Rutas

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.

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Economics of Dog Food

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.

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Hammocks

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.

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Training Youth Group

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:

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Repostería Castro

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.

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