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!