1. The 3 year-old next door looking for her mom and saying "no tengo mi mama..."
2. Albita singing to herself unaware that I was in the patio "tengo hambre, porque no comí, solo comí una cochinada, y aqui estoy en mis pijamas..." before I burst out laughing.
3. Carlito yelling and running across the patio with a broom pointed at all the pollitos "Ya no me aguanto! Espero que sean un poquito mas grande para que me como todos!"
4. A man and woman on a motorcyle, the woman in the back with both palms up and a queque in each hand.
5. Just when I think I've seen everything Nicaragua has to throw at me, I find myself in a bus with thawing meat juice dripping on me from the overhead storage. You win Nica.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
84 days to go!
Everytime I've thought about reviving my blog, I always find something else to distract me. Lillian emailed me with comments about my post from May 2009 and gave me new inspiration. That and I was envious of her actually-up-to-date blog.
As the title says, I have 84 days left of my Peace Corps service! Our COS (close of service) conference was last week, where we talked about resumes, job searching, grad school applications, and the process to finish off. More on that later.
Something very interesting that I've recently noticed is that cultural differences that I once felt don't bother me as they used to. For example earlier this week my profe mentioned that one thing i failed to do during my time here was find someone to help her get a VISA to visit her brother in the US. I remember when she initially approached me with this request when I had first arrived and it really bothered me. Now I can respond playfully that I'd love to take her with me but it's out of my control. The "tse tse" of men doesn't phase me. Yesterday I had to go to MINED (Ministry of education) 3 times in to try to get an appointment with the delegada. I finally found the secretary the third time and all she told me was to call the office tomorrow to see if the delegada would be in. And in the end, she didn't come in the next day! Work problems don't seem to as big as they once were. Maybe I've solved any of the pressing problems along the way, but maybe things just don't feel as severe as they used to. It has taken two years but I am finally fully accustomed to living in Nicaragua. It's a combination of really knowing the language, culture, and having built relationships friends and counterparts. My patience has been tested and retested with every project and task. Fortunately I've learned to laugh and get-over mysself :)
As the title says, I have 84 days left of my Peace Corps service! Our COS (close of service) conference was last week, where we talked about resumes, job searching, grad school applications, and the process to finish off. More on that later.
Something very interesting that I've recently noticed is that cultural differences that I once felt don't bother me as they used to. For example earlier this week my profe mentioned that one thing i failed to do during my time here was find someone to help her get a VISA to visit her brother in the US. I remember when she initially approached me with this request when I had first arrived and it really bothered me. Now I can respond playfully that I'd love to take her with me but it's out of my control. The "tse tse" of men doesn't phase me. Yesterday I had to go to MINED (Ministry of education) 3 times in to try to get an appointment with the delegada. I finally found the secretary the third time and all she told me was to call the office tomorrow to see if the delegada would be in. And in the end, she didn't come in the next day! Work problems don't seem to as big as they once were. Maybe I've solved any of the pressing problems along the way, but maybe things just don't feel as severe as they used to. It has taken two years but I am finally fully accustomed to living in Nicaragua. It's a combination of really knowing the language, culture, and having built relationships friends and counterparts. My patience has been tested and retested with every project and task. Fortunately I've learned to laugh and get-over mysself :)
Sunday, March 29, 2009
I´m updating!
I just received a letter in the mail and it’s reminded me of how much I love hearing updates from people that I miss. And on that note I remembered my very inactive and outdated blog.
I’ve been in my site for about four months now and things are going well. The following is my typical day
At 5:50 am my cell phone alarm goes off, though I usually get out of bed a little past 6 am. For awhile I was waking up at 5:30 and it made me miserable. I’d open the back door to see a sky that looked exactly like it did when I went to bed, and my house definitely does not have a magnificent view of the sunrise. Anyway, I grab my water bottle in the morning and down about half a liter of water because my mom’s latest obsession is drinking lots and lots of water. Plus it’s so hot and dry here that I get dehydrated when I’m not consciously drinking water all day. I make a cup of coffee with my water boiler and French press (courtesy of my generous sitemate) and something for breakfast (usually oatmeal, peanut butter and jelly or banana sandwich, fruit, pancakes, rice porridge, or something leftover). I water my plants –which includes a garden of little watermelon and squash plants, which aren’t looking too good after I transplanted some that were too crowded. I’m probably going to replant them soon. I have a seedbank of tomato, bell peppers, hot peppers, and other random seeds that I’m hoping will sprout soon. I just transplanted two basil plants and a mint plant that I bought last weekend. There’s the pineapple top that I planted a few months ago and I’m hoping has sprung roots. And then I have what’s left of my ginger plants, which were looking great until a piece of plastic fell on top of them and my host mom forgot about them. I’ve managed to revive one and it just sprouted some new leaves. There are a few bags of avocado, guava, and papaya seeds that I just planted and am waiting for to sprout. I have a mango and a few citrus plants that grew in my compost pile which are now in their own bags. I’m hoping to practice injertos with them once they get big enough. I think the English word is grafting? It’s when you take a branch of a grown tree with favorable characteristics and stick it into a little tree. If it sticks then the little plant will grow into a tree with combined characteristics –perhaps the resistance/hardiness of the original plant but delicious fruits like those from the branch. My old host family has an amazing lemon tree without spines and big seedless lemons. You can make mega citrus trees with lemons, oranges, and grapefruits. If you can’t tell I love my little plants, but back to my schedule. Nicaraguans bathe in the morning but I can’t bear to pour cold water on myself in the cool morning, so I get ready minus the bathing and ride my bike to school. Depending on which school I’m going to, the bike ride is either two blocks, or 5 km in one direction or another along the carretera. The bike ride to one school is nice and flat, but when I come back at noon I go against strong winds in the scorching sun. What makes it worst is that my bike tires are consistently flat even though I pump and have someone check them whenever I get tired of having to pedal so hard to barely move forward. My other 5 km route is half uphill to this little school that sits on the top. Going is tough but coming back is wonderful because half the time I don’t have to pedal and I move with the wind! Anyway I go to class, give my class related to some environmental theme, hang out with the kids for awhile and then head home. This week we were supposed to make compost piles in all of my schools, but things ended up being far more complicated than simply digging a hole and dumping organic trash in. At one school we’re flattening an area because the teachers I’m working with decided it was the best space even though it’s slanted and covered in trash. So it needs to be flattened and fenced before we can even dig the hole. At another school we spent all morning pounding fence posts into the rock hard dirt. We even dug the hole, but since the school doesn’t have running water all the time, we couldn’t make the compost pile without water. At school number three, I arrived to meet my profe at the bus stop. She had to cancel class to go to a meeting in my site, which someone told her about yesterday. Of course she failed to notify me, but that’s nothing new. Hopefully one more week and we’ll have our compost piles decomposing. Continuing with my schedule, I ride back to town and pick up some veggies for lunch/dinner. I discovered this week that the Spanish NGO in my site (that has absolutely no interest in working with Peace Corps volunteers) receives super fresh fruits and veggies to sell every Monday. I bought a giant cantaloupe for 16.50 cords (a little less than a dollar) and it was the sweetest and juiciest cantaloupe that I’ve ever had. Besides cantaloupe and watermelon season (volleyball sized watermelons also cost a little less than a dollar), did I mention mangoes are now falling off the trees and littering the ground? I hung out at home cleaning today and I heard at least five mangoes fall off the tree in our patio and thump onto the ground. The tree we have has these little yellow mangoes, which are not bad for free mangoes, but my old host family’s house has these head sized red ones that make me want to cry. Avocados are coming up too, which is also very exciting. They’re harder to get in Leon since they’re not really grown here, but nonetheless I look forward to eating mangoes and avocados everyday. Back to my schedule –I make lunch, and then read outside for part of the afternoon. Sometimes I have random appointments like talking to someone at the health center or mayor’s office, or someone comes by for an English lesson, but it’s really too hot to do anything active in the afternoon. My zinc roof turns my house into an oven so I pull my plastic chair outside to read in the shade. Today I bought a hammock made out of woven plastic so that I can sit or lay outside! When the sun gets lower, at around four I can go inside to nap in my living room hammock. I water my plants, and at around 5:30 I go for a run down a dirt path. It’s about 4 km roundtrip and some days different people come run with me, others I just say adios to everyone along the way. One guy walks out of his house to the road every day when I pass by just to say adios. There’s one house with a bunch of girls who will run with me away and back to their house. Conveniently they are the girls who help me pick up cow pies when I go collecting them for my compost or garden. After my run, I make some food, bathe, watch shows/movies on my computer or go visit my host family, read, and am usually in bed by 10 or 11 pm. It’s amazing how living in Nicaragua has regulated my schedule. I’ve never slept this early in my life! On mornings that I don’t go to school, I wash my clothes, mop my floor, clean my kitchen, inject pesticides into the holes that wood bugs continue to drill in my wooden bed frame. It sounds gross, but it’s really just outrageously annoying. I have done everything people tell me I should do, but every week I find more wood shavings and every week I inject the holes with more pesticides or diesel, but they always come back! I’m so close to scrapping this bed and just buying a mattress and box spring. That sounds a whole lot less frustrating. Weekends are little gringo get-aways when we can hang out in the cities and eat yummy food, have a beer, run errands at the bank and post office, go out, get groceries, and stay in dingy hostels where the workers know our names. It’s really quite nice.
I’ve been in my site for about four months now and things are going well. The following is my typical day
At 5:50 am my cell phone alarm goes off, though I usually get out of bed a little past 6 am. For awhile I was waking up at 5:30 and it made me miserable. I’d open the back door to see a sky that looked exactly like it did when I went to bed, and my house definitely does not have a magnificent view of the sunrise. Anyway, I grab my water bottle in the morning and down about half a liter of water because my mom’s latest obsession is drinking lots and lots of water. Plus it’s so hot and dry here that I get dehydrated when I’m not consciously drinking water all day. I make a cup of coffee with my water boiler and French press (courtesy of my generous sitemate) and something for breakfast (usually oatmeal, peanut butter and jelly or banana sandwich, fruit, pancakes, rice porridge, or something leftover). I water my plants –which includes a garden of little watermelon and squash plants, which aren’t looking too good after I transplanted some that were too crowded. I’m probably going to replant them soon. I have a seedbank of tomato, bell peppers, hot peppers, and other random seeds that I’m hoping will sprout soon. I just transplanted two basil plants and a mint plant that I bought last weekend. There’s the pineapple top that I planted a few months ago and I’m hoping has sprung roots. And then I have what’s left of my ginger plants, which were looking great until a piece of plastic fell on top of them and my host mom forgot about them. I’ve managed to revive one and it just sprouted some new leaves. There are a few bags of avocado, guava, and papaya seeds that I just planted and am waiting for to sprout. I have a mango and a few citrus plants that grew in my compost pile which are now in their own bags. I’m hoping to practice injertos with them once they get big enough. I think the English word is grafting? It’s when you take a branch of a grown tree with favorable characteristics and stick it into a little tree. If it sticks then the little plant will grow into a tree with combined characteristics –perhaps the resistance/hardiness of the original plant but delicious fruits like those from the branch. My old host family has an amazing lemon tree without spines and big seedless lemons. You can make mega citrus trees with lemons, oranges, and grapefruits. If you can’t tell I love my little plants, but back to my schedule. Nicaraguans bathe in the morning but I can’t bear to pour cold water on myself in the cool morning, so I get ready minus the bathing and ride my bike to school. Depending on which school I’m going to, the bike ride is either two blocks, or 5 km in one direction or another along the carretera. The bike ride to one school is nice and flat, but when I come back at noon I go against strong winds in the scorching sun. What makes it worst is that my bike tires are consistently flat even though I pump and have someone check them whenever I get tired of having to pedal so hard to barely move forward. My other 5 km route is half uphill to this little school that sits on the top. Going is tough but coming back is wonderful because half the time I don’t have to pedal and I move with the wind! Anyway I go to class, give my class related to some environmental theme, hang out with the kids for awhile and then head home. This week we were supposed to make compost piles in all of my schools, but things ended up being far more complicated than simply digging a hole and dumping organic trash in. At one school we’re flattening an area because the teachers I’m working with decided it was the best space even though it’s slanted and covered in trash. So it needs to be flattened and fenced before we can even dig the hole. At another school we spent all morning pounding fence posts into the rock hard dirt. We even dug the hole, but since the school doesn’t have running water all the time, we couldn’t make the compost pile without water. At school number three, I arrived to meet my profe at the bus stop. She had to cancel class to go to a meeting in my site, which someone told her about yesterday. Of course she failed to notify me, but that’s nothing new. Hopefully one more week and we’ll have our compost piles decomposing. Continuing with my schedule, I ride back to town and pick up some veggies for lunch/dinner. I discovered this week that the Spanish NGO in my site (that has absolutely no interest in working with Peace Corps volunteers) receives super fresh fruits and veggies to sell every Monday. I bought a giant cantaloupe for 16.50 cords (a little less than a dollar) and it was the sweetest and juiciest cantaloupe that I’ve ever had. Besides cantaloupe and watermelon season (volleyball sized watermelons also cost a little less than a dollar), did I mention mangoes are now falling off the trees and littering the ground? I hung out at home cleaning today and I heard at least five mangoes fall off the tree in our patio and thump onto the ground. The tree we have has these little yellow mangoes, which are not bad for free mangoes, but my old host family’s house has these head sized red ones that make me want to cry. Avocados are coming up too, which is also very exciting. They’re harder to get in Leon since they’re not really grown here, but nonetheless I look forward to eating mangoes and avocados everyday. Back to my schedule –I make lunch, and then read outside for part of the afternoon. Sometimes I have random appointments like talking to someone at the health center or mayor’s office, or someone comes by for an English lesson, but it’s really too hot to do anything active in the afternoon. My zinc roof turns my house into an oven so I pull my plastic chair outside to read in the shade. Today I bought a hammock made out of woven plastic so that I can sit or lay outside! When the sun gets lower, at around four I can go inside to nap in my living room hammock. I water my plants, and at around 5:30 I go for a run down a dirt path. It’s about 4 km roundtrip and some days different people come run with me, others I just say adios to everyone along the way. One guy walks out of his house to the road every day when I pass by just to say adios. There’s one house with a bunch of girls who will run with me away and back to their house. Conveniently they are the girls who help me pick up cow pies when I go collecting them for my compost or garden. After my run, I make some food, bathe, watch shows/movies on my computer or go visit my host family, read, and am usually in bed by 10 or 11 pm. It’s amazing how living in Nicaragua has regulated my schedule. I’ve never slept this early in my life! On mornings that I don’t go to school, I wash my clothes, mop my floor, clean my kitchen, inject pesticides into the holes that wood bugs continue to drill in my wooden bed frame. It sounds gross, but it’s really just outrageously annoying. I have done everything people tell me I should do, but every week I find more wood shavings and every week I inject the holes with more pesticides or diesel, but they always come back! I’m so close to scrapping this bed and just buying a mattress and box spring. That sounds a whole lot less frustrating. Weekends are little gringo get-aways when we can hang out in the cities and eat yummy food, have a beer, run errands at the bank and post office, go out, get groceries, and stay in dingy hostels where the workers know our names. It’s really quite nice.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Dashing thru the snow...
My blog has been severely neglected for a long time. I’d like to say that it’s because I’m too busy, but that’s clearly not true because I have nothing but free time. I’ve been in site for a month now, and things are generally going well. I had to switch host families because my first host mom left for the US and the kids did not think the amount she had agreed I’d pay was enough to cover the costs. Now I’m living with the same host family as my site mate, and besides the very dungeon-like room without windows, the family is great. I can’t understand why the concrete floor in my room won’t dry after it was washed three weeks ago. It’s not dripping wet, but it’s definitely that darker color of wet concrete. As long as mold doesn’t grow on my stuff it’s fine.
Some of the fruit seeds I had dried were moldy however, which was really sad because I had spent lots of time drying them. I started a garden at the library with some of the kids who always hang out there and hopefully my seeds will grow! I think they’ve been pretty good about watering twice a day and I’ll go visit tomorrow when I get the chance. Apparently the water pump burned out and the water did not come today. We’re hoping someone will go out there and fix it, but with the holidays and nobody working, who knows when it will come back. I guess this is when you appreciate having a well instead of a faucet.
Yesterday my family and I went to a quince años. When girls turn 15 here, the family (if they can afford it) throws a huge party to celebrate. They invite all the friends and family to a dinner, where everything –tablecloths, dishes, utensils, decorations, even the Quinceñera is pink. There are 14 little girls dressed in matching pink dresses running around so that the birthday girl can be number 15 in her wedding-like gown. The one we had here had supposedly invited 350 people, which is huge. My host brother’s friend had planned the party, and they spent $100 on the cake alone! It was this ridiculous multi-tier cake with stairs to connect various parts, and they didn’t even cut the cake during the party! Apparently when there are that many guests, they save the cake and distribute it to VIPs the day after. Sure enough, a red-eyed Douglas who had not slept all night brought my host family a portion in the morning. Anyway there’s dinner and dancing, and I love how everyone (minus the evangelicals) dances in this country. It doesn’t matter if you’re old, young, man, woman, drunk, or sober –everyone loves to dance. It’s an aspect that I wish other cultures shared because it’s fun and people go home happy. What I don’t enjoy is the incredible number of drunkards at parties here. There was a guy who sat down on a plastic chair at our empty table, fell asleep, and then toppled over still asleep. I’m not going to start with the rest of the bolos, but there certainly are plenty of them, all the time.
My ongoing search for a house to rent has been tough. I’ve seen a ton of vacant houses or piezas (rooms sectioned off/mostly independent from the rest of the house), but most of them are far away from the center of town or out of my price range. An additional problem with the houses far away from the center of town is that water is distributed differently in different neighborhoods. The houses that are far away only get water at night for a few hours, whereas houses closer to the pump may have water almost all day. Bucket baths aren’t terrible, but having running water most of the day is so convenient. During the wet season there’s always water, but then during the dry season some areas may go weeks without water. When that happens you have to go buy water from the farms nearby that have their own wells, and then you’ve got to take it home. I would also love a flushing toilet instead of a letrine, and the only house that I’ve seen with one is the one the married couple I’m replacing lived in. The house is new, humongous and gorgeous, but too expensive for me. And my search continues.
It’s hard to believe my birthday and Christmas are just around the corner. Having spent many Christmas’ away from my family, I feel fairly desensitized about the holidays. Last year I was with my parents, but the year before that I was in Costa Rica with Debra and Jess, and the year before that I was in New York with Ro and her sister. Still there’s a part of me that wishes we could do one of those extended family get-togethers with lots of food and baby cousins running around. My nuclear family’s missed out on that sort of thing for a long time now since we’ve lived in Taiwan for so long. I guess I’m looking forward to the Christmas when that’s a reality, and since I’ll be in Nicaragua until 2011, it won’t happen for a long time. Chinese New Year is the holiday that really kills me because you spend two weeks eating delicious food that I am constantly missing. Maybe I’ll aim to make it to Taipei for Chinese New Year in two years.
BTW I can’t believe I’m turning 23! EEK! I’m quite jealous about missing snowboarding, fortunately I have the beach and tropical fruit to make me feel better.
Happy Holidays folks! Hope your days are filled with Christmas music, fresh baked cookies with good coffee, and good company to pass the time.
Some of the fruit seeds I had dried were moldy however, which was really sad because I had spent lots of time drying them. I started a garden at the library with some of the kids who always hang out there and hopefully my seeds will grow! I think they’ve been pretty good about watering twice a day and I’ll go visit tomorrow when I get the chance. Apparently the water pump burned out and the water did not come today. We’re hoping someone will go out there and fix it, but with the holidays and nobody working, who knows when it will come back. I guess this is when you appreciate having a well instead of a faucet.
Yesterday my family and I went to a quince años. When girls turn 15 here, the family (if they can afford it) throws a huge party to celebrate. They invite all the friends and family to a dinner, where everything –tablecloths, dishes, utensils, decorations, even the Quinceñera is pink. There are 14 little girls dressed in matching pink dresses running around so that the birthday girl can be number 15 in her wedding-like gown. The one we had here had supposedly invited 350 people, which is huge. My host brother’s friend had planned the party, and they spent $100 on the cake alone! It was this ridiculous multi-tier cake with stairs to connect various parts, and they didn’t even cut the cake during the party! Apparently when there are that many guests, they save the cake and distribute it to VIPs the day after. Sure enough, a red-eyed Douglas who had not slept all night brought my host family a portion in the morning. Anyway there’s dinner and dancing, and I love how everyone (minus the evangelicals) dances in this country. It doesn’t matter if you’re old, young, man, woman, drunk, or sober –everyone loves to dance. It’s an aspect that I wish other cultures shared because it’s fun and people go home happy. What I don’t enjoy is the incredible number of drunkards at parties here. There was a guy who sat down on a plastic chair at our empty table, fell asleep, and then toppled over still asleep. I’m not going to start with the rest of the bolos, but there certainly are plenty of them, all the time.
My ongoing search for a house to rent has been tough. I’ve seen a ton of vacant houses or piezas (rooms sectioned off/mostly independent from the rest of the house), but most of them are far away from the center of town or out of my price range. An additional problem with the houses far away from the center of town is that water is distributed differently in different neighborhoods. The houses that are far away only get water at night for a few hours, whereas houses closer to the pump may have water almost all day. Bucket baths aren’t terrible, but having running water most of the day is so convenient. During the wet season there’s always water, but then during the dry season some areas may go weeks without water. When that happens you have to go buy water from the farms nearby that have their own wells, and then you’ve got to take it home. I would also love a flushing toilet instead of a letrine, and the only house that I’ve seen with one is the one the married couple I’m replacing lived in. The house is new, humongous and gorgeous, but too expensive for me. And my search continues.
It’s hard to believe my birthday and Christmas are just around the corner. Having spent many Christmas’ away from my family, I feel fairly desensitized about the holidays. Last year I was with my parents, but the year before that I was in Costa Rica with Debra and Jess, and the year before that I was in New York with Ro and her sister. Still there’s a part of me that wishes we could do one of those extended family get-togethers with lots of food and baby cousins running around. My nuclear family’s missed out on that sort of thing for a long time now since we’ve lived in Taiwan for so long. I guess I’m looking forward to the Christmas when that’s a reality, and since I’ll be in Nicaragua until 2011, it won’t happen for a long time. Chinese New Year is the holiday that really kills me because you spend two weeks eating delicious food that I am constantly missing. Maybe I’ll aim to make it to Taipei for Chinese New Year in two years.
BTW I can’t believe I’m turning 23! EEK! I’m quite jealous about missing snowboarding, fortunately I have the beach and tropical fruit to make me feel better.
Happy Holidays folks! Hope your days are filled with Christmas music, fresh baked cookies with good coffee, and good company to pass the time.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
waiting
my latest blog got lost in my mac formatted memory stick...i´ll get it from my laptop next chance i get, but here´s a link to a snapfish account with some older pictures that i took awhile ago...
http://www2.snapfish.es/share/p=34141223163844752/l=430210278/g=88138871/cobrandOid=1021/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB
briefly, we´re waiting for our site assignments from maria antonia. after the longest week ever, they´re announcing sites wednesday, tomorrow evening after a few talks...everyone pray for maria antonia and that she will give me a site in matagalpa! of course i´m not set on anything...i´ll be happy with my site no matter what, but matagalpa sounds so much like the coffee plantations and cloud forests of monteverde which was my first love. until then, nos vemos...
http://www2.snapfish.es/share/p=34141223163844752/l=430210278/g=88138871/cobrandOid=1021/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB
briefly, we´re waiting for our site assignments from maria antonia. after the longest week ever, they´re announcing sites wednesday, tomorrow evening after a few talks...everyone pray for maria antonia and that she will give me a site in matagalpa! of course i´m not set on anything...i´ll be happy with my site no matter what, but matagalpa sounds so much like the coffee plantations and cloud forests of monteverde which was my first love. until then, nos vemos...
Saturday, October 4, 2008
week 5
It’s hard to believe that I’m already entering week 5 of the 11-week training session. Recently things have been looking better. We’ve started a bunch of the projects we’re required to do during training like starting a vegetable garden, giving talks in elementary school classes, forming a youth group, and various other things. I’m gaining confidence in my Spanish from a lot of positive feedback, though there are times when my communication skills still seem inadequate. This week our group visited the little library in the central park and I borrowed a Spanish book by Gabriel Garcia Marques called El Coronel no tiene quien le escriba. I think I tried to read it when I was in college to no avail. Even this time I opened it up, read a couple pages and had very little understanding of what anything meant. But I kept going and at some point I started flipping between that and the dictionary to decipher each sentence. I really enjoy reading well-written books, and somehow the process of unveiling Marques’ prose is fascinating. It’s also good because most of it is written in past perfect or imperfect tense, which I have tons of trouble using. I think I need to go back and write down the vocabulary to actually learn it, but that’s an additional level of effort that I’m not yet ready to commit. Though I seem to be moving in that direction. Living in
Today we had a session on cultural differences with Naomi that was really interesting. We read an article written according to studies that were done on how Peace Corps volunteers have dealt with cultural differences. The pattern fits me pretty spot on. There’s the initial enthusiasm period in the very beginning of training when everything is fresh and new. Then there’s the initial culture shock when you are frustrated from the inability to communicate well with the new language and it makes you homesick and emotional. It’s almost like stress and makes you extra tired and keeps you up at night. Then there’s adaptation and acceptance for the rest of training as you learn more Spanish and feel more comfortable in the community. Apparently the next two steps happen after training, where we go to our sites alone and are hit by another culture shock. This stage is followed by another adjusting time. Week three was definitely when I wanted to pull my hair out and be with people who shared my culture. I felt like I knew my own culture and was aware of my own filters and biases. But the frustrating part was the close-mindedness of everyone around me. During week three my host sister was showing me how to peel and orange with a knife. In
Something very exciting is that we’re leaving to visit volunteers on Sunday! It’s an activity in week five, for trainees to visit other volunteers who have already been in their sites for over a year now. They want to give us some insight into what volunteer life will be like and hopefully provide some inspiration. Plus it’s a vacation from training!
Monday, September 22, 2008
Some thought
After two weeks of living in Nicaragua, I finally understand how it feels to be a minority. In California and Taipei, Taiwanese Americans are everywhere. Until now, I had rarely interacted with someone who was uninformed or unaware of us. Lately I’ve developed a stronger sense of what I identify with and consequently, the misconceptions that upset me. Maybe my pride is the problem, but it’s tough to get over when no one else nearby shares the same feelings. There are a few things that I wish a few people that I’ve encountered would understand.
1. I’m fine with being called Chinita. Really. But the country that provided scholarships for Nicaraguans to attend their universities was Taiwan, not China or China Taiwan.
2. Ching chong ching chong. That’s really unnecessary.
3. A discussion about how the US efforts to help development in Nicaragua are solely for political power is really not what this Peace Corps trainee wants to hear just because I look Chinese.
4. On a lighter note, I’m glad I don’t know karate because just because it is popular here doesn’t mean that every Chinese person knows karate.
I guess this is the first time I’ve really stuck out and it takes some getting used to.
I’m complaining a lot, but things are not as bad as they sound. On Wednesday we spent the afternoon in a medical session about malaria and dengue followed by a technical session about deforestation. The medical talks are given by our Peace Corps doctors and I really enjoy them. I’ve learned about Malaria before but somehow its prevalence in Nicaragua made it more fascinating this time. I am seriously going to do some research about some sort of career in pathology. Anyway we all have to take chloroquine once a week as a prophylaxis and it’s still effective against the plasmodium in Nicaragua. So good news is I won’t get malaria! Unfortunately there’s no vaccine or medication against Dengue Fever. It’s known as the back-breaking fever because the symptoms are severe and apparently pretty terrible. Since it’s a virus, you can’t do anything about it and your system clears it in about a week. If we get it we have to get our blood tested for platelet levels because one strain of the virus is hemorrhagic and that causes death. If platelet levels are normal, you’re fine even though you feel like you’re dying. Last week I developed a rash from either the soap in my bathroom, or one of the three deet-free mosquito repellants that I was using. So I’ve stopped using all of the above and I think I need to start again cause like I’ve mentioned, los zancudos love me. Apparently I’m allergic too because my bites initially swell pretty freakishly. Right now my arms and legs are covered with bites and not only do I want to scratch my skin away, but it’s also quite sad-looking. Peace Corps gave us these plastic briefcases containing every over-the-counter medical supply you could think of. There’s Sudafed, Benadryl, Tylenol, Ibuprofin, Aspirin, condoms, band-aids, cough drops, oral hydration salts, chapstick, floss, anti-fungal cream, sunblock, saline, antiseptic soap, etc. I have all sorts of things I probably won’t ever use, but it’s pretty fun to flip through. We can request anything we run out of or need and hopefully I’ll get the bug repellant with deet that I requested soon because I think they’re out at the moment. Some photos will make this post more interesting but I can´t figure out how to upload them without terrible pixelation. I´ll post my snapfish link to the album once i figure all that out. Nos Vemos!
1. I’m fine with being called Chinita. Really. But the country that provided scholarships for Nicaraguans to attend their universities was Taiwan, not China or China Taiwan.
2. Ching chong ching chong. That’s really unnecessary.
3. A discussion about how the US efforts to help development in Nicaragua are solely for political power is really not what this Peace Corps trainee wants to hear just because I look Chinese.
4. On a lighter note, I’m glad I don’t know karate because just because it is popular here doesn’t mean that every Chinese person knows karate.
I guess this is the first time I’ve really stuck out and it takes some getting used to.
I’m complaining a lot, but things are not as bad as they sound. On Wednesday we spent the afternoon in a medical session about malaria and dengue followed by a technical session about deforestation. The medical talks are given by our Peace Corps doctors and I really enjoy them. I’ve learned about Malaria before but somehow its prevalence in Nicaragua made it more fascinating this time. I am seriously going to do some research about some sort of career in pathology. Anyway we all have to take chloroquine once a week as a prophylaxis and it’s still effective against the plasmodium in Nicaragua. So good news is I won’t get malaria! Unfortunately there’s no vaccine or medication against Dengue Fever. It’s known as the back-breaking fever because the symptoms are severe and apparently pretty terrible. Since it’s a virus, you can’t do anything about it and your system clears it in about a week. If we get it we have to get our blood tested for platelet levels because one strain of the virus is hemorrhagic and that causes death. If platelet levels are normal, you’re fine even though you feel like you’re dying. Last week I developed a rash from either the soap in my bathroom, or one of the three deet-free mosquito repellants that I was using. So I’ve stopped using all of the above and I think I need to start again cause like I’ve mentioned, los zancudos love me. Apparently I’m allergic too because my bites initially swell pretty freakishly. Right now my arms and legs are covered with bites and not only do I want to scratch my skin away, but it’s also quite sad-looking. Peace Corps gave us these plastic briefcases containing every over-the-counter medical supply you could think of. There’s Sudafed, Benadryl, Tylenol, Ibuprofin, Aspirin, condoms, band-aids, cough drops, oral hydration salts, chapstick, floss, anti-fungal cream, sunblock, saline, antiseptic soap, etc. I have all sorts of things I probably won’t ever use, but it’s pretty fun to flip through. We can request anything we run out of or need and hopefully I’ll get the bug repellant with deet that I requested soon because I think they’re out at the moment. Some photos will make this post more interesting but I can´t figure out how to upload them without terrible pixelation. I´ll post my snapfish link to the album once i figure all that out. Nos Vemos!
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