After seven weeks of training, I´m finally starting to feel comfortable in my town. My family and I understand each other, I know the prices and routes the buses run. I know the local paper vendors, bartenders, and other people its good to know in town. That cooshy life will be over July 18, and after a week of swearing in and preparing, training will be over and I will start my work in my permanant site: San Sebastián de Yalí, Jinotega, Nicaragua, which boasts a bustling population of 6,000. As soon as I am comfortable at one site, I´m off to the next one, my real one!

Yalí is in one of the poorest and most remote regions our hemisphere has to offer. It is way up in the mountains for Nica standards, although the summits are just a little higher than the base level for Denver. The town is one hour from the nearest paved road and nearest person from my sector, three hours from the Department Head (Jinotega), and six and a half hours from the capital city (Managua).

Now, before you make judgements, there are seventeen other volunteers in the department from other sectors, including a health volunteer in Yalí itself. The countryside is supposed to be spectacularly beautiful and pristine, and my packet reads:
¨If you like to hike, this is your site!¨ I will be teaching high school students La Empresa Creativa, a business class designed by the Peace Corps and the Ministry of Education. I will also be teaching the LEC to 80 local coffee producers and helping them with their practices. There is also a fantastic opportunity to work with the local government on a project promoting ecotourism. It is not going to be easy without paved roads!

Anyway, after figuring everything out, this is exactly the type of site I wanted. I want a tight knit community where I will feel that I am making a difference, and am given the space for some introspection and personal development. That sounds a little lame and even a little selfish, but then again, isn´t everyone?

Sometimes its the really little, lame-ass things that make a big difference. Today, my site-mate and I went to a local orphange, which is really not local because its forty-five minutes in a mototaxi down a dirt road. We talked to the directora about having our youth group in town collect books for them only to find out that they lacked even basic necessities: fruits, vegetables and bread. We took a tour around the clean, though modest faciltities. Every door we opened held children calling every woman in the room mami, clinging to our legs, reaching to be picked up, held, talked to, and loved. I found myself with a child on my hip in every room. A two-year old named Manuel reached for my face. He grabbed my nose, pulled my lips and tugged on the flesh of my gruff, unshaven chin, over and over again. I never would have stopped him. I didn´t want to. I explained to him that it was my beard, and that one day he would have one too.

I still don´t love kids, but I found it hard to leave every room. The youngest, like Manuel, cried after spending only minutes together. I realized that these kids need a lot of loving, maybe more than this life can offer them. On the ride back, I didn´t know what else to do but joke about it. All I could say to my site-mate was ¨I can´t believe that kid tried to stick his fingers in my mouth!¨

Saturday night at eleven o´clock I hear running and general chaos between my little apartment and the main house. Thinking it a family problem that has nothing to do with me, I roll over. Not a minute later, my host mother is pleading my name outside of my door, obviously in tears. In nothing but my boxers I run out to see a huge blaze not fifty yards from my doorstep. My host mother is telling me her brother-in-law´s house is on fire, and I hug her out of instinct.

I run back in to grab clothes and glasses, but by the time I run into my host father he has already given up running buckets of water across the street. The girls and my host mother are out front repeatedly screaching, ¨They never come! The firemen never come!¨ It was something I would hear over and over for the next forty minutes. By that time, two houses, a construction company the family also owned, and the boarding house of a japanese volunteer away for the weekend are in a forty-foot blaze. The exploding cans and equipment in the store continuously explodes making the scene reminiscent of war. The firemen have to come from the next department and return to it everytime they need more water. There is no hyrant in my town. The fire continues until about one-thirty in the morning. In the mean-time one man is carried onto our porch with a burned leg. He yells for water, which I get for him from our kitchen, although by the time I get back outside the story has unfolded. My host family tells me he dropped boiling paint on himself while trying to steal it from the burning store. He is hauled away by paramedics as I narrowly avoid what would have been my second appearance on national television. ¨Only in Nicaragua¨ say the girls, ¨Only in Nicaragua would someone do such a thing.¨ I almost regailed them of the looting in the States during the Rodney King Riots or Hurricane Katrina. In a country where agony and suffering are the only memorable history, I thought it better to bite my tongue.

Last week I went on what we call our Volunteer Visit, where we aspirantes go to visit active volunteers for a couple days. I ended up with a really cool guy and I hope my site is as full of activity as his. He has a couple really cool projects with a pineapple coop and with nature reserve guides. Speaking of which, this week we get our site booklet which shows us our posibilities. We get to look at the different sites and even get to list our preferences, although the descision is ultimately made by our APCD (Assistant Peace Corps Director). There are many an acroname I have omitted from previous blogs, so consider yourself lucky.

The day I got back from my volunteer visit, I really felt at home here in Masatepe. My home here and my host family felt really comfortable. I think I may have some trouble moving on. I´m happy where I am, in the close proximity of other aspirantes and in a great town/family/institute. I even had my father´s day conversation while dangling my toes in the lagoon of an inactive volcano, which made me appreciate my setting even more. Teaching is getting easier, although our youthgroup has taken a turn for the worse. The kids seem uninterested. I do feel like I´m getting a little bit better with them, although not sure if it´s too late.

Just photos

Well I think I´ve started to talk about what a complete 180 this has been for me, but it´s starting to sink in fully. I´m enjoying myself here, but there are just things I miss. You have to watch your back at all times here, and one just can´t take a walk at night here if stressed out. There are just certain pleasures of American adulthood that I have had to shelf. I miss the night life, which was fun here during our Fiestas Patronales, but has since disappeared. I miss the ability to have a hot or cold shower then cuddle up in whatever temperature setting I want! I miss being an adult: doing my own laundry, cooking my own dinner, leaving whenever I want, talking to whoever I want, doing whateverI want, and going wherever I want. Most of the things I miss are small things. Although I love my host family, I miss all of you who are reading this, you who make me comfortable and at home: MY friends and MY family. Thank you for always being there in the past if I didn´t say that before I left, and I hope some of you will still be there for me when I get back. Sorry to sound possessive, but that´s how I feel today.

Here I have had fun and learned a lot of things, but cultural differences can be frustrating, just as much so as a Nica would have in the states. The fact that no one talks to there children about condoms and then get pissed of at their kids when they get pregnant. The occassional lack of individuality and the desperate need for family. At the same time, I imagine they think of us as monsters for kicking out our kids at the ripe old age of eighteen! Well the first quarter of the 11 week training is enjoying the novelty, and the second quarter is feeling the initial culture shock. That´s where I am. The rest of training is usually getting settled in. After training there is apparently further culture shock and further settling in. I´ll keep you all informed don´t worry... Oh and I promise at some point there will be photos, but i haev simply not had time yet, sorry!