The First Three Weeks

So when I last wrote to you all I had just swore in as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Now I have been at my site for about three weeks. How has it been going? Well, it has its ups and downs. There are definitely days where I am very excited and happy thinking about being here for two years, teaching, doing research, exploring the island…and then there are others when I’m thinking that I just want to go home where I can understand what is going on around me! (Luckily they are much less often than the other days).

So what have I done since I’ve been here? After my first four awkward days at site I left again to go to a Thanksgiving get-together with the other volunteers in the department of Rivas. It was not just a Thanksgiving vacation but also an opportunity for me to meet the volunteers that are around me because no one from my Nica 48 group is nearby (I’m a special case in our group so I can do work on the volcano). Everyone else is the environmental group is farther north or west of me.

The Thanksgiving dinner was delicious and we lucked out and got to stay at a really nice place for free. It was a brand new building that had never been used before located on Lake Nicaragua with beautiful views of Ometepe Island in the background. It is owned by some U.S. NGO who is working with one of the volunteers in Rivas and they were nice enough to let us stay there. It was fun and we had a really nice dinner (although sans turkey). And one of the volunteers said to me, “I don’t want to scare you, but I think this is the best meal I’ve had since I’ve been here!” And she is getting close to finishing her service.

Sunrise and Ometepe from where we had our Thanksgiving stay.

It is true that the food is a little bit lacking or at least repetitive. My family basically eats only what they grow which is rice, beans, plantains, and chickens. So that is what I eat. At least two times, and sometimes three times a day I eat rice and beans and plantains. And they serve me a LOT of it. I keep telling them that it is too much or I want less and they keep giving me heaping platefuls of food. It is good, but I have begun to just stop eating it all because it is too much food and I am going to be good and gordita when I leave here if I don’t! (Gordita more or less means “little fat one” and they use it here a lot…sometimes as a term of endearment. It is very normal to hear people say: “Oh, you look fat today.” It is a bit hard to get used to but they don’t seem to mean it offensively and when they say it to other Nicaraguans they don’t take offense. One of my host sisters is on the larger size and the rest of the women in the family all refer to her as gordita or gorda and she herself does the same.)

I have spent some time getting to know the community, but it is a slow process. I have gone to four different school promotions/graduations and presented myself to the community at two of them. Since then when I go around and try to introduce myself to people, most of them already know who I am. And lots of times when I am riding my bike around the community little kids will call out my name as I go by. But most of them are too shy right now to talk to me when I try to talk to them. But I’m sure that once school starts up in late January and I start working with them I will know a lot more people.

I also attended and helped out with the Purisima (I’m not sure if that is spelled right). It is a weeklong celebration of the Virgin Mary. Every day for a week they get up a 4:00 AM to light off fireworks and go to church and pray and sing. And then in the afternoon at 4:00 PM they go to someone’s house where an altar is set up with a statue of Mary and they pray and sing again and hand out food. One of the days it was at my host sister’s house and I watched them build the altar at the house and then helped them prepare food and bag it up. They were preparing food all day. Then they put everything in little baggies to be handed out. I made little bags of candies and cookies and also bags of rice, soup, and plantain slices. Then some of the women also made bags of juice. (For those of you who have never been to Central America, a lot of drinks are sold in plastic baggies that are tied off and then you bite into a corner of it and drink the juice or soda or whatever it is.)

Bagging up food for the Purisima.

I spend most of my time with the kids in my family who live at or near my house. There are eight of them, two girls and six boys. The boys are pretty energetic and running around all over the place and they are all always in my stuff. They especially like my computer and I have started a new “no touching the computer rule.” And the two youngest, a boy and girl, love to dance and often sing and dance for me songs from a popular telenovela (soap opera) for kids here.

The two little dancers.

I also just bought a new bike last weekend so I can explore some more of the island and get to my other town where I will be teaching. But earlier this week I went for a nice bike ride and the next day went to use it again and there was something wrong with the tire. I don’t know if I have to buy a new one yet, but I’m really frustrated. The bike was less than a week old!

I’m also learning just how far out in the country I really am. It is quite the bus ride to get to the two bigger towns on the island (a bumpy, dusty and crowded one and a half or two and a half hour ride). While the scenery is spectacular, I’m already tired of the trip. It’s also a pain to get off the island and I imagine I won’t be leaving very often or at least not more than I have too.

So really, I don’t have a lot to do until school starts up other than play with the kids, ride around my community, and figure out where I’m going to live. I’m also going to be working with a visiting volcanologist this week who is coming to look at some recent mudflows/rockslides that occurred this year during the rainy season. I am definitely looking forward to that and getting out on the volcano.

Once again, I hope everyone is well and I wish you all a wonderful holiday season!