You have waited long enough…

Soooo sorry for the long wait about my site but I have, of course, just been busy celebrating, thinking, hanging out my PC friends (only three weeks left of living close together), and traveling around Nicaragua. After days and weeks of waiting, 1:30pm Friday, came up quickly and unexpectedly and without much discussion the blank map of Nicaragua was placed up in front of the room, ready to be tagged by the 39 PCVs (19 in business, 20 in English) marking our new homes. Minutes passed by as the site by site was announced and only five were left in my group when I was called up. The sites remaining were Leon, Granada, Somotillo, San Ramon, and Villa Sandino. So I went up, waited patiently for the announcement, and then heard the place that will become my new home, my new work, and my new challenge………

Granada, Granada

Initially I was a little surprised because I had been thinking that Leon would be my site but still happy and excited to be living in a big city and a cool place (things to do not weather because really it is HOT and humid without air conditioning). After thinking about the site placement, it all made sense. Granada fits what I wanted and I know I will be successful there. It is all the most touristy city in Nicaragua, many positives and negatives about this, so not that you needed any more incentive to come visit me, but now you have it.

Much more on Granada soon…..

Nervous Times…..and some photos

Two days left until the big day! After my interview with Georgia yesterday about my site preferences I think that it is going to be one of the following (in order of likeliness): Leon, El Viejo, Ocotal, Granada, Juigalpa, Somotillo. Just my thoughts, although I could be completely wrong.  I am definitely anxious right now.

Oh and here are some random pictures to get you through the day….

Hanging out on a wall at Catarina’s Mirador

Who is that behind the zebra? Looks kinda cute.

Volcano Masaya and all her glory

Anjie and me on Volcano Masay

Some of the more photogenic members of Masatepe’s bball team

A church in Masaya’s Central Park

Enjoying some Mexican food in Masaya with lots of PCVs

Site Options!

Exciting times here in Peace Corps Nicaragua. On Thursday, we all received information packets that listed all of the possible sites for our group and on Saturday had a site fair which gave us even more information on all the departments and sites. The sites are really spread out all over Nicaragua but primarily north of Managua. There are some of the country’s biggest cities in Leon, Granada, and Esteli and some pretty small, rural sites like San Ramon, Cinco Pinos, and Villa Sandino. There are colder weather sites where you will need to sleep with a blanket and sweatshirt and places where sleeping naked with three fans will be the preferred method. Some sites are heavy on the teaching while others focus more on community projects and business advising. There really is a site for every type of individual and positives and negatives about every single site. You would think that by now after learning about the sites and thinking for hours, I would have some idea as to which site I want but I am just confused. And while other people are making spreadsheets, doing regression analysis, and going crazy over the site selection process, I remain very calm. Of course, it occupies a large space in my mind right now but I feel like I will be placed in a site that I will like and that I will make the best of my situation. Still that doesn’t mean I do not have some thoughts so without further redo here is the breakdown of sites, some basic info about ones that I like, and some thoughts rambling through my mind. Maybe you all can choose for me:

City	# of Schools	# of Sections	Municipality Size	City Size	Dist. From Managua (hrs)
Juigalpa	4	10	65,000	45,000	2.5
Villa Sandino	3	6	15,000	5,000	4.5
Granada	4	6	115,000	80,000	1
Nindiri	3	7	37,000	8,000	0.5
Rivas	2	8	45,000	26,000	2
Cinco Pinos	1	5	7,500	2,000	6
El Viejo	2	8	91,000	40,000	2.5
Somotillo	3	4	32,000	12,000	4
Achuapa	3	4	14,000	3,500	4.5
Leon	1	9	200,000	156,000	1.5
Telica	4	8	28,000	6,000	1.75
Esteli	4	12	115,000	75,000	2.5
Palacaguina	3	7	15,000	5,000	3
Somoto	4	14	33,000	16,000	4
Ocotal	3	7	35,000	?	4
Quilali	1	4	26,000	13,000	7
Sebaco & San Isidro	5	10	35,000	16,000	1.5
San Ramon	2	4	30,000	3,000	3
San Rafael Del Norte	4	9	18,000	5,000	4
Yali	1	4	23,000	5,000	5

So what do the colors mean?

Red: Definitely do not have any interest. (Rivas is for a female volunteer)

Orange: No thank you, I would rather not.

Yellow: Sure.

Green: I feel good about this site.

As you can see, I have 11 in the no thank you categories and another 9 in the maybe, probably categories. I will tell you that I prefer bigger cities, department capitals, diverse environments, cooler weather, accessible transportation, good internet, cleanliness, semi-structured work environment, a good balance between teaching and business advising, working with women and youth, and living near other PCVs. But by no means, do all the sites in yellow and green fit into those categories. So in no particular order, here are some addtl thoughts on sites that I think are cool:

Juigalpa, Chontales: Department Capital located east of Managua on the other side of the lake. Lots of teaching which I am not sure I want but there is a possibility of working lots of small businesses and on a tourism initiative which even this category out. It is hot but not as hot as the departments of Leon and Chinandega. I have heard there is a great basketball court and nightly games! I will not have a sitemate but will be fairly close to some other PCVs.

Villa Sandino, Chontales: a fairly rural place but with some cool projects to promote tourism and work with the mayor’s office on income-generating activities. Also the current sitemate is a woman named Pat who has a reputation as a ridiculous cook.

Granada, Granada: the most touristy site in Nicaragua. Relatively clean, well-off city due to the tourism and tons of NGOs and other business opportunities in the site. Still, it is very touristy meaning it will be fairly difficult to immerse into the community but you would get to meet a lot of cool travelers. Also a VERY expensive site, so money becomes a huge issue here. Hot and humid but near lakes and water so you can always take a dip.

Nindiri, Masaya: Semi-small site that is basically a suburb to Managua. Decent amount of teaching and a fair amount of freedom to seek out opportunity to consult small businesses. There is a great basketball court and league that I play in now! Because it is so close to Managua, all of Managua’s amenities (movies, malls, restaurants, Peace Corps office with free internet) are a quick 30 minute ride away. You would have to travel to two rural sites to teach every week.

El Viejo, Chinandega: Remember that I went here for my volunteer visit and although I would not be pissed to end up here, I probably would not be too happy. Just didn’t feel much for the city. There are some cool opportunities to work with international NGOs and in agri-business. It is VERY hot.

Leon, Leon: The country’s second biggest city and tourists do come visit here. It is supposed to be a really fun city with lots of cool things to do. It is a university town which I love (really would like to be near a university for numerous reasons). There is a lot of teaching to be done and a “steady” 9-5 job with a NGO. You will be very busy in this city and more urban environment. It is also very hot and very expensive and it will be almost impossible to be known in the city. Almost doesn’t seem like a true Peace Corps experience which could be bad or good, depending on your perspective. I think it could be cool so I listed it as one of my top choices.

Esteli, Esteli: big city, cool weather, supposedly really beautiful. Lots of teaching and the NGO job working with a recycling plant seems decent but not great. Also expensive and has the pros and cons of big city living. I should add that in a bigger city, you may have to live with a host family a lot longer due to money issues.

Ocotal, Nueva Segovia: Department capital, medium sized city. Cooler weather but not as cool as other northern sites. Good split between teaching and working at a business coop that operates a solar center that sells and produces several solar based products. Also some cool small business advising opportunities. Supposedly a cool city with good food and a decent nightlife. One of my top choices.

Quilali, Nueva Segovia: waayy out there but you would get to work with a coffee coop that needs help in the certification process. Lots of cool business advising opportunities and not a lot of teaching. Colder weather but because it is out there, there are transportation issues.

San Ramon, Matagalpa and Yali, Jinotega: small, cool, mountainous sites with some great opportunities for agri-business and eco-tourism. Not a lot of teaching which is great. Also not a lot to do…could be boring!

So there they are…feel free to Google Earth them, look them up on Wikipedia, make spreadsheets, and do whatever else other Peace Corps people are doing right now to decide on which site is right for them. I really just want to make sure I end up in site where I fit, where there are positive people around me, and where there are business advising opportunities. And as I said before, all sites have plusses and minuses so I will just hope for this best. I am really just excited to find out where I will be going and get busy doing my job. We will await the big day, Friday!

Nica who Nica what

Howdy do?!? Hope all is well in your part of the world. Life in Masatepe remains great and I have a positive mindset once again, now that I seem to have finally gotten over last week’s food poisoning. I heard that they cannot find the source of the salmonella in the tomatoes imported into the US….well I may have a clue if the government wants to ask me. I continue to study and practice my Spanish and honestly see myself becoming fluent over the next six months. Peace Corps continues to keep me scheduled but some days are relatively free and I have been using them to play basketball, chat with my friends, and go out to make new friends around town. If you are all looking for more details as to what daily life is like, I encourage you to check out Goggins’ blog (he is my sitemate and keeps very rigorous diary) by going to www.thegoggins.com. You will see some cool pics and understand more of what my daily activities are.

I am anxiously awaiting the list of possible sites which should arrive in a packet today. Saturday is the site fair. Next week is my site interview with Georgia (the small business development program (SBD) director) where we will discuss my preferences and then NEXT FRIDAY, I will officially know my site! Wow! In the meantime, while I stare at this giant cockroach crawling toward me, here are some other observations from my life.

It takes me twice as long to walk the same distance when it is hot outside. You should see how slow I move when the sun is just beating down on me. It as if I have a 50 pound weight tied to the bottom of my legs and I am just inching along.

You cannot call timeouts during play in a basketball game. You must wait until it is a dead ball or a whistle is blown to call a timeout. How do I know this rule? Well because at a critical moment at the end of one game, I hustled to get to a rebound, scrambled on the cement to grab the ball, and then frantically tried to call timeout (both in English and Spanish) with the ball in my hands. Yet as frantic as I was calling timeout from the floor surrounded by four players on the other team trying to get my ball, the referee just ignored me. Straight up ignored me and then called me for traveling. Before I erupted at the referee, the other players on the bench told me that I could not call a timeout during the game. So after we held on to win the game, the entire team had a great laugh at my expense.

It is difficult to date here. This includes both other Americans and Nicaraguans. Not that I have tried this out yet, but considering that everyone lives with families, there is never any privacy, and that life is fairly conservative here, you see how difficult it would be. I have already asked a few Nicaraguans how they actually date when they live with their parents and cannot go to their own room alone with their partner, and I have received the response that you just have to be sneaky. There is also a reason there are auto-motels (hotels by the hour) everywhere around the country.

There really is no privacy. Everyone knows my business and everyone knows each other’s business. The most popular hobby here is gossip. They are absolute experts and any Nicaraguan could easily win a competition job for Extra Tonight on the tele. I am sure it is worse in small towns here and for all I know it is exactly the same in the States in small towns but it definitely is bad here. Considering that I am white and easily seen, my host mother here knows where I went even before I come back to the house and thus I need to make sure I am always on my best behavior. It also doesn’t help slow down the gossip mill, when not so many work away from their homes and really do not have much to do during the days.

Spanish is an easier language than English. All the words are pronounced as they sound where in English, all the words are pronounced differently. I have a new sympathy and respect for those that learn English. And I found that English has a lot richer vocabulary than Spanish even though Spanish may have more words. There are far more adjectives in English and it really is interesting when I want to describe something in Spanish as I would in English but no words fit….and it isn’t because I don’t know them…they just don’t exist.

Masatepe is a tranquil city. Here they always use the word tranquilo. It is a nice place, the people are decently well off, and the streets are relatively clean. Wouldn’t be a bad place to live for some time although I am sure it would get boring after a while.

I am getting a bit tired of training. Although I love my group (most of them at least), I am ready to just get working already in my very own site. I am ready to know where I am going to live, where I am going to work, and just get started forming my own circle of friends. The sessions are becoming repetitive and I am slowly beginning to lose interest in the training process although I know it is necessary.

Business is almost all micro-business. I think I read a statistic that 97 percent of the businesses were micro and if you look around my town it seems as if 100 percent are except for the bank and the Pali (a Wal-Mart owned supermarket chain). Most people open their own businesses out of necessity and a lack of available jobs and just use their business to make enough money to survive and provide for their families. There is no thought in expansion, growth, operations, etc. The only goal is to have enough money to provide food for everyone (which although great does not help Nicaragua as a whole). I am realizing the great opportunity I have here to really advise small businesses and open their eyes to profits/losses, inventory, basic accounting, market studies, price competition, etc. As I learn more about individual businesses, I am getting more excited to help.

Life is just pretty slow and pretty simple. People seem to be bored a lot. They watch television to entertain themselves and gossip. I feel bad for my little sisters that there are not more activities for them to do in the afternoon. Afterschool camps would work great here. Actually any organized activity for kids would be fantastic.

Volunteer Visit to Chinandega

I definitely am not a deeply spiritual person, and I do not think that everyone’s destiny is predetermined by nature, but sometimes I am forced to recognize the power of fate. One of these times happened during my volunteer visit in El Viejo, Chinandega. Mike, my volunteer host for the visit, and I were thinking about what we were going to have for dinner. He went through the various options in El Viejo, gallo pinto, gallo pinto, and chicken and rice. Seeing as how I had already eaten the same thing three meals in a row, I decided it would be fun if we cooked our own dinner. Yet, it was already 5:30pm (very late in Nicaragua) so the options at the market were limited. We ended up deciding on pasta, plain old spaghetti with some chunky tomato sauce. Simple to make, cheap, and delicious….or so we thought.

Fate was trying to tell us something about cooking the pasta. As I mentioned previously, it was late so the vegetables and ingredients available were not the ripest of the bunch. The tomatoes we found were also expensive. Then as were walking down the street, it began to absolutely pour….cats and dogs…lions and bears…it was relentless. I ducked into the first store available which happened to be a panaderia (bread store) and Mike with his bicycle made a mad dash for his house with the food to start dinner. I told him that I would buy some bread and somehow make it back to his house. Well the rain, thunder, and lightning would not let up and I began to chat with the panaderia owners. We had a great conversation, they gave me a bunch of free bread, and finally they let me borrow an umbrella so I could venture out into the storm. After an hour or so at the panaderia, I made my mad dash to Mike’s house. The water was already boiling when I got there but we weren’t quite ready for the pasta so we waited a couple of minutes. Guess what happened? The gas went out on his stove. Not discouraged at all, we moved the dinner operations next door to his neighbors kitchen. Then the electricity went out. So we just lit a candle. Then we realized that their stove was not strong enough to boil the water but we were determined to make this pasta so we did. Fate was trying to stop us but we did not listen! Then we feasted on pasta al dente with a tomato, garlic, and onion sauce and some good homemade bread. I cant say it was a delicious feast but it was food that was different. Almost immediately after eating, I felt really, really full and this feeling did not leave when I went back to my hostel (Mike didn’t have anywhere for me to sleep in his very simple, “Fight Club”-esque Peace Corps house so I stayed at a hostel during my visit). Then the fullness turned into pain. Then I tried, with all of my efforts to relieve myself of this pain by sticking fingers, hands, and metal objects down my throat so I would throw up but nothing happened. Finally after about an hour or two of excruciating pain, I threw up for the first time of what would be many times to follow. The night was one of the longest of my life filled with no sleep, lots of pain, lots of vomiting, and lots of dehydration. I was in a dirty hostel in the middle of the night in a town where nothing was open and everyone was asleep. It was not a good situation. Fate was trying to tell me something and I just should have listened. By the way, Mike, who never gets sick, also felt terrible for the next two days. Me, with my weak stomach, well I was still feeling the effects on Saturday. Let me also add that when it rains, it pours. During my night of pain and sickness, I also received lots of friendly bed bug bites! Just reminds me of all the good times during Guatemala.

So the last half of my volunteer visit was a waste but the first half was pretty cool. After meeting Mike at his house, we went to the nearby big city of Chinandega and tried to eat lunch at Subway. Yes, they have Subway there! But it was Sunday so Subway was closed even though the sign blatantly said it should have been opened. I guess the Nicaraguans just decided to not open it on Sunday. Chinandega is a pretty ugly, big city but with lots of conveniences. It will not be a possible site for my group as there is already a business volunteer living there so lets skip to the funny parts of the visits.

I got to judge an English singing contest. It was endearing, embarrassing, and hilarious at the same time. There were 20 groups of students who went on the stage and sung completely random English songs to the best of their abilities. We judged them on pronunciation and inflection. Some songs included those of the backstreet boys, total eclipse of the heart, la isla bonita, yesterday, and my heart will go on. I would have totally given it to the group that sang “Total Eclipse of the Heart” if they had added the line from “Old School” in there (I fucking need you now tonight for those non “Old School” lovers), but in the end a kid that sang a country song did a really good job and was awarded the victory.

Mike is a funny guy and jokes with everyone on the street. A guy came up to ask for money by saying “Dame un peso, amigo” and he responded that not only would he not finance his begging but that he was not his friend. Straight up said, “I am not your friend and I will never be your friend. Actually maybe I will be your enemy.” Then he told the beggar that this other guy had some cordobas and to go ask him. Also Mike loves to do the look there is a stain on your shirt act and tells his students to stay away from him on the street (in a joking manner). Funny guy and definitely inspires me to improve my Spanish as he is fluent.

What more can I say about the volunteer visit? It definitely got me thinking about my future site. Wants, likes, what kind of city, what kind of work, etc. I talked a lot about the actual work of Peace Corps and whether it was achieving its goals. I got to see what my future life might be like and I got to see a volunteer in his last week of service. Mike is going back to the States this Wednesday to begin a MBA program so he was saying his goodbyes, had a farewell party, etc. His farewell party was incredibly sweet with teachers reading poems about him, students singing, and everyone dancing. I only hope that my farewell will be just as sweet and that I will be able to make an impact on many individuals and lives during the next two years.

As you can probably tell by my writing, time is running short at the internet cafe so I am going to post this now. Thanks for all the birthday wishes and I had a kickin’ party this past Saturday night….yay for 24!