Mo Rain, Mo Problems

So during training the topic of canceled classes came up one day as a frustration of current volunteers. And classes do get cancelled a lot for usually ridiculous reasons and holidays. And the speakers during training were right: it is super frustrating to show up to a school to find out that classes have been canceled because of “La Feria de las Raizes” (Fair of Indigenous People of Nicaragua, or more literally the Fair of Roots) However, of all the reasons that were listed on that initial list, one struck me as particularly odd: Rain. My first reaction was this isn’t some sort of athletic contest; you can’t actually close school because of rain. And if I can side track real quick, athletic contests don’t get stopped for rain, or lightening for that matter. It was a little unsettling to continuing playing football last week amidst a lightening storm. But c’mon, you can never be the first person to walk off the field or you’re the wuss that was “scared of a little rain”. But anyway, now I can understand why la lluvia has such a profound impact on the cancellation of classes. Aside from being slightly obnoxious, it can be really dangerous here, and the students in the isolated villages (comarcas) often can’t get to class because of swollen/flooded rivers, downed trees/power lines, or landslides. A young girl died here yesterday because the wind knocked over a power line, and in nearby Managua city, the paper reported that 1,622 were negatively affected by storm, 233 houses destroyed, and 100’s of people evacuated from the capital. The capital city! That’s not including the more rural areas. There was a span of more or less 18 hours where it just straight up did not stop raining. As an example check out the picture of the local river, where the level rose over the bridge:



If you look closely in the backround, you'll see people are standing chest deep in what was previously a road



As a result, I’ve spent a lot time over the past few days trying to scramble my competition together. But day after day of rain has caused me to move my municipal competition back a week, to next Thursday the 20^th. So at least temporarily I can now breath a little easier, have been able to read my new purchase on the Kindle (That Used to Be Us by Thomas Friedman, thank you dad), and hang out with one of my new best friends: my 4 year old neighbor Evalito:

This stick is his cuchillo to attack caballos y torros, which were all over my room that day

That’s the update for this week. I’ve now been in country for officially 5 months now as of this past Tuesday. Oh and I bought another surfboard, I couldn’t help myself. So now there’s no excuse for any of my so-called friends to come visit down here. I got an extra hammock and extra surfboard, access to cheap, high quality rum, and a very favorable exchange rate. What more could you want?

Two other fun facts:

-In a study done by The Economist Intelligence Unit, political stability in NIcaragua is one of the lowest in the world, tied with Egypt.

- Read a great book and feel the need to share it with someone, or in particular, me? If you ever feels that urge, you can buy the kindle version of the book following this link: http://amzn.com/w/1SF4V4PAAK63N