Blogs from Estelí, Northern Highlands, Nicaragua, Central America Caribbean - page 7

Oct 12, 2008 7:45 am Sunday Wow a lot has been going on since I wrote last weekend. First of all, last weekend I managed to leave my USB 1G memory stick in the computer at the internet place… I didn’t realize this until I’d gotten home, of course. I caught the last bus into Esteli, ended up on the Sandino urbano that takes the super long way around, and was worried that I’d miss the last bus out of Esteli… So I asked the cobrador, or the guy who takes your money on the bus, and he was super helpful in telling me where to catch the last urbano out of Esteli so that I could catch the last bus back to my community, and in telling me that I probably wouldn’t find my USB ... read more

Our alarm goes at 6am. Quite early really but as it’s pitch black at half past six each night so things starts early. For example, Yelba (the mother of our host family) starts her day by taking the days corn to the communities mill at 5am. Our first port of call, post latrine, is a wash at about 6:30am. The place for ablutions is a few paces from the back door in the shape of a small enclosed brick walled area. The view from there is tremendous looking across the lush surrounding hills. Washing equipment is a bucket of water and a pan (plus shampoo and soap of course). Nicaraguan’s are very smell conscious and Yelba often directs us to the shower with worrying enthusiasm. Breakfast - pineapple, melon, banana, a cup of the local coffee ... read more

Our agreement with Grupo Fenix is that we have all our meals catered for. This is the standard setup for volunteers with the programme and makes keeping fed more straightforward than fending for yourself. Breakfast and dinner is always with our host family including lunch on the weekends. Our weekday lunches happen together with the rest of the volunteers (currently three others) and rotate between the women of the community. Through our payments for bed and board as volunteers the families get paid an amount for each meal that they cater. It’s a pretty well thought through arrangement and on the face of it straightforward. We’ve only thrown the system into chaos once. Last week we decide to extend a trip to Managua so we could spend sometime with other cooperative based programmes in search of ... read more

Thank you all for the warm birthday wishes! Mi madre gave me roses from her garden in the morning and made me traditional Nican birthday food, or chopsue. Yeah, actually, it really is traditional birthday food here... and, as usual, it rocked. The 3.5 month old baby, JJ, is just so damn cute and soooo incredibly tranquil and happy that he makes the whole house happy. Actually, my family is usually happy. They joke around with each other all the time, especially my 17 year old brother, Isaac, and nuestra madre. He keeps arm wrestling our 49 year old mom.... and she wins everytime! Man, doing laundry by hand will give you some fuerte arms. I need to get photos with my family so you all can see them... life is getting into a routine... Iowa, ... read more

Buenas from the wilds of Nicaragua! Although I blog all the time at mytb.org/mbaade, figured I would send out one of my mass emails after my first three weeks of living and training in Nicaragua with the Peace Corps. So with the Peace Corps service is for 27 months, which includes 3 months of in country training and 24 months of service. The PC is divided up into 5 different sectors: TESOL, Environmental Education, Small Business, Health, and Agriculture. I am part of the Agriculture sector in Nicaragua and am 3 weeks into my 11 week training period and I AM LOVING IT! We have Spanish classes every Mon-Tues-Thursday at least, from 8am-12 and then applied Spanish from 1-3pm. Most Wednesdays and all Fridays we have technical sessions and tech training... which includes EVERYTHING from how ... read more