Funny Money

The other day as Paul and I were in a taxi, we saw the driver give a woman some weird-looking Monopoly money. It turns out that Nicaragua got new money overnight:Since then we've decided this money is really cool so we've been trying to collect it. Today, for instance, we just got this C$200 bill ($10 USD):It turns out that might not have been such a good idea, and we plan to spend it first thing in the morning to get it off our hands. Time Magazine talks all about it here:

Most of the criticism, however, seems to indicate an underlying lack of confidence and trust in the government. There are many who remember the first Sandinista government's inventive monetary policies and the resulting mega-inflation of the 1980s. As a result, some people are now treating the new plastic dinero as if it were a hot potato. "Many people don't want these bills because they think they are valueless and they're going to get stuck with them, so they're spending them as fast as they can," says clothing vendor Fabiola Espinoza. It has unintentionally created a bizarre stimulus effect on Nicaragua's beleaguered economy. "As soon as I get one of the plastic bills, I try to pass it on right away to someone else," says shopkeeper Gloria Romero.

Apparently the money is also illegal and worthless (read the Time article for more details), so let's hope we can pawn our bills off tomorrow morning. Yikes!

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Marvin

To have been posted Thursday June 4, 2009.
 
A daily occurrence for women volunteers here is that we will be catcalled by random men on the street.  These calls of “¡Gringa! ¡Chelita! ¡Hermosa! ¡Mi amor!” really bother some women, but I usually never let it get under my skin.  On my daily walk to school from the market where I get off the bus, though, there are a couple of men in particular that have yelled to me every single day I’ve walked by them on my way to school even though I shake my head fiercely and refuse to acknowledge their existence. 

After my trips to the States this past spring, my first day back to school the cat calls started anew: “¡Mi gringita!  Where have you been?  We thought you were lost! We’re so glad you’re back!”  It was at this moment my heart softened a little bit for these guys… at least they had noticed my absence and seemed to miss me a little bit.  More recently, I’ve been going to school in taxi because I don’t leave the house in time to catch the ruta, so when I passed by them on Tuesday they said, “¡Mi gringita! I know you’ve been passing by in cab so you can avoid me!  I’m glad you’re back!” and at that moment I decided that perhaps I should try to reach a truce.

Yesterday I went shopping for souvenirs during my free periods at school, so I had to walk past them to get from school to the market.  Normally when I approach the men I look straight ahead and keep walking, but yesterday I walked up to them and said hello… this alone was enough to preempt the catcalls for that visit.  I explained to them that I have been ignoring them for all of this time because to Americans, those catcalls are very rude and offensive.  I told them I now realize, though, that they don’t say those things to offend me, but rather because they think it’s nice.  They agreed and said they meant no offense, so we introduced ourselves and agreed that I will stop ignoring them and will say hello to them when I pass, and they will stop catcalling me and say hello instead. 

In the end they told me I needed a picture of them to remember them by, and it just so happened that I had my camera with me yesterday.  Here’s their picture:

The big, jolly guy is Marvin and he’s the one who led the catcalls, the one sitting on the curb is Alberto, and I don’t remember the names of the other two.  Marvin told me that I need to tell everyone who sees the picture, “These are the men who fell in love with me and bothered me every single day.”  There you go, Marvin.

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TEFL 44

To have been posted June 5, 2009

In May, 2007, the Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) group came to Nicaragua as its 44th training group. Each training group is referred to by its number, so we're TEFL 44. We started off with 20 and lost a few here and there and are now down to 13.

June 7, 2007 at Volcán Masaya during training. This was before anyone "ETed" (early terminated) but three people are missing from the picture.

Here we are at swearing in on July 20, 2007. At this point two had left, so we were 18.

This is from the despedida (farewell party) for our first boss, Deepa. We had three bosses while we were here--Deepa, Lizzet, and Joayne, and for about 6 months had no boss (though Karen did a great job doing her job and the boss's job during that time):

Finally, here we are near the end at our Close of Service conference in April, 2009.

It's hard not to compare other PCVs to family: you don't get to choose who else is in the group, you have lots of forced quality time, and they're the people that you'll probably spend most holidays with, so you end up liking each other despite pretty big personality clashes. We also know that these people are the only others that will really understand what our time was like here, understand the drama and chisme that comes along with being a Peace Corps Volunteer, and for with it is totally normal to use words like chisme, pinche, como no, and fachento in an otherwise all-English conversation.

Today was our final Close of Service presentation to the Peace Corps staff, and the last time we'll all be together. We had a nice dinner and began saying goodbyes. Fortunately it's not too difficult to stay in touch now with email, text messages, Skype, Facebook, and $29 flights, but we'll be sad to anyway and we're looking forward to seeing everyone again soon.

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Souvenirs

To have been posted June 3, 2009.

Now that we’re about to leave, we’ve been thinking a lot about what sorts of souvenirs we’d like to bring back with us to remember Nicaragua by. Masaya is the undisputed capital of arts and crafts in Nicaragua, so we have a lot of things to choose from, all right under our noses.

Masaya’s Old Market is its tourist market and it housed in an... old market that looks like a castle.

It’s really nice and clean and well lit, but it’s also a lot more expensive because it caters to tourists. We generally took our visitors here to get a feel for things and to pick out what they want, and then we took them to the other market. They do have a large selection of the wide variety of goods available here.

The New Market is Masaya’s main market where Masayans do their shopping for nearly all goods, but it also has a separate artisan section for the brave tourists. Here’s the parking lot of the market and some outside shops. The entrances to the actual market are past the big tree on the right:

This market is closed in and is therefore dark, dirty, and provides a fairly overwhelming experience. We don’t have many pictures of the inside because it’s too dark and there’s just too much stuff crammed inside to be able to take a picture that does it justice. Here are two attempts:

Finally, the city of Masaya isn’t the only place to find good souvenirs. The entire department is full of artisans, and each little town is known for its own type of work. Masatepe is known for its woodwork (and sometime in the future Paul and I plan to return and buy a nice set of rocking chairs), Catarina has tons of plants and gardens, and San Juan de Oriente is known for its pottery:

We will probably make a couple more trips to the markets to scout out the wares we’d like to buy and bargain to get a good deal on them. We’ve decided to take some art home with us so that we can display it in our home as a recuerdo of Nicaragua and of our markets here.

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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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