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.