Always have been a morning person. The day before yesterday I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Or, as they say in the Spanish, I woke up on my left foot. I alternately hated everything. I hated that the two boys in the house never haul water, and I hated waiting in line to haul water. I hated that Lenin got to drink coffee and eat breakfast while I drank coffee, watching the damn pump, so I would know when it was my turn to fill the buckets for my house, and I had to keep eating and [View Full Entry]

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9 November 2009 Monday 10:16 am The pictures in this blog are a motley bunch. First, there’s Coco, one of two seamstresses in Moropoto. She took in four pairs of pants of mine, as even the pants I bought here are too big. Now they fit again! She charged me less than $0.50 for each pair. She also hemmed some fabric Lenin and I bought for a sheet, and she made a pillowcase, too. The green material with the suns and moons is now what my sheets and pillow case look like. The next is of “aunt” Leo and her husband, [View Full Entry]

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Oh what a long, strange, trip it´s been.... Just when you think you´re headed to Guatemala, you actually end up in Nicaragua again. When I initially left here in September, I knew I was leaving too soon, that I hadn´t hardly scraped the surface of what life in this land is like, but the beckon of the waves in El Salvador called me, and I let myself get carried away. Two months later, it comes to no surprise that I´m back here again. This time, instead sweating it out at the beach, I´m high in the cool mountains of Esteli, enjoying [View Full Entry]

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Estelí This town is quiet and hardworking unless of course they are celebrating thier patron saint, in which case the whole town shoots fire works off from dusk until dawn and spends the day eating raspados around the town square. The horses even dance to the marching bands while on parade. We visited the Nicasa cigar factory today which makes cigars for international export and uses genuine Havana seeds to grow tobacco for the Nicaraguan speciality smoke. The aroma of the aging tobacco was incredibly intense and gave you the sensation you were smoking a cigar as you entered the room, [View Full Entry]

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19 August 2009 Esteli 10:30 am Every time I see a business I think about how I could do it better. If only that applied to my volunteer work. I am a bad volunteer. I could be better. I am not giving this job my all, living up to my expectations, etc. I like to dream and plan the next step more than live in the present. I need to set aside dreams of the future and focus, really focus, on being a better volunteer. I work well with schedules and goals. I need to set up a schedule. A budget [View Full Entry]

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As we headed north from Granada, we saw more and more guys in jeans and cowboy hats. Estili was agriculture country through and through. While the city is not overwhelmed by a number of sights that would qualify for posters designed by the ministry of tourism, it did serve as a very good stop for us. Isle de ommetepe and Granada are very different. As such, I felt that it was very worthwhile to swing by to see a region not as touristy, and what felt like was a more authentic representation of everyday life in Nicaragua. The hostel that we [View Full Entry]

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29 May 2009 Friday 8pm, Esteli office Well. Decided to get out of my site for a while and come to Esteli for the weekend. Not gonna lie, though, don’t like leaving when the boy is still there. But he has to work tomorrow and has class Sunday and it’s fine. I have a ton of stuff to do tonight and tomorrow. Stuff to buy. Stuff to do. And am going out to Moncha’s for Mother’s Day tomorrow. I am in the office, blessedly on wireless, and it feels like I am in college again, preparing for an all nighter. Except [View Full Entry]

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I am back in Estelí. For the night. Maybe for tomorrow night, too. So I just got back from a 4 days of IST.. or In Service Training, for all Ag volunteers. We went to this farm in the department of Masaya, south of Managua. We started with chores every morning from 6-9. I worked in the rabbit cages the first morning. They have a lot of rabbits. Like a lot. I watered all of them for an hour. While others fed them. Then we learned all about how the farm runs and how they keep track of all of them [View Full Entry]

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Okay, so I´m not much into politics. And it´s hard to keep in touch with them when you´re in a foreign country. I will say that I have become slightly more republican since being abroad from the good ol´USofA. And a helluva lot more patriotic and defensive about my country, tis of thee. Okay, maybe not more repuuuublican... maybe just less of a liberal democrat. Or fiscally republican and socially democrat? Quien sabe. Anyway, the point is that I honestly don´t keep up with politics. But that doesn´t stop me from having an opinion. This morning at breakfast the older voluntee [View Full Entry]

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Over grensa bar det og rett inn i ein ny buss. Ein ska alli bli forstokt over kva slag folk som vi selge eller tilby ein ting paa bussturar. Matselgarar, menn me vatn, brus og ol og gamle kaaner med heimelaga boller hoyrer til det meir vanlege. Pa denne bussturen fann ogsaa ein pengevekslar ell to og ein predikant med paaskekollekt og preken paa spansk vegen inn i midtganga. Lurt aa spare tid: Halde preken medan du likevel skal fraa A til B med bussen:) Ellers er paaskefeiring i latinamerika ganske keisamt. ALT er stort sett stengt, inkludert barar og restaurantar, [View Full Entry]

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