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Me teaching about the materials that go into organic compost and digging and filling our compost pit with help from the students at Si, A La Vida (a non profit that works with at risk youth and developmentally disabled youth)

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My 5th grade science class using play-doh to make animal cells with all of the organelles inside

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Slumpin’ like a champ

August 2016

You may have noticed that my blog has been painfully silent for…months. Or if this is the first time you’re reading my blog, you’re in for a depressing one.

Towards the end of our 3 months of training, we learned about the Peace Corps global “Cycle of Vulnerability and Adjustment”, which graphed the ups and downs associated by PCVs around the world. It graphs things like the highs of the “honey moon phase” of the first two months of being in country (accurate), the lows at the end of training as trainees become affected by culture shock (somewhat), the lows during the first 3-6 months of being in site and feeling like you’re doing nothing (accurate), the highs during the 6-12 months after adjusting to site (mostly accurate), and of course, the infamous one year slump. We began learning about the one year slump pretty soon after arrival and it was treated like an epidemic that hits all volunteers: everyone just hates life around one year of service. Something to look forward to, right?

During training, I was indignant and felt pretty strongly that I would be the one to defy the odds! I was going to love all of my PC service! I was going to make change, however small it was! Gosh darn you, Peace Corps, because you were totally right. You were also right when you explained that this smooth, well graphed chart of the next two years of my personal emotions would be anything but smooth and would instead look like an EKG chart with millions of ups and downs.

Peace Corps service has been one of the most exciting years of my life. It has also been the hardest. After coming back from the US, I was so disillusioned with everything: Nicaraguans, my work at the schools, the heat, CAT CALLS, the food, Nica culture, and every single little tiny annoyance that I deal with every day. Before coming to Peace Corps, I KNEW it was going to be hard. It’s the hardest job you’ll ever love, right? And I’m good at doing “hard” things, right? The second question is definitely debatable (ha…ha…), but one of the things that make Peace Corps so hard is that there are SO many little hard things. And when you put all of those little annoyances and challenges together, it makes everything SO difficult.

It’s hard for me to describe adequately why living here has been so hard and (honestly) depressing for the past month. The only real way to understand it is to live here and experience the difficulty of the million little challenges like my other PCVs, who have been an endless resource of support. The only other way to understand it is to be my boyfriend, who is a saint and listens to my daily (often times hourly) complaints and mental breakdowns and constantly tells me that I can do this.

To be totally honest, I’m still really frustrated and am still fairly unhappy and it’s the main reason that I haven’t been blogging. Both my lack of excitement about blogging and my desire to not post extremely angry and depressing blog posts has made my blog go colder than my daily dinner of gallo pinto (WHY does the dinner need to be made at 4pm when everyone eats after 6pm?!?). I can’t promise that my next few posts will be timely nor bright and sunshiney, but they will keep coming and I’ll keep taking it one day at a time.

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Home

July 8-20, 2016

Finally, FINALLY after nearly a year, I took a trip back home. I wasn’t at all worried about reverse culture-shock, but I was actually surprised how much it affected me. The perfect example was when I got off the airplane in Texas with another PCV who happened to be on the same flight. We walked to the bathroom to see this sign:

It was shocking to us that automatic toilets even exist (I don’t have running water during the day at my house) or that sinks could have hot water (cold bucket showers, all day, every day).

 The week and a half I had back home and visiting Annapolis, MD where I used to work, was absolutely magical and perfect. Even though the trip was short, I was able to eat some of my favorite food in Durham, hit the beach at home and consume the most food possible in 7 days.

 Next I traveled to Annapolis with my boyfriend to stay on his parents’ snazzy yacht and see a bunch of friends and yet again, each as much food as humanly possible in 3 days.

 All in all, it was a fabulous trip back and I’m already counting down the days until I go back!

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Teacher Training

July 6, 2016

After around one year of service, Peace Corps always has in-service trainings that cover various topics. Our IST focused on teaching and our work in the schools and we invited a counterpart to come with us. My third grade profe agreed to come as well as agreed to co-facilitate a charla with me about the importance of co-planning before co-teaching. I was really excited to llevar this particular profe, because she never seems motivated to co-plan with me and is always trying to get out the door and finish the school day early without ever prioritizing her students’ learning.

The three day IST focused on a variety of topics including the behavioral management cycle, backwards planning, a garden practicum, and of course, a cultural exchange night. We stayed at the most fachenta hotel in Managua, and were treated to such luxuries like hot water, AC, and good food (aka limited rice and beans). I was really hoping that bringing my profe to a Peace Corps training (which, in my opinion, are always incredibly informative and well put-together) would motivate her to go above and beyond in both planning classes and teaching them. As I’ve mentioned before, teachers absolutely refuse to work more than 25 hours a week (which is partly why school is dismissed early almost every day) and only spend an hour planning all of their classes each day because they focus on lecturing from the book and copying entire chapters from the text book. Hopefully she will now have a better understanding of the importance of including student-centered learning in the classroom and be motivated to incorporate some of the techniques I have been working on during co-planning!

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A Gringolandia July 4th

July 4, 2016

What better way to celebrate Amurika than going to the touristiest place in Nicaragua? After almost a year in Nicaragua, I finally made it to San Juan del Sur, a beach nearby.

My friends and I spent the weekend relaxing on the beach, eating good seafood, exploring restaurants, and eating DOUGHNUTS.

On July 4th, Katie and I took the short, yet steep, walk up to “The Jesus”. The view was well worth the dollar entrance and afforded us a beautiful view of the city of San Juan. We also saw some sweet hermit crabs!

Later in the day, we took a shuttle to a nearby beach and rented a boogie board and I had a blast battling the HUGE waves. To continue celebrating America, we enjoyed some nachos on the beach and topped off the night back in San Juan with pizza and craft (!!!) beer.

Although I was dreading leaving and going back to site, the American style doughnut gave me my fix and sent me on my way. Luckily I ran and caught the 9am bus because my friends got stuck in a 2 hour taxi driver strike that blocked the highway and gave them quite a story to tell.

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…Earthquake?

July 2, 2016

Because Nicaraguans love celebrating, there was yet another celebration over the weekend to celebrate Teacher Appreciation Day. I had actually been looking forward to this event for several months because all of the profes had talked about how fun it was and how the alcaldia (mayors office) provided food and rum and rented out a big hall with a beautiful mirador of the lake.

The day the event rolled around, I spent the entire day running errands around town and ran back home to quickly shower and get ready. Obviously, my host mom (a pre-school teacher) had been getting ready for hours and was surprised when I showered and got ready in 30 minutes. We rode out to the event (several hours late, obviously #LaHoraNica) and sat down for a delicious meal to the tune of ear-blasting music. After trying and failing to scream above the music and converse with the profes, we went out to the dance floor.

We were happily dancing along and having a good time when suddenly, all of the ~100 people in the room SPRINTED out of the room. I stood dumbstruck on the dance floor with the six other gringo students that were visiting for a week and building latrines at the school and thought that maybe it was a part of the dance? It wasn’t until I heard shouts of “Temblor! Temblor!” that I realized that there had been an…earthquake?

I casually walked outside with the other profes and tried to get information between all of the Nica gasps, frantic phone calls to their family members and exclamations of “ay Dios!” Nicas are known to be dramatic and I thought they were doing just that. We sat around for a few minutes and I looked online at INETER, which monitors earthquakes in Nicaragua and confirmed the rumor that there was indeed a 5.4 earthquake in Costa Rica. I’m still bummed that I didn’t even notice it, but it was an even bigger bummer that everyone went home and the whole party was basically cancelled.

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Final swim class (and yes, more celebrations)

July 1, 2016

After almost two months of weekly swim lessons from the kids from Si, A La Vida, we had our last class. And naturally, it was pouring rain.

We definitely didn’t let the weather rain on our parade and had a great last day. I was SO proud of my students and the progress they made. On the first day of class, many of the students were afraid of the water and could barely put their face in the water. All of them were TERRIFIED of any water higher than their waist. On the last day of class, all of my students crossed into the deep end and treaded water for at least 10 seconds, and a few students for almost a minute. The adolescents in the afternoon easily treaded water for two minutes. It may seem small, but this could make the difference between life and death in a swimming accident.

We also achieved another milestone goal. The younger group used a kickboard and crossed the entire width of the pool, which is all deep water. The older group swam around 25 meters without stopping, also across deep water. Considering that all of the children were terrified of water the first day, it was a huge accomplishment. In addition to gaining water safety skills and comfortability of being in the water, all of the students gained self-confidence and by the end of the class, stopping doubting themselves about every skill. This was especially important for the girls because in Nicaragua, girls are often treated as inferiors and constantly told they can’t do this or that. All in all, I was so proud of my students and what they achieved in such a short time.

 And of course, there were even more celebrations for Dia del Maestro, Teacher Appreciation Day. There were more celebrations at school, on the streets, and at Si, A La Vida.

My host mom (a profe) introducing the dancers (pictured here, my next door neighbor)

My 4th grade class and their very sexual dance routine

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Getting my nails painted, Nica style (but with dirty feet from walking through the pouring rain)

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Planting, parties, celebrations

June 28, 2016

After being stuck in Managua for four days with a bacterial infection (4/6 of our hiking group got either an infection or a rash #gohardgohome), I finally made it back to the island. After being in site for around 45 continuous days, being gone for almost a week seemed like forever.

After weeks and weeks of trying to plan garden work at both of my schools, we finally planted at one of my schools. We planted cucumber, radish, tomato, and pepper to accompany the squash we planted a few weeks before. Unfortunately, I was unable to make any progress at my other school. After meeting with a male teacher four times and explaining the plan to work on establishing the garden in the abandoned building (the only available space at the school), the day of preparation arrived and was disastrous. Instead of asking the parents to come in and help, asking the children to bring in tools, and working together to establish the garden, the profe had all of the students working outside of the school on a rented piece of property, hadn’t ask anyone to bring tools, and hadn’t asked any parents. When I asked him what was going on, he gave me half of the students and no tools to work on the garden. I was furious. After a grueling two hours of trying to keep kids occupied with zero tools, I decided that it wasn’t worth it to work with someone that obviously had zero interest in working together. It still saddens me that the school doesn’t have a successful garden (the male profe only planted corn with the students on the rented land), but decided that sometimes it’s better to cut your losses and work with someone that is actually willing to work alongside of you.

Frustrations aside, it was time to celebrate. Of course. This week was Teacher Appreciation Day (cross that out…week) and all of the schools spent almost no time in class and all of the time celebrating. Each celebration is basically the same and starts off with the national anthem, a prayer, a few words, and then a mixture of folklore dances, sexual reggaeton dances, and poems. Then they serve drinks, then food, and then everyone leaves immediately. In addition, there is ear blasting music throughout the entire event that renders it impossible to have a conversation. Still, they’re pretty fun.

Fifth grade students dancing

My fourth grade students

The giant plate of food they gave us

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Two volcanoes, one week

June 24-25, 2016

Still sore from climbing the monstrous Concepcion a few days before, I climbed on the bus and traveled to the city of Leon for an annual PC Safety and Security meeting. After the meeting, a group of PCVs and I made the long trek way up north to hike a volcano in Chinandega, arguably the hottest department in Nicaragua. After getting lost several times and thinking that the bus left us, we decided to celebrate on our last four hour bus by passing around some drinks.

We arrived around 9pm to the tiny town of Potosi, Chinandega overly excited from our liquid emotion and settled in to our hostel. After a delicious Nica meal, we hung out in the hammocks and had some beers and celebrated actually arriving to our destination.

We woke up around 4am to get ready for our hike and met our guide around 5:30am. Our guide was extremely knowledgeable and stopped numerous times to show interesting trees, the guardabarranco national bird, and some cool fruits.

The hike started off with a beautiful sunrise through the countryside and, in comparison to Concepcion, was an easy walk.

The beautiful walk up

Everyone else struggling

After a lot of sweating, we made it to the top to the most incredible view I have seen thus far in Nicaland. Cosigüina sits at the northernmost tip of Nicaragua on a peninsula that offers stunning views of the volcanic lagoon, the Gulf of Fonseca, the Pacific Ocean, Honduras, and a tip of El Salvador.

First celebratory Tona

The beautiful lagoon at the top with Honduras in the background

View of the Gulf of Fonseca

We drank some celebratory beers at the top and began the easy hike back down to our hostel. Hot, dirty, and very sweaty, we grabbed some snacks and climbed on the bus for the 5 hour trip back to Leon. Of course, when we arrived to our hostel in Leon, there was no water because…well, it’s Nicaragua. We spent the rest of the day enjoying beautiful Leon and its delicious food to finish off one of my favorite trips (thus far!) in Nicaragua.

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Gardening

June 21-22, 2016

Part of our job as PCVs is to work with the schools to establish a school garden. Although the school garden is included in the curriculum and is required by the government, very few schools actually have gardens. Working on the garden was a long process spanning several weeks and required a lot of motivating the hot and tired students.

Finally planting the squash!

Parents and students working together to form the seed beds

Working hard to sift the soil for the seed bed

Taking care of the squash plant

As hot and stressful and challenging as it was, photos like this (below), make it worth it

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Hiking my friendly neighbor

June 19, 2016

For the seven months that I have lived on the island, locals would always ask me if I had hiked Concepcion, the volcano overlooking my every move in site. Finally, I found the perfect opportunity to hike my friendly giant. The university group that comes to the island for a few weeks for a study abroad class always incorporates numerous excursions into the trip. One of the excursions is hiking both of the volcanoes, but Concepcion is always given as an option because it is so challenging.

They invited me to go along and we met at the finca at 6am and started at 6:30am. Before even arriving to the bottom of the volcano, we were already drenched in sweat. The next few hours of my life were the most challenging I’ve ever experienced. Like most Nica hikes, there are no switchback trails and on Concepcion, this means STRAIGHT up the volcano. Since Concepcion is the second tallest volcano in Nicaragua, sitting at 1610 meters, it’s also one of the hardest hikes.

Already drenched in sweat at 7am

Every hour of the hike, we all exclaimed that it couldn’t possibly continue being this hard and that we wouldn’t make it any farther. Yet we kept on pushing and finally arrived at the top.

Taking a break at the mirador, where we couldn’t see anything due to the clouds

Hiking through the clouds

The top was freezing cold, extremely cloudy and very windy. We scrambled on all fours up to the craters lip and looked into the active volcano. Pura Nica, I was freezing and sat next to one of the volcanic vents that regularly spewed out burning hot air. 

Crazy fuzzy/sticky plants at the top

The last part of the climb

Warm vents with hot volcanic air blowing 

After celebrating our impossible climb with peanut butter sandwiches, we sat dumbfounded and tried to figure out how in the world we were going to climb down this beast. Considering that the climb was straight up and the majority of it was done on our hands and knees, it seemed impossible to make it down. One slow step at a time and lots and lots of sliding down on my butt, we FINALLY reached the bottom.

At the crater’s edge...and terrified about how to make it back down

At the mirador on the way down, where the clouds cleared for 5 minutes

Although I consider myself to be in okay physical shape, this volcano kicked my butt. It was by far the most physical 9 hours of my life and I will forever be proud of myself for making it up and down in one piece!

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Pitaya smoothie aka God’s gift to the planet. This smoothie lleva pitaya (dragon fruit), mango, banana, chia seeds and flax seeds. Definitely one of the biggest benefits of living in the tropics!

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Sink Building, Gringo Parties, Lemonade

June 18, 2016

The other Environment PCV on the island has been working all year on implementing a school kitchen to help the parents. In Nicaragua, there is no cafeteria and parents must travel to school with bags and collect dry rice, beans, corn, oil, and a toasted corn powder that is used to make a drink. They then take all of the materials back home, cook all of the food (and usually add cheese or bread or tortillas to show that their family is not poor and able to contribute more) and later in the day, come all the way back to school to serve the food. Obviously, this wastes a lot of time for the parents and the result is that many parents don’t end up cooking the food and the students miss out.

In order to combat this problem, Lindsay decided to build a kitchen at the school using the improved stove and oven models we learned during trainings. Lindsay had already constructed an improved stove at the school and was working with a local builder to build a sink. We spent the day cutting the iron rods while the builder and a local father worked to cement cement-blocks into the wall.

The improved stove and the builder beginning to place the cement blocks

Placing the cement blocks

Lindsay working hard

After cutting all of the iron rods, we worked to tie all of them together.

Finished product!

This table was used as a mold and filled with cement.

Later on, this cement table will be placed on top and dug out to make the actual sink. Finally, they will work on connecting a water supply to the sink and install cabinets below to house the pots and pans.

 Upon finishing the sink, Lindsay and I made the hour long bike trip back to my site and cleaned up. We then walked up to the farm where the group of university students was staying. Each time a university group comes through, I give a charla to them about the Peace Corps, Nicaraguan culture, and my work in the community. They invited us to their despedida party and we had a good time dancing around to some American tunes.

Later that evening, we headed back home and watched the famous Beyonce Lemonade video, which was interesting. Days like this remind me why the Peace Corps is such a cool job: each day is so vastly different!

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Far away meetings, a wedding, and garden work all in one day

June 15, 2016

Some days in the Peace Corps are comical, and this Wednesday was one of them.

In the morning I biked to Balgue (an hour away over lots of hills) and hiked up the Finca Magdelena to meet with Lindsay, the other Environment PCV on the island, and two National Park Rangers. The Rangers wanted to meet with us to discuss the non-profit they are trying to start on the island, which will focus on training the local guides with actual trainings on biology, geology, ecology, and first aid, unlike the (basically) non-existent training they currently receive. After a long meeting with them, I biked all the way back to Altagracia to make it in time for the wedding.

My next door neighbors had a civil marriage after being together for more than 10 years and to celebrate, they organized a party. After a quick bucket bath, I attended the celebration filled with lots of food and excessively loud music, like all Nica parties.

The happy couple!

The cake my host mom’s sister made

After the wedding celebration, I changed clothes and ran to school to work on the school garden with the 4th graders. We worked hard cleaning out trash and large sticks inside the abandoned building behind the school.

Working hard to clear all of the trash

My wonderful 4th graders who elected to stay after school to help me chop up grass for the compost pit

All in a day’s work!

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Avocado climbing

June 14, 2016

After class got cancelled…for the second day in a row…sigh, I was finally able to take another trip with my host dad Gato up to the chagüite (small plot of land with plantains and some other plants). We left bright and early in the morning, Gato on motorcycle and me on my bike.

After the difficult and sweaty trek part way up the volcano, we went in search of avocados at the chagüite. Gato instructed me on the scientific approach to picking avocados, which involved Gato using his hands and his feet to shimmy up the giant trees and carefully walk out on the skinny branches to snap off avocados. I then spread a sack between my arms to make a small landing pad and ran around underneath the tree simultaneously trying to catch the avocado and not let it hit me on the head and knock me out.

Gato climbing the tree like a cat!

I only wish I had a video of the sight of me running around with a sack spread between my arms, frantically trying to catch all of the avocados and not let my host dad down. Luckily, it was easier than I thought (100% because Gato threw them right to me) and after an hour, we had a sack full of over 50 avocados!

Sack of avocados hooked up to be transported back down the volcano