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.

In the interest of the science of comfort I´ve picked up a new project. I spent this weekend at a hostal two hours north of Yalí. They are putting in flushing toilets, hot water showers and eventually internet access. None of this sounds like a big deal, but mixed with an integrated community and farm experience, it should be really cool. There are also petroglyphs about a two hour hike from Rancho Solentiname. I gave an impromptu class at a Polytechnical school, and we ended up dragging half the class along to see them. Horse back riding is a must, and some of the views were incredible. Needless to say, it was an amazing experience in an iconic setting.

Although I should leave analysis of the US elections to those residing in state, or those who at least cast their ballot, I can’t help myself. In my defense my parents did mail my ballot to me. Due to inherent inconsistencies of the Nicaraguan Post, however, it has yet to arrive. I am proud that our president elect is one of such international esteem as opposed to Voldemort W. Bush. I was also proud to have the concession speech in Chicago. I bragged to volunteer and Nicaraguan friends alike that ‘Those hundreds of thousands of people are watching Obama accept the presidency fifteen minutes from my house!’

Five days after John McCain delivered history’s most gracious concession speech, the Nicaraguan Municipal Elections broke out. There were no peaceful mass gatherings. There was no concession. Period. The FSLN Sandinista Party—reformed remnants of the Cuban-style-socialist-dictatorship still figureheaded by Daniel Ortega—stands accused of stealing the elections. The PLC Liberal Party is counting and recounting the election results in Managua, reminding me of the 2000 or 2004 US elections. Party leaders called their constituents to the streets en masse to protect or protest the election results, respectively.

Four people were murdered in Managua as the streets erupted in a violent spectacle, a caricature of Nicaraguan politics. Even here in Yalí, the warm, eerily quiet and visibly tense election day boiled over in a 2 am rock fight. Broken up by the army two hours later the exchange resulted in a mere two injuries. One young man was shot in the leg, and an even younger women lost her front eight teeth. Although a 48 hour prohibition was placed on the country, booze was well stocked and may be held accountable for significantly lowered accuracy.

No one will ever know if the elections were truly fraudulent, due to a lack of extra-party—not to mention international—observations. This factor does not help the tainted claim of ¨Free and Fair Elections.¨ In Managua the Friday before the elections, drinking cocktails with US Ambassador Callahan, hitting up the poshest nightclubs in Nicaragua, I barely considered the political trepidation. I love the seamless contradictions of being a Peace Corps Volunteer.

Although interested and bound to informing those interested of the goings on here in Nicaragua, the subject is already passé. I lost the first draft of this blog in a botched file transfer, but just couldn’t let myself get by without explaining what happened in the Nicaraguan elections. I’ve gotten over them and now I’m really excited about my future projects. I’ve started a series of accounting presentations with my coffee farmers and I will be working with the Mayor’s office to promote tourism to local petroglyphs and waterfalls. Today I’m having a deservedly comfortable evening creating my first business exam in Spanish for my high-schoolers. My site-mate and I even made smores and tea to celebrate pure relaxation. She knits as I absently type.