I think I am starting to feel settled into my site and the surrounding area. These last couple weeks I have been in the cities more than I expected to be. A couple times was for health reasons and others for internet and meeting up with friends. This weekend I went to Matagalpa which is a great big city where a lot of volunteers tend to meet up. It has a great big grocery store and a nice café with wireless internet. It takes me a bout 3 hours to get there when all is send and done and with being sick this week and feeling rather homesick I didn’t realize how much I needed a mental health day! Drinking a fancy coffee and eating a salad was soo rewarding. Also seeing volunteers who seem like family now even though we have only known each other for 4 months felt so good! I stored up some hugs, horror stories and got podcasts and episodes of tv shows!
My week was productive, if you are wondering some of my daily activities on site I will try to give you a basic break down. I usually spend the morning cleaning, doing my laundering, ironing, taking a bucket bath and eating breakfast. I spend more time here on personal hygiene and overall cleanliness then I ever did in the states! Part of this is because I was in the company of many a fleas! Who like it more when you are dirty! A great way to get rid of them is bath in the morning and before you go to bed, change your clothes everyday and iron all your clothes before you wear them.
During the day I go visit people’s houses and meet with some kind of group or project. Half of it or more is usually socializing and chatting the other is finding out all the projects there are in my town. Really most of the time the work part of the day doesn’t feel like work cause I just ask a lot of questions and have so many nice people explaining things to me, asking questions, as we hike through the different communities! I tend to meet a new person about every week and I try to always make follow up appointments. I am by no means bored but feel like I am just getting to know everything and try to figure out what the needs and wants are. I also do a lot of assigned project readings from peace corps and my own personal reading at night. One thing I want to do more of is studying in Spanish…but by the time the day is over my brain is fried from all the talking and stumbling through my day…
Some highlights from these past weeks were…
Decorating or baking cake with my women’s group who opened a mill with the first volunteers and now have started working on a bakery operation.
Making tamales from scratch after the first young corn harvests ( the women are preparing them as the men are hauling them in from the fields) we husk the corn, take of the shells with a knife and then mill it by hand…it takes all day!
Teachinga girl my age (who is becoming a great friend) how to knit and her teaching me how the crochet here and making circular table designs
Horseback riding up to a view point, hiking all over the place, and watching all the farm animals do their silly farm animal things
Planning a super extravagant birthday party with a 5 year old here who celebrates his on the 23rd of October, we are making a piñata, a cake from scratch, and ice cream
Seeing and laughing with volunteers, eating chocolate getting phone calls and packages from home.
Humbling/learning Experiences…
One of the women from the mill lending me a clean shirt after I was soaked from walking up to her house in the pouring rain…just to find out the meeting I was coming to was cancelled…( that happens a lot here)
Talking to an incredibly intelligent producer about his struggles in the business aspects as he will takeout a loan to try out a new technology or crop type and then the weather and the market (which is totally unpredictable here, because there is no organization about who is producing what and in which quantities…which means if everybody grows onion and you thought of the same thing…you will make no money, but if you decided on lettuce you could be in the gold, it is a complete gamble)
A family walking an hour with two plastic chairs to bring to my house so I would have some furniture.
People seeking me out from all sides of town just to ask for English classes
People recognizing I am probably homesick and sympathizing and trying to comfort me.
I am homesick this week and I miss all of you! I hope this blog wasn’t to random it is hard to catch people up on two weeks of activity!
today I hope to get myself a gas stove and next time hopefully I will have stories of cooking on my own in Nicaragua!
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