Update

Here’s a quick (or long) update on my life:

This past weekend was a fairly calm weekend. I had class all day Friday and again on Saturday morning from 8am-noon. Friday night I just hung out at home with my family and went to bed early at around 9:30, I know, I’m such a party animal. Then after class on Saturday I went running (I’m up to running about 8k’s now, I’m training for a “supposed” half-marathon that exists here in Nicaragua in July) and hung around the house.

One interesting thing about Nicaraguan culture is the value of simply sitting around and talking. I’ll quote one of our cultural readings: “Westerners are incapable of understanding the psychology of sitting. In villages all over the world, sitting is an important social activity. Sitting is not a ‘waste of time’ nor is it a manifestation of laziness Sitting is having time together, time to cultivate social relations.” This quote and other readings got me to thinking that us Americans feel like we are doing “nothing” if we just sit with people for the night. There needs to be some activity such as watching a movie, playing a game, going somewhere in order for us to feel like we did something. I still feel like I did nothing this weekend but at the same time when I reflect, I feel that I did some good bonding with my host family this weekend, so I suppose that doesn’t count as nothing. Generally, the people here don’t do anything on the weekend just to do something. There has to be some fiesta or some reason to actually leave their house. This includes vacations as well. The people don’t generally go somewhere just to see it, they go because they have a reason to go for a job or something. For some families it has to do with money, but for many it is simply just the way their culture is. Very different from the U.S. (keep in mind that when I make these cultural statements I am generalizing and I really only have the perspective of 1 town in Nicaragua).

Anyways, moving on from the psychology of sitting to the Super Bowl. I did get to watch the Bears lose the Super Bowl. I’ve noticed that when I leave the country my team always gets to the final and loses (e.g. Illini B-Ball). Oh well. It was actually a lot of fun watching the game because a group of 10 of us Peace Corps trainees got together at a bar/restaurant in Santa Teresa to watch the game. The restaurant is owned by my host aunt so that was fun. Included in the group were three trainees from Chicago and one trainee from Indianpolis so we had a good rivalry going. It was fun to get the group together outside of a classroom setting. This was one of the first times that it has happened because we all live in different training towns and we are always busy with classes or homework. All of the trainees are sort of torn between hanging out with each other in our free time and hanging out with our families. So far we’ve all mostly chosen to hang out with our families for the sake of getting to know them and improving our Spanish. But it is kind of a shame to make some really good friends and then not be able to hang out with them as often as you would like.

One major accomplishment of mine this past weekend was washing my own clothes. I’m talking about hand washing with a washboard. It was actually really fun although family seemed to think that it was just about the funniest thing ever. This was mostly because I am white and because I am a guy. My host dad and host brother both don’t know how to wash clothes (although don’t get the wrong impression, my host dad actually does most of the cooking) so the idea that this white boy was washing clothes was too much for them. The other trainees have their wash basin in their backyard patios of their houses so they have some privacy while they wash. Mine however is right in the middle of our tiny kitchen. For me to wash all the dirty clothes I had took about 2 hours. Meanwhile during this my host dad and sister were cooking lunch, people were eating lunch at the table, people walking in and out of the house. So basically I had no privacy while doing this like most of the other trainees have. The other thing that they thought was so funny was that I was sweating while doing this. I was not sweating profusely, but some beads of sweat accumulated on my forehead. This is a very labor-intensive activity that I was doing in an un-air conditioned house in the tropics. In other words, I had every right to be sweating. Basically what I realized after this was that I will always be funny. It will never be normal for a white boy to wash his clothes, or do any other various “Nicaraguan” activities. But hey, at least I could make some people laugh for 2 hours. Plus, washing stuff on a washboard gets things 10 times cleaner than in a washer.

Anyways, those were my little adventures/thoughts this past week. This Sunday each trainee goes and visits a volunteer at their site for about 4 days. We are all very excited about it to finally see exactly what the daily life of a volunteer here in Nicaragua is. Assume that my next post will be about that so hope that it’s a positive one!