Still no rain. The electricity and water keep going out. The weather report alleges that this week for a couple days it will rain and the high will only be 90! Wow, that would be fabulous, but I’ll believe it when I see it. Until then, things are really quite uncomfortable, because not even my fan works at the moment without power.
I’m going to assume this week at school will be “normal”, however you’d like to interpret that. There have been teacher strikes going on since the week before Holy Week about wages and not getting paid on time. I missed school on Thursday because my counterpart teacher was a part of a strike held in Managua, Apparently they got really riled up, even lighting a car on fire! Then we were back to school together the very next day. Does anyone else think that’s really weird? There’s supposed to be more teacher strikes this week, but I don’t know if it’ll affect my schools or not, we’ll see.
Again, I’d like to stress to you to not send any packages. I have 2 that were sent months ago and never arrived. And some others that are in route and taking a curious amount of time. I asked another volunteer in my department about it, because about 30 of us share 2 P.O. boxes. They said they were having the same problem. We brought the issue up at our regional meeting the other day, and everyone made a list of approximately how many packages and letters they were missing. The numbers were staggering! I mean, how sad. We’re talking birthday presents, Christmas presents, and comforts from home. I think our P.O. box is being targeted because after all this time, the people at the office know that this ‘PVC’ word in box 366 signifies Americans, and the contents could be pretty sweet. I even heard a tale of a former PCV who published a book about serving in Nicaragua. He was suspicious that the people at the post office were stealing from him, and as he was expecting a package from home with his favorite tshirt in it, he saw the dude at the post office WEARING it. PC is “investigating” the office now. This problem is only occurring in Leon, which makes us believe that it’s a problem with our specific office, and the issue is not that things are getting stolen at customs. Maybe in the future I will change my mailing address back to Managua, so my things arrive there, or possibly to the post office in my town. I’ll have to get back to you on that.
Next weekend I’m going to Mataglpa, the cool, green center of the country to visit Jocelyn. Carla is coming out too for the weekend. We are going to spend our time on the farm milking cows and riding horses. Yee haw. It’ll be a great break from the heat with my 2 friends.
7/May/2010
Living in this time warp is killing me! Since when is it May?!
Last weekend I took the journey to Matiguas, Matagalpa to stay with Jocelyn in her site. Carla made the journey out there as well, and a wonderful time was had by all. I was sick the week before going, and tried to schedule a doctor’s appointment, but there was none available. I wavered between wanting and not wanting to go. Getting better was my priority because my parents come on the 9th and I didn’t want to be sick for them. I wasn’t going to go until I woke up early in the morning, finally able to breath out of my nose. I spazzed out of bed in a frenzy, got packed, and left on the 530 am bus to leon. From there I took a microbus for a couple hours to Matagalpa, Matagalpa (the capitals of the departments are almost always the same name as the department). From there I took a taxi to the other terminal in town that buses would leave from to take me to Jocelyn’s site. I ended up having to wait for an hour and a half in the world’s most annoying bus terminal. LITERALLY every 10 seconds someone was shoving something in your face offering to sell it to you. I actually almost lost my cool. But luckily I was able to focus on my book, and when someone shoved something in my face I’d merely lean over to the side and not miss a beat of the book. A couple of harassing hours later and I was on my way to Matiguas. This part of the trip was all on dirt road. It was beautiful countryside with little shacks in the middle of nowhere. After arriving in Matiguas 8 HOURS LATER, the town drunk introduced himself to me as I texted Jocelyn to hurry up and get to the terminal to get me!
The next day the 3 of us went to Jocelyn’s host family’s farm. Carla and I fulfilled every young girls dream of milking her 1st cow. Then we got on horses and rode around the farm for awhile, with the main goal of finding a lost cow. We practiced riding the horses, getting them to run, slow down, ect. I forgot how much fun that is! We all got so comfortable riding the horses, we thought it’d be funny to see if we could herd the cattle. We just wanted to see if they’d listen to us. Plus, at that time, the rest of the farm workers had gone back home for breakfast, and we had the place to ourselves. So we rode into the pasture where the cows were and began the herding. We started out just chasing the cows one by one until they sort of grouped together and exited. It was so hilarious that we were really doing it! I don’t know what happened next, but I disturbed some bees. Luckily there weren’t hundreds, as there are in my worst nightmare. I did get stung 5-7 times though, which at the time was very upsetting and confusing, as I hadn’t quite figured out yet what was actually stinging me. After that we went back to the farm to recollect the cattle and bring them back out to the pastures where they belonged. We thanked them for listening to us and playing along with our fake cowgirl shenanigans.
Our next adventure brought us to a river with a waterfall. This place is so beautiful! It’s so lush, even though it’s the end of the dry season, and the rolling hills are something out of a movie. We jumped into the wonderfully cold water and swam around. Jocelyn and I later jumped off a big rock into the water. I’ve missed that thrill of jumping into the air, not knowing exactly when you’re going to hit the water.
After the great trip, I made sure to return home going through Managua, and I shaved 3 hours off my trip, making it a quick 5 hours.
This week my parents come for a visit! I think they’ll be able to hack it. We are gong to be staying in my site for awhile. Although we won’t be doing completely routine things, I think they’ll get a pretty good idea of what my reality it. They’re going to be coming to school with me and also to my youth group. All the kids are so excited to meet them. I sort of thought they wouldn’t care, but they surprised me by being totally excited!
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