at him to stop, the boy's response was, "That's how Nicaragua is." I don't think we've ever hated being here more than we did after seeing how hateful people can be to a poor puppy for no reason at all.

We got Brown Dog a collar and spread the word among the neighborhood kids that we're taking care of her, so we haven't had any other incidents since the first day. She and Dora get along really well, though sometimes Brown Dog plays a little roughly for Dora's liking. Though she's had a tough life as a street dog, you'd never guess by her behavior. In her heart of hearts, Brown Dog really wants to be a lap dog, though her awkward, long legs make it a little difficult. She follows us from room to room and always wants to be in the middle of the action. After a few days of Dora showing her what she's supposed to do, Brown Dog now loves playing fetch or tug-of-war with Dora. She knows how to shake and is getting pretty good at sitting, and walks much more obediently on a leash than Dora does.

Our hope is to give Brown Dog to a Volunteer that's looking for a sweet, cuddly dog that is also a very loyal guard dog; she is always alert to strange people or sounds, and Dora usually runs behind trying to pretend she knows what's going on. Brown dog sleeps out in our garage/patio, and I've never felt safer. If any Volunteers reading this are willing to give Brown Dog a permanent home (and a better name!) please let us know. Until then, you can find us all snuggled together watching T.V.

Lists of things

2008-11-04T18:29:00.000-06:00

Unfortunately I had to update my list of things that have been stolen from me so far on Friday. I stopped at a restaurant (in what I now realize is the "bad part" of Masaya) to look at the menu and left my bike alone for maybe two minutes and when I turned around it was gone. I think I had that bike for about a month or two but it's gone. There are probably 30,000 blue bikes in Masaya so I don't really think the police are going to be much of a resource.

I know I've posted this picture recently but it's the only one I have of my bike. The description that I've given everyone is that it's blue with Shimano stickers. I'm pretty sure it's gone.

My list of things stolen is:

Basil plants (x2)
Bikes (x2)
Bike locks (x2)
Handkerchief (stolen off of the clothesline)

That's really not a bad list considering that other people that live close have had computers and iPods stolen. That's the only thing that contains my vigilante spirit.

PeasCorps Update 2.0

2008-10-26T09:27:00.004-05:00

In case you normally read PeasCorps via RSS or the subscription e-mail and don't normally visit the blog itself, you might come check out our new website design.

Paul took the masthead picture at the Malecón, a block and a half from our home, and it shows the Laguna de Masaya and Volcán Masaya.Please leave a comment (no registration required) to let us know what you think, or just to let us know that you're reading. Thanks!

Our Flickr Photos

2008-10-25T17:34:00.003-05:00

Recently there has been an epidemic of volunteers' computers crashing or being stolen; I think one of the things that they have been most upset about is that they lost all of their pictures. That would a disaster for us, so I decided it was time to get everything backed up and uploaded just in case something bad happened. After a lot of hours spent weeding out, organizing, tagging, naming, and titling all of our pictures using iPhoto, we finally have all the pictures (and movies) of our time in Nicaragua uploaded to Flickr. Not only are they all there for safekeeping, but Flickr lets you do a lot of awesome things to organize the pictures:

Tags: I've "tagged" all the pictures by topic, so you can go here to see pictures of volunteers, food, fiestas, Dora, family, or pictures from training, to name a few.
Map: All of our pictures are placed on to the map so you can see exactly where they were taken. You can zoom in, browse around, and in some cases (like in Managua or in the US) even see the building where the picture was taken.
Sets and Collections: These are like photo albums and groups of albums, so you can explore by event.
Archive: Here you can search by date and even seen the pictures displayed on a calendar.

Some of these pictures made it on to the blog, but the vast majority didn't, so please check it out, leave comments, and point out typos. We'll try to keep regularly updating more pictures as we take them, so bookmark the page.

Where's that Mosquito Net?

2008-10-16T16:02:00.000-05:00

In our time in Nicaragua, we have met all sorts of creatures of various sizes . But now to our list of lizards, spiders, chickens, tarantulas, beetles, ants, cockroaches, and mice, we have a new addition: a big scorpion. Sunday night we were all getting ready to go to sleep when Dora seemed particularly interested in something back by the bedroom door. Paul saw it first and, fortunately, pulled Dora away and stuck her on the bed for safety. We didn't really know the best way to kill and dispose of a scorpion, but we feel no shame in saying we took the coward's way out: we used a heck of a lot of Raid on that thing. Though Raid is designed for cockroaches and flies, we were pleased to find out that it works just as well on scorpions. We also learned that scorpions' tails uncurl when they die.

This was another creature that we wanted to kill first and photograph later, so this is it once it was already dead (its tail isn't curled anymore). We also tossed a córdoba down to help judge the size... we realize it's less than ideal because most people don't know how big a cord is, but it's about the size of a quarter.

We had hoped that by moving into a different house, all the animals whose family members have perished by our hand would be unable to track us down to get revenge; unfortunately, we seem to make small yet venomous enemies everywhere we go.

The Streets are Full II

2008-10-16T11:31:00.000-05:00

We have been dreading October since November 1st of last year... last year it rained heavily just about every day the entire month. We missed school and wrote letters in protest, and we've been anxious about October since then, particularly since we now have a dog that doesn't take rain days from needing to go outside to use the bathroom.

Now that the month is more than half over, I feel comfortable saying that this October hasn't been as bad. Last year was a particularly bad year because Hurricane Felix seems to have hovered near Nicaragua for the whole month; this year it still rains just about every day, but it's been mostly limited to a few hours in the afternoon or raining during the night. Even though it hasn't been as bad, though, doesn't mean we're not going to complain...

Now since we've moved to a different part of town, even a relatively small amount of rain can cause quite a bit of disaster. On this side of town, Masaya slopes downward with all the water running to the Laguna de Masaya... we live two blocks from the lagoon, so quite a bit of water has accumulated by the time it gets to us: This picture is from last Sunday. I went to a counterpart's house to plan for this week's classes and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Just as we were finishing our plans, the sky turned a dark, menacing gray and I decided that it was time for me to leave. I hopped on Paul's bike to come home just as it started to sprinkle, pedaled as fast as my little legs would go, and arrived home about 5 minutes later; by that time, it was already a downpour the likes of which I've only seen a couple of times in Missouri. I unlocked the gate, brought the bike in, and grabbed the camera to take a picture: this was what our street looked like probably 10 minutes after the first raindrop fell. You can see the tiny stripe of street that remains unsubmerged, but otherwise the water comes up to the sidewalks.

A few blocks "up" from our house, there's a big interestion (with a stoplight!) that is hands down the worst area for flooding that I've ever seen. Two weeks ago I was walking from school to a pharmacy near our house to get my antibiotics for my bacterial infection (I'm all better now!). It started sprinkling as I was walking, and I very foolishly decided to stop in to my favorite store "Everything for a Dollar, More or Less" to see if they had any new dog toys for Dora. When I walked out of the store a few minutes later, the one intersection that stood between me and the pharmacy was completely flooded with water up onto the sidewalks and entering the buildings that lacked a high step up. I considered rolling up my pant legs and fording the river, but a man told me it was too dangerous and that the water would drain soon. The "Todo por un Dollar, Mas o Menos" people shepherded me back inside the store to wait out the rain, and I ended up spending an hour and 15 minutes sitting cross-legged on the floor waiting for the rain to slow enough that cars and buses were willing to drive across the intersection.

I finally got home at 4:45 and my community class begins at 5:00 across town near where we used to live. Last year Paul and I rolled our eyes at classes being cancelled due to the rain, but I have a confession to make: I cancelled class, changed into dry clothes, and had some hot chocolate while I spent the evening watching t.v.

We haven't had any official unofficial rain days at our schools yet, but if that day comes, I'll gladly sacrifice my moral high ground in order to stay high and dry myself.

The Streets Are Full I

2008-10-13T16:03:00.000-05:00

Last year, San Jerónimo's parade came as a surprise to me. This year, we were ready. Masaya's fiestas patronales began a couple of weeks ago with the hipica horse parade and the running of the bulls (we stayed safely inside the house for that one). Then last Tuesday there was no class because it was again time for San Jerónimo and sidekick San Miguel to go parading up and down every street in Masaya. Tuesday came and went with no parade, so Wednesday I went off to school because my counterpart had said that there would be class. I arrived at school to find about 4 teachers and 15 students, so had to turn right back around to go home. When I made it home, the streets were completely full with people and one of my students (who knew better than to go to school) told me that San Jerónimo was just about to pass. I went inside, grabbed the camera, and took a few pictures.

Here's the loud band passing by.
Here are the obligatory beer carts and mobile barbeque stations.

And here is a (loud!) video of San Jerónimo passing by with the huge crowd running behind. Paul thought the video had been sped up, but they really were running this fast.

Just as quickly as they ran by, everyone disappeared and the street was quiet again. Filled to the brim with trash, but quiet.

Do Laundry like a Nica in 10 (Not Very) Easy Steps

2008-10-12T17:12:00.000-05:00

For the most part, I think Paul and I don't really complain about missing the comforts of home that we lack here... the most notable exception to this is the washer and dryer. I have no idea what I was complaining about even when in college I had to carry my laundry all the way to the laundry room and then I had to be in the laundry room as soon as the washer or dryer finished to avoid some other laundry zealot taking it out and stealing my machine. I would now be happy to have to fight for my right to put an extra quarter in the dryer.

Here, laundry requires far more time and dedication, and your clothes end up far less clean and far more stretched out than they would in a machine. Just in case you don't believe me, here is how to do laundry Nica-style in just ten steps.

1. Gather all the supplies you will need: a big bucket for water, a medium bucket for soaking your clothes, and a small pan for rinsing; powdered soap, bar soap, an Aunt Jemima's syrup container full of fabric softener; a brush; a washboard; dirty clothes.

2. Fill up your clothes soaking bucket with water and your powdered soap. Let the clothes soak to loosen up all the dirt and grime. I don't recommend the "sun" scented Xedex; apparently the sun smells sort of moldy.

3. Lay your newly soaked clothes out one by one. First use the bar soap (Transparent Maravilla is the best) to get the clothes all soapy.

4. If the clothes are sturdy and not going to stretch out, use the brush on the tough-to-clean areas or on any particularly dirty spots. If the clothes are delicate or going to stretch out a bunch (I'm thinking of you, Old Navy tank tops), skip this step.

5. Run the clothes along the washboard inside and right side out. Watch your knuckles!

6. When you've completed steps 3-5 for each article of clothing, rinse each one until the water runs clear--no soap bubbles allowed! The easiest clothes to wash and rinse are, by far, underwear. The most difficult are jeans and other pants.

This shirt isn't done yet because the water's still soapy.

7. Rinse out your medium clothes soaking bucket and fill it with clean water and fabric softener. We suggest a maple syrup bottle as your fabric softener dispenser for its precision. Let the clothes soak in the fabric softener (from 15 minutes to however long you need to regain your strength from all the washing, rinsing, and wringing).

8. Wring out the clothes again as much as you can.

9. Hang your clothes up on the line. Make sure to turn them inside out first; clothes here fade mere seconds after being exposed to the sun. If your laundry line is inside, congratulations! If it's outside, keep a close eye on the weather (you don't want an extra rain rinse cycle) and bring your clothes inside anytime you're leaving the house--you don't want anyone to steal them after all that hard work. This is one of the Old Navy tank tops that started as a medium and is now probably an XXL.

10. Let the clothes dry and pray that it doesn't rain--you need the sun and don't want the humidity! In 24 to 72 hours (weather permitting) you should have dry and more-or-less clean clothes.