¿Y Entonces...?

Volcán San Cristobal, the highest activity volcano in Nicaragua, erupted this morning in Chinandega, caused by an aftershock of the earthquake in Costa Rica last week.

All of the volunteers in that department as well as León were all evacuated to Granada until it’s safe. 

I’m about 7 hours away from this volcano, and am completely safe, but please keep good thoughts for all Chinandeganos and Leones!

Sunday: I went to Ocotal to pick up some packages that were waiting for me. Thank you Auntie! I also received an amazingly great care package from a girl that has followed me on my fitness blog. I was NOT expecting it, but it was such a lovely surprise.


That night, I stayed with a friend, an Agriculture volunteer who lives in a town called Mozonte, about 15 minutes outside of Ocotal and we made an awesome Cilantro Chicken Salad for dinner.


Monday: Off to Managua. I caught the bus at 6:30am and rode with another volunteer who is about to "ET" (Early Termination). She is set to "COS" (Close of Service) in November of this year, but she got a great job opportunity at an NGO in Washington, DC and she starts in two weeks. She was headed to Managua to do all of her ET medical appointments. Upon arrival, we went to a fachenta coffee house, got iced coffees and BAGELS.


It was my first bagel in who-knows-how-long, and it couldn't have been more delicious. It was good talking and hanging out with her and I wish her the best. I then went out to dinner with some other volunteers who were down from Nueva Segovia that night and had a good time enjoying good company.

Tuesday: Carazo! After eating a great salad from Quizno's (yes, you heard that right) I went to go visit my training host family, whom I haven't seen since I became a volunteer.


Bad news upon arrival: My Maya had died of a puppy cancer. One of the other two dogs also died because of old age. Poor little Chanel, the rottweiler, is the only pup left. I was heartbroken at the news, but the rest of the visit was nice.


The family told me my Spanish has improved immensely and that I look like I've lost weight! That's always encouraging to hear (especially since I'm cooking for myself now and working out with P90X/Insanity DVDs and running 3 times a week.

Wednesday: León! I met up with a friend who I spent the rest of my vacation with. We stayed at a hostel called Chilli Inn...for $5 a night and 2 free drinks for every  night you stay there, with a themed party (aka BBQ night, Karaoke night, etc.), how could we say no?


It was a great hostel, and I know that whenever I go back to León with anyone who visits, we are probably going to stay there. Oh, and they have a resident puppy, named Tequila, who I fell in love with.




We walked around the city a bit, enjoyed the architecture and went to a Mediterranean restaurant that one of the Segovian married couple volunteers had recommended going to. Hands down, amazing. 5 stars. The meal itself was maybe $15 (C$375) for everything we got, and in the states the same meal would have easily cost at least $100. Again: for people who are visiting, we're eating there!

Thursday: BEACH! We met up with two other volunteers from León, from the Agriculture and Business sectors, and the four of us went to the Las Peñitas beach about 19km outside of León City. One of the other Vols knew of a hostel that had their own area of the beach...and it was all ours. The weather was a little overcast and it was extremely high tide, but the day couldn't have been more perfect.


My friend and I then returned to our hostel and enjoyed dinner at their restaurant and two Health volunteers from the group before mine met up with us to eat as well.

Friday: Journey up north. We were doing great on time, and after breakfast at a great little restaurant called Desayunazo, we headed out of León at 11am on a microbus to Estelí. After a relatively short wait time of about 10 minutes, we caught a NICE, air-conditioned Expreso bus to Ocotal. Those buses are very few in this country, and we thought we had lucked out. About 45 minutes into the ride, the bus stopped. We were asking what was happening and when looking out the front window, we noticed a pile-up, caused by a tranque (road-block). Tranques are common in Nicaragua-mostly farmers or military members protesting something or rather and they usually let traffic go thru about once an hour.

So we waited. We called our Security Officer at Peace Corps in Managua to advise him of where we were and he just asked for us to keep him updated. After 2 hours of waiting and no signs of letting up, we grabbed our bags and started walking, along with many other people who had the same idea. We tried to hitch a ride with some passenger cars, but after about 2km worth of walking, we caught a bus that was originally going from the pueblo of Murra to Estelí, but had decided to turn around and take the load to Ocotal and it was PACKED, but we were lucky enough to catch a seat.

By the time we got into Ocotal, it was about 6pm. My friend had told me that there was a Jicaro bus that sometimes leaves at 6, and if we had missed it, we were going to call our Volunteer Leader who lives in Ocotal to crash for the night. The minute we stepped off the bus, we saw the Jicaro bus leaving the terminal and we BOOKED it with all of our bags, and made it last minute. We finally got to my friend's house at about 6:45pm and not even an hour later I was sleeping hard.

Saturday: I made it back to Jalapa safe and sound, and I'm already looking forward to my next vacation in mid-September. It's actually a Peace Corps workshop with our colegas but it is in a really nice hotel called Selva Negra in the department of Matagalpa, and I cannot wait to see it.

This past week I was able to meet with the two counselors at the high school, rather instituto, in Jalapa about me starting work there regularly. Since we are at the end of the month, I was able to only get two days of work there, but come September, I hope to be making an appearance there at least one, possibly up to three, times a week teaching classes on various topics.

INAJAL (Instituto Nacional de Jalapa) has about 2,000 students enrolled: in the morning, the 7th-9th graders (1st thru 3rd year students) are in class and in the afternoon is the 10th and 11th graders (4th and 5th year students). They go to school Monday thru Friday and their classes are 40 minutes long with a half hour break in the middle of the morning/afternoon.

I started with three sections of 10th graders my first day and three sections of 8th graders on the second.

On the first day, I had two sessions that lasted 80 minutes and one that lasted 40 minutes. To the two longer classes, I gave a charla about the male/female reproductive systems, sexual/reproductive rights, menstrual cycle and introducing fecundation. After that, we transitioned into a Nicaraguan-made 20-minute movie called La Casa de Muñecas about real Nica adolescent mothers and their hardships. From there, I gave numbers about adolescent pregnancy in Nicaragua as well as physical, emotional and economic consequences that it may bring. Lest to say, it's very eye-opening and I think that the all of the chavalos would rather go to University next year rather than having a baby.


The next day, I had three 40-minute sections of 8th graders and did my self-esteem charla. The counselors had warned me that the younger classes are very disrespectful and I'd have to talk over them to get their attention; I told them not to worry since I could project my voice pretty loud. Luckily, all three classes were respectful and were attentive the whole time. At the end of the charla, I gave them an activity in which they had to write one positive thing about themselves (i.e. I like that my friends can confide in me) and one negative thing that they wish they could change (i.e. I don't like that I'm shy). They would take the negative phrase and throw it into the middle of the room and we took all that negativity and threw it away in the trash.

My colega told me that we were going to give a charla to the homosexual/transgender population of Jalapa with CEPS about HIV, STDs and overall well-being. I was beyond excited since Nueva Segovia is a rather conservative department and I have not encountered many openly-homosexual people up here. Jalapa, especially, is known for it's machismo and though I was happy to participate in the presentation, I was skeptical of the turnout.

We had about 15 people show up to the presentation (that we held at a bar that doesn't open till later in the night); they were all very friendly and knew they were among friends and could be open, honest and trusted in our environment. The presentation started with a CEPS member going over the basics of STDs. I then started my presentation of different kinds of STDs while the CEPS rep showed pretty graphic photos of what I was talking about. I also discussed HIV, and during all of our presentation, we had representatives from MINSA giving free HIV testing. Of the 15 that participated, only 4 got tested, and they were all, luckily, negative for the illness.


After my part of the presentation, CEPS went on to talk about the importance of condom use, while referring back to what I had previously mentioned. After that brief session, we went on to talk about the difference between "sex" and "gender"..."sex" referring to what separates men and women biologically and "gender" referring to what we are perceived as in society. Given that, we had about 8 volunteers get up and give us a "fashion" show in which they had to walk down the runway three times: the first: as masculine as possible, the second: as feminine as possible, the third: as themselves.



We had a lot of laughter and a ton of fun, and I'm happy to say I gained confianza within the small group that showed and I'm looking forward to working with them more in the future. It was about a 3-hour long presentation, and while the rain was pouring hard outside, the sun was shining and the rainbows were certainly bright in that bar that day!

Whew. After 10 long, productive and fun days out of site, I'm glad to be back with the Jalapeños. After the first 3 months of service, the majority of our group went to a language workshop to better our Spanish skills for a week. More on that later...

On Friday, I went to a town called Quilalí, where there are three volunteers. We all went up there for a despedida (going away party) of some Agriculture and Business volunteers that are finishing their service and returning to the US.

Quilalí is BEAUTIFUL, but SO FAR away! I took a 45-minute bus ride from Jalapa to the empalme (road fork) and meeting up with some friends, took another bus to Quilalí. After reaching the town of Susucayan, the road becomes dirt for the next 3 hours. If the views weren't so beautiful and I didn't have the company of my friends on the bus, I might have gone a little crazy! It's only 25km from the empalme but because of all the hills the bus has to climb to get there, we had to take a break here and there for the engine to cool. I definitely have a lot more respect for the volunteers who live there and travel out of site to get to Ocotal or Managua.


Upon arrival, we went to our friend's host-family's house where we met up with 9 other volunteers. We all hung out, played guitars, listened to some original songs by the dubbed "Segovian Mountain Ramblers" (all members of which are returning to the states...how sad!) and enjoyed a nice home cooked meal by the doña of the house. I got to talk to some volunteers I don't see too often and met some new people, too. Overall it was a great night spent with great company.




On Saturday, a group of us took the bus out of Quilalí. I was en route to Ocotal for the Independence Day party that is put on by the Ocotal volunteers. After another long bus ride out of Quilalí, we got to Ocotal and had a great time. The restaurant that we frequent was kind enough to clear an area just for us and decorated some empty bottles with American flags. I met more volunteers, reunited with some people from my group, ate some great fritanga and had a wonderful time.




On Sunday, two of my friends from my group and I made the pilgrimage to Managua from Ocotal for our language workshop. In Managua, we checked into our hotel, enjoyed HOT showers, met up with people from our group and four of us went to get Korean food, upon recommendation from a volunteer who was about to return to the states.

Long story short--bad decision. I spent all week regretting my decision of going to that restaurant.

On Monday morning, we all headed out to the department of Masaya. Me, my two friends from Dolores and our friend from the Diriamba training group in Carazo were all in the city of Masatepe. The current aspirantes (trainees from Nica 59) were off doing their site visit, so we stayed with their families. We weren't sure what bus to take from what bus terminal (there's a few in Managua, and they're not all that close to each other), so after roughing it and paying probably more than we should have, we all made it to class about 45 minutes late. Hey, we had the excuse that were growing accustomed to "Nica time" in that no one is ever on time!

It was a very productive and busy week. We obtained a lot of new information during the classes, which lasted from Monday-Thursday from 8-4 every day. THAT is a lot of Spanish class! We did get a chance to look around the department a little after class a few days and went to the mirador (lookout point) of the famous Laguna de Apoyo and Laguna de Masaya. The aspirantes in Masaya are very lucky to have such a beautiful area to be in. Don't get me wrong, Carazo was a great experience, too, but these guys are spoiled! The aspirante in my house has her own guest house! There is even an aspirante whose family has a pool!



On Friday, we returned to Managua for a reconnect with the entire group. I found out that one person in my group is in the states on medical leave because he has a severe case of Mono. Luckily, we've been in touch and he's recovering well and should be back within the next week and a half or so. Another person from my group is engaged! Her boyfriend came to visit from the states and popped the question. Very exciting! Another close friend was in Managua for the previous two weeks with a pretty bad staff infection in her leg due to a bug bite, but after several rounds of antibiotics and close medical attention, she is back in her site today and I'm sure she's loving being home.

As am I! I got a little homesick while being away from Jalapa so long! Well, 10 days...but it did feel like a significant amount of time! When I got home, I came back to an empty house. Profe is gone for a day or two because the schools are on semester vacation for 2 weeks....and the doctora moved out! The vibes in the casa are a lot more tranquila (calm, relaxed), and though she didn't clean up after herself (she left old food that had been sitting in her fridge since she moved in in a corner of the living room...I'm lucky I didn't find a mouse! She also failed to sweep or mop anything before leaving...) and I went straight to work after I got home from traveling a long journey on the bus, I'm happy that I live in a stress-free house again. Granted, yes, I will have to eventually buy my own stove, cooking/kitchen supplies and mini-fridge...but for now I'm going to be sharing with the Profe which is totally okay with her. 

Home is where the Jalapeños are. Home sweet home.