Back on track

Our host sister Ena Sofia builing with her first LEGO blocks.

One of our New Year´s resolutions is to be sure that this blog is updated fairly regularly over the next 3 months, so here it goes!

It´s been a fairly busy week for both Jess and I. She´s working on her partnership project, which we´ve written about a few times on this blog. Things are really coming together and I think she´s going to have a very functional, professional-looking final product. I finally put my calculus class from last semester to bed. I needed to college credit as a prerequisite for the graduate program I am starting in the fall, so I tried online classes from RVCC (New Jersey) in the Fall. For the most part the coursework was very straightforward and easy to follow online. I did run into some problems at testing time, because both professors wanted the exams to be monitored by a university. That took a bit of coordination, but, as of yesterday, it went off without a hitch.

We´ve also been spending a lot of time looking for jobs we´d be interested in and we´ve even started sending in applications as of a couple of weeks ago. I actually got a bite, believe it or not. I had a phone interview and everything, but in the end they decided to go with someone else. It was good to find some interest, though.

I think over the rest of our posts you´ll find that we´re focusing more on getting home and starting back up in the US of A. It´s interesting, because we still have more than two months in Nicaragua, but it seems like all conversations, not only with Americans but also with Nicaraguan friends, always focus on our trip home. Clearly, there´s planning that needs to be done and all that, but I for one feel a little guilty about it. It´s pretty much 100% certain we´ll never find ourselves living in a Spanish speaking country again, let alone a third world country, but it´s tough to keep focused on the day to day.

I think one of the reasons why is because Nicaragua feels so normal to us. Standing on a bus for 2 hours pressed between 30 other people is easy. Cold showers are a daily occurrence. Even speaking Spanish 8 – 12 hours a day is second nature. When we got back to Nicaragua from our vacation over Christmas we fell right back into our routines without any of the grumbles or gripes we had upon returning from our trip in June.

The interesting part is that our time home over Christmas also felt everyday and regular as well. To drive your own car, to eat out, to wear winter clothes was a part of our entire lives before Nicaragua, so it wasn´t too surprising to fall right back into it. I have to admit, I was still completely blown away by Wegman´s Marketplace and I hope I will be every time I go for the rest of my life. All those cheeses!

I think that when we get back we´ll be able to find a happy medium between the comforts of life pre/post Nicaragua and the simplicity of Peace Corps life. Hopefully that means a better appreciation of things that are in short supply in Nicaragua. Just to name a few: family, stable government, seasons, safe food, general prosperity. I think we´ll also work to maintain the discipline we´ve developed here around household chores, exercise, sleep, and inexpensive healthy cooking.

I, for one, am looking forward to the next step. Wherever and whatever is will be the closest Jess and I have come to permanency since college. After HWS we felt like we were always skipping between internships, schools, jobs, and answers to that all important question, “So what do you do?”

So, without getting too philosophical, we hope that this blog will allow all the readers left to see into our lives and thoughts as we transition out of Nicaragua and into the wilderness of the US…

Here are a few pictures to be sure this blog stays interesting:

Here´s the cat reading E.O. Wilson´s Consilience. Go figure.

Go Hobart!

The latest puppies from Astro´s old family. They are 50 days old. This one is Benji.

This is Astrito, or Little Astro.

Astro meeting the mini Astros.

Astro practicing for his trip home.

Yoda bothering Astro while he´s locked up.

December

First of all, apologies for such a long gap in posting. Matt and I have had a very busy month and a half. That said, I thought I would do a quick post to bring you all up to date and let you know what happened in December.

As Matt mentioned in the previous post, we had a huge event in Somoto for World AIDS Day (December 1^st). Working together with my sitemate, we applied for money from a program known as VAST. VAST funds are funds made available to Peace Corps volunteers through the United States PEPFAR program, or the President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief. The “largest commitment by any country to combat a single disease in history,” PEPFAR was enacted in 2003 during the Bush Administration and provides funding internationally to HIV/AIDS prevention programs worldwide.

Me, working on the banner.

Using funding from VAST and local organizations, we helped to organize a World AIDS Day Concert in Somoto with a well-known Nicaraguan artist, Perrozompopo. The band agreed to donate their time for the event and we set to work organizing a health fair the likes of which had never been seen in Somoto, including games like dart and ring tosses, informational health booths, cultural acts and our own, home-made condom mascot suit. We had roughly 300 adolescents attend the concert and health fair, and were able to measure before and after results, finding that they actually did learn from the event. It was the first time that local organizations had seen an event like this, the first time they had ever thought to evaluate to see if it actually work, and most importantly the first time that they realized the benefits of multiple organizations working together. All in all, a great success.

The start of a long weekend....it eventually becomes a large, man-sized condom suit.

And here it, looking more like a crayon than anything else...

But in the end, he turned out pretty well!

The health fair was a success.

And the concert also went over well (with our banner in the background!)

Just after that, Matt and I headed down to the beach for our Close of Service Conference. It was three days chock full of information about the logistics of leaving Peace Corps and how to deal with the inevitable of returning to the States and finding jobs. While the conference was very useful and the setting beautiful, I unfortunately spent most of it in bed with the worst chest cold of my life. I managed to lose my voice completely for the first time in my life the day before our final language interviews (where they evaluate our progress over two years). Needless to say, I had to postpone mine. We did however get to see some adorable baby sea turtles hatch at a hatchery right in front of our room and head out to sea! And in the end, Matt and I both ended up with a Spanish level of “Advanced-Mid”. Two levels down from native speaker, so not too shabby.

Look at how tiny the turtle is!

Another guy just trying to make his way to the sea.

Finally, at the end of December we headed home for the holidays to spend some much needed time away with family and friend in the states. It was a whirlwind trip, chock-full of movies, bowling, chatting and lots of food. (Matt managed to gain 10 pounds over the course of 10 days. Still not in the positive though – he lost 25 when he first got to Nicaragua!). Thanks to our families for a wonderful trip home (and to Mrs. Lyttle’s class for letting us come and share our experiences with them for a morning).

Professional bowlers at work...

But we know who the real professional is....

Some New Year's Eve fun.

So, December was a good month. We’ve now settled back in to things in Somoto and are frantically trying to finish up projects and begin to make plans for the readjustment back home. It will be harder than it sounds. Two years is a long time to spend in one place and I think that we are both starting to realize how much it feels like home. We’ll see what the next three months bring us. Probably a lot of hard work and a lot of mixed emotions.