My first year in Nicaragua has now officially come and gone. I´ve had my official One-Year medical visit with nothing to report other than a wart that had to be brutally burnt off. My palm is still sporting an inch long whole, the depth of which I´ve never had on my body.

I´m currently typing in my Institute where I give class. We have a great set of computers where the internet has recently been reinstalled. The first year (7th grade class) is doing work, but not even pretending to behave by our standards. They are screaming, fighting, yelling, but somehow getting their assignment done. Our sence of workspace solitude does not exist here. I´ve just given an Excel class to teach all my classes to write professional surveys and market studies. Some of my sixteen year old students did not know how to click and drag. There is a huge gap between those who grew up in town and those who did not.


As I was walking from a planning session the other day, the lights went out. This is nothing out of the ordinary, and my cell phone is always enough to light the path. I quickly realized though that my cell phone drowned out a cacophony of flashing lights. There were thousands, no, millions of fireflies exploding sporatically their eerie greenish light. It looked like the grandstands of the olympics but without another light around. Occassionaly lightening in the background would drown out th stadium sensation, only to return it within seconds. Besutiful.

Simultaneously knocking on hard wood to evade the dreaded jinx, I whole-heartedly claim things are stellar. I have spent half of April out of Yalí. After a fantastic vacation, and two weeks of trainings and meetings, I´m finally ready to get back to work. I´m just not sure I´m needed. Empty Nesters around the world, I feel your paigns to care for and reprimand self-sufficient children realizing all too late that they were quite capable of solo success for some time. My business class miraculously went on in my absence. I´ve returned to hear some fantastically creative ideas for entrepreneurship here. I´ve come to the realization that after three months of not working with the coffee exporter, I don´t have a place. They simply hired a technician who outshines the old Starsky and Hutch of my counterpart and me.

I am happy to get back into the institute with newly invigorated teachers and students. The competitions for the students entreprenurial projects is arriving, and we´re all getting excited. Even my first english class to my coffee cooperatives in over a month was great. I felt it was so long over due, the phrase of the day was ¨It´s About Time!¨

There´s also been a decent amount of rain lately, which means Reading Weather for me. We´re actually in a great saddle between two climatic peaks. With the dry season waning, and rains a´comin´, there´s enough water to do laundry and still enough sun to dry it! After a long, and completely drenched hike the other day, I was very happy to have dry towels, boxers AND sweatpants. Hot coffee didn´t hurt either.


P.S. I´ve become so proficient at clothes washing, I broke chunks off of the cement washboard the other day! Too much stress, or Old Abe? You be the judge.

As I dab at my never ending snuffles, I am thankful I didn´t get them last week. After spending a couple of days I should have just taken as vacation days, I left on the grandest adventure of my Peace Corps career. We got down to Granada by evening and escaped to the volcano Island of Ometepe be noon the next day. Contending for a position as one of the Seven Wonders of the World, our brief stay on the island was an important part of the Peace Corps Nicaragua experience.

We stayed with a friend and made a sprint attempt to the top of the smaller of two volcanoes, Maderas. Turning the four hour hike into a two hour jaunt, we all felt deserving of the five pounds of rice we brought to the top--we no where near finished it. Within fifteen minutes of reaching the crater lake at the summit, two of us were swimming across. We got to the other end to find one of the most spectacular views I´ve been privy to see. We slowly made our way back, tighting with every stroke. Turning to each other half way back we said what we had avoided admitting: our legs were starting to cramp up. We stopped talking and just kept trucking, using mostly our arms. Making it back to shore--ten yards of mud and partially decomposed detritus--was painful. But we did it alive. By the time I got back, though, my legs had cramped up so bad, I had to crawl through the mud in front of a group of twenty canadian super-hippy med students. They proved to be some odd-balls, but at the time it was embarassing.

The ultra-hippy vibe is marvellous, and I hadn´t been called Conservative in years. The narrow-minds of the extreme Left have found a haven on Ometepe. I´m happy they can find peace hiding away from the rest of the world: the literature, the research, the anecdotes that describe the world progressing because of capitalism. I´ve researched the etimology of words looking for a good combination. After already applying it to a scholarship application, I´m ready to say I support Regulated Capitalism. I believe in it, and I believe it works. Weather it come from the Left (opening and reforming socialist ideals to realities of free markets) or from the Right (responsible taxation and limited distribution of basic needs) I think it works.

The rest of the political discussion on the trip was dictated by a German companion whose uniquie view on Northern European Socialism was eye-opening. We were all interested and had our own swists on the story. We cruised in a private whip, a rare experience in Peace Corps, up North. We hiked around Estelí, and finally made it to Canyon Somoto. It was beautiful, filled with people because of Semana Santa (Holy Week) but Beautiful none the less. I got dropped of in Condega just in time to get my last bus back, and found myself home for a very late dinner.

Since then, I´ve been preparing for a training session my sector has with our teacher counterparts. We´ve also been inundated by a plague of large insects called the chicharra. If I hadn´t been convinced they were an annual epidemic, I would have sworn we harboring Jewish slaves in town. Their humming sound is so intense, it disrupts class in periodic bursts. They are beautiful in their all encompassing presence. I´ve never heald an exoskeletal creature of such girth. They are about two and half inches long, and longer in circumfrance. Their long, fine, paper-thin wings barely look like they are strong enough to support them in aerial transport. This could explain their frequent landings in inauspicious spots. Like my bed. It reminds me more of a mutant locust plague than a yearly occurance.

I´m also suffereing from some combination of allergies and a cold. They all tell me I´ve got gripe, which is a cover-all, non-specific set of symptoms I don´t believe in. I´ve spent more time in bed than I should have after a week of vacations. Cést la vie.

Happy Easter and Much Love

Transitions are always strange times. I feel like Peace Corps life can often be as big of a transition as Middle School. I´m losing my sitemate and getting a new one. Sometimes there are two volunteers in a single site and I have been lucky enough to be one of those. But just as my sitemate and I are starting to understand each other and work together really well, her service has ended. She´ll be going back to Portland, Oregon after an extrodinarily successful service as I put together makeshift vacations for Semana Santa. There will be a new volunteer moving into my town within the month. She seems really nice and I´m excited for a change, though still nervous that we won´t get along. It´s not like there are a lot of options if you don´t like your sitemate, though I have become more confident in my ability to deal with all sorts of characters successfully.

This week, I´ve been pretty busy planning my exams for the institute, saying goodbye to my current sitemate, planning Semana Santa, and planning for the rest of my month being packed with Peace Corps training sessions. I´m also realizing that I´ve been here for a little while. Having been in Nicaragua for almost a year and watching my sitemate leave I can´t help but think about what I´ll do when I leave. My time to ¨Plan the Rest of My Life¨ is waning.

None of this has anything to do with the reason for today´s commentary. I just felt my first honest to goodness earthquake in Nicaragua. I have to admit that the sensation was slightly numbed by feeling an earthquake in Chicago at four in the morning just before I left last year--minor geologic miracle. This one was still cool, though. I was sitting down to type in my buddy´s cyber when all the monitors and roofing started to shake. It was cool but when we went outside, we thought we were both crazy because it didn´t look like anyone else had even noticed. Turns out we weren´t crazy. In the last twenty minutes half a dozen people have come in to confirm this small quake. Keep in mind Nicaragua does have an extraordinary reputation for destructive quakes.

Half marathons are not that long. I suppose they are supposed to be completed in less than my 1:56. But at least I know what I have to do for next year.

Little Mark has been born, healthy and well. Congratualtions, Alec! Being so far from the excitement back home, I feel slightly removed from it, but I´m happy that I´ve been kept abreast of the situation. Lee-Ann´s students also found an old book that Susy Ramos gave me years and years back. I write to them more or less every week, and they sounded so excited to be using the same book I used.

As my half-marathon quickly approaches, I have lost the ability to avoid stress with the occassional piece of chocolate or even more rare... cigarette. Better for it. I found myself running to the next department, Estelí the other day. I was told when I got there that I had already run 15 km. Running the way back, the my only thought was pride that I was running more than a half-marathon (21 km) in one day. Once I got back, I was told that I had only run 16 km in total! Disappointed, but no where near defeated, I´m still cross training daily.

Saturday, I found myself hiking uphill with my sitemate and a group of girls I teach. In a defiant act of masculinity, or perhaps testosterone based stupidity, once lost I would not allow the group to rethink directions. Instead I took out my trusty machete and slashed our way through the cloud forest, uphill--ughhh!--until we reached the summit of one of the tallest peaks in Yalí, El Volcán. After being called cochón (faggot) repeadetly the week before, it was an even more necessary and invigorating Indiana Jones experience. The entire top of the mountain was covered in thick vines and pillowy, green, lichenous trees. It looked more like a movie set than reality. We found an easier way down once at the summit, but low and behold, I came to the rescue again! Forced into service, I killed a snake for the screaming masses of helpless damsals.

The next morning I found myself handwashing (per usual) all of my days garments, just to give myself a little gender balance. I then ran up to the base of El Volcán and tacked on my usual hour of Yoga. I´m not sure if I´m going to be in shape for this mini-marathon, but I´m sure trying.