Taxi

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.

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Paul's Book List

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.

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Holly's Book List

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):

1. The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards (432 pages)
2. The History of Love: A Novel by Nicole Krauss (272 pages)
3. Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder (352 pages)
4. Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert (304 pages)
5. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (352 pages)
6. A Million Little Pieces by James Frey (448 pages)
7. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (371 pages)
8. Marley & Me by John Grogan (304 pages)
9. A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel by Haruki Murakami (368 pages)
10. Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami (416 pages)
11. Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer by James L. Swanson (496 pages)
12. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (336 pages)
13. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (336 pages)
14. Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins (352 pages)
15. The Dante Club: A Novel by Matthew Pearl (464 pages)
16. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel by Haruki Murakami (624 pages)
17. Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu by J. Maarten Troost (256 pages)
18. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (320 pages)
19. American Taboo: A Murder in the Peace Corps by Philip Weiss (384 pages)
20. Naked by David Sedaris (224 pages)
21. 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)
22. Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn (224 pages)
23. My Car in Managua by Forrest D. Colburn (148 pages)
24. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind (272 pages)
25. The Freedom Writers Diary by Erin Gruwell (320 pages)
26. Running with Scissors: A Memoir by Augusten Burroughs (352 pages)
27. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling (784 pages)
28. Atonement by Ian McEwan (368 pages)
29. Good Owners, Great Dogs by Brian Kilcommons (288 pages)
30. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (560 pages)
31. Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert (352 pages)
32. Water for Elephants: A Novel by Sara Gruen (350 pages)
33. How to Be Good by Nick Hornby (320 pages)
34. The Dog Whisperer: A Compassionate, Nonviolent Approach to Dogtraining by Paul Owens (256 pages)
35. Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua by Stephen Kinzer (450 pages)
36. The PowerScore LSAT Logic Games Bible by David M. Killoran (402 pages)
37. The PowerScore LSAT Logical Reasoning Bible by David M. Killoran (541 pages)
38. LSAT 180 by Kaplan (368 pages)
39. The Official LSAT Superprep (405 pages)
40. Law School Confidential by Robert H. Miller (352 pages)
41. Graduate Admissions Essays: Write Your Way Into the Graduate School of Your Dreams by Donald Asher (256 pages)
42. River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze by Peter Hessler (432 pages)
43. The Ivey Guide to Law School Admissions: Straight Advice on Essays, Resumes, Interviews, and More by Anna Ivey (324 pages)
44. A Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs, and Me by Jon Katz (240 pages)
45. The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeanette Walls (288 pages)
46. How to Get Into the Top Law Schools by Richard Montauk (560 pages)
47. Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs with a Film or Digital Camera by Bryan Peterson (160 pages)
48. The Digital Photography Book by Scott Kelby (240 pages)
49. The Elements of Photography: Understanding and Creating Sophisticated Images by Angela Faris Belt (384 pages)
50. The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby (448 pages)
51. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (544 pages)
52. New Moon by Stephenie Meyer (608 pages)
53. Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer (640 pages)
54. Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer (768 pages)
55. Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach (336 pages)
56. Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins (320 pages)
57. 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.

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Mother's Day

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!

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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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