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.
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