Opps, I’m getting worse and worse about updating on here. First, I want to give a shout out to the thoughtful people from whom I’ve received packages this month. My fantastic friends Shelby and Claire for the dance music, skittles, and the high class musings of gossip magazines. You two are the best. Also to Lucy Bailey. You really went above and beyond, completely raised the bar on package quality! And of course Mom and Katy! Mom, you always keep me so well-supplied up here. Katy, I promise I’m sending you a letter back tomorrow, this time for reals! Thanks to everyone, you’re making my site mate super jealous!

So just a glimpse back at the month. The San Carlos fiestas were in full swing a couple of weeks back. It’s a pretty big deal here. The celebration is essentially for Nicaragua’s Independence Day, but San Carlos also holds a big 3-day fishing tournament with competitors from around the globe. Ok, mostly just Costa Rica, but still, big deal. There was no class for the week and they set up a big stage and a bunch of tents downtown with all these food and beverage vendors. The winning fish of the tournament was 140 pds, which I didn’t see, but that sounds enormous. That’s within 10 pds of my senior year of high school weight…Ah, the skinny years. We also went to this beauty pageant/drag show called Miss Diversidad. There was a regular beauty pageant too, but the competitors were like 11, and I get creeped out by pageant children, unless they’re on TLC. So I didn’t go to that one. Anyways, the drag show was pretty amazing if only for the fact that it was in Nicaragua. Only a few cities in this country would have something like that. Yeah, there were only 4 or 5 competitors and the whole thing was a little poorly produced (whoever was in charge clearly lacked the ability to wrangle some trannies, turnover time was quite glacial), but I was impressed by the turnout, very much a family event judging by the crowd. Me and my site mates also got fake trashy tattoos, Myrtle Beach style. They were pretty hot. I got a heart with an arrow through it on my bicep. Feel free to take a moment to fan yourselves. It was literally done with some type of spray paint and stencil. Drag shows and spray paint tattoos, only the highest class for San Carlos!

Also of note, been to Juigalpa twice since my last post. Juigalpa is bigger and has more stuff than San Carlos, but is a bit closer than Managua, though still far enough that we get to spend the night. The first time I went there to pick up my new glasses. They’re blue and very chic…or kind of ugly, I can’t decide. The second trip was for a Peace Corps regional safety and security meeting. Since, our region only has about 8 volunteers, some of whom were on vacation, they decided to combine our region with others and have our meeting in Juigalpa. It was fun, we got pizza and went to this bizarre museum with mutated preserved animals and a Cyclops baby in formaldehyde. Seriously, that baby and his one eye still haunts me.

Friday was also very sensational. Me and my site mate had a wine, cheese, and Glee night here in my room. I had these delicious great cheeses that you can’t get here (thanks entirely to Lucy Bailey), crackers, this boxed wine that you can only get at one place here in San Carlos that is probably pretty shitty but tastes great when you haven’t had wine in forever, and we watched the last few episodes of Glee’s first season and the first two of this season! They took hours and hours the week before to download with the awful internet here, but so worth it. I guess I’m late on this, but Britney+Glee=Dreams Really do Come True. Such a great low key night. Signing off for now, the rain is ridiculous, which means my room is almost certainly flooded, so I should leave. I’ll try to post again in a couple of weeks, but I’m a liar about this, so who knows.