Most of week 2

One of the local artists places

Where we usually have class
Days 11-16

It feels like it’s been awhile since I posted on this thingy and this post will be long, sorry. So I finally caught the GG finale from last week and my host family probably thought I was going bat poop crazy in my room for an hour. Yelling American obscenities, cackling gleefully, screaming “What!“ over and over at the end! All I’ve got to say is, Chuck Bass better not be dead!
Saturday we had another destination lecture of sorts, this one in a famous restaurant called the Olla de Barro. We didn’t actually get to taste the food, so I’m kind of unaware as to why we met there, but I had some tasty cheap crackers that were probably made in America. The lecture mostly dealt with the small business advising portion of our job. I still don’t think I’m qualified to be giving experienced business owners advice. Though, in Nicaragua, apparently many small business owners lack basic accounting knowledge and other practical managerial skills that might seem obvious to us, like putting up signs and such. I still don’t know how many Nicaraguans are really desperate for some American blonde 20 something to come in and tell them all the stuff their doing wrong. Saturday night was fun, though. San Juan is pretty and the people are nice, but it’s not exactly a happening place. Most of those working are artists. There are no real restaurants or bars, just this sketchy billiards place where old drunk men come out at night and we figured this wasn’t quite our scene. Just wait though, we’ll probably be regulars there in a month. So us San Juan de Oriente trainees walked to Catarina and met the trainees that live there for a few beers. When we got there without really thinking about it I go “I haven’t had a drink in over a week, it’s been like 5 years since I could say that!” which is really only something you should say at an AA meeting, but then to my relief a couple other people seemed to agree. They’re probably secretly planning my intervention right now.
Sunday was peaceful, until after church, when shit hit the fan, literally! No, just kidding, that would super nasty, but I did get pretty sick. First, I agreed to go to church with my host mom…a Baptist church. The pastor was really friendly, but talked in a really low fast voice that I couldn’t understand and I think I totally agreed to go to church every Sunday and the lord only knows what else. Seriously, I wasn’t catching a word he was saying and just kept smiling going “Si, ah si, estoy de acuerdo(I agree).” So for all I know the pastor is now expecting my first born and a hymnal solo during the summer solstice. Then during what seemed like a passionate service he kept mentioning my name usually followed by something about children, money, and the President of the United States. I wasn’t sure at the time if I should look offended or pleased, so I settled on contemplative. After, someone brought out these brochures with, I kid you not, something called Operation Andres, that has something to do with recruiting new members. Now I don’t want to be paranoid, because Andres is a decently common name (though I have yet to meet anyone here going by it) and these brochures were printed up all professionally, probably in a different city, but it is more than a little odd that they started a new program aimed at getting more people in their church called Operation Andres the first time the new American named Andres comes to their church! Creepy, I hope they don’t do something Baptist level crazy like paint the steeple in my blood! Joking…kind of. Anyways, so all during this service my stomach was like, screw this. So I really didn’t eat dinner and just went to bed around 7:30. Maybe an hour and a half later I was throwing up stuff I don’t even remember eating. Sorry for the graphicness, but for the rest of night I was diarrheaing (new verb) to the max. Meanwhile, it was pouring down rain and my bathroom is outside…fml. I achieved at best 3 hours of sleep and was in no mood to trifle with the next morning. My Spanish teacher told me to rest and call the doctor and the doctor told me to rest and take this medicine and drink the hydration mix, all of which I was already doing/about to do. So I slept over 4 hours, ate a few pieces of carrot and celery for dinner got some work done and went back to bed.
The next morning (Tuesday) I felt refreshed. I ate an egg and half a piece of toast and for lunch I had practically normal portions. Yesterday, it rained, again (it’s been raining almost nonstop since Sunday), but, yesterday, it really rained like no one’s business. I was practically swimming to class in almost knee high water at certain places. We had to travel back to Masatepe for a 2 hour lecture on Nicaraguan Economic History in the afternoon, it was almost as fascinating as it sounds. The worst part of the trip was when we were getting on the bus to Masatepe. The other San Juan trainees and I were meeting our teacher at the bus stop and she decided as she saw us approach that we needed to immediately catch the bus she was right next to. Unfourtunately, I was at the time across a large highway from said bus. So me and another trainee sprinted across the highway in the pouring rain trying to avoid becoming road kill. As I was getting on last through the back of the bus (in Nicaragua people enter the bus through all different parts: front, side, back, it’s all fair game) the bus started going. These buses are old American school buses by the way. So I had one foot kind of on the bus, one foot in the air, and one hand desperately hanging on to the open back door. Now these buses take off pretty fast and are pretty crowded, so the driver couldn’t really hear my screams of protest. This random man started helping/possibly trying to kill me by closing the door whilst I was still only half inside. the door was flung into my face before closing partially back causing the glasses I was wearing to fall behind onto the street, I then flung myself inside and the door was closed for good. All this occurred on a moving bus in the pouring rain. I emerged from this public transportation nightmare mostly unscathed (a bruise on my cheek and a scratch on my leg), but my poor glasses are lying somewhere on a Nicaraguan highway. Don’t worry, I have a backup pair, and will now try and refrain from entering moving highway vehicles. The best part of this was the whole time I was hanging on the back of the moving bus, the other trainees and my teacher had wriggled to front of the crowd without looking back and were all like, “Where have you been, why do you look pissed?” when I found them later. I so should’ve caught the next bus. We totally caught a break on the way back and got a private ride in a jeep with some of the Peace Corps staff on their way to Managua.
Today we went back to Managua for the first time since getting off the plane. It’s a little over an hour the packed bus, not so much fun at 6 in morning, unless your idea of fun is forcefully having to dry hump with 10 sweaty strangers. The rest of day was nice, though. All of Nica 53 got to see the Peace Corps office for the first time, we were in air conditioning all day, and we got a free lunch. Totally worth the dry humping in my opinion. Tomorrow night some of us are going to this party at a restaurant one of the trainee’s families owns in Nicinomo a couple of miles down the road. Should make for a fun end of the week! I posted a few pictures, but I really having been taking my camera around with me lately. I’ll try to be better next week.

Oh, you can title these things.

Days 7-11

Nicaragua is so loud! If its not barking dogs (dogs roam the streets in mass) or crowing roosters (always the subtle one, I told my host sister today how my favorite food is rooster), its blaring music or people screaming. The Baptist church next door (I can’t escape them!) was still raging at my grandpa bedtime of 9. Then at 530 in the morning someone was banging a hammer. Maybe I’m alone in the opinion that there is no construction work worth doing before 7a.m. I’m getting used to it, but thank sweet mother jesus for my earplugs, or I would never sleep.
For the last few mornings, I have been getting up early to run. It’s pretty bizarre jogging here though. The scenery is gorgeous, but Nicaraguans don’t jog for exercise. So most of the town that’s up just laughs at the silly gringo jogging around the town as I go by.
I’ve adjusted to the food easier than expected. Besides the avocados and mangos (So plentiful! So delicious!) , I generally just eat things without thinking too hard about what they are. There are vegetables here that I didn’t even know existed. I had a soup a couple days ago for lunch that had like 10 different kinds of vegetables in it, the only one I recognized was onion, so I’m calling it onion soup. The cheese isn’t very good in Nicaragua, but they have so many different kinds of delicious frescas. Yesterday, I had a pineapple and something else one. Not exactly sure of the ingredients, but it was pink, and tasted like pink things should.
This week as a whole has been pretty exhausting. We have Spanish class for like 7 hours a day and then there’s always PC (shout out, Rachel, sometimes I confuse myself with the PC thing) readings and assignments to do after. Also, trying to speak in Spanish for most of the day is mentally draining. The heat isn’t helping. It’s not so much the actual temperature (which I’m pretty sure has been a little over 100 in the afternoon for most of the week), but more so the lack of air conditioning. There is none. That seems pretty obvious, but it’s hard to imagine until you’re sitting inside and it’s still 100 degrees. At whatever moment you read this, I will be sweating, it’s a fact. I do love how we have class outside, literally in the jungle. Paradise.
Today we had a field trip of sorts to Masatepe where all the trainees met up to get rabies shots and talk about dangerous diseases with the medical staff. We headed back before noon so we could still have lunch with our families, because nothing gets your stomach grumbling more than talking about scabies and diarrhea. This afternoon me and the other San Juan trainees walked around town and chatted with local artists. We met some amazing people who had been making ceramics all their lives. Most of them sell to galleries and such in the States (I’ve taken to calling it the States, it makes me feel worldly, deal with it). My plan next week is to start posting on Mondays and Thursdays, those are the best days for me to hit up the cyber café near me. I forgot to load up the pictures from my camera this time, opps. I’ll have extra next time.

Day 3 through 6

Starting today (Saturday) I plan to make shortish daily journal entries on my laptop and save them to my flash drive so when I go to the cyber café I can just post these little treasures on here. Yesterday started out with a little lecture from the head PC security guy about a bunch of super scary ways we might get robbed/attacked. Some of the current volunteers talked about how some of their group mates had been express kidnapped and such. They say it’s honestly really pleasant for a kidnapping. Later we split up into 8 person groups based on our Spanish levels for a 3 hour session. I’m in the beginner med/low group and it was sadistically pleasurable to see other trainees struggling as well. We also received our training town assignments and 4 person groups. I’m in San Juan de Oriente with Peter, Jordan, and Angela. Pretty excited about our group potential. The day was capped off by a surprise boat tour of these little islands around Granada with these amazing houses (I think the President of Clemson’s brother owns one. Katy, you need to get on that.) There was a bunch of wildlife including this diva monkey who just loved having his photo taken. Afterwards, we went out for one of the Nica 53’s (we’re the 53rd training class to come through Nicaragua) 21st b-day. He’s the youngest of our group.
Today began with the Business and Agriculture groups splitting up in two different buses to be taken to our training families. It was kind of sad to say goodbye to some of the agriculture people, cause we’ll really only see them a few times in the next 3 months. San Juan de Oriente was the first stop on the way and I was the third person off the bus, so it was kind of intimidating having 20 something people watch me meet my new family. I have a host mom and host sister. They have a store at the front of their house so there are always people coming in. The food has been delicious, though I’m not always sure of what it is. I do know that I’ve eaten a crap load of avocados. Communicating with my host mom is mostly a game of charades, but my host sister does speak a little English. I go by Andres here. They can’t really pronounce Bayless, instead they say Payless. My host sister goes oh, los zapatos! So there is a distinct possibility they think my family owns a large shoe company. The worst thing so far (besides feeling like a mentally impaired orphan at times around my new house) is this damn rooster. If you thought that roosters only started crowing at daybreak, you would be very wrong. The one that lives next to my room likes to warm-up around 1 in the morning. I’m already plotting ways to get rid of him. Poison? Knife? Breaking his neck? We’ll see. Though judging by his size, he could probably take me.
Today in class we walked around the city and found all the important sites. It was way too hot, but now I know where the police station, schools, and shops are. The next 11 weeks will be extremely busy. We have class Mon-Thurs for 7 hours a day, then on Friday and/or Saturday we go to other cities for different safety or technical activities. Even at night we have a good bit of homework. I did find Survivor in English on my host family’s tv last night and watched the whole finale! It made me feel so much better, though Parvati really should have won! The next one is check it, IN NICARAGUA! What are the f-ing odds! Until next time, mis amigos, I miss you all!

Day O

It feels like it’s been forever since my last post (in America!), but really it’s only been three days! Tuesday was kind of fun, well not most of it, compared to Wednesday though, which we will get to, it was a dream. The flight from Cola was early, got up at 4a.m., but problem less and the airport had free wireless. All airports should really have free wireless, cheap D.C. and Miami bastards. Anyway, got to D.C. actually a little early, and was definitely the first Peace Corps person to try and check in that morning. Left the bags with some niceish hotel workers and met Katy for a little breakfast (thanks for the skittles and starbursts!) and made it back to the hotel. Still couldn’t check in (apparently this is one of those swanky hotels that are booked solid in the middle of the week for no apparent reason), by this time though there were a couple other volunteers there to meet and share paranoid fears with.
We had this really long orientation session where we did things like draw our feelings on giant sheets of paper with a group, seriously that was mostly what we did. I’m one of like 3 Southern people here, one Mississippi, one North Carolina. Some Florida’s, but that doesn’t count. Afterwards, the people in charge gave us way more money than we really needed to go out and eat wherever. So some of us decided to hit up Georgetown for our last supper. Really fun, lots of wine and beer, Katy came by. Dinner was definitely the highlight of this long day. We got back around 11 so we could get a nap in before our 1 a.m. checkout time.

Day 1

This day was hella long. We had to checkout of the hotel at 1 so we could take a bus to the airport at 1:30. The airport was closed, so we all just laid around on the floor and played cards and what not. No free wireless…assholes. Why did we get to the airport before it was open? That is a stellar question to which apparently no one knows the answer. We herded thorough eventually for our flight to Miami. I slept in fits for pretty much the entire flight and felt slightly less bitchy upon arrival. The Miami airport is really nice, but not quite nice enough to enjoy staying in for over 4 hours which is what ended up happening.
First, right before boarding was supposed to happen, the man came on and was all like “there are some mechanical problems we are working on, so slight delay” to which I thought slight, take your damn time! Then he came back on and goes “so we’re going to think about it for another hour.” While the airport staff was pondering whether or not our lives were super important or just fairly important, we played more cards, no free wireless…really Miami, I expected more from you. I guess the hard thinking airport staff didn’t want our blood on their hands, so they decided to change our plane and we all herded across the airport to another gate. We waited there for awhile, before boarding. Just as I laid my head back against my seat for some rest, someone came on the intercom to tell us to all get off for “security reasons” so we all exited the aircraft with much pissiness, though at this point it was kind of funny. Finally we got on the plane where I discovered a damn crying baby two rows behind me. If that had kept up the entire flight, I might have lost my shit, but luckily it only lasted like 15 min or so.
We all excitedly looked out our windows upon arrival, and Nicaragua looked fantastic from the air. A bunch of PC staff greeted us at the airport and we took an hour bus ride to Grenada, which is lovely. The hotel we are staying at is pretty much paradise. We had a couple hours of information sessions and dinner, before they let us go. Most of us hit the sheets early, I went to bed at 9 when I realized I was staring at a wall for over 5 uninterrupted minutes.

Day 2

Such a refreshing sleep. We had to be at breakfast at 7 and some people went jogging at 6. I was really planning on it, don’t roll your eyes, but then I didn’t, which sounds like most of my stories about exercise. There were some current volunteers around, which is fantastic, since they just went through what we are going thorough very recently. This one girl told me about how poor her Spanish was when she got here and how she was placed in the beginner low class, which is the lowest, but now she’s pretty much fluent. She’s my inspiration. We had lots of information sessions today and got a whole pharmacia worth of medicine. We also had our individual Spanish evaluations. This went pretty much as expected. The evaluators spoke no English and my lady soon realized I spoke no Spanish. I mangled her language for several minutes before resorting to my blank stare method. So then she would point at basic things like my shoe and a chair and I was all over that. Except for body parts, that section of vocabulary completely left me. That sounds like not a big deal, but she pointed to like 10 different ones, as my hopes of beginner high or intermediate low class went fluttering out the window. I’m not extremely concerned about it though. I’ll just have to show improvement to an intermediate medium or high level by July to pass training.
Later, some of us walked around the city. We took a few pictures and I’ll try to attach some of mine. The city is beautiful, but really hot in the afternoon. Due to my extreme sweating situation, some other volunteers asked how my run went when I got back. To which I replied, quite well, before chugging two bottles of water. I just took my malaria pills, so I’ll keep you posted of any weird dreams I might have. One of the current volunteers said hers’ were all sexual, so…I probably won’t keep you posted on those. I didn't proofread this so...sorry. Adios!

So just watched "Dancing with the Stars" for the first time and now viewing GG for the several hundredth. America! Is it so wrong that I'm more than a little concerned about missing the apparently epic (according to certain internet sources) finale? Is it too much to hope that my Nicaraguan host family are avid Gossip Girl fans who are at this moment planning a big GG finale party for this upcoming Monday night? I don't think so.
Tomorrow (at 6 a.m. Yay!) my plane leaves for DC where I will meet all the other Peace Corps volunteers headed to Nicaragua. Then we have some horrid schedule where we check into the hotel at noon, do some sort of seminar till 7, and then check out of said hotel at 1 a.m. to head over to the airport for a flight that doesn't leave till like 6:30 a.m., which is just disgusting. They must have their reasons, though. I guess I'm all packed, but really packing for 2 years of your life is pretty much a crap-shoot. I'm super nervous/excited about this trip. Mostly concerned that my lack of Spanish and/or lack of roughing it experience will make this a mess. At the very least, me trying to run around a third world country where I don't speak the language should be high comedy. I'll try and keep up with this blog fairly regularly, should have internet for the next few days at least during training. We're in a hotel in Managua till Saturday. Make sure you leave comments every once in a while if you're reading, so I know I'm not just writing this to myself! Need to start getting ready for bed. Love you all!