¡Fiestas Patronales en Santa Teresa!

Jess and I went to El Crucero again this week, so I made sure to bring a camera. You’ll find some pictures below of the view. It is really a beautiful spot.

Two pieces of news in this blog.

1. Jess and I received our first pieces of mail on Friday! Thank you to the Coxes out in Oregon and my parents! It took about 2 weeks for both to get here. There are a few interesting things about the Nicaraguan mail system. Everything makes it to your door opened and emptied. There’s a stamp on the letter that says it was received by the Nicaraguan Post Office already opened and that they taped it up for you. How nice!

I don’t know where it happens along the line, but the word amongst volunteers is that the letters are opened in transit to check for money, valuables, visas, etc. Packages are apparently worse, as everything is rifled through and anything that looks valuable or enticing is kept as a handling fee by those doing the sorting. We’ve learned a few tips from other volunteers about receiving mail intact from the States. I’m posting this for those of you who will be sending things, but to the rest of you, please don’t feel obligated.

TIPS FOR MAILNG TO NICARAGUA
1. Add the title “Padre” or “Hermana” in front of the recipient’s name. If the sorters believe that the package/letter is meant for a person of the cloth, they probably won’t open it.
2. Mail any kind of larger items in manilla bubble padded envelopes available at any post office or Staples. The sorters are less likely to open an envelope than a box that they can re-tape.
3. Draw crosses on the outside of any envelope to instill a sense of guilt in the sorters.
4. Include cards of different saints in packages (see number 3).

Of course, anything sensitive or valuable shouldn’t be mailed through normal mail. Most volunteers have important things sent to the U.S. houses of other volunteers who are soon to be returning and can bring more valuable things back to Nicaragua.

2nd piece of news:

Today, for the Fiestas Patronales de Santa Teresa, Jess, myself and a few other aspirantes went to “El Rodeo.” The rodeo here is exactly the same as the rodeo in the US, just a whole lot more dangerous. Jess and I paid 20 cordobas (about 1 dollar) for the cheap seats. However, at a Nicaraguan Rodeo, the cheap seats are actually the closest to the action (kinda makes sense, doesn’t it?). We were actually under the bleachers, with about 6 feet of clearance with only a few fence posts between us and the bulls. The people above were throwing garbage, spilling beer, and spitting through the slats on the “cheap seats,” but I none of us were hit.

At a Nicaraguan Rodeo anybody who wants to ride a bull is able to. Also, anyone who wants to jump into the ring and taunt the bull is able to. Such freedom is not always a good thing. One guy broke a collar bone and had blood coming out his ear. We thought he wasn’t going to make it, but he came to as soon as someone gave him a can of beer. Who knew that’s all it took?!

I also made a friend at the event, as we shared a common interest in the incredible size of the bulls. Although he was covered in tattoos, he seemed like a nice guy. An hour later, while sitting in front of my house, I saw the police march him by in hand cuffs. Apparently he’s a local “ladron,” which means pickpocket or thief. Oh well.

When I write these posts I always make it seem like we’re living in a lawless, dangerous land only seen in Spaghetti Westerns. This place is actually incredibly beautiful and the people here are friendlier than any other I’ve met. After talking with Jess last night we both agreed we haven’t been happier in a very long time. This is absolutely the best decision (joining the Peace Corps) we’ve made together as a couple, besides getting married. Thanks to everyone for all of your support!

The views from La Mision. Enjoy!

Here´s Jess, another aspirante, Jess´s Mom (Reyna), and me on our way to a volcanic laguna! Que Bueno!

Here´s a shot of Jess´s room. Gotta love that mosquito netting!

Life in Nicaragua.

Things have been going well in my town. We’re preparing for the same festivities that Jess had in El Rosario. Apparently, Friday through Monday night is going to be pretty rowdy. I keep telling Jess my town is a lot quieter than hers, but this weekend might prove me wrong.

Our Spanish classes have been going well, I feel that my language skills are much better than they were just a week ago. I’ve been able to have real conversations with family members, which feels great. The next step is understanding other people in town, who haven’t been briefed on the latest wave of “gringos”. Yesterday we had an activity where we needed to walk around town and learn the daily schedule of different people. We were only given a piece of paper with the hours 5:00am to 10:pm written on it. Then we struck out on our own to interrupt someone’s routine. I found the mother of the town’s priest, who also works in the rectory. Her life was pretty exciting, I must admit.

Afterwards I tried to talk to a doctor in the Centro de Salud (Health Center), but she could only give me a minute of her time. She talked to fast anyway.
Finally I found a 20 year old guy named Fransisco who is a “cobrador” on a local bus. You see, in the public transportation in Nicaragua you have the bus driver (el conductor) and the guy who handles all the money changing for passengers. He’s called the cobrador. They never forget a person who’s gotten on the bus, where they’re going, or if they’ve paid their fare. The cobrador actually spends most of his time with his head out the window (or, more commonly, half his body) shouting out our next destination. These guys start at 5:30 in the morning in front of my house and don’t go home until dark.

Jess, myself, and a few other Trainees took a ride into Diriamba on Saturday. It’s about a half hour ride and it cost us 10 cordobas each (about 55 cents). Let me just say I didn’t think they made busses I couldn’t stand up in. Well, I was proven wrong this weekend. That half hour ride was the most uncomfortable ride I’ve ever taken. The entire ride was like I mobile game of Twister. Crazy. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures to back up this experience because carrying cameras (and taking them out for pictures) is pretty risky business around here. Maybe another time.

Friday the entire group of aspirantes went to a beautiful mountain topped town called “El Crucero”. We spent the day at a building hiding behind a cemetery called “La Mision”. It belongs to the organization Feed the Children and works as an outpost for work groups visiting Nicaragua. The building has some of the most beautiful views, but again, I didn’t take my camera, so you’ll have to take my word for it. We’re going back soon, so I’ll definitely be sure to bring it this time.

Jess and I decided our trip to El Crucero was blog worthy because of this story:

3 of the training towns got up at 5am to catch the 6 o’clock bus to Jinotepe, the local hub for busses to anywhere. All of the groups meet up in Jinotepe around 6:15ish, and we all catch another bus for El Crucero. This early in the morning we’re lucky to get our own microbus. Picture a minivan from the States with 12 aspirantes, 3 professors, 1 conductor, and 1 cobrador, and that’s our group at 6:15 in the morning on our way to El Crucero.

El Crucero happens to be right smack in the middle of the route between Jinotepe and Managua, so our professors have the driver drop us off at the Cemetery in El Crucero. “Why,” you may ask? Because none of them had been to La Mision before and were told to drop us there. We were supposed to wait for the Peace Corps owned Minibus to take us to La Mision, so there we stood, on a foggy, extremely windy mountain top in the middle of a cemetery in the middle of Nicaragua. Just as I was starting to revisit my wilderness survival skills our bus pulled up (a ½ hour later, by the way). We got on board and drove a fifth of a mile to La Mision. A fifth of a mile!

We’ll know better next time. OK, I don’t want to end on a bad note, so here are a few pictures of our town.

Here are a couple of pictures of my patio. I love this rocking chair because it´s made of rebar (the crudest, ugliest construction material used in the US). Although the garbage in the streets can be overwhelming, Nicas use recycle everything. Like this chair.

This is our hammock. Nicaragua is famous for it´s incredibly beautiful and comfortable hammocks. This one is no exception.

This is a picture of another aspirante with her favorite animal, the ever elusive "escorpio". This should not be confused with a "perro sampopo" or a "scorpiono". I still need some clarification. Any thoughts?

Outside my door to the left.

Outside my house the right.

See yout tomorrow, Honey!

Good post, Jess. We´ll actually be seeing each other tomorrow, when the group meets up. This weekend, the director of Peace Corps (de todo el mundo) is visiting some of our training towns! I´m headed to Jess´s on Saturday afternoon through Sunday.
Next weekend she´s coming to my town. We´re having a grand fiesta, so it should be a good time.

¡Adios!

El Rosario

Hola!

Matt has posted an update on the logistics of Peace Corps Training in Nicaragua - Spanish Class in the morning, practice in the afternoon, host families etc... So I´ll try to be brief.

Matt and I are living in separate towns right now about 5-10 minutes from each other by taxi in the department of Curacao. My town is very small, which I am enjoying quite a bit. My host mom owns a small pulperian (a small store with basics - almost like a convenience store) which is right next to our house. I spend most evenings in there with her, learning how to say things like ´flour´and ´corn´and ´shampoo´, and such. Its actually quite helpful.

My spanish is already progressing, but I find that it takes so much effort for me to think and speak and listen in spanish all day that by the end of the day, I am absolutely exhausted. There are three other aspirantes in my town, and we all meet together daily for spanish class. All of them have a better vocabulary than I do, so I am learning a lot from them. We´ve only been here for a few days, but it feels like months. And my professora assured me this morning that in the course of next ten weeks (the length of training), that I will progress quickly. We´ll see - it feels like I am learning so slowly right now. My poor host sister has repeat words ten times before I remember what they are.

In general, things are going well. My stomach has been a bit upset, but I haven´t had to visit el laboratorio yet, so thats a good thing. Its probably just the changes in diet - lots of beans and rice. And I am sure that I will get used to that.

Yesterday, we had our first technical training, where we began to learn abou the state of health in Nicaragua and current efforts to combat things like malaria, HIV-AIDS, infant malnutrition and the other multiple health problems here. These trainings are integrated throughout the week with our language training so that we have all of the knowledge that we need at the end of 10 weeks to go out to our sites and begin working!

Thats all for now. I don´t have any pictures yet, but I will take some of the fiesta this weekend and try to post next week!

Life in the Training Towns

Life in El Rosario is perty darn good, if I do say so myself. We arrived on Saturday to open arms. My host family is spectacular. The matriarch of the family, Doña Gladys is a real sweet heart. We’re having a little trouble communicating, because she speaks the essence of Nica Spanish and I hardly speak any. Nica Spanish drops all of the “S” at the end of a word so “Gracias” becomes “Graciah”. Another example: the word for “enough” is “bastante.” Everyone who’s taken a semester of Spanish in their life knows it’s an easy language, because you simply read every letter on the page and say a word just as it looks. Well, when the words you use in every day language lose a very important letter, you might as well toss that first semester of Spanish right out the window.

I have a couple of sisters here as well. The older, Suzy, is around 40 and is deaf. She is incredibly sweet and spends the majority of her day cleaning the house, doing laundry, or just relaxing by a window. Two things I’ve learned:

1. Very few people here have “traditional” jobs. A lot have money sent back from Los Estados. Almost everyone sells something out of their home. Several houses have actual stores with a variety of products, but more common is a house that only sells phone cards, or cornmeal, or, like my house, ice and frescos (homemade sugar drinks, kind of like kool aid).
2. Nicas spend a large part of their day just sitting, talking, eating, cleaning or cooking. There’s an incredible sense of peace and continuity here, because just about every day is the same. Needless to say, I’m really enjoying it.

As an “aspirante” in the “Cuerpo de Paz” I spend my mornings in Spanish and technical class. The classes are actually being held in my house for the next 3 weeks, so I’ve got it the easiest of all the trainees in my town (4). We eat lunch with our families and then apply the lessons we learned during the afternoon. For instance, this morning we learned about modes of transportation, the costs, and how to be sure you’re getting on the right bus. After lunch, we went to the local bus terminal and asked the drivers and their corbadors (the guy that handles the money) all of the questions we learned that morning. Everyone was very nice, and we had my host sister and her friend along with us to help us in a bind. I have to admit it’s a great way to learn.

OK, what else is happing. My first day here I walked into our clothes line, which happens to be rusty old barbed wire. I put a little cut in my head, about 2 inches long. I did it to make my father proud, mostly. I went to the home of a nurse yesterday, and she said it was healing well!

There was a dog fight on my roof on Monday morning. I thought the two were going to come crashing through, but luckily it ended pretty quickly. Who needs alarm clocks when dogs fight on your roof at 5 in the morning?!

Jess and I have been split up for a few days, but her family brought her by Monday night for 30 minutes, so I took her around town. Tomorrow I’ll see her with the whole group. This weekend I’m headed to her town. Next weekend she’ll come here, as our “fiestas patronales” will be that weekend. Apparently it’s one big “religious” festival with a whole bunch of music, pyrotechnics, and cowboys. My kind of party!

Adios for now. Thanks for reading!

This is the main room of the house where we have class. Muy Bonito!

Here is my patio:

Hello from Managua!

So our trip down was fairly uneventful. We got through customs very easily. Even the commute to the hotel was easy. It is with walking distance of the airport. However, in that short little walk it was definitely clear we weren't in Kansas anymore.

The road we need to cross was a 4 lane highway. Speeding past were old school busses painted all sorts of crazy colors. They were just stopping in the middle of 50 mph traffic to pick up anyone who gave them a wave. Apparently, this is how the bus systems works in Nicaragua. We also saw a bunch of pick up trucks with railings surrounding the bed of the truck. "Why would a Toyota Tacoma need a 4 ft railing around it's bed," you ask? The answer is quite obvious, of course. When you have 10 people that need to go somewhere and only room in the cab for 3, the only option is to have the other 7 people (men, women, and children) stand up in the bed of the truck as you barrel down the road at 50 mph. Hopefully you can see this in the picture with Jess standing in the median of the highway.

We also got our first set of immunizations today. I believe I only got the first round of rabies prevention, but I couldn't really tell you. My mom and dad would be proud to know that I didn't even fight back. Our Peace Corps Medical Officers (PCMOs) also gave us an extensive first aid kid, malaria meds, and even a humongous DEET impregnated mosquito net. What more could a girl want!

So that's that. Below are a few select pictures. Let us know what you think.

This is Nicaragua out the window of our plane.

Here's Jess walking across her first Nicaraguan road. Right above her left temple is a truck with Nicaraguans hitching a ride.
Here's the hallway leading to rooms in our very nice hotel. Love it!

Peeping Jimmy here was trying to catch a glimpse through our shower window. Well, we didn't give him what he wanted...and he's still there. I'll call security in the morning if need be.

Staging!

So its finally official - we just finished our first day of staging in DC. Today we had a basic overview of Peace Corps' goals, safety and security, anxieties, aspirations, etc... We also met 17 fellow health volunteers who will be training with us over the next three months. We have one more day of staging and then we will be on a plane to Managua. By Saturday, Matt and I will each be living with a host family and be immersed in Spanish every day.

For the first three months of training our address will be:

Jess Werder
-or-
Matt Lyttle
Voluntario del Cuerpo de Paz
Apartado Postal 3256
Managua, Nicaragua
Central America

It sounds like mail is rather dependable, though it takes about 8-10 days for things to reach Nicaragua. We are ok in terms of our supplies (though we may be asking for care packages later!). But we would love cards, letters, post cards and other reminders of home.

Pumpkin Finds a New Home

Sadly, Jess and I have had to give up our cat, Pumpkin. We felt it would be best for him if he could find a new family and not have to re-adjust to us once we're back in the country. We've been searching since we first found out about our departure date, but really only came across a solution in the week before Christmas. One of Jess's co-workers at ACS, June, lives in a spectacular victorian house in Troy, NY with her cat and dog. She told us she'd been looking to get another cat, so this was the perfect opportunity for all of us. Even Pumpkin got a good deal, as he's been wanting a friend for a while. Now he'll have a dog and a cat to play with! Here are a few pictures of his journey. I have to admit it kind of felt like it must to drop your kid off at kindergarten for the first time. Oh well....


Here's Pumpkin driving to his new home. Don't worry, he is a very good driver. We've been practicing.

Here's Pumpkin weighing himself in his new home. Such boyish charm!

And here he is at the top of his new staircase. Adios, senor!




THANK YOU, JUNE! TAKE GOOD CARE OF HIM!