A limerick

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.

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Tacos La Salle

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.

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20 - Palí

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.

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Showtime: The Small Screen

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.

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My worst day here

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.

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