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.