Gorging

Today I have been reading David Sedaris, a hilariously good short stories writer. If you haven't read anything by him you either, haven't heard of him before, or don't enjoy laughing. As with most times that I read I am inspired to write similarly to that which I had been reading. I almost completely filled my journal with the description of the corn stalks in Mali after finishing John Steinbeck's “East of Eden”. And as I would love to think of myself as extremely hilarious, I have discovered however, that I am just very good at knowing what my family and close friends find funny. This tends to get me in trouble when I assume everyone has this same sense of humor at say, a dinner party of fellow volunteers and our Country Director (my boss' boss). At any rate, in a house where I usually have electricity and cable and screaming children to keep me entertained, I found myself bored enough to go to my emergency stash of reading. I am currently out of books to read and, because Sedaris is both hilarious and in short story form, I have been trying to savor the book by only reading a short story here and there with breakfast or before my afternoon nap. So today I gorged, I blame it on the rain.

            The rainy season has started and I am loving it. Except of course my clothes not drying all the way, the humidity wringing the sweat out of me like I'm a sponge, water dripping through the adobe tiles onto my face at night, being woken up by claps of thunder that feel like they will bring down the house and only having slightly reliable electricity for about 5 hours a day. But, hey, at least it's cool until about 8 am so I can get my morning run in. Today the rain started mid afternoon and I was ready for the power to go out but just as it seemed safe, I sat back to enjoyed an old episode of “The Big Bang Theory” only to have my host grandma busted in and tell me to unplug the TV immediately. Although it seemed like just another irrational nicaraguan-ism to me, like not eating limes when you are sick or not showering when you are warm to prevent getting a cold, apparently a house just down the street was struck by lightening because of the TV being plugged in and shattered all of the tiles of the roof. Because I could see the evidence around the corner and really it wasn't my house to gamble I complied and sat out to enjoy the storm rolling in. The quiet crescendo of drops and rolling thunder however were overcome by the unnecessarily loud evangelical church next store. Apparently they weren't worried about shattering tiles, with or without lightening. I am generally pretty tolerant of religion, even when it is almost pushed upon you with their outward, in the community practices but I really don't understand the need to broadcast bad singing and electric key boards. Although God may appreciate them in their own house of worship, a electric sound system that engulfs the whole neighborhood is quite unnecessary. Especially when it is at 4 in the morning, five days in a row, for two hours at a time. I asked my host family what holiday or event could possibly necessitate a 4 am church service for almost a week. When I was answered that there was none, they just wanted to pray to god, I retorted with, “Well don't they think that God can hear them during the day? I mean he is God after all.” Seeing as though the power wasn't going to conveniently go out so I could enjoy the weather, I retreated to my room, put in my much appreciated ear plugs and gorged on my bit size nuggets of laughter. Happy Rainy season everyone. 

Up swing

Despite what my friends and family might think, doing a third year has been harder than I thought it would be. I didn't realize how much longer it would feel. In addition to starting all over the experience has only been made more difficult when I see other fellow volunteers from Mali moving on with their lives back in the US. My friend from Mali, currently living in New York, came down to visit, and we had an excellent time. But when she left, it just reminded me how much I miss those friends I had made and how out of place I felt in my new environment. I was starting to have serious doubts as to if I had made a mistake in coming here. My work seemed as crusty as the dried up Nicaraguan earth at the end of the dry season. I had unexpectedly hit a 6 month slump. Slumps are tricky things. They are hard to spot, hard to avoid and, even once they have been identified, hard to fix. The business volunteers had yet another in service training planned and I was not looking forward to it. In the end however the training, and the return of the rain, are what I think ultimately pulled me out of my slump. I felt as refreshed as the returned green leaves on the trees lining my drive back to my town. I was able to look at my next 6 months and make goals and project ideas that I was excited about. It makes the remaining time seem more manageable. When I started to look at the list of things I want to do, the 6 months seem almost too short again. Life no longer seems stagnant and dusty, but busy and exciting. And as I looked out the window of the bus on my ride home with the volcano as the background I was reminded how full of energy I had been when I first arrived.

My house is full of 2-5 year olds who are always bipolar with their emotions, as those of that age tend to be. Crying fits suddenly burst into smiles, a party could end in screams of exasperation. During one of these flash flood of emotions I was reminded that as an adult I am in charge of how I feel about things, so I better start feeling happier or the next few months are going to be miserable.

I had a meeting in Managua, 10 am to 1 pm. After a short amount of sleep the night before, the 3 hour meeting, and the rushed 6 hour trip back to my town, exhausted I was greeted by a quiet town, because the power was out again, and food my host family had saved for me from lunch. I eagerly ate my dinner and with a full belly went to bed happy. It was good to be home, and I for the first time I truly realized I will miss them when I have to go back to the US.

Happy Birthday

There are tons of things that happen every week that I look around for someone else to find what is going on as ridiculous as I do, and then realize I'm all alone in that assessment and end up laughing to myself. Like the one time I saw a skinny man who spoke no English wearing a shirt that said, “I (heart sign) my curves”. Generally when this happens I think of you guys and make a mental note to tell you next time we talk, but of course my memory isn't what it use to be. I blame the malaria meds. Instead we talk about gossip and family and how I'm going to the beach again on a break from work. Well lucky for you I went to a anniversary of a high school with a note pad and this blog in mind. Apparently Nicaraguans find every possible reason to have a party. It's like being in college again, but less functional. Instead of having a super hero pub crawl just because it's a random Tuesday in January and we haven't gone out in awhile, it's a annual rodeo weekend that takes a week to prepare for, which of course means no school or work. At least the end of the pub crawl ended with us crawling to the library to print out a paper for Monday morning. This week's distraction was a high school anniversary in a neighboring town. We already had the one for our town a couple of weeks ago so I knew what to expect, lots of kids, no classes, fried food and, of course, a beauty contest. Really I can't think of a better way to say “Happy Birthday” to a high school than to parade awkward adolescences in front of all of their classmates in little skirts and judge them. And apparently neither can Nicaraguans. Actually a beauty contest seems to be the preferred activity for every event. I've already been to 4 and I've only been here for 6 months. Usually the contestants are 13-16 years old, skinny and really good at popping their hips to accent their cat walk. The pageants also usually invite the old winners to do a dance. Trying to get all the time out of these girls that they can. Today's event started with such group of girls doing a dance with short shorts, belly showing tops and a cowboy hat. Generally I would think this is awkward enough, but one of the girls was slightly heavier than the rest. I'm not trying to discriminate against fat people, but I know I wouldn't want to be in that outfit, well, ever. I couldn't stop staring at that one unlucky girl. And her belly kept winking back at me. It was like those jean commercials where the belly buttons are singing “I'm coming out”, only less singable. I broke my stare to look around and, per usual, no one thought it was weird. I had myself a chuckle and looked forward as the actual contestants came out. The pageant went on like all the rest, traditional outfit, “sports wear” which is pretty much just a sports bra and jean shorts, “fantasy” where the girls get to make their own dresses and at last the evening gowns at 11am. I didn't stay to see who won because the noon bus came and I was more interested in getting back for lunch. And that was my “work” for the day. Bonding with my co-teachers and learning a little more about the Nicaraguan psyche.

Hokey Pokey

So the week did not have a stellar start. The business adventure that I had embarked on with the women's group was not successful on Monday. They didn't sell all of their cupcakes and, from my observations, didn't really try that hard. As a result they had to pay for most of them themselves. Wednesday's class was out of control and the kids didn't seem to care about the material. They were shocked when I took away the notes they were passing and the photo album they had their noses in. Worst of all the teacher didn't seem to care either. On top of it all, my teacher canceled the class for next Monday because she's "sick" again. I keep trying to tell her, she's not sick, she's pregnant and they're called appointments, because you can schedule them, like for when you don't have class to teach.... Wooo sah, wooo sah. So I decided as a way to keep myself from spontaneously combusting, I would cancel English Club on Thursday afternoon and just take a moment to catch up on my reading. Just as I was easing into my hammock 6 little girls showed up at my house. "Carolina, are we having class today?" I told them no and thought they would just run a long, but they were persistent. I figured since I usually complain about not having enough work, I should take advantage of work when it is knocking on my door, or in this case surrounding my hammock. I changed out of my soccer shorts and headed to the school. Since I wasn't planning on having class that day, I didn't have anything planned, but I could tell these girls were pretty much starting from square one. We pronounced "Hello How are you?" and "My name is..." for about 20 minutes. When I could tell they were as done with that practice as I was we started with another topic, body parts. I asked one girl to draw a picture of a person on the board and then labeled the important parts. I could already tell their minds were saturated with "Hello, how are you?" so we ended the day with a fun song, the "Hokey Pokey". They put their left foots in, their left foots out, and really got into it when they shook it all about. I'm pretty sure they didn't memorize all of the body parts there and then, but then I also realized that wasn't the point. They did the hokey pokey and that's what it was all about. I know, I know really cheesy, but it really turned my week around. I can't make kids memorize all the common parts of the body in 5 minutes, or 5 hours, but I am helping in a little way and maybe not even in ways I can see now. And now friends and family that is what my life in Nicaragua is all about.

Rabayah's visit

Sorry for the lack of witty commentary, but I promise to have a wonderfully witty blog up shortly.

The Hat!

Somoto Canyon and other fun sights of Nicaragua