More parade pics...

I just posted about independence day, see previous post. Here are some more pics.

Cute little girls in traditional dresses.
I thought this girl was funny. Despite the fact that all other participants got hot and tired after 2.5 hours (temperature in the 90s and long sleeve and marching, yikes!) this little girl did not stop dancing the whole time.

More traditional dress...

This is my host sister in Corinto, Karen. All the girls from her school braided their hair like that the night before. This is also taken very close to my house.

Independence Day...Nica Style

September 14th and 15th Nicaragua celebrates its independence from Spain. When they gained their independence in 1821 it was as part of a coutry that comprised of all of Central America. Central America would later break apart to the independent countries that exist today; Nicaragua gained its complete independence in 1838.

In Nicaragua they celebrate independence day with a big parade, similar to the United States. The parade consists of representatives from each primary and secondary school. Each school has a Banda de Guerra which is basically a marching band, but with only percussion. Each school somehow obtains drums (I think they borrow them from somewhere, but I´m not sure where) and then for the 3 months leading up to independence day they practice how to play the instruments. Also, each school has their own band uniform. Some are just variations on their school uniforms, and some are much more elaborate marching band uniforms. Because they have to pay a neighborhood lady to make their uniform, usually only the rich kids can play an instrument (but I guess thats not much different than the U.S.). Accompanied behind the band are the best students of the school (who don´t have to pay, so there is some justice). In front of the band are the dance group. Most of the schools also have some students in traditional dress that will carry the sign saying which school they are representing.

Today (14th) they did a parade around Corinto with each school all dressed up, dancing and marching and playing their percussion heavy songs. The dancer girls would dance scandalously in front of them. Even though I´ve never seen the movie, I couldn´t help but feel like I was on the set the movie Drumline. It was really fun because I know a lot of the kids that were marching so it was fun to see them all dressed up in uniform and playing an instrument. Plus, marching bands are just cool.

Tomorrow they are going to have a competition between the secondary schools for best band. Should be pretty great to watch.


Here is a picture of one schools dancing girls.

This is the public high school of Corinto, and also the biggest secondary school in Corinto.

Another one of the marching bands, with possibly the most extravagant uniforms. The two kids playing the xylophone things are my students. This also happens to be right in front of my house, with the ice cream shop in the background.

These are some of the girls in nicaraguan traditional dresses (but people only wear them for nostalgic occasions like this, you won´t see any random woman on the streets like this).

This is the group that especially reminded me of Drumline. The girls shook their stuff in 5 inch heel leather boots during a 2.5 hour long parade. Now thats pride for your country.

Hurricane Felix

I got a few questions if I or any of my friends were affected by Hurricane Felix that passed through the eastern coast of Nicaragua and parts of Honduras. Luckily, no one I know was affected. I am on the western coast of Nicaragua and the hurricane never passed here. Peace Corps Nicaragua doesn´t have any volunteers on the east coast (for security and logistical reasons) so there were no Peace Corps Nicaragua volunteers were involved. Some volunteers in the northern Nicaragua border areas were evacuated as a precautionary measure but the hurricane did not end up passing through there.

The northeastern Nicaraguan coast was hit pretty bad as well as parts of Honduras. Since I don´t have a television or recieve the newspaper I get sometimes get unreliable information, but I´ve been told that 90% of the roofs in that region of Nicaragua were torn off in the storm. On Monday, my site Corinto, the biggest Nicaraguan port town on the Pacific, is doing a fundraising event to to support the relief effort in Puerto Cabezas, the biggest Nicaraguan port on the Atlantic. Hopefully, Puerto Cabezas, and the rest of the towns affected, will recieve the support they need to rebuild.

You can read (perhaps more reliable information) about the Hurricane Felix in this New York Times article sent to me by a friend:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/05/world/americas/05hurricane.html?em&ex=1189137600&en=4199cd261ec85c76&ei=5087%0A

Paradise

A week and a half ago I had the great opportunity to go to San Juan del Sur with a couple of friends from my training group. My friend Danielle (who was my neighbor in my training town) had her parents visiting Nicaragua for 2 weeks and her parents rented a villa in this beautiful Nicaragua tourist destination. You may have read about this beach on the south western coast as ¨the next Costa Rica¨ and the ¨great new place for Americans to retire¨. There is a lot of development going on in that area, but luckily it isn´t overrun by tourism...yet. There are a lot of foreigners around in this small town which is nice because it causes coffee shops and english language bookstores to exist (whereas they are non-existent in the rest of the country).

Anyways, these pictures are part of my response to the people that said ¨Why the hell would I want to go to Nicaragua?¨ when I tried to convince them to visit me.


This is our ¨family dinner¨ cooked by Danielle´s stepmom. As you can tell we had bottles of wine, nice dinnerware and delicious chicken cacciatore. It was a nice break from rice and beans eaten alone at my plastic table and chairs on Winnie the Pooh plastic plates (that makes my life sound really sad, but honest, its not!).


This is me, Danielle, Lisa and Jonathon in the wonderfully American kitchen.

The villas are built into this hillside. The brand new Villas de Palermo are only $130 a night (two bedrooms, two bath, kitchen, living room and a gorgeous pool...do you see my future as a travel agent?)

This was our view from the villa. You can see the reception/restaurant and pool are in the bottom left corner. You can see the ocean in the background. The only drawback was that the ocean (and town) was a 5 minute drive away. But to us it wasnt a drawback because the pool overlooked that beautiful green landscape so we were more than content to spend our time lounging by the pool.

The PCVs poolside.

As you can see it was a beautiful spot and we were very lucky to be invited by Danielle´s parents to spend the weekend with them. It was also a great chance to just relax with some of my friends here. Usually when we see each other we are in a big group and rushing around somewhere so this was a nice break. Anyways, your trip to Nicaragua to visit me can clearly be as luxurious as you want (as long as you´re paying). Think about it...

p.s. for you future retirees: these villas are also for sale and San Juan del Sur is supposed to be a good investment right now. I´ll even offer my services of ¨taking care¨of the villa during my time here...

My Routine

Some people have been wondering what exactly my job or day-to-day life looks like here in Corinto, Nicaragua so I thought I’d share an average week.

Monday and Tuesday are generally what I call my free days. This means that if I need to make any meetings, work on any side projects or plan my classes I do it on Monday and Tuesday. This isn’t to say I do nothing on Mondays and Tuesdays, I just don’t have any consistent obligations on those days. Mondays and Tuesdays I go to the health center in the morning and work in the nurses’ office. Sometimes I’ll have meetings in the mayor’s office or in the schools, so I’ll go there. But my home base for those days is the health center. I hang out, chat it up with the nurses and doctors and do my work. I’ll usually eat at a small café right next to the hospital that serves rice, beans, and some sort of typical Nicaraguan meat dish.

Wednesday’s and Thursday’s are my busiest days. In the mornings of each of these days I go to elementary schools and give health classes to 5^th and sixth graders. Right now I am at the end of a twelve week series in two different schools, so I know the kids decently well. This might be my favorite thing because its fun to hang out with kids of that age. My classes have been topics such as self-esteem, puberty, effective communication, and preventing HIV and teenage pregnancy. I have a good time with the kids but my level of enthusiasm for teaching goes on a week by week basis. Some classes go really well and others not so well. But overall I really enjoy teaching in the schools.

Wednesday and Thursday afternoon I also meet with two separate youth groups. About 3 months ago, my counterpart, Xiomara (in charge of community outreach and education for the health center) and I went around Corinto looking for adolescents in different neighborhoods to form youth groups. Right now we have 3 different functioning youth groups. Sometimes Xiomara and I meet with them together, but since she is busy with other duties, a lot of times I meet with the youth groups alone. I plan ahead of time games and a topic to talk about. The topics are generally the same as the ones I cover in the schools.

Friday’s vary. In the afternoon I meet with the 3^rd youth group. In the mornings sometimes I go to the hospital or have another meeting. But a lot of times I wash clothes Friday mornings. Washing clothes by hand takes time so in order to catch up with my mountain of laundry, I’ll wash on Fridays (to supplement my Saturday and Sunday morning washing).

Weekends also vary. I usually go out for some beers one night of the weekend with my friends Manuel and Vilma. They are two Nicaraguan friends my age who have been great friends to me since I moved to Corinto, they helped me find my house and helped me get acquainted to Corinto so I’m lucky to have them. In the mornings I’ll wash my clothes and in the afternoons I’ll clean my house, go to the beach, go hang out with the other volunteer that lives in Corinto or go into Chinandega (the closest big city) to buy things or meet up with other volunteers. Another things I like to do that surprises people is keep myself up to date on movies. They sell bootleg dvd’s here for $1 (fairly bad quality but still watchable) so I’ll buy them or borrow them and then my neighbors and I will watch them on their dvd player. I have seen The Simpsons, The Departed, and Ocean’s 13 among other in the past couple of months. I’ve probably seen more new releases here than I would have in the U.S. Anyways, I also read a lot to keep myself entertained. I read about a book a week, and Peace Corps provides us free Newsweeks (we can pick them up when we are in the PC office in Managua) to entertain ourselves.

Along with this, I try to go running at least 4 times a week. Now that it’s gotten a bit cooler here in Corinto I run at 5:30pm along the beach and it’s fairly comfortable. Plus I get to watch the sunset every day which is added motivation to go run. All of this routine stuff added in with the random obligations of life keeps me fairly busy.

That’s my week in a nutshell. Any questions?

This is a picture of a couple of the girls in one of the youth groups. This particular youth group is all female. The other two are coed. It wasn´t our intention to have an all female group but they were the only ones that maintained interesting in attending the group meetings. The woman on the right is my counterpart, Xiomara.

Interesting news article

This article was sent to me thanks to my mother. I think it is an interesting article describing the political situation in Nicaragua. It talks about some of the power outages in the capitol city, Managua. These problems are affecting the energy supplies here and causing all areas of the country to ration electricity. Here in Corinto, we don´t have power between 7am and 3pm. Every part of the country has its own schedule of when the power is off. Anyways, here is the Chicago Tribune article, (thanks mom!)

Chicago Tribune Article 8-13-2007



Everyone have a good weekend!

for the record...

My family that just came and visited me and saw me in person say this after reading my blog:
¨I don´t know why people say you´re fat, you didnt look fatter to us when we saw you.¨

Regardless, i do need to cut back on that delicious fritanga...

Bats and fat.

I thought I would share two quick stories about adapting to life in Nicaragua.

The other day I was working on some of the materials for a youth workshop in one of the offices of the health center and was really hot. I ride my bike to the health center so often times I arrive and I am hot. It doesnt help that the offices are small and usually have only one small window to fresh (hot) air. So I´m sitting, sweating, making these materials in the office, when something big flies past my face. A bat. My reaction should have been, ¨Holy crap, a bat!¨ But instead my reaction was, ¨That little breeze felt soooo gooood!¨

I´m being a good adapted Peace Corps volunteer by using local resources (a bat) to make up for what I lack (electrical fan)!

My other story is in regards to food and my weight. When I first got to Corinto and showed some of my new friends pictures of me and my family people would always tell me that I ¨looked much skinnier in person than in the pictures¨. I thought that this was a good thing, perhaps I would return to the States skinnier just as my friends had predicted. But then came the reality of living and eating in Nicaragua. Let me explain.

In training, we were fed 3 small meals a day and didn´t know many Nicas outside of our host families. So fast forward to me arriving in Corinto after training (skinnier because of three meals a day in small portions) and discovering the amazing world of fritanga! Fritanga are little stands that women have in front of their houses where they sell all the fried delicacies of the Nicaraguan diet. I´m not going to lie, I became addicted. I craved Dona Blanca´s fried enchilada and gallo pinto every night. So from eating dinner most nights at a fritanga I put on a lot of the weight I had lost. And when I walked into rooms people would say, ¨Hola Pablo, you look fat today!¨ (Oh thank you! Good day to you too ma´am!) Anyways, the fritanga alone didn´t beef me up.
I found myself eating 4 or 5 meals a day because people kept giving me meals. I would eat a sizable lunch and then about 30 minutes later someone would come stop by with a plate of food and say ¨here we made this for you!¨ and I would say to them, ¨oh thank you so much but I just ate!¨ But then they would get a really sad look in their eyes and just kind of stand there with the plate not knowing what to do, so finally I´d say, ¨but I guess I can eat more...¨ So then I would dutifully eat a second lunch. Then dinner time would come around and the same thing would happen. Thus, two dinners and two lunches. This didnt happen all the time, but once or twice a week is enough to beef me up.

Anyways I have a few strategies to combat this:

1. Running

2. I bought a fridge. This way when I have gifted food or leftover food I can put it in the fridge and save it for another day.

3. Stop buying from fritanga.

In the past week I have implemented all of these strategies and we´ll see what happens. I dont mind having a gut, I´ve had it my whole life (it seems). But I would like to avoid people greeting me with ¨Wow you´re fat!¨ We´ll see what happens...

Pictures of the trip...

Here are some pictures from my family´s trip to visit me that I should have put up weeks ago.

This is us hiking through a cloud forest in Selva Negra.




This is a great picture taken by my sister. It captures the beautiful church in Granada with one of the painted school busese in front which is a primary mode of transportation here in Nicaragua.


This is my host family´s house from training when I brought my family there to meet them.


A picture of my family with my host Aunt and two cousins.


Here is my Nica family and family family all together at my host family´s house.

First visit from the states

So I have been bad about updating this blog lately but it is because I have been busy. I just got done with a wonderful weeklong visit with my family. My mom, dad and sister Laura came to Nicaragua last Wednesday and gave me my first chance to be a tour guide, be a translator and really tour Nicaragua. The tour was whirlwind but great! I´ll cover some of the highlights.

We first went to Selva Negra, an eco-friendly coffee farm in the mountains. This is a self sufficient farm that groes coffee, livestock and makes cheeses. It also has difference cottages and rooms for rent for a nice rustic getaway in the leafy green mountains of Matagalpa. It is a very peaceful spot to chill for a couple of days and thats exactly what we did. We ate our meals at their outdoor restaurant overlooking a lake and the mountains with ducks waddling by our table and howler monkeys sreaming in the distance. We spent a little less than 2 days there and we all agreed that it was the type of place you could just stay and relax for a week. (sidenote: Selva Negra, which employs over 200 Nicaraguans, just got a contract with Whole Foods to sell their coffee. The coffee is great and the cause is good, try to support it)

After the relaxing and cool mountain air we moved into the high gear and hot portion of our trip. We headed to Granada, the colonial Nicaraguan city on the lake that U.S. newspaper travel sections love to write about. The city itself is beautiful and the most prepared place in the country for tourists. It has fancy restaurants, hotels and a beautiful central park. A huge volcano looms in the distance and off the edge of the lake are over 100 tiny islands that you can boat through. My favorite part was the food (surprise surprise). I earned my reputation as a two plate eater by gladly finishing my mom and sisters half eaten plates. I´m not going to say that I only eat rice in beans in Corinto, but I dont really eat any delicacies such as Spanish style seafood pasta or french fries. Needless to say I thought it all was delicious.

While in Granada we visited the Volcano Mombacho which is in a cloud forest. It had a great view of Granada and great vegetation because of the almost constant moisture in the air. We also visited a lake that was formed on the inside of a crater of a volcano. It was a beautiful spot to swim and relax at an outdoor restaurant until a huge storm came in a blew over all of the tables and chairs. We also did the boat tour of the small islands where rich people build pretty houses. I couldn´t help but think how I was going to get myself invited to a Granada island party sometime during my 2 years here.

After the first 4 days of tourist Nicaragua, my family was ready for real Nicaragua. On Sunday morning we set out for one of the longest but most rewarding days of the trip. We left for Santa Teresa, my training town so that my real family could meet my Nicaraguan family. I imagined much awkwardness because of the language barrier between my family and my nica family. But in reality, both my families got along great and had no problem talking through me as translator.

We continued on and met up with a group of Peace Corps Volunteers I am friends with and my parents took them out to pizza. We proved our love/lack of pizza by consuming 4.5 pizzas and two orders of breadsticks between 10 people. From there we drove (stuffed) to Corinto and immediately after arriving went to dinner at one of my Nica friend´s house.

I spent the rest of their time in Corinto showing them what its like to live and work there. They had a good chance to see some of the interesting challenges I face. For example, for about 38 our of the 48 hours that they were in Corinto there was no running water. Also my interesting neighbor situation where our walls inbetween us are made out of plywood and dont quite reach the floor leaving a 3 inch gap between the wall and the tile floor. While we were sitting and talking in my living room, my neighbor, who was in his house, says to me through the wall, ¨Paul, my girlfriend is pregnant.¨ Myself, not thinking that this was a ¨through the wall¨ conversation topic, was unsure how to react so I just said, ¨Really? Congratulations.¨ Privacy is fairly nonexistent at my house because sometimes they participate through the wall in conversations that are going on in my house. Also, we have many through the wall conversations that would probably be more appropriate face to face. But anyways, my family got to see the places I work, live and hang out in Corinto.

I´m very glad that my family got to know Nicaragua and Corinto. There are certain things that you just have to experience to fully understand and I´m glad that my family now understands. My family got generally the same impression that I first got. The scenery and vegetation are beautiful, the people are great, and its not as poor as you would think the second poorest nation in the western hemispere would be.

But more than anything else, I was just happy to spend time with my family. Growing up my whole life in Glen Ellyn, always living/being close to my family and maintaining the same friendships since I was young, it made me take for granted the importance of having people around that just know you. One big thing I miss here in Nicaragua is having people around that know everything about me and having family and friends that know where you come from, your goals, your personality and your quirks. My family visiting me for a week was a chance for me to be around the people that know me best and I enjoyed that break. I love meeting new and different people here but sometimes its nice to have those people around that know what you´re going to say before you say it.

Anyways, now that I have tour guide and translating experience I will charge my next visitors a higher fee (read: more leftovers at fancy dinners). And I hope I have more visitors here because I really enjoyed sharing my experience here.

I´ll try to write more often now that I´m back from vacation. Write me updates, I always like hearing whats going on back home. Take care everyone!

Mini-vacation...Miraflor

I just got back yesterday from my first mini-vacation in Nicaragua and it was an overall success with a few interesting stories along the way.

The trip was to Miraflor, a nature reserve/coffee farm/pretty place in the mountains, to spend the weekend with my training group discussing the good, bad, and funny of our first three months in site. The trip from Corinto to Miraflor took about 10 hours on 5 different buses. The buses were either minivans packed with people, or old discarded yellow school buses from the U.S. packed with people. When you get on these buses there are vendors that come on selling a variety of things such as tomatoes, beverages, enchiladas, books on how to learn English, or bananas. This always entertains me because these buses are super cramped with people and these vendors try and pass through everyone yelling out what they’re selling. Once the bus gets going, there is always people getting on and off, we pass through villages and sometimes stop briefly for vendors to get on and try to sell stuff again. In other words the bus rides are definitely uncomfortable, hot and cramped but the time usually passes quickly in an entertaining way.

We all arrived to Miraflor on Friday after everyone had long busrides. Mine was one of the longer bus rides, but one girl in my group rode about 15 hours to get there. It was great to see everyone and find out about their sites. We stayed at Posada la Sonada in a cabin that had about 14 beds.


This is a cabin where the 14 of us stayed. Thats me standing in the green shirt there.


The owner was a sweet lady who cooked all our meals for us (delicious I might add) and arranged for a guide (read: 22 yr old neighbor boy) to take us on a hike to the nearby waterfall on Saturday. The hike was great because I finally had a chance to walk around in the mountains in Nicaragua.

The weather in Miraflor was a lot cooler than what I am used to in Corinto because it is in the mountains. I slept with my jeans on, two long sleeve shirts, a jacket, and a heavy blanket. In Corinto, I sleep in boxers, with a sheet and a fan pointed at me. The hike was great because the weather was still fairly cool, even at midday. Despite the cool weather, when we arrived at the small waterfall we decided to go swimming. There was a small cliff overlooking the waterfall where you could jump off of into the water below. We all took turns doing the cliff diving into the frigid cold water.

Thats me jumping into the water...I jumped from where the girl in the pink shirt is.

This is part of my group posing for a beautiful pic in front of the waterfall.

Later that day we returned to the cabin played cards and hung out. Most of the weekend was spent exchanging stories. For example, a guy in our group who lives in a very rural site was taught by his Nica friends how to make a chicken poop any time and any place. It involves spinning the chicken and spitting on its stomach and he says it works every time. Then he proved to us that it works every time by grabbing one of the chickens where we were staying. But the question we all asked was, “First off, why would you ever need a chicken to poop, and second off, who figured out that this was the way to make a chicken poop.” I guess you can never underestimate the lack of “normal” entertainment in farming communities.

This is our buddy showing how to make a chicken poop. Another one of the many valuable life skills we pick up in the peace corps.

On Sunday, we all said our good byes and left again to our sites with plans to meet up again in September. I left with my two friends that live close to Corinto and we hopped on our series of buses. The trip back was a bit exciting because about 30 min into our third bus it broke down in the middle of nowhere on a dirt road. We had already paid and we were in the process of getting our money back (of course not in full, but about a 70% refund) when another bus passed by and picked up some of the passengers from our bus that were standing on the side of the road and had already gotten their refund. That other bus started to leave and so we are trying to hurry up our refund process so we can chase the bus. We finally get the refund and start chasing after the bus yelling “Suave! Suave!” or slow down. Keep in mind that we are running with big backpacks on, the stupid Americans chasing after a bus full of Nicas. They finally slow down enough for us to jump on in the back door (remember the back door of school buses?). Well, there are three of us, and since the bus just picked up a bunch of new passengers, all the seats and the aisle were completely full. There was room for about 1 more person in the back there, but somehow we managed to squeeze the three of us on, barely being able to close the door behind us. Anyways, we spend the next three hours standing in the back of a packed old school bus, on dirt roads, holding our backpacks and bags. When finally arriving to our destination, we were exhausted but also felt lucky because if we didn’t get that bus, we may not have been able to get home that day.

Its times such as those that remind me that I’m in Nicaragua. Corinto is fairly developed, I have internet a block away from my house, almost always have running water, electricity, and cell phone service. So sometimes I think that my life here isn’t much different from life in the states. But riding on a school bus on dirt roads standing up makes me think, I’m probably in country a bit different than home. Then I learn the definitive way to make a chicken poop, and I know I´m a long way from Chicago.

Never mind about the rain.

So Mother Nature loves to prove me wrong. Since the blog about how much its been raining here, it hasn´t rained. It has been hot and sunny here in the past two weeks with clear skies. Now I´ve recently been told that the rainy season means its rains for spurts then doesn't rain for a while. So really, its just kind of like spring time in the U.S.? I´ve been told that August and September are really wet months here but I´ve also been told the rainy season (right now) cools down Corinto and, in reality, it is still 95 degrees at 9am everyday.

Anyways, I actually have grown accustomed to the weather here and have lost the ability to imagine what ¨cold¨feels like. This means its perfect timing for me to take a brief vacation to the cold region of the country. This coming Friday I will be travelling to Esteli which is in the northern mountainous regionof the country. I´ve been told that its gets cold there during the night and sometimes you even need a sweatshirt! I´m going there to meet up with the majority of my training group to celebrate two girls´ birthdays. Our training group (20 of us) spent 2.5 months together in classes and living together in training towns. But, since we swore in as volunteers on March 30th and all left for our sites in different parts of Nicaragua, we haven´t seen each other. We are all going to meet up at a nature reserve that has cabins, hiking trails and lakes so it should be a great time to catch up with everyone, hear funny stories and speak english!

In Peace Corps they talk about the 3 month hump. This is the first three months at your site when you are still adjusting to the new people, the language, the work, living situation and the culture. Most volunteers say that this is the hardest part of their service, and since it is almost June 30th, everyone in my training group is about to pass the three month hump. So in a way this get together will also we to celebrate that. I´m sure there will be difficult times in our future, but by now most of us at least feel at home in our sites and settled into our jobs.

This will be my first time away from my site in the 3 months that I´ve been here and I´ve been looking forward to it for a couple of weeks now. It will be nice to see a different part of the country and hang out with Americans (especially so close to the 4th of July). Anyways, I hope all is well with everyone else...

Have a good 4th of July and eat lots of BBQ for me!

Rain....

(My rainy patio)

So the rainy season has started here in Corinto. I also used to be confused to exactly what the rainy season is so let me explain. Simply enough, it means it rains. Usually every day. It will rain once or twice a day for about an hour each time. We still have days of sun, but they are interrupted by an hour of rain. I actually kind of enjoy it but it has thrown some complications into my life...

First, if its raining kids don´t go to school. I feel this can be problematic for an education system when there is a 6 month long RAINY SEASON! I´ve learned that there is a system to this madness. The kids start school at 7am. So the rule is that if its raining past any time past 6:30am, school is cancelled, at least for the kids anyways. The teachers still go so they can get their full government paycheck. So for example, last week, it rained in the early morning every day. So the students didn´t go to class for an entire week. Usually, at around 7:30am (or earlier) the sky would clear and the rest of the day was sunny and beautiful. But since it was raining at 6:30am, there wasn´t class. I blame this mostly on kids laziness and parents willingness to allow it, but there are actually some good reasons why. Most importantly, most of the schools have holes in their roofs, therefore if its raining, they can´t hold class. This ncludes two high school classrooms thats don´t have a roof at all. Legitimate excuse. Also, most kids and parents think that if they get wet, they will get sick. Understandable although I have gotten very wet from the rain many times here and have yet to get sick (its hot here, even during the rain so I personally believe it is impossible to catch a cold). Anyways, since half my job is teaching classes to 6th graders here in Corinto, if it rains...I have nothing to do.




Another result of the rainy season. Bugs. I´m not sure if this picture does justice but my feet have been covered with bug bites ever since the rainy season started. And of course they itch a lot. Its mostly just flies and mosquitos, but they really eat away at my ugly feet. All the Nicas tell me its because I have ¨sweet¨ gringo/American blood. That could be because Nicas don´t seem to have a problem with the bug bites. (For all of you that thought you would get two years without seeing my beautiful feet, no worries, here they are!)

Another problem I have with the rainy season involved my leaky roof. Luckily my landlord lives next door to me and is a super nice guy. He fixed the roof as soon as he could so I only had to deal with a couple of days of leaky roof.

The other inconvenience that the rainy season brings is getting my clothes to dry. Since I line dry all my clothes, unexpected rain makes it difficult to have clean, dry, good smelling clothes. For example, this morning I washed some clothes because it was super sunny. Depending on the item, it usually takes the whole day for clothes to line dry. Three hours after I washed, a big downpour came. Luckily I was at home this time, and I quickly tranferred my clothes to a line underneath my patio roof. Sometimes it starts raining unexpectedly when I´m at work and then my half dry clothes soak with rain water, which is usually less than clean. Sometimes my neighbors are nice enough to bring in my clothes, but sometimes they forget.

Anyways, thats how the rainy season has been affecting me in the 2 or 3 weeks since its started. In the past two weeks I have had two other changes that have nothing to do with the rain. I talked about my neighbors before, but now I have more. The brother of my neighbor and his wife just moved in next door with their newborn baby. Which makes, a 22 yr old woman with a 3 yr old, 24 yr old guy and 23 yr old woman with a 14 day old baby in the house on the left of me. Then on the right of me which was vacant before moved in a 25 year old guy by himself (it´s really rare to live alone, but his mother lives elsewhere and is planning to move to that house in a couple of weeks). It sort of feels like college but with babies and without all the beer. OK, maybe not college, but I´m living with young people again instead of middle-aged families and in that sense if feels like college.

Here is a picture of me and the new baby in my house. The baby boy´s name is Casey, and I was in charge of correctly spelling the name for the official documents. They wanted the correct english spelling but thought that it was spelled Keysi. You´ll notice that the baby is wearing a red bracelet. Nicaraguans put this bracelet on their newborns to protect them from drunks. Or at least thats what the mother told me. But all the babies I´ve seen in Nicaragua have this bracelet to protect them from harm (from drunks).

I think I´ve exhausted myself talking about rain and babies. Congrats to everyone that just finished school! Someone write me an email on how the new sunny weather in Chicago (or wherever) is affecting your life...

This past week was very busy for me. I moved into my house this past weekend, which was more exhausting work than I thought it would be. Between the moving, cleaning, and arranging all day Saturday and Sunday, I was spent.

Then this past week I was working a couple of projects for the Dia de Solidaridad, or Day of Solidarity. This is an international day of recognition for the rights of people living with HIV and support for a cure. In typical Nicaraguan fashion, there was three different days that this was celebrated because no one was quite sure of the exact date.

I was told by various people that it was this past Wednesday, so I decided to do a red ribbon campaign in the high school. I had some of the neighborhood kids and coworkers help me make about 900 red ribbons. Then on Wednesday I went to every class in the high school to distribute them and give a 3 minute talk on the meaning of the red ribbon and importance of non-discrimination against people living with HIV. It was the first project that I have done here and I was pleased with how it went. The students wore the ribbons and listened to what I had to say. It was the first time that I have worked in the high school but I hope to work with them more in the future.

On Wednesday we also had a meeting with some youth leaders in Corinto about the significance of the Dia de Solidaridad and how they can bring that message to their classmates. During that meeting, a man who works with human rights came and told us that the Commission on AIDS in Corinto was going to start up again (I had been told that it hadn’t functioned for a couple of years) with a meeting on Thursday to plan activities for the Dia de Solidaridad on Sunday. So at the meeting on the Thursday a couple of the community leaders planned a small event in the center of Corinto to promote the Dia de Solidaridad. Then on Friday some of the Doctors were going around to schools saying that day, Friday, was the Dia de Solidaridad. Then yesterday, Sunday, we had the event at the Corinto Museum celebrating the day. Fiestas here are never just one day, and apparently neither are days of remembrance. So in other words I was busy with all of these events. They all turned out really well so I was happy.

This was the event on sunday in front of the Museum in Corinto. It is the nicest building in Corinto so there are a lot of events inside and around the building. We had an information table and some music playing.


These are some of the youth leaders (wearing the red ribbons I made, I might add) working on posters for their schools. Nicaraguan tradition is to never smile in pictures, the youth do sometimes because I think they have caught on from American culture, but still in every picture you get some faces that look angry/awkward.

Living alone is working out fantastically for me. I was worried about being lonely but it turns out that I live next to a great family that is very welcoming and generous so it is almost like I still live with a family, but have all my own space and stuff. The family next door isn´t a traditional family. It’s a 22 yr old mother, her 3 yr old son, their house worker a 40 yr old woman, and her two kids, a 12 yr old boy and 6 yr old girl. The house worker doesn’t technically live there but her and her kids spend the day there every day from 7am – 8pm. The kids will hang out in my house with me a lot and I chat it up with the women often. It’s been a great situation in the short amount of time I’ve been living here. I’ve also met some of the other neighborhood kids who are fun to hang out with. One of them really wants to learn English and he often comes over to do his homework so I can help him with his English. (Quick little story about the 3 yr old next door, he’ll come over to my house and just point and stuff and say “What’s this?”, he’ll point at a chair, then the wall, then my bottle of water, then the floor, always saying very inquisitively “What’s this?”. The best part is that he’ll come over every day asking the same thing about the chair, wall, floor, etc. I’m glad I have a cute Nicaraguan toddler in my life again!)

My ¨house¨is two rooms, one is like a living room and the other my bedroom. This is my living room with my bedroom in the background. I have plastic chairs which is typical of every nicaraguan household. My hammock is the colorful thing there on the right hand side. I love it. Oh, and the best part about my house is whats hanging on the wall next to the doorway, a machete. Another staple of every nicaraguan household.


This is a picture of my ¨kitchen¨. It is outdoor which is common in Nicaraguan households. That door is the door to my bedroom. I have some clothes hanging there because it was threatening to rain so I put them under that roof. The lavandero is the sink thing against the wall which is where I wash my clothes, dishes and hands. The little table in the middle has a stove on it, its like a gas powered hot plate. And the other table with the sheet over it is where I keep my dishes and spices. The sheet protects it from bugs and the ash that fall from the sky here (from the burning of the sugar can fields close by, apparently thats how you harvest sugar cane).


I thought this was a good picture of my patio. I share the patio with two other houses. I took this on a saturday which is typically the big clothes washing day. Those different colored little towels are my neighbors sweat rags (every single person here carries around a sweat rag to wipe their brow because everyone is constantly sweating!) I have some clothes hanging to the left hand side and in the back. That turquise thing in the back is where the bathroom and shower are. In the bottom left hand corner you can see the little cement block path I have to take to get there. This pic is taken from my ¨kitchen¨.

Thats all for now, keep me updated on how the Chicago spring/summer is going!

Moving Day

In my posts I have talked about my housing prospects. Well, I finally decided on something and am going to move out this weekend! I will be moving about a block and a half away from my host family´s house so I will still be located in the ¨center¨ of Corinto. It is sort of like a townhouse in the sense that I will share some things with my neighbors. It is two small houses attached to each other, sharing a patio and a shower. My house is two small rooms. There are two toliets in the patio (one for me, one for the other family) and one shower that we share. I will also have my own lavandero, or washboard and sink in the patio. Most of the houses here have their toliet, ´kitchen¨ and shower out on their patio with just a roof over it to protect it from the rain. A Nicaraguan kitchen usually consists of a lavandero and a gas powered hot-plate stove. The lavandero serves to both wash the clothes, and also as your only sink and place where you wash your dishes. Sort of hard to explain, so once I move in I´ll take pictures.

Anyways, the finding a house process was annoying to say the least. Basically I just asked every Nicaraguan I knew if they knew of anybody renting a house. Then random people would come up to me and say ¨I hear you´re looking for a house to rent, do you know who´s renting a house? Carla, who lives two blocks down from where Don Julio lives, do you know where Don Julio lives?¨ ¨No.¨ ¨Don Julio lives one block north and two blocks down from the church.¨ Then I would follow those directions to find Carla and ask her about her house. (Quick note about directions here: the streets don´t have names here and people dont have house numbers. Your address here is in relation to a landmark. For example you might live, two blocks west and one block north of the central park. The Peace Corps Office address is ¨Two blocks north of Hotel Brandt¨. Also, sometimes they are in reference to things that don´t exist. Your address might be, two blocks north from where the bank used to be. Basically it just means that you have to be always asking questions as you go to a destination). As you can imagine, I often brought a Nicaraguan with me to help me find the places and also to ask about prices.

The one good thing about the house searching process was that I realized how nice the Nicaraguans are. I told a casual work acquaintance that I was having problems finding houses and on the weekend she came to my house and led me ALL around Corinto to people she knew asking if they knew of houses. She spent 4 hours with my looking for houses. I kept telling her that she didnt have to do this for me, and she said, ¨You would do the same for me if I was in the U.S. looking for houses.´ And no doubt, after this experience I would. But I was thinking, if some random Nicaraguan (or any foreigner) got a job at my office in the States and was complaining about lack of good housing in Chicago, would I spend my saturday afternoon contacting real estate agents and asking friends for available housing? I wish I could say yes, but probably I would just sympathize with them and move on to the next topic of conversation. Not only did this woman help me, but the next day a friend of mine did the same thing, taking me around to people he knew to ask them about housing. I was impressed by the help I was given which really made me feel welcome here. Granted things are a bit different in the States, but try to show hospitality to foreigners living in the U.S. as repayment for them helping me here. A small gesture goes a long way to help someone feel welcome in a strange place where they dont even have addresses!

Anyways, I found the place I´m going to move into through a friend of a friend. I am hoping to only live in this place for a few months while I continue to look for a more private place, where I will have my own shower and own patio. I move into my new place this weekend. I am most excited about being able to cook for myself (this excitement will probably fade immediately after I make myself a huge veggie omelette that I have been craving). I dont have that much stuff so the move shouldn´t be too difficult, I´ll keep you updated on how everything goes. Have a good weekend!

Vaccination Campaign and Fiesta

So I guess the fact that I haven’t posted in a while shows that I am settling into normalcy here in Corinto because I don’t have something new and exciting to post every other day. Anyways, the last two weeks have been pretty interesting and exhausting.

As far as work goes, last week was the National Vaccination Campaign in Nicaragua. This means that the health workers all throughout Nicaragua go door to door through their communities vaccinating children under 5 against polio and any other vaccines they still need. Also, they vaccinate kids and adults against tetanus. So, since I am now a health worker here in Nicaragua I went out with a team of nurses to give these vaccines. Mostly I just did some of the paperwork involved and carried around the cooler of the vaccines. Although they would have let me, I did not inject anyone because it is against Peace Corps rules and I’m pretty sure that would break some sort of medical moral codes. The polio vaccine is actually just droplets that you put into the baby or child’s mouth, so I did helped administer those.

Overall it was a very interesting experience because I got to go door to door and see a lot of different parts of Corinto. Everyone of course was really nice and invited us inside so I got to see the range of houses here from shacks made out of tin to big super nice houses (probably paid for by a relative working in the U.S., or at least that’s what a Nicaraguan friend told me). All the little kids were really cute and it was amazing how some kids took it with a smile, and then some kids would try to run away screaming and crying. I’d say the crying was much more common.

An interesting cultural thing was a belief about the relation between bathing and vaccines. Most of the mothers would say, “But my child hasn’t bathed yet today, won’t the vaccine cause damage because of that?” Most of the mothers believed that if later in the day the child bathed after the vaccine it would somehow cause harm to the child. But Nicaraguans have a lot of interesting beliefs in regards to hot and cold liquids. For example, you shouldn’t take a cold shower when you’re really hot because it will cause harm. And you shouldn’t drink a really cold drink when you are really hot because it will cause harm. As a result sometimes they will serve you coffee on a really hot afternoon. I haven’t experienced the coffee one much in Corinto because it is a bigger city and these beliefs are generally much stronger in the rural areas. Anyways, it’s easy to think these beliefs are stupid, but us Americans also have our own beliefs that are based on no scientific fact…it’s just another one of those fascinating cultural differences.

The vaccination campaign was really cool to participate in but exhausting! Walking from door to door all day in 100 degree heat was a bit tiring. I’m glad I participated in it but I also glad its over (well almost, we are going to the high school to vaccinate on Wednesday).

This past weekend was a Seafood Festival to benefit the Old Folk’s Home here in Corinto. It was delicious! It worked sort of like the Taste of Chicago where you bought tickets and then went to booths that were selling all sorts of different types of seafood dishes. For example, fish tacos, shrimp pancake type things (sounds gross but delicious), shrimp cocktail, fried fish, shrimp paella….and much more. I was really impressed by the organization of this fiesta. I’ve been to a couple other fiestas in other cities in Nicaragua and they seemed to be haphazardly put together, but this was very well run. Congrats Corinto! The fiesta is continuing all week which means that Tuesday and Thursday no one has to work which is nice. There is a concert this Friday and other activities throughout the week…should be a good time.

The final news I have to share is that I’m almost positive that I found a house to move into! I am required by Peace Corps to stay with my current host family until May 12 and then after that I can choose my own housing situation. I am anxious to live on my own after almost 4 months of host family living. The house I found would be far away from the center of town so it would be a smaller neighborhood feel, which is what I was looking for. I want to live in an area where I can really get to know my neighborhood; the center of town just doesn’t have that super friendly feel like the smaller neighborhoods have. I’m going to decide for sure where I’m living tomorrow so I’ll keep you updated.

That’s all for now. Hope everything is good with everyone at home. Its graduation season and the weather is probably nice, enjoy it!

Hiking Volcano San Cristobal

Now that I’ve been in Corinto for more than two weeks I feel more like this city is my “home”, which is a nice feeling to have. I’ve made some friends (all high schoolers, but hey, they’re fun too) that helps me feel like I have some sense of belonging here. Work is starting slowly. I’ve realized that my counterpart isn’t much of a “helper”. This is a little frustrating but now that I’ve realized this I know that I have to take initiative instead of waiting for her to show me things. That’s what I did this past week when she wasn’t around, I went around Corinto introducing myself to some people that I think I might work with in the future (ie. Youth Center and Women’s Center). I think I will start giving classes about HIV, teenage pregnancy and self esteem to sixth graders next week. This will start giving me a routine, which I am anxious to start having here. Also, I have been looking for a house to rent here in Corinto. I currently live with a host family which is working out really well, but after more than three months of living with host families, I’m ready to have some privacy and independence. Finding a house to rent has proven to be more difficult that I thought. Things are either too expensive or way too run down. I may have found something today that I can rent for a good price and it’s small but very nice. It would be close to where I am living now so I could maintain the same friendships easily. We shall see.

Anyways, this past Sunday I went with some other volunteers to hike Volcan San Cristobal. This volcano is about an hour drive from where I live and you can see it looming in the distance from Corinto. It is the tallest volcano in all of Nicaragua at 1,765 meters high. We started on the trail at 6am and got to the crater at 11am. The top was more amazing than I had imagined with made the very difficult/hot hike very worth it. Plus, being that it’s Nicaragua, we were the only people hiking the volcano, so we had it all to ourselves all day on a beautifully hot Sunday afternoon. We spent about an hour on the rim of the crater eating lunch and exploring the crater a bit. Then we descended for the next 4 hours finally arriving at our truck parked on the dirt road at about 4pm. I haven’t done an all day hike in a long time, I forgot how exhausting they are! But it was by far one of the greatest hikes I’ve done. Interestingly enough, usually hikes are great because of the view from the top of the surrounding area. This hike was great because of the view of the actual top of the volcano, the crater.





This is a picture of us hiking up the volcano. It was starting to get very steep at this point...and very hot since we were past the tree line.


This is my friend Travis, right on the edge of the crater. As you can see there is tons of sulfur gas coming out. The outer crater is very big and wide, but then if you hike down in you can see a smaller (but still big) opening which is where Travis is standing.

This is what the top looked like right before we got to the crater. It was loose volcanic rock with lots of cactuses. We all got a little cut up in there. Plus that was the view...it was a little cloudy but still beautiful.
This is an attempt at a shot of the crater. Again you can see the gas coming out. It was too big to get the whole thing in the photo.

This is the group of volunteers I went with. The man on the left is the host dad (nicaraguan) of the guy in the Alma shirt. We are standing on the edge of the crater of the volcano. On the left is down the volcano, and to the right is the crater.






Sunday night, after the volcano hike, I went to a variety show that my host sister was participating in to benefit the Old Folks Home here. There were some young people, like my host sister, participating but the majority of the singers were men or women between the ages of 60 and 70. I wish I had a video camera with me. I’ll just say this, one the funniest things I’ve ever seen in my life is a 70 year old Nicaragua woman dancing provocatively on stage to a Daddy Yankee reggaeton song. To make it even better, halfway through the song a random 75 year decrepit man jumps on stage to dance with the old Nica woman. Priceless.

Anyways, thats all from me right now, I hope everyone else is doing well, keep me updated with your lives! Until next time...

Puppies and host family.

I haven´t really said much about my host family here in Corinto. They arent quite as great as my host family in Sta. Teresa but they are really nice. I have a 16 year old host sister that I hang out with a lot and I have met and hung out with her friends. I know, I´m back in high school again. Anyways, I also have a 26 yr old host sister who is almost never around, and a host brother who is 11. My host mom is about in her 60s. They have two dogs and one of their dogs just had puppies the day before I arrived in Corinto (almost 3 weeks ago). Here are some pictures of the puppies!




Here is a picture of me with the puppy in our living room.

This is a picture of my host brother Payo, host sister, Karen, and me. And of course the puppy.

And so you might ask, ¨Paul, are you going to keep one of the puppies? They are so cute how could you not want one?¨ And the answer to that is, yes I would love to keep one. However, the mother is the ugliest dog I have ever seen in my life. (And not the cute kind of ugly like my Grandpa´s old dog).

Here is a picture of the mother...since there is a good chance that those puppies will grow up to look like her, I´m not going to keep one of the puppies. How could I possibly love a dog that looks like that???

First week at site...

Well, here I am, living in Corinto. I moved here last Sunday after lugging my 80+ pounds of luggage from Managua to Corinto on two different buses (just an fyi: the modes of transportation here are either “microbuses” which are vans from the 1980s that are very run down and they somehow pack in about 20 people and there always seems to be room for one more. Or the alternative is taking a school bus. Literally these are old school buses from the States that get sent here to Nicaragua when they are too old to transport the U.S. schoolchildren. These are a lot slower than the microbuses but generally you have a bit more room. Sometimes you’ll see a school district from the states written on the side of the bus that you recognize, or sometimes they repaint them to be very colorful. I think that the old school buses are one of my favorite “different” things about Nicaragua. I took the school bus to Corinto because it had much more space for all my luggage, but usually I take the microbuses to get around).

Anyways, the first three days here were pretty tough. I was really overwhelmed again by everything. I had just spent the past 2.5 months becoming very good friends with the other trainees and spending a lot of time with them, and then poof, I was on my own. I also went from a SUPER structured training environment, to here, where I have to develop my own idea of what I am going to work on. Then of course this was coupled with a new host family, still having problems with the language and being in a new place and not knowing anything or anyone. So basically, I was stressed. And when I’m stressed I become quiet which makes things even worse because then everyone around me thinks I quiet and shy so it’s hard to meet people. As you can see I was struggling.

But sure enough after getting to feel comfortable with my host family and understanding the language a lot better (the slight difference in accent in Corinto compared to Santa Teresa really threw me off) I started to be myself again and have really enjoyed Corinto. I was a little shocked at first because the people here aren’t as openly warm as in Santa Teresa. I attribute that to the fact that Corinto is more of a big city by Nica standards and Sta. Teresa is a small town. In Sta. Teresa when you walk down the street you say hi to everyone. (One more brief side note: here in Nicaragua if you pass someone on the street you don’t say “Hola”, you say “Adios”. This confused myself and the other Americans in the beginning but now it seems normal. They don’t understand why we would say “Hello” to someone as we’re passing just like I don’t understand why they would say “Adios” to someone while passing). Anyways, so here in Corinto when I would say “Adios” to people I’d get blank stares and no responses. This was not the Nicaragua I was used to because usually the people are so friendly. After being here a couple of days I’ve noticed that this city operates differently. The people are still really friendly but with people they know. In Santa Teresa, “strangers” almost doesn’t exist because everyone knows each other. But here, in a city of 20,000, there are strangers. So it took a couple days for my neighbors here to get accustomed to my face and my presence and now they are as friendly as the people in Sta. Teresa. It seems minor, but little things like that made it hard for me to adjust at first.

The past two days have been great here. I have a host sister who is 16 and she has been showing me around Corinto and helping me improve my Spanish. It is Semana Santa here which is the holy week, and so there are processions through the streets everyday. All of Nicaragua has the entire week off of work and school so it is a party week for everyone. I haven’t really done any partying since my only friend here is 16 yrs old, but it seems like a good time watching everyone else! But the moral of the story is that I started to feel more at home here and adjusted to the ways that things work here in Corinto. It’s a little more rough around the edges than the “perfect” Sta. Teresa. But I’ve grown to like that aspect because it seems a little more real.







This is a picture of one of the processions through Corinto. It was on Good Friday so it was Christ with the cross followed by the Virgin Mary.





Anyways, I only had to do minimal work this week. I went with my counterpart (a doctor at the health center who I will work directly with for the next two years) and a few other health workers to various restaurants and food stands on the beach and made sure that they were preparing food in a sanitary way. It was great to get to know some of the restaurants. I was super impressed by the fact that these checks were going on, but really they didnt check much, I’m still not convinced that some of the places are preparing food sanitarily. Next week my counterpart is gone all week so I’m basically on my own. I think I’ll go to the health center and try to meet some of the workers and doctors there and then maybe visit some of the other organizations here that I might work with. For example there is a Youth House and a Women’s shelter here, I’m still not sure how they work so this week I will go investigate.








The two women in navy blue I was working with. This is one of the beaches in Corinto and we were walking around talking to people that were selling food from little stands. Not a bad way to spend a days work. The beach isnt gorgeous, but I think it beats an office building. Although I might change my mind if that office building had air conditioning...

I’ll close with a funny story. When we were visiting the restaurants to “inspect” them, we would all meet at the health center and then get a ride to the beach. Our ride was the town ambulance. Here in Nicaragua ambulances sometimes transport sick or injured people, but most of the time just transport health workers or whoever needs a ride. The ambulance is just an SUV with a stretcher in back. Anyways, the ambulance driver, Don Pedro, came to pick up myself , my counterpart and three other female workers. We started driving and Don Pedro started talking to me about how I was definitely going to marry a Nicaraguan woman. By the way, every Nicaraguan that I meet, within the first minute of conversation tells me that I will definitely end up marrying a Nica. It’s quite amusing. (Don’t worry, I don’t have any plans like that so far). So Don Pedro was telling me that I had to find a Nica woman to marry me but first I had to learn how to pick up a Nica woman by catcalling. The catcalling here in Nicaragua, and Corinto especially, is ridiculous. It doesn’t matter if a woman is with her husband or by herself she is going to get some comment on how beautiful she is and possibly/probably something more explicit. Whats interesting is the men here generally think that this is the best way to find/pickup women and think that the women love it. (An American girl here who has a boyfriend in the states was asked by a Nica man “What catcall did your boyfriend use to get you?”). So I’m in the ambulance with 4 women and Don Pedro, and Don Pedro pulls alongside this woman who is carrying a huge bucket of stuff on her head and just starts catcalling her, telling her how beautiful she is for about a minute (p.s. this woman was about 50 yrs old and not beautiful). Meanwhile the women in the ambulance just laugh while this is happening and I can’t help but laugh. The woman who is being catcalled just stands there, listens and smiles but doesn’t respond. Eventually Don Pedro pulls away with the ambulance and tells me “That’s how it’s done.”

I think the catcalling is awful, but it’s honestly a part of life here and there’s nothing I can do to change it. So when Don Pedro is giving me a lesson, I’ll just listen and laugh.

That’s all I have for now, Happy Easter everyone!

Officially a Volunteer!

This morning my training group and I officially swore in as volunteers! This means that we are now Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) instead of Peace Corps Trainees (PCTs), its a good feeling to finally be there, and also a bit scary! Anyways, the ceremony consisted of a first part where it was just our training staff, the trainees and our host families. I made a picture slide show that was shown that had pictures of all the families with their host kids, and then other fun pictures from our training. It ended up turning out really well and all the host families really liked it. So that part of the ceremony was thanking our host families. Then the second part was much more formal with the U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua, the Minister of Health from Nicaragua and all the Peace Corps staff including the country director. It all took place at the nicest hotel in Nicaragua, the Intercontinental. The ceremony ended with the Minister of Health swearing us in as Peace Corps volunteers in Spanish, and then the Ambassador swearing us in as volunteers for the U.S. government in English. It was a really nice ceremony with all of us dressing up nicely for the first time since we've been here! Here are some pics from the event and afterwards:






This is Danny and Kadesha, two members of my group that spoke at the family ceremony giving thanks to the families for hosting us. My picture slideshow thing is in the background.

This is me and U.S. Ambassador just after swearing in. He looks like he's not happy, but really he is super thrilled that he finally met me.

And right after that previous picture, the Ambassador was mobbed by Nicaraguan news reporters. I'm not sure what they asked him, but basically after every event where the Ambassador speaks, the press asks him to comment on something. Hopefully we'll get in the newspaper here!

This is a picture of the of our whole group after the swearing in. The guy in the middle with the suit on is our Assistant Peace Corps Director (APCD). He is basically our boss because he is in charge of the Peace Corps Health Education program in Nicaragua.

Here is the guys pic. A couple of the guys in our group grew beards all through out training that they called their "swearing in beards". I am a little sad that I didnt participate because I've never had a full beard in my life. But, at the same time, having a beard while being in 100 degree heat for 3 months sounds like a nightmare. And they agree, they are shaving them off later today. The three guys in the suits are Peace Corps staff. Our APCD is on the left. The man in the black suit in the middle is our Peace Corps Country Director who is in charge of all things Peace Corps in Nicaragua. And the guy on the right is Nicaraguan and was in charge of our training.

Anyways, that was swearing in. Its was really exciting for all of us, but we all feel really anxious too because for the first time since we got to Nicaragua, we are all going to have to separate. Our group has spent a lot of time together and have gotten really close, but starting this Sunday we are going to scattered throughout the country. Also, throughout training we had something planned just about everyday with assigned tasks and were usually surrounded by other Americans. Now that we are actual volunteers, we go off to our sites to live surrounded by only Nicaraguans and we have to create our own job and form new relationships from nothing. Pretty exciting and pretty intimidating!

Anyways, our group is in the capital city, Managua, this week and we plan on going out and celebrating our swearing in. Then tomorrow and sunday we will be saying goodbye to each other as one by one we leave for our sites. I will be leaving Sunday morning for Corinto. It will be quite a mix of emotions.

One more thing...During the swearing in ceremony we thanked a lot of people that helped us throughout training and our friends and family from the states definitly was mentioned. So I just wanted to thank everyone who has sent me emails, cards, or packages! Every little bit helped me to adjust to my life here in Nicaragua. And thanks for reading my blog and emails, every time I could vent a little bit, or share a great experience helped me to organize all my new thoughts in my head. Anyways, thanks to all!