Second Hand TShirt of the Week

A little innapropriate this week, so younger viewers avert your eyes.

1. "Hang out with your wang out" worn by middle aged women in la Villa

2. ¨"Dream on Boys, you no you can´t have me" worn by a male joven in Camoapa Boacao, spotted by Cassi

The next two come from my friend Chalin in Diriamba
3. W.I.F.E - Washing, Ironing, Fucking, Etc..  Worn on a machismo man. Very fitting
4. This one needs context. Chalin was sitting in the office of one of his principals discussing a budget for a project, when a student walks in with a "I heart boobs" shirt. He says he just lost it.

Happy 21st Lil Bro

Gazing ahead toward his future and his 21st Birthday

Gumby never leaves his side

This guy turns 21 today, make sure to wish him a happy birthday. I´ll do my best to find a good beer and drink it in your honor today. Have a wild one!

Fiestas Patrias

So this past week marked the Nicaragua’s Independence Day…both of them, respectively on September 14^th and 15^th. There are two reasons to celebrate independence here. Here’s a fun fact for you: an American by the name of William Walker, initially at the request of the Liberal Nicaraguans, came to Central America in the 1850’s  with a gang of mercenaries (or filibusters as they were known at the time), and forced his way into power. For three years, I believe 1853 – 1856, Walker was in control of Nicaragua and was making moves to conquer the rest of Central America, all in the name of the United States, of course. But on September 14^th, a coalition of Central American forces held strong, and finally repulsed him from the country, hence the reason for the first Independence Day. Day 2, 15^th of September, marks the anniversary of when, once again as a whole, a coalition of Central American forces expelled the Spaniards, the original imperialists in the area from their native lands 190 years ago. Another kind of fun fact is that Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica originally were one unified republic, but due to tribal and local differences, that disbanded after 20 years or so. BUT, take all this information with a grain of salt. I had to ask a lot of locals about the reason for the independence, and this information is the most generally agreed upon. For being so patriotic and enthusiastic about the holidays, it seems that the general public is pretty misinformed about it. Once person told me the 15^th marked the day that Nicaragua expelled the English from the country.

For me, Independence Day in the states means long afternoon/evening barbeques with friends and family, red-white-and-blue, and fireworks at night. Oh and how can I forget, plenty of delicious American beer. Here things are a bit different, where the majority of the festivities take place in the morning both days, before the sun gets to high in the sky, and therefore hot. Each colegio (high school) in the municipality has a band and a dancing group that march through the calle principal of Villa El Carmen, to the football field. At the football field, each school has the opportunity to perform their acto, a 20 minute long performance by the band, with the dance group of course dancing along to the beat. For high school students, the acto’s were surprisingly complex and incredibly fun to watch. Each school invests a lot of time, and fair amount of money into their performance (often at the expense of my class time to my chagrin), and they start preparing for it often a month of two in advance.  It’s an unofficial competition, and each school wants to be the best. I was lucky enough to be an “esteemed guest” which meant I was in the company of all the VIP’s of La Villa, and had a front row seat to each performance. Yup, just another one of the perks of the job. The whole thing reminded me of that cheesy Nick Cannon movie, Drumline, but much cooler since it was live…and in Nicaragua. I kind of wish I was in the band, banging on a drum with the kids. Maybe next year. So hear are plenty of pictures of the event, to see just how big the whole thing was, since each school brought between 40 to over 100 kids to participate. How you choreograph something like that, with that many kids, is beyond me. Enjoy the photos.

This kid on the rigtht is the Nica version of my meatheaded buddy Graham back in the states

 

Oh, one last little bit of Nica daily life. I’ve had this mystery stain and seeds appearing on one particularly spot of my floor the past couple mornings and I couldn’t figure out where on earth it could come from. So I finally asked my host mom, and she non chalantly told me it was just the murcielagos. For those of you remember, murcielago means bat. So At some point in the night, I have bats flying into my room to enjoy their midnight fruit snacks. With scorpions, spiders, and plenty of other bugs always crawling around, bats are just one more thing to add to the list. Am I right? Am I wrong?

What´s Good In Nica time

Friends, and Family, I apologize for the lapse in my updates, I’ve tried to swear off English these past couple weeks, avoiding all English music, literature, writing, and or course speaking. For my parents, I apologize if I scared you, but it was all in the spirit of academic pursuit. It has it side effects though, as you’ll see if you read the next post. I’m posting a bunch of stuff at once to bring you all up do speed. So here it goes with the interesting things in my life these past couple of weeks, outside of the everyday occurrences:

Me and two volunteer compadres took a spur of the moment vacation a couple of weeks ago, our first one of the service. After a meeting we had in Diriamba, we decided, why not, let’s go to San Juan del Sur for the night. So without really knowing where we were going or where we were gonna stay, we hopped on a bus with what little we had. Now, San Juan del Sur is the tourism capital of Nicaragua, a veritable Backpackers Meca, mixed in with all of surfing fanatics and families on vacay. So a perfect place to decompress and throw back some Tona’s. San Juan is an interesting place: it has the feel and look of a typical Nica town, but the attitude is so different, where as many people are speaking English as they are Spanish. We had a great time sharing our experiences, offering each other pointers, and having what seemed like a night in America, bar hopping and talking to American Women. Turns out the line, “Oh I’m a Peace Corps Volunteer down here,” really turns some heads. Just another perk of the job. The big news from the weekend is that I bought my first surfboard down here, and have been able to go shredding a couple of times.

Which brings me to my next story. So I live about 30 km from the nearest surfable beach, (Massachapa and Pochomil) which during the week is easy enough to get to, there and back. But during the weekend, the buses stop running in the afternoon, and the only feasible way to get back is hitching a ride. I get some strange looks with the surfboard, but usually after a while I get picked up. I guess I should mention too that this is an election year in Nicaragua and that campaigns officially opened last week. So my ride back to the Villa ended up being in the Presidential (Candidate) Procession of Enrique Quinonez. The procession stopped right in front of me, and they were more than happy to give an American ride, as well as throw me as much free campaign gear as they had. I’m now the (proud?) owner of an Enrique Tshirt and Hat. So this whole time I’m cruising in the back of this car, thinking its just a rally, people driving around honking horns that sort of thing (which happens all the time). As I later found out, our thirty car procession or so involved the candidate himself. As it turns out he was in the car directly in front of me. The Parade stopped when we got to the entrance of the Villa. I hopped out quick, because as a PC volunteer, I can’t be seen showing any local political preference, and didn’t want any rumors going around town. Well we ended up stopping because Enrique wanted a photo shoot with some locals, and I almost walked right into him, surfboard and all in my haste to get away. I’d be a little worried about the association, but of the five candidates, Enrique is in dead last in the polls, with a commanding 1% of the vote. Not exactly front page news, or really news. But a funny thing to stumble into.

The Fiestas Patria are this week, or in other words the Nica independence day. There are tons of local competitions based around it, and this past Friday I was able to attend a special competition of Nica folklore, including song, dance, and poems. Each of my schools had kids competing in each category, so it was a great way for me to see some authentic Nica culture first hand, score some brownie points with the kids, and show myself as a community member of the Villa. A triple threat. Check out some of the pics below:

           

Got my first picante de alacran, or scorpion sting the other day. Always shake your clothes before you put them on.

I also got semi sick for the first time, the sickness being a stomach bug. Had it been any other time, I probably would’ve taken the day off, but it happened to occur the day my boss came to the Villa to visit all seven of my schools, talk with each counterpart and director, as well as the delegado. It was a long day. But the good news is that I’m finally taking solid poops again. For awhile, even the smallest fart brought me to close to the danger zone, and I had a couple of close calls.

As a good PC buddy of mine pointed out yesterday, Mach, it’s been exactly 4 months (well as of Saturday) since we were in DC together sharing our last American meal together: big ole burgers, washed down with some Anchor Brewing Company Liberty Ales. Can you tell I’ve thought about that meal for awhile now? It’s weird to think about that night, because my life in the US seems like such a long time ago. These past 4 months have seemingly flown by. But when I look under a microscope at everything I’ve done and experienced in that time period, it hasn’t been that “short” of a time. It seems like things may just fly by over these next two years.

Hola, yo me llamo Samuel.

When I arrived in Nicaragua, I thought by the end of training I’d have the language down no problem. The thought process was, “How could it take that long?” Well, I know why now – there’s just so much content, it’s almost impossible to decide where to start, or what to focus on. Every where you turn in the language, you run into a problem between tenses, vocab, grammar, and everything in between. I can’t even name all the tenses in English, how am I expected to learn the 14 of Spanish. Am I right? There has just been so much more to learning a language than I realized. What’s interesting, is that when you forget a word or verb, you start thinking about other ways to say a sentence, and I’ve been surprised at how many different ways I’ve been able to say the same thing in my head. Every time you talk in a new setting is a small little puzzle, because I have to figure out how to get my point across using my limited knowledge of the language. I now apologize to any of the study abroad students I criticized, who didn’t learn the native language. Three months is not bastante time to learn a language.

            What’s been super humbling about the whole experience, and the toughest to deal with is that by not being able to talk, it’s almost like you’re losing a piece of your personality. After that’s been taken away from me, I’ve learned how much my mannerism, sayings, and slang has been a part of me, a part of personality. It’s been as much a part of me as my attitude, the clothes I wear, and the people I hang out with. So when that goes, so does a little piece of you, as depressing as that is to say. Because right now, I’m speaking very formal, simple Spanish, since I don’t have a mastery over the language yet, and it’s tough to form a bond with people when you can’t truly be yourself. I’ve been able to make friends while here in the Villa, but I feel like there is so much more out there once I really understand everything going on. Everyone just speaks so fast. The up and up is that right now I feel like I’m on some sort of threshold of breaking through, as it seems like I’m picking up more and more everyday. But this whole game of learning a language has really been a roller coaster, so I imagine even this week I’ll be thinking the exact opposite.

            So to clarify, things are tough, but I expected that. As tough as this has been, I realize I probably got it pretty good since I don’t have to learn Chinese or Arabic, and the learning curve is a bit faster. So the language will come, and with that comes bigger and better things. 

Second Hand T Shirt of the Week

T Shirt of the Week

Both this weeks were worn by fit, meat head middle aged men. Real strong looking dudes. I’m not sure if steroids are illegal down here, I doubt it.  Between their general look and swagger I get the feeling they knew what their shirts said:

1. Back the Fuck UP
2. Fuck All Y’all

I apologize for the cussing

La Villa en Vivo

La Villa

After much ado, I give you the Villa. Benjamin was good enough to bring me my camera back from his short return to the states, and I can kind of give you all a better image of the village.

Here is the main entrance to the Villa, one of two. But the second entrance is just a dirt road, that leads to small barrio. This entrance (the left) off the highway (the right), continues for a about 2 km, and you get to the end of town. While there is maybe a couple hundred yards of cobble stoned road here and there, this is pretty much it for paved roads. I happy to be lucky enough to live on it for the time being. As you can see below, it just creeps along almost dead straight, dotted with houses, pulperias, and fritangas. It’s got a real small town feeling too it.

Here is my home for the time being, the local ice cream chop. Things could be worse huh. My host mother is quite the entrepreneur. Apart from selling just ice cream, she has that hot dog/hamburger stand in front of the house, as well as a legit photocopier, which are hot commodities in town.

Once again, my room opens up to open air, but this time in stead of Chico the goat and a dirt back yard, I at least have a covered garage. Fun fact about my room is that aside from the furniture, everything is hanging from the rafters: mosquito net, hammock, backpack, surfboard, everything.

Where I spend most of my time outside of the house and school: the court. Between football sala, football campo, and basketball, I have my hands full. The football campo field is pretty interesting to play in, as some patches are about knee night, to the point where you can’t see the ball. The shorter sections are where the horses have been grazing, and that means tons of moon pies everywhere. Watch your step!