Masaya Pictures
>> Sunday, June 10, 2007
This is almost our entire TEFL group... there are 20 of us, so 3 (Irene, Liz, and Sara) are missing.
Seeing More of Nicaragua
Before this week, all the trainees have been more or less sequestered to our small training towns except for a trip or two to Managua. This week, however, we got a much-needed change of scenery. First, from Sunday to Wednesday we went on a volunteer visit to get to see the daily lives of TEFL volunteers around Nicaragua. Paul and I got to go together to visit another married couple in Chinandega, Chinandega. Chinandega is in the northwest and is probably comes in at a close second as the hottest place in the universe (second only to the surface of the sun). Despite the heat and the humid sizzling heat after it rained in the afternoons, our trip was really nice. We got to meet a lot of volunteers that live in the department of Chinandega, we got to observe a lot of classes in the volunteers’ schools, we ate a lot of good food (Subway, Pizza Hot, and Eskimo ice cream, for example), and we got to stay in a fairly nice hospidaje (hostel) in a room equipped with two nice fans and cable TV. The other great part of the trip was the transportation: from Managua to Chinandega we got to take an expreso microbus, meaning that it went straight to the destination without stopping a million times along the way to pick up other people. Paul and I were shocked that there were 15 seats in the microbus and 15 people in the microbus and we even had nice upholstery and head rests to enjoy our two-hour trip.
Yesterday, Saturday, we all went to Masaya for a charla (talk) and we got to go to Volcán Masaya. It was fun to see my first active volcano even though we did not see the lava we had been promised. After hiking around the volcano and taking lots of pictures, we went into Masaya to have lunch and walk around and see the city. Masaya is well-known for making hammocks and other furniture items, and there are lots of tourists; I’m a little embarrassed to admit that now after being in Nicaragua for five weeks, I react a lot like Nicaraguans when I see a gringo I don’t know: I can’t help but think to myself, “A gringo! Who is he? What’s he doing here? Does he speak Spanish?” Unlike many Nicaraguans, however, I am able to show some restraint and keep the comments to myself.
This week is back to the same ‘ole Spanish classes, but then Saturday is our site fair where we find out all the sites our group will be sent to for the two years; there are presentations from current volunteers in each of the six departments where we’ll be going, and we get little descriptions of each individual site. Single volunteers fill out preference forms about where they do and do not want to be sent, but I think site placement is usually pretty underwhelming for married couples. Because we have to be in a site big enough for two volunteers (with two separate high schools, for example), the Peace Corps usually already has a site picked out. We might get to express a preference between two sites, but I think Paul and I are both relieved that it’s not going to be as stressful an experience for us as it is for everyone else.
Overall, I can’t believe that we’re entering our sixth week in Nicaragua and that training is already nearly half done. Part of me feels like I’ve been here forever, while another part feels like I just got here. Our Spanish is still making slow but steady progress, and we try to pat ourselves on the back for small victories like successfully being able to fill out a withdrawal slip at the bank (no easy task—they’re very particular about how you fill them out) or asking for and receiving only the vegetables and condiments I want at Subway. Unfortunately, we haven’t yet mastered the art of eavesdropping on nearby conversations in Spanish or comprehending an entire episode of Spongebob Squarepants (Bob Esponja here)… but then again, training’s only halfway done.
Transportation P.S.
>> Saturday, June 02, 2007
I had mentioned that there's a legal limit to the number of passengers on a bus, but what happens if there's a violation of that limit? Well, I can tell you because our bus today got pulled over by the police for having 20+ people when the limit is 15.
We pulled over to the side of the road and I thought someone was getting out--you can get out wherever you want along the side of the road--but only the driver got up. He opened my door and grabbed a plastic bag from under my seat and started walking toward the officer. He handed him the bag and told him that there were bananas and other snacks in there. Holly and I exchanged a glance like, "did you see what I just saw?" We did and it was. The question that I'm stuck on now is what was that bag doing there? Was it the driver's lunch or is there always a prepared bribery goody bag in the van? I'll have to keep my eye out for these things in the future.
Nica Time
This Wednesday was Mother's Day in Nicaragua. I quickly learned that Mother's Day here is a really big deal--there's no school on Mother's day, and the stores and markets are all really busy with people buying cakes and gifts for their moms. The night before Mother's Day, a band of teenagers from the church goes to the house of each mother to serenade them and to celebrate their motherhood... Tuesday night, they were at my host mom's house at 5:00 am. It was still dark and I thought I was dreaming when I heard the music playing, but then I realized that it was the band outside. Some moms wake up and go outside to say thank you for coming... I'm not sure if my host mom went outside, because I pressed my pillow firmly to my ears and just tried to go back to sleep.
The other interesting thing that happened this week was that there was a new bridge being dedicated in the next pueblo over from my little town. A group of people from Japan paid for the bridge to be widened, so there was a big ceremony with the Japanese people, the mayor and other VIPs from our towns, and the little sister of Shannon (the trainee in my town with whom I have Spanish classes) was going to be dancing at the ceremony. Shannon and I convinved our language facilitator to let us go and watch the ceremony even though it was kind of drizzly and raining. We grabbed our jackets and cameras and caught the microbus to go to the bridge. The ceremony was supposed to start at 9:00 am, so we when we decided to go at 9:15, we were a little worried we'd have missed the whole thing.
That was a very stupid thing to worry about. Our biggest mistake was that we forgot about Nica Time... nothing in Nicaragua ever starts on time. It is perfectly acceptable to arrive late for things, so it's really silly to arrive early or on time.
We got to the bridge at about 9:25 and there were only a few people there and some kids from the nearby school. There were some plastic chairs stacked up and the bridge looked nice and new, but it certainly didn't look ready for a big ceremony. After we had been there for perhaps two minutes, it started to pour. We had our jackets, ponchos, and umbrellas, but that really didn't matter. We realized that there was no way the ceremony was going to start any time soon and we were soaked, so we were just ready to go back and resume Spanish classes. However, because it was raining, the microbuses run less frequently, so we had to wait for nearly an hour for the microbus to come back through the bridge to take us back to my town. By the time the microbus came back, the mayor and other people had started to arrive, but everyone was soaked from head to toe (very few people had jackets or umbrellas) and we were pretty sure that no dancing or cool ceremony was going to happen.
We later found out that the rain had made some other bridge impassable for the Japanese people, so the ceremony never happened at all. Everyone waited around at the bridge until after 11 because they didn't want the guests of honor to get there to find the bridge abandoned. We went back to our town, changed clothes (we felt really bad for our language facilitator because she didn't have a dry change of clothes; we finally convinced her to borrow a dry pair of socks from me), and resumed our Spanish classes. We didn't get to take cool pictures of a cultural event or see Shannon's sister dance, but it was an adventure nonetheless.
I learned one other important lesson on Thursday. Shannon and I have a youth group that we lead every Thursday and Sunday. The goal of the group is to do a project in the community, give them charlas (little talks) on topics of interest, and have fun and get to know each other. Our first Charla was Thursday and the kids had asked us to talk about how to prepare for a job interview in Nicaragua. We worked really hard the whole week to make papelogrofos (posters), plan a skit, have games, blow up balloons for one of the games, buy soda and snacks, not to mention practice our Spanish a lot so that we could say a few coherent sentences to them. Usually our group actually arrives on time (I think they have learned that gringos expect them to come on time), but the meeting was scheduled for 5:00 pm and 5:15, 5:30, and 5:45 passed with not one single youth group member. It turns out we needed to learn a second important lesson: when it rains, no one really does anything. With our balloons and snacks and everything ready, Shannon and I both felt like little kids who had a birthday party and nobody came. We'll re-give our charla next week, so I just hope it doesn't rain!
Paul and I leave tomorrow to visit another married TEFL volunteer couple, so we're really excited about that. We'll be gone from Sunday to Wednesday and plan to bring our camera and take lots of pictures--expect a full account when we get back!
Getting around
>> Thursday, May 31, 2007
If you need to travel within the city there are a couple of options: first is by foot. It’s cheap and for most people reliable but slow. The next step up is a guy on a bicycle with seats on the front pushing you around. Also slow. After that there are moto taxis… they’re sort of half motorcycle and half car but they’re not really good if you need to go outside the city. Then there are real taxis. In my city the taxis are all a flat rate no matter where you need to go, but in Managua you have to haggle and explain that yes you’re a gringo but no you’re not going to pay $50 to go 2 miles.
If you need to go to another city, you could go in a taxi but they’re pretty expensive for traveling long distances and we’re not allowed to own/drive cars and even look at motorcycles so the only real choice we have is to take the buses. There are basically two kinds of buses… there are retired school buses from the US (some still say “Jefferson County School District” on the sides and others are painted bright green with chrome wheels) and there are microbuses that are more like vans than buses. I haven’t been brave enough to take a big bus, but I think we’ll get the experience that this weekend when we go to visit another volunteer.
So far we’ve stuck to the microbuses for traveling between our cities and to Managua. In my city it’s usually really easy to catch a bus… you just walk to the park that’s a couple of blocks away and there are usually three or four competing microbus cobradors yelling “Managua Managua Managua” which comes out sounding much more like “manoamanoamanoa” than actual words, but they definitely get their point across. The cobrodors aren’t the drivers… they’re just guys who get passengers onto the bus and who take your money. They’re more or less bus pimps, and they can be really aggressive in their marketing techniques. If you walk up to a terminal you will usually have to pass by several buses going places that you don’t want/need to go to before you get to the bus you want, but the cobradors do not care. They will take you by the shoulder and try to guide you onto their bus, like even though you need to go to a meeting in Granada, Matagalpa does sound awfully nice so you’ll just change your mind after the suggestion of a nice cobrador.
Once you find the right microbus you aren’t really done. Very few people have their own cars, so everything they need to carry comes on the bus with them. The bigger buses have roosters, dogs, and whatever on them, but I haven’t had to share my seat with any farm animals yet. Usually it’s furniture, a huge basket of wares that weren’t sold at the market, or for Mother´s Day yesterday there were a bunch of people with gigantic flower arrangements on the buses. The buses technically have a maximum capacity, but I’ve never seen a bus refuse a passenger. If necessary the cobrador will hang half his body out the window in order to accommodate another person. The buses slow down on the side of the highway to let someone on but they never really stop. Once you get to the destination terminal you really just start the whole process of cobradors courting you over again. Managuamanaguamanagua.
This is a pretty typcial microbus:
This is the high school where I am working:
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