Unlike last year, this year has already been a whirlwind of events, problems, possible solutions, work, and fun. This last week alone was indicative of the schedule and the year I have chosen for myself.

I restarted classes Sunday night with my youth group and it went well. Monday I started classes, had the evening off, but was out by eight o´clock with my jeans still on. I made one of my teacher´s cry in the institute and we subsequently had a huge blow out that started in front of students, followed into the office and finished with two intermediaries and some more tears. I had classes in the day and started my English classes to two coffee cooperatives at night--all of which went surprisingly well considering my morning.

I gave class Wednesday morning before packing my bags and heading out to Jinotega. I spent the rest of the week helping translate, eating way too much and drinking until way too late with another trade mission with delegates primarily from England, but also comprised of Australians Danish, Americans and Japanese. During the week, I also found out my Mother might never be able to see my ailing Grandmother again because of family disagreements. I had gotten over the fact that I may never see my grandparents again, but I was dead set on having my parents tell them to their faces I loved them as often as they could. On top of that, the only girl I´ve met in nine months who I thought I might ever click with decided we didn´t click so well afterall. Someone I work with pulled a rather Mrs. Havershamesque move, both encouraging me and warning me of the impending doom. I´m now exhausted and just want to go home. Being an absolute vagrant, though, I´m not sure where that is. Right now I´m going back to the bed I´ve been sleeping in for the last few months. I will arrive fifteen minutes before I have to give class because I missed my noon bus to Yalí having not prepared for it beforehand.

Sitting in the institute where I give business classes, I realized I was getting in the way more than helping. We are putting together the schedules for the year and I may have worn out my welcome. I don´t want classes on Mondays or Fridays because the majority of a seemingly endless cascade of holidays, reunions, and meetings fall on those days. I´ve made my point and now type away my morning waiting for the debates to finish and the white papal smoke to arise in decision.

My schedule last year was clear and I spent the majority of my day (and night) reading or looking for other projects. This year, I will have to micromanage my schedule to make sure that I give due time and effort to each pending project. My main projects remain giving business classes and helping certify farms to sell to Starbucks. I´ve finished two projects during the vacations: painting the world map in the primary school and translating for the Japanese/Korean Trade Mission. I also have a host of other side projects I´ve recently started or will be starting soon. Amongst them are supporting Yalí´s struggling tourism industry and giving English classes to professional coffee cuppers in Yalí and Jinotega.

I´m excited to get the year started as all of it depends on the schedules of my primary projects. My recreational activities have naturally been spurned in the process. I have found myself halfway or almost done with four different books, all of which I started thinking I had all the time in the world. My budding interest in my Catholic heritage—no doubt to my parents´ content—has had to take a backseat. I even stopped running for several weeks because my schedule and my traveling simply didn´t allow it. The hyper-tradeoff is just being realized, and I´m sure its full impacts are not quite felt. This week I´ve been running between propaganda drenched trainings at the institute, meetings all over town, and touch-up-work on our world map—all of which needs to be done before classes start next Tuesday. In the meantime, I´ve found solace in reading Harry Potter to my eight-year-old host brother every night after dinner. So perhaps I still have more time than most.

After spending the majority of December stagnating, activity has improved. After my vacations, I found myself facilitating my sitemates dream of painting a world map on the grammar school. Two weeks ago we got the mayor´s office here to pay for the project and pumped most of it out. Although some fine details still await attention, the majority is done. I had to leave early to join a trade mission in Jinotega City. The group was a mix of Japanese and Korean coffee buyers and ¨Cuppers,¨ or professional tasters.

From Monday through Thursday I dutifully translated from Spanish to English, from which the two English speakers translated to their respective native tongues. Amongst the coffee plants, were presented Western proclivities to Eastern accuracy. We travelled over some of the best coffee producing lands in the world. As such, I even got to show off Yalí and a friends farm to the delegation. I learned that there is a lifetime of information to learn about the mystery of coffee as some of the world´s most discerning cuppers were just learning about its production for the first time. Caffeine is a drug just like any other... it has its mysteries and its romances, its temptations and entrapments.

Sometimes the only thing someone needs from stress is a little escape. I got to see other volunteers and had a very positive vacation. Returning to my little room, I breathed a sigh of relief. The boys were excited to see me back. I continued my position as their superman by bringing home smores. I taught the lads to heat up marshmallows over the stove. They were elated and spent most of the next morning plotting how they were going to get more marshmallows. Today I went on a three hour hike with my sitemate. She´s not the best hiker, but a good conversationalist, which made things funner than my solo venture would have been. That´s how I enjoy myself here in Yalí. I read, relax, hike, run, and do whatever work I can find. I missed it.

With the world economy in the tank, this is the perfect place for me.

As Christmas approaches and then arrives, I find myself wishing more and more that my family was here, or I were with them. Not my host family, not my training family, but MY Family. I miss you all a ton, and things can get lonely without the people you identify. Reading doesn´t take the edge off, you can only run for so many hours a day, eating makes you tired, drinking is expensive, and watching the Bears beat the Pack REALLY made me want to be curled up at home watching on the TV at home instead of my little TV in the pharmacy. I guess I just have to deal. As quickly as the holidays have come they will go. In the mean time at least the weather´s nice.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. I will wake up for an early run, come back and do some quick shopping before I attempt to cook Oatmeal and softboiled eggs for the twelve people in the house right now (a mere 4 more than usual). Soon I´ll be in the middle of a surfing vacation with warm waves crashing around me and fireworks above. I´ve got bigger fish to fry!

Love you all, Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, and an immensely Happy New Year

The slow creeping days of vacation I´ve been warned about are here. I miss my family and watching my host family get together with all the awkward moments, old stories and inside jokes doesn´t make things easier. Not being particularly emotional, I tried getting really drunk instead which resulted in nothing more than embarrassment and a very difficult run the next morning--training for a half marathon an hour south of me in the Ithsmus-Bound Cordillera Isabella.

I´ve spent plenty of time calling my counterparts and looking for new work with coffee cooperatives, the harvest of which has begun. I though I would see only an increase in work due to my connection with a large coffee exporter, but the opposite has been true. I woke up at four thirty in the morning to take a four hour bus ride for a ten o´clock meeting with a cooperative coordinator. How did that pan out? He wasn´t in the office that day. I called and or showed up at the coffee exporter office four days in a row. What happened? My counterpart was not in or did not call me back. I tried to take a two hour bike ride over a mountain with a faulty bike to find a friend to get my new phone´s user code. Where did I end up? Sleeping in his bed waiting for enough sun to ride back and talking to him on the phone because he wasn´t there.

Other than that, I´ve had a lot of time to run, yoga and read. I´ve been running through books faster than I ever have and listening to the same CDs over and over again. It reminds me of the Christmas breaks of the past sans Starwars on constant repeat. Oh and I´m wearing shorts right now.

This weekend, a friend of mine and Peace Corps set up a trip to Managua to eat Thanksgiving with the Deputy Ambassador of the US. After a long bus ride and a quick visit with my training host family and almost a month without leaving my site, I felt very Nicaraguan. As soon as we got to Turkey Day, it was a whole different story.

We spent the early part of the afternoon sipping on cocktails in the pool. We moved on to vino, turkey, garden-grown vegetables, cranberry sauce, apple and pumpkin pies, etc. All were done to perfection and covered with gravy. The afternoon was fantastic and quickly shifted to the tryptophan-enduced slump. We recovered for a second round then drifted off to sleep on big beds in air conditioned rooms with hot showers.

The next morning we continued to indulge until shortly after lunch when my buddy and I left. We were sated and beginning to burn from swimming in the hot midday sun. It was perfect. The Deputy Ambassador´s driver dropped us off to get cabs, but within twenty minutes I was back to the Nicaragua I know.

I´ve realized the reason so many Peace Corps Volunteers feel unfomfortable in there sites and when they return home, is an inability to adapt quickly. The transition from rich to poor, from powerful to powerless, and the reverse needs to be mastered. I will never be a Nicaraguan Campesino. I am a Chicagoan, born and bred. I am also a well adjusted employee of the United States living in Nicaragua. I function within the community perhaps not seemlessly, but functionally. I´m still the gringo, but I have no problem moving from world to world.