Hello all, just thought I’d walk you through a normal day here in San Dionisio. 

I normally get up between 5:45 and 6:30, depending on the day.  Many days, I am awaken by birds (chickens start early!), dogs, the neighbor’s radio, etc. before my alarm.  The radio is local and typically plays the same songs over the course of the morning, and has a soundbite telling the time about 20 times an hour.  There are also soundbites saying things like “Sabes estillo” and “Fin de semana” which interrupts songs and drives me crazy.  I only listen to the radio vicariously, as my neighbors oftentimes play it loud.  On Tuesday and Fridays, I work in a small rural school about an hour outside of town, so I get up early to get on my way.  I get to school around 7:15, where the school has a quick assembly and then we start class.  I teach third and fourth graders Natural Science, and I try to make class more dynamic than the lesson book.  It should be noted that we only have one lesson book for the classes, so it is relatively easy to stray from the sponsored plan.  For most of the classes I teach at that school, we have a bit of a conversation of the theme, and then I dictate a lecture for the kids to copy.  Then, I have the kids read back a sentence or two at a time, and I comment on its meaning in context.  We then give some questions to answer, maybe some drawing and explanations of diagrams.  For older kids, I try to get more into analysis and conjecture, but it is tough because the textbooks are very narrow and teachers are unwilling or unable to get much more information into their hands.  I also try to do some experiments, like tracking the sun, making fossil replicas, decomposition of various objects, planting of beans in various soils and liquids etc.

Tuesday I get done at 12, and get home by 1.  It’s laundry day for me, where I wash with a “lavendero” which is a table sized contraption with a washboard with a tub of water attached to it.  Washing is slow and boring; many other volunteers are disposed to paying a woman in town to wash their clothes for them, but I figure right now I have enough time, so it seems worth it to do my own.  I have my own plastic bucket, where I soak clothes and then take one out at a time, rub soap on them, scrub them against the washboard, then rinse the soap off.  The average Nicaraguan woman is more thorough than me, but I think my status as a white male makes me rather immune to many of the material criticisms common to Latin American cultures.  So, while my clothes may be slightly off colored and wrinkled, I have no ambitions to improve my technique at this point. 

On Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, I teach at the urban school in the afternoons.   The noise level is always high at about 6:30 am, but by 8:30 it is much quieter, namely because my loud neighbors both work for the school system and have work starting at 8.  Sometimes their two kids start playing more contemporary pop around then, but other times everyone is out of the house.  I oftentimes hear the 10 year old boy, who I teach, whining like a champ.  Literally whining seems to be his preferred manor of communication.  Sometimes I make fun of him at school for it, but generally he is a good kid.  On the other side of my house lives a young couple with an 8 month old girl and one of their mothers.  They are much quieter. 

Monday morning is rather slow, and I generally work out a little, read, listen to podcasts, cook beans or something like that. On Wednesday morning, I teach basketball to some of the high schoolers.  The basketball/soccer court is right near my house, and I have also gone around 3 times a week recently to play around dinner time.  I can say that before, I rarely observed kids playing basketball, but once I started showing up with my ball, people have taken to playing much more.  Granted, double dribbles and lots of fouling is part of their game, but certainly the high school kids are improving a little bit each week.  On Thursday morning, I co-plan with one of my teachers before class for an hour or so.  

After school, I sometimes have time to play soccer at the fields, which are a little outside of town, about a half hr from my house and 15 min from the school.  The level is pretty relaxed and it is sometimes frustrating to show up only to have the majority of time spent watching others shooting against a goalie instead of playing.  At the beginning of league play, lots of people were playing, now the number is usually less than 10 who show up. 

I co-plan with one or two teachers in the evening, trying to get a good grasp on the subject we will be teaching and trying to guide the lesson plan to more amplified ends.  In total, I work with 6 teachers: 1 in 3^rd, two in 4^th, one in 5^th, and two in 6^th grades.  Because I do not teach each hour of Science and the classes have paced themselves differently, I sometimes teach the same class twice, or teach one aspect of a class and then teach the prior theme with the other section.  Sometimes my head spins a little trying to remember what we taught last time and where we were trying to take a certain theme, but generally my teachers are accommodating to my questions. 

By 7 pm I might not have done a whole ton during the day, but I am certainly tired.  As my site mate says, it gets late really early here.  I usually have some cooked beans on the stove which I heat up, cook some rice, and bring that into my host family’s house to eat.  They are generally in their own worlds, the mom lying in bed, cooking or chatting in one room with friends, while a few kids are watching the latest Disney shows like “ICarly” or something like that.  The older son is generally out at a friend’s house, and the mom’s nephew (his mom died of kidney failure 2 years ago) who sometimes sleeps over, come home around 9 or so.  Usually, I am already back home by then, and in bed around 8:15 to 9:15.

On Gardens and other thoughts from Nicaragua

This is another example, sorry its about a month old at this point.  And yes, I am in better spirts.  Will write a new one this week!

Hello friends and family and greetings from Nicagagua.  I apologize if
I haven´t been in contact with some of you in quite awhile, but I
figured that this would be the best way to let everyone know how I am
doing!
I am sitting on a chilly (pants weather for me) rainy Sunday morning,
cup of tea in hand and Spanish contemporary music on my speakers.  I
had meant to do some gardening today, but the rain seems to have other
plans for me.  I have tomato and cucumber and some squash planted, but
I haven’t really had success in anything growing.  Having planted
twice directly in the ground with no success, I decided to plant in an
old tire and a couple of grain sacks using compost I had made.  In my
effort to either cut corners or internally diminish the risks of rain,
I never built a roofed seed nursery.  However, it seems that for the
short time I am here, an investment in roofing and construction time
for a few veggies also doesn’t make a ton of sense.
In my school gardens, I have had more success mostly due to dumb luck
of planting times between hard rains.  In my rural school, we planted
tomato and green peppers.  There is a second and much larger garden
being built there; a large multinational food producer and distributor
has taken interest in this school giving the teachers some training,
founding an ecological brigade of students, and directing the parents
to make a garden on school grounds.  I welcome any attention paid to a
school system lacking resources, but of course, if I were in charge, I
would have focused my efforts differently.  For example, to have
parents come and make a giant school garden is great – if it can last
for more than a year or two.  I have a premonition of this group
leaving my school soon, taking with them their expertise and the
strict oversight that organized volunteers and built interest.
Lacking here is a strong commitment to the school system from some of
the parents.  For example in every grade about 1/5 or more of the kids
were never enrolled for the academic year, and never show up.  For the
kids that do show up, their parents naturally have other things to do
than build or maintain gardens.  From year to year there is a lot of
work in regenerating the soil and re-tilling and with a garden of this
size.  It will be hard to rely on just the will of teachers and
students to carry out the work year after year if parents loose
interest.  Outdoor work is traditionally the work of men, and here
there are only female teachers.  Fortunately, they have great soil at
this school, so it might not be as hard as I think to get everything
ready again.
At my other school, which is much larger, every class (2 of 5th and 2
of 6th) has tried making their own garden.  I suggested combining
efforts to save costs and upkeep, but due to space issues and problems
from years past, this is not in the works.  So far, only one of the 4
actually looks reasonable.  Here, we have to find dirt and compost
from other places because the high clay content essentially prohibits
anything fragile from growing.  We have collected manure and dirt from
the river banks which is much more silty.  The successful garden is
straight rows of dirt in an area that was already fenced in.  The
others are spread out among the school grounds and have improvised
fences and have had less dedication.
The most notable non-functioning garden has circular rows originally
built around a large hole to be used for compost.  We fenced in the
circle and dug the hole about 2 months ago, and since then the teacher
has not really continued the garden process.  So, in the meantime the
rains are heavy, and the hole filled with water which could not drain
because of the clay soil.  After a few weeks, the hole became
extremely smelly and had rotting branches and insect larva growing in
it.  On a day when the kids planted corn on the majority of the school
property (separate from the garden project), I pointed out the public
safety issues created by the hole, and tried employing some boys to
fill it with rocks.  I was interrupted by the teacher with the “good”
garden, who said the hole wasn’t these kids problem, and better to
have the other teacher take care of it.  A couple weeks later, in the
first teacher’s class, we checked the soles of all the kids shoes to
see who had brought in the pig shit.  Of course, the smell was from
outside and we needed to close the windows for a few days till someone
filled the hole in.
One thing I have noticed down here is that people are generally
willing to deal with problems when they are obvious, but mitigation or
contingency for problems down the road are lacking.  Another example
that comes to mind is something as simple as a doctor’s meeting.  One
teacher had to leave school more than an hour early one day, and after
recess ended, the teachers who had been chatting about this and that
got their kids seated, and then spent the next 20 minutes in the hall
assessing who would watch this class while the teacher was gone.  For
me it is hard not to have my blood pressure rise, to jump to the
conclusion that these delays and interruptions that are so common are
robbing these kids of an education, and that even from the inside of
the system, I am incapable of doing anything.  While lamenting my
issues to a friend, she asked me, “Have you given up in thinking that
this job is better than it is yet,” and I suppose by being mad is a
sign that I have not.
I can only lead by example, but I find the example that I am to be
fairly lost, sometimes unmotivated, and generally inconsistent from
the ways which Nicaraguan teachers are trained.  I gave a lecture
presenting a small guidebook for teachers written by other PC
volunteers to the teachers a few weeks ago.  It touches a wide range
of topics like transitions, in class games to review or share
information etc. and I finished with a challenge to have every teacher
try one of these activities in a class, and that I would be happy to
watch and help or give feedback if my schedule fit it.  I also asked
for a paper giving me suggestions at the end.  Most teachers suggested
that I give more lectures like this in the coming months, however no
one came to me mentioning a time to observe, or even an example of an
activity’s outcome to me in the last few weeks.  It has been
impossible to try reinforcing something which seems ignored.  For
reasons like that, the job seems so hit or miss, with the good and the
bad almost overlapping each other.  Like the US economy, where the
same day as a good jobs report comes out, the housing market drops
another 4% in price, my head is filled with conflicting notions of
from where to focus efforts, how to improve on failures, or even
whether I should involve myself here anymore.

Update

Note- this post is super old! Sorry, I am posting this late but better than never!
 
Hello all, just checking in from the land of lakes and volcanoes;
I did not have class for almost the last 3 weeks because the teachers
were busy assessing the need for education for the illiterate
campecinos.  Known as “el censo” or census, teachers travel daily to
rural outlying communities and gather information about what the
farmers do and do not know.  Those who cannot read and have interest
for classes can sign up to have someone come teach them.  The country
claims a decent literacy rate, but it is difficult to find people
outside of government or NGO jobs who are confident readers.  People
butcher simple words on signs (the difference between the sound of B
and V is particularly hard), and the kids consistently link separate
words together and copy words incorrectly from their books.  Most of
these errors best corrected by individual time spent reading, but the
culture of reading and resources to provide books are not there.
To an outside observer, it seems as though the nation would be best
served by not playing education as a zero sum game.  That is, I think
that there are other qualified people in the town capable of teaching
adults, and using the grade school teachers disrupts essential
incremental progress.  Or, during the 2 1/2 month break between school
years, teachers could make themselves available if that is more
suitable.  What I want is perhaps narrow minded, but I would go so far
as to say these kids are being cheated out of their education right
now.
I was not really made aware of the break until it happened, so I did
not stress extracurricular activities with my youth group.  I tried
starting a project I had had in the back of my mind, but this didn’t
turn out so hot either because of my lack of foresight.  While
training for the half marathon, I had run past a set of houses 20
minutes outside of San Dionisio that seemed to have a well exposed to
open air.  I thought that a program to cover the well might provide
clean drinking water to the people I had seen filling up buckets
there.  So, I created a small survey about the uses and problems with
the well.  Printing off 10 copies, I waltzed over to this settlement
expecting to find people relieved to have someone interested in
helping them.  Instead, the first person I approached seemed more
hesitant and suspicious of me, and was not willing to take the survey.
 After getting a little frustrated, I finally asked why she did not
want to potentially have the well capped, she told me that her house
only uses the water during the rainy season, and she gets her drinking
water from a neighbor’s house that has pipes.  One day she hopes to
afford piping, but for now everyone is happy with the arrangement and
has no need to cap the well.  So, I walked home after that meeting a
little downtrodden but I did learn a lesson: that something may seem
to be a good idea, but that the best way to confirm its worth is by
asking a few simple questions before investing much thought In it!
 I have been trying to keep myself occupied with a little travel, PC
training and my newly started boxing class.  I have not quite learned
how to protect myself in the ring, and so when I sparred with a guy
training for a match on May 19, he got a few good licks when I
approached too close.  I got a little dazed by one of the hits, and by
then the trainer had put me through 3 rounds, and it was time to stop.
 After stepping out of the ring, I felt pretty good and continued
training.  However, when I cooled off at home, my head started hurting
a little more and more.  I was a little worried at that time, but it
didn’t seem too serious, so I took an Ibuprophen and went to sleep.
The next day I felt a bit groggy and spent a lot of time in bed, but
then went to boxing again (but did not spar). I still felt bad the
next day, and so I called up the PC and got an appointment that same
day with a doctor in Managua.  He checked me for a concussion, and
then gave me a CT scan, which turned out negative for swelling or any
other problems.  Again, I learned my lesson and will both give some
time for my head now, and also spar only when I am ready.
It is safe to say that I am a little frustrated with the current
projection of Peace Corps.  In some senses I still have barely started
my primary mission to teach, but I just haven’t found the best way to
approach conflicting schedules, misunderstandings and lack of
foresight on either side.  In some regards, there is no such thing as
a normal school week between my commitments to the PC away from my
community and the habit of changing and cutting school days.  All this
needs to be addressed individually to all of the teachers I work with,
who all have different expectations of our working relationship.  But,
I keep on keeping on here, and somehow it’ll all work out!

Hope all is well out there!

School is... Cool

So the school year has started, and I am still trying to wrap my head around what that means.  I am supposed to work with 4 teachers total from 2 different schools, so I have been splitting my time observing different classes.  What I am looking for are teaching styles and interest in working with me, so that I may pass the next two years with the best probability of that may fit with making a difference.  Some aspects of the school day are a little hard to figure out, like why cleaning must take place during school hours or why parents are allowed to sit in with kids on occasion.  The limited resources in the classrooms also still surprise me.  The kids have a hard time reading partially because they never have access to anything to read except during school hours.  The only material in school is textbooks with short stories about the merits of being honest or going to school.  Nothing is developed over time or left unfinished in a school day, and the kids know that they will never have to remember anything about the day’s work again.  

That being said, I have played hookie for a few days, going to hang out with a group of high school students from Connecticut who were helping a local community construct a footbridge over a stream that becomes a torrent during the rainy season.  The kids were mostly charged with moving rocks in order to fill in the immense space for the ramps, but they also mixed and spread concrete and cement to fill the anchor pilings for the suspensions.  They were a fun group, with lots of energy and were very interested in the PC and what our experience was like.  I tried to make it clear that our experience is just that – our own – and that only some of the generalities of service transfer from sector to sector or from country to country. 

Other than that, I have been preparing for a half marathon, and hope to have a time a little under than 2 hours.  I have been running pretty much every day, and feel good about my endurance etc.  Running has been a lot of fun and I have enjoyed a different Nicaragua of the early mornings and late afternoons.  That being said, I am looking forward to being out of training.  It was interesting to get ready for a race but I think that running just isn’t for me.  It is too slow and repetitive, and I look forward to being able to afford buying a bike some day!  The race is on Sunday about 4 hours from here.  The entrance is $10 for a dinner, housing, breakfast and for the race, which seems like a pretty good deal for me. 

Moving, airports, and vacation ends

In the past few weeks I finished up summer camp and moved to a new house.  The end of camp really was a bit slow, as attendance went down and we had little help from any older Nicaraguans.  I think for next year, I have learned a few important lessons, like to ask for a little money from the families to have more freedom to buy things and preserve attendance a little better.  Also, I plan on only doing camp for one week at any given place, but to move to one or two smaller communities in order to keep interest up and reach more kids.

I just got back from another trip to Leon, where a bunch of volunteers watched the Super Bowl together.  It was a lot of fun to see everyone enjoying themselves and going a little crazy.  For us volunteers who are still wet behind the ears, we saw evidence of the grind of PC and to see what appear to be well adjusted volunteers, even if they were a little tipsy and yelling a lot.  I also went to Canon de Somoto, a small slot canyon in the north of the country.  What a place!  It is only about 3 miles long, and the trip was about equal parts swimming through calm water and walking when the canyon was a bit wider.  With 500 foot rocks on either side of us in about a 30 foot channel, it was quite surreal and spectacular. 

I live in a house on the same property as my host family, and I have arranged for the majority of my meals to come from them.  I am comfortable with this arrangement because it gives me essentially scheduled interaction with my family every day, and leaves me a little more time to do other stuff.  I My father is an engineer in one of the nearby municipalities and is away 5 days a week.  Right now he is in San Francisco visiting his sister.  My host mom is a lawyer, but has not worked in awhile.  She worked for the last mayor’s office, but when the leftist government took over a few years ago, she was out of work.  My father worked there too and was also sacked, but he was able to find work in another area. 

When the family went to the airport, I went with them to pick up a package my dad had sent me for Christmas (thanks for the Kindle, dad).  This was my third time there, as the first time I had arrived around 2:30 and the line for the day was closed, and the second time, upon entering, I brought only my national ID and not my passport, which I guess is necessary for foreigners.  Anyways, I got in and headed to the guy who last time had told me that I should go directly to him and forego the line process now that I had my passport.  I went to him, he scribbled something I could not understand on my papers, and then I went to the line where they individually find packages for customers.  After waiting awhile, and then going to one box containing area, I was informed that it was not there, but in another box containing area in another corner because I had not picked it up in the 21 days allotted.  So, I went to the other area and after an hour, they found my package.  Then, a guy inspected the already opened container to make sure the contents was correctly labeled, and I went back to wait for them to decide how much to tax me.  After waiting for awhile, a guy came with a circled number on the back of my documents, C$4,100, or about $220.  Mind you the kindle is worth $109.  I explained that I simply could not pay this, and then the man’s boss interrupted him, and he essentially thanked me for my service and told me that there would be no charge.  So I left, and went to the airport the next block over, and met up with my host family.  As we were leaving the parking lot, the man now driving was never given the parking receipt from my father who was on a plane, and so we had to circle around to pay.  As we circled around to get in the line to pay again, we also stopped to park- for 15 seconds.  Apparently they will not give a ticket to someone who has not parked, so we stopped to make sure we were in compliance with this policy!

All in all, I am really excited to start the school year because I feel that I have been on a bit of a 6 month vacation and I need more to occupy myself.  I am going into 2 different schools but I do not know my schedule yet.  There is a meeting on Friday which will hopefully shed more light on who I am working with and where I should be at any given time.  Aside from this, there is a project that another volunteer had to leave before completion, and I will hopefully be able to lend a hand to it.  There is a group of high school students coming to a rural community near me to build a bridge, and they have logistical and cultural needs to be met while here.  I plan on going up and helping them for a day or two in order to help with translation, food preparation and any other issues they may have during their stay. 

Jan 13/18, 2012

This week was the swearing of Daniel Ortega for his second consecutive term.  From the streets of San Dionisio, it appeared to be a quite festive event.  Although I stayed home, I could hear from my house the party going on down the street in front of the mayor’s.  My host dad and brother went to enjoy the festivities for awhile, and left me to watch on TV from home.  The inauguration took place in the Revulotionary Plaza, where there was a church decorated with lights and memorabilia, a statue of Sandino and Ruben Dario, the national poet of Nicaragua, and another building looking very stately.  I recognized a few famous world leaders on the stage with the president and his wife, who is head of public relations for the Sandanistas.  There was Mahmud Aminindjimagad, Hugo Chavez (looking quite chubby, with a half inch of hair and suffering from cancer) and the president of Costa Rica, whose name I do not remember.

 During the inaugural speech, Ortega hit his principal points made by the FSLN often, talking about how to develop all of the country leaving no one behind, and how Christianity is a focal point of the way forward for Nicaragua.  All the time, the state run radio and TV stations played the party theme songs, sometimes cutting off the speech as the songs faded in and out during pauses in talking.  The most vivid song the Sandinos have is an upbeat version of “Stand by me” which calls for 1 more election for Ortega to move the country forward. 

                Also this week, I have been trying to get all the final details of camp in order.  I have been having trouble getting young Nicaraguans interested in helping me as counselors; I have tried to schedule several meetings but they have never showed up.  I am not very confident that the next week they will be willing to show up and be there for 4 hours a day if they can’t even make a half hour meeting to plan.  The issue of sustainability comes up often as a PCV, and in this case, I am a little pensive on how anyone would be willing to do this on their own in a year or two if they no one knows the drill for these weeks.     However the kids seem to be enthusiastic and eager to start, so that is a relief. 

 Today I am getting ready to head to Esquipulas to enjoy their Fiestas Paternales, where the Catholics celebrate the town’s patron saint for a couple of weeks…

And I’m back from my trip to Esquipulas!  The patron saint of the town is called black Jesus, and, according to a friend has its traditional roots back in Guatemala.  Apparently, in a town named Esquipulas, the citizens started worshipping a Jesus that more accurately reflected themselves as dark native people.  The idea spread and today the festival is vibrant in several cities around the area.  For my part, I arrived on Friday after spending the day trying to plan camp a little better.  When I got there, the streets were active, but not yet vibrant.  30,000 people were supposed to be there the next day, but the town did not look any different.  The next day, we took a bus back to my site, where a pilgrimage walk was to begin back to Esquipulas.  The walk started at around 12, and was pretty fun, although the final few miles were tough because I was ready to eat and thirsty and tired.  But, I suppose a pilgrimage involves a little sacrifice.  By the time everybody got to town, it was truly a big mess of people everywhere.  Most everybody were scattered on the street, and found bits of shelter under parked trucks, or extended roofs, or did without.  My group slept outside on a balcony of a house and we were pretty comfortable.  It rained a bit, and I felt bad for all the thousands left in the cold and wet.

The next day we stayed around the house, only venturing out to go on an hour hike and to buy provisions for meals.  The hike was pretty spectacular; there is a small hill just outside of town that has a great view of the town and the surroundings.  The hills are really pretty around here, and the colors from different fields are slightly different shades of green depending on the crop.  Most of the hills have trees left on the drainage areas and the top, presumably to prevent erosion and preserve the soils.  The soils on the hills are poor, and most of the space is just grassland for cattle.  By mid day, most people had cleared out and all that was left was massive amounts of plastic bottles and Styrofoam plates covering the streets.   That night, we went to a rodeo and watched people bull ride for awhile, although we were all tired and a bit uncomfortable standing along the fence of the ring. 

I got back from the trip on Monday morning and had to focus on my camp.  My site mate and I made signs, got the activities ready, and the kids started trickling in.  All in all, 23 showed up the first day, and we had 21 the second.  Also, I have had some Nica helpers, although they weren’t the ones I was trying to meet with last week.  The first day we did introductions and nametags, and then had the kids draw a map of their communities.  After a few ice breakers and name games, we went to the school and I taught them the rules of capture the flag.  They seemed to get a kick out of the game, and played for about an hour. 

The next day was supposed to be swimming lessons, which my site mate had taught back in the states.  However, she has been sick, and was not able to come yesterday and won’t come today either.  So, instead, we did a sort of treasure hunt I had planned for another day, with different tasks or things to find around town.  I included picking up 3 sacks of trash as one of the objectives, and it was amazing to see how excited they were to collect as much as they could find.  I have been scrambling a little to schedule other events because we had almost split the4 hours of planning almost evenly.  It is a free activity, so I am not too concerned about not going the full time, but it would be better to occupy all the hours. 

New Years Vacation

I just got back from a vacation celebrating the new years with fellow volunteers.  The first part of the trip was a stay at a volunteer’s house in San Marcos, where 4 of us went to a beach and passed the time in his city, enjoying some of the sites and hanging out at his house.  His family is fairly well to do and politically elite and his parents were on vacation in Costa Rica when we came.  His grandmother was around and made sure to attempt to clean up after our every move, and also approved our cooking methods of scrambled eggs and pasta.  The day on the beach was marked by a bottle of rum being cracked at about 11 am, and we only just dipped in the water a few minutes to cool off. 

The next leg of the journey was up to Leon, a vibrant and wealthy city that frankly did not look or feel like any other part of Nicaragua.  For starters, there were tons of gringos around and they were all strolling around, some were even getting in and out of giant tour buses.  Granted we went on an especially busy time for gringos to travel, but the rest of Nicaragua is full of Nicaraguans so the population of white people seems out of place.  Also, although it does not appear that many people on the Pacific coast are in desperate need of food to survive, there is abject poverty in the area, but it is entirely masked in Leon.  From our hostel-going, shwarma-eating, beer-drinking vantage point, it was the first time I felt masked from some of the problems plaguing the country.  It is hard to think of desperate poverty while seeing a Hummer to pull out of the American style grocery. 

Our next destination was the beaches of Las Penitas, which is a small resort community, founded about 40 years ago with the creation of a nature reserve to the south along the ocean.  We stayed at a small hotel owned by a French Canadian woman.  The hotel was really just a couple of cabanas and a dorm style room on the beach with a spacious restaurant under a thatched roof and pool.  The ocean in front of the hotel was immensely powerful and had fairly contestant 6 foot waves and a strong undertow.  Swimming was certainly possible, but it was necessary to take precautions and always be aware of your surroundings in order to avert being swept away.  I was able to body surf quite a few of these waves and cruised upwards of 200 feet on a few of them.  On the last day, I even was able to surf at an angle on a few of them, which is a pretty big rush!  We spent New Year’s Eve at the pool, and then took a boat ride into the nature reserve led by a father-son team pointing out wildlife and telling a few stories about the area.  We saw some crocs and even a sea turtle trying to lay her eggs on the ocean side of the island.  Her problem was that there were many people around (us) disturbing her, and there was a guy with a sack ready to take the eggs to market when they were laid.  That night we went from restaurant area to the pool to the beach, and finally a few of us went to a small bar a few hundred yards down the beach to have a few more rounds.  A good NYE indeed.

Overall, it was a really good time and I was able to interact in meaningful ways with many of my new friends dispersed throughout the country.  The Peace Corps is in some manners a pressure cooker of for our relationships because of the long lulls between seeing each other, isolation of sites, and relief to have native speakers around.  Relationships congeal, undergo metamorphosis and are redefined through the intense to lonely spectrum of service.  My time with the gringos seems to be spent dissecting what makes us strong and weak, defining emotions and personality traits and deciding how or why an experience in service makes us more unique or similar.  If it sounds exhausting, that’s because it is!

It is such a pleasure to see the changes in others and I hope that the changes I am going through are recognized in others, too.  I am figuring out what it means to be away from many of the normal things I have learned to take for granted while also living under the microscope of being a foreigner.  It is impossible to integrate, even in 2 years, to everything.  I will always be the tall guy with a funny accent that probably has some money and a potential ticket to the US.  I will fight a bit of an uphill battle to change behaviors that as an outsider seem inefficient or destructive, but I am also fighting “development battles” with myself.  For example, I can tell someone that it probably is not a great idea to consistently throw trash out of a moving bus, but I can’t provide the resources to build the infrastructure to collect it from trash cans in the countryside.  The Peace Corps preaches sustainability, and I think we all get the message that if a program or project that we start cannot be continued without us, it is not worth much.  This may even prevent some of us from attempting some big things in preference to staying safe and easy.  I feel at this point that as a person that gets the sustainability message, the ability to act on our intuition and make a larger difference is a little lacking.  From my weeks in service, the PC to me right now seems more about the cultural interaction than anything else.  I am relived to be back at my sight and try to figure out my summer camp schedule which starts in 2 weeks.