Peace Corps Director Tschetter Visits Central America

While we were in Managua last week for an in-service training, the worldwide Peace Corps director came to visit Nicaragua as part of his Central American tour. Since our hotel was right across the street from the airport, his first stop was to meet all the TEFL volunteers. Director Tschetter and his wife served together as a married couple in India in the late 1960s, so he spoke to us about their experiences and about the current Peace Corps. Perhaps best of all, he gave us all a Peace Corps patch and lapel pin! No, it doesn't take much to impress us.

Peace Corps Director Tschetter Visits Central America
Director Travels to Guatemala and Nicaragua

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 18, 2008 - Peace Corps Director Ronald A. Tschetter finished a week-long visit to Peace Corps programs in Central America today. Director Tschetter started his trip in Guatemala meeting with Peace Corps Volunteers and staff, and continued to Nicaragua where he met with President Ortega and visited Volunteer sites.

Director Tschetter had a meeting with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega in Managua on January 17. During their historic meeting Tschetter said, “As I traveled around the country, I'm not only impressed by the work our Volunteers are doing, but also by the strong relationships they are building with your citizens. I thank you and the people of Nicaragua and look forward to continuing our relationship in the future.” Tschetter met other Nicaraguan government officials including Foreign Affairs Minister Samuel Santos Lopez, Health Minister Guillermo Gonzalez, and Education Minister Miguel De Castilla Urbina.

Nearly 1,800 Peace Corps Volunteers have served in the Central American nation of Nicaragua since the program opened in 1968. The program closed in 1979 but reopened in 1991 with a special focus on agriculture, business development, education, environmental protection, and health and HIV/AIDS initiatives. Tschetter visited Agriculture/ Food Security Volunteers David Grist, of Atlanta, Ga., and James Hollins, of Waxhaw, N.C. and Small Business Development Volunteer Melanie Bittle of Carrollton, Texas.

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The Peace Corps is celebrating a 46-year legacy of service at home and abroad. Currently there are more than 8,000 Volunteers serving, a 37-year high for Volunteers in the field. Since 1961, more than 190,000 Volunteers have helped promote a better understanding between Americans and the people of the 139 countries where Volunteers have served. Peace Corps Volunteers must be U.S. citizens and at least 18 years of age. Peace Corps service is a 27-month commitment.

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Coffee Break (from reality)

I'm sitting in a coffee shop enjoying my cafe con leche in the air conditioning and using the free wireless while all around me people are speaking English. The brand new Porsche driving by is enough to make me forget that I'm in Managua for the week. The Nicaraguan teenage couple making out on the couch across from me brings me back to my cultural reality, though.

Holly and I don't start school again until February 4th and so we're in Managua working at an English immersion summer camp. It's sponsored by the embassy and we're doing cool stuff (like a trip to the newspaper and the zoo!), so thanks to the American taxpayers for that. We actually don't start the camp until tomorrow so we're going to take advantage of our time here and maybe go see a movie and definitely get a good dinner.

That's about it. The Nicaraguan baseball championship is right now and Masaya's team is in it against Managua (the decisive favorite). The series is tied 2-2, so there's still time to jump on the San Fernando (Masaya's team) bandwagon. I know everything is better with low-quality pictures, so here's a picture from the all star game that we went to a month or so ago (foreigners vs. Nicaraguans):

I think that game ended up tied, but the Nicaraguans usually win because the foreigners always drink heavily before the game so it ends up pretty lopsided in favor of the home team. We'll update again soon, hopefully with pictures from the zoo.

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FAQ

When we were home it let us know that we failed to answer some important questions, so here's a frequently asked questions list that we compiled to address our deficiencies:

What do you eat? Mostly carbohydrates at home--rice and beans, pasta, fried rice, chow mein, etc. Gallopinto is the main nicaraguan staple that I we eat a lot with tortillas for dinner. It's basically rice and beans with a little extra flair.

That sounds delicious. Where do you get your food? I think most people buy their food at the open-air market in Masaya. We do this some, but the supermarket is a lot closer so we usually just go there. It's not a great supermarket, nor even a good one, but it keeps us from starving. If we want anything special like Ragu pasta sauce we have to go to Managua.

How's your Spanish? It's a lot better than when we got here and we can do day-to-day stuff but we both have trouble when we have to do stuff outside our normal comfort zone. For example, I always feel pretty dumb when I go into a health clinic because I don't know all of the medical vocab and some of that is pretty technical. Basically, it's ok but there's room for improvement.

Do you still live separately? Thankfully that was only during training and we've been together since July.

Do you teach at the same school? Nope--different schools. Our city has at least 3 public high schools (that seems like something I should know for certain) so we are in different places. My school is small--300 secondary students--and Holly's is way bigger with more like 3000 students.

Do you teach alone? In the high schools we teach with a Nicaraguan counterpart. I have one counterpart and Holly works with 2. Mine is male and Holly's are both female, but that's purely coincidence. Besides working at the high schools, we both have community classes that we teach alone.

How do you get news? We are kind of lucky because we have a TV and get pretty good cable. We get CNN and Fox News channel and most of the major networks. Otherwise, we read La Prensa and El Nuevo Diaro a few times a week if one of us is up early enough to catch the paper man. There's a guy that walks by every morning selling papers and we just have to be around when he walks by t pay the 5 cords for a paper.

What are your neighbors like? Well, most of them are really nice. There´s one old lady that lives across the street who has recently become really bossy about our security. If she sees someone talking to us that she doesn't like she will come over and scare them away and then tell us to close our door and turn on the outside light. She's not exactly the kind of lady we'd want to be friends with, but it's nice that she's looking out for us. One of our other neighbors, Juan Carlos, is normally a pretty responsible guy, but as soon as Friday rolls around and he's had his fill of Caballito he turns into a totally different guy. Then he's a little too friendly. The only other neighbors that we talk to are little kids who deserve their own post.

What do you do in your free time? This and that. Mostly we sit in our hammocks and read or watch TV. If we're really ambitious we go to the beach or visit friends on the weekends.

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We're Coming to America!

We'd like to talk about our trip home but Neil Diamond said it so eloquently that we would sound barbaric compared to his sweet lyrics.

We can't wait to see our family and friends!

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Our first visitors

My parents came to visit last week and it was really nice (for Holly and me at least). They were only here for five days so we spent the first few in and around Masaya and then went to Selva Negra in Matagalpa for a change of scenery. Here are some pictures from the trip:

My dad made friends with all of his Coca Cola brothers in Nicaragua by giving them free pens… it was a nice gesture and only a little awkward for the translators:

The Mirador in Catarina is one of my favorite places in the department of Masaya so we made it there early in the trip:

Somehow we tricked them into taking the busses… waiting by the side of the road provided a lot of quality family time:

Coyotepe is an old fort that is on a big hill overlooking Masaya. During the Somoza years and then during the first few years of Sandinista rule it was used as a torture chamber for political prisoners. Suffice it to say that countless people have died there. to show our contrition we took a happy family photo on top of it:

Selva Negra is a really cool organic farm/hotel/restaurant/forest in the mountains of Matagalpa. Everyone was a little surprised by the cold but it was really pretty the whole time.

I felt really bad because I forgot to remind my dad that it would be cold so he only had shorts with him. He survived, though:

It was a pretty short trip but nice to show my parents that we don't live in absolute squalor and just to catch up in a way that isn’t really possible over the phone. Also, thanks to my parents we’ve worked all of the kinks out of the schedule and should be able to provide a vomit-free experience for all future travelers.

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