Wednesday, May 20, 2009

So much to say

I don’t even know where to start.  I’ve been in my site for about three weeks now and really loving it.  Work is definitely a little slow going, but you know, it should pick up eventually.  As most of you know, I spent semana santa with my host family on Ometepe, and it was the classic nica vacation in that we didn’t…really…do…anything.  Honestly, it was a pretty tough week for me.  We did go to the beach a few times, but all of the volcano climbing, finca visiting, horse riding never really materialized.  We spent most of the time sitting around the house talking, which in Nicaragua is a totally legit activity, but still one I haven’t gotten used to.   Of course my brain chose this exact moment in time to decide not to remember any of the Spanish I had learned in the past three months.  The accent on the island is also one of the hardest ones for me to understand, so I definitely solidified my role as the mute foreigner.  If you can imagine a solid week of nothing really to do except sit around and chat, only to realize that, oh crap, chatting isn’t really a valid option.  On a positive note, I did prove a long-held theory that is, in fact, impossible to die of boredom.  Trust me, I wouldn’t still be with you if it was. 

I’ve come to learn that bad Spanish weeks and frustration and homesickness and annoyance with anything and anyone Nicaraguan and just hard times in general are pretty much unavoidable, so you just have to learn how to deal with it when it happens and do whatever you possibly can to keep yourself sane.  Plus, whenever I’m really having a rough time, something wonderful and amazing seems to happen to pull me back to reality.  In this case it was two wonderful and amazing things happening.  The first was that I received my first package.  (Translation: get off your tails and send me stuff.  Even just a note or old magazine.  Old magazines are worth their weight in gold.)  You have no idea how happy it will make me.  Address is conveniently located on the left-hand panel .)  And it wasn’t just any package; it was the package from the gods sent by my wonderful mom (thanks mom!) full of such goodies as Splenda, Cholula hot sauce, and more clothes.  Everyone was in amazement of my goodies, especially the clothes for one reason:  They all smelled like clean laundry.  When you’ve been hand washing and line drying all your clothes for months, the smell of fresh laundry just melts your heart.  Everyone just sat around smelling my clothes for a good half hour.  I still haven’t worn one of the shirts so that I can still smell it whenever I get homesick.

The   second wonderful and amazing thing that happened was just a little thing called swearing in.  Yep, that’s right, after 3 looooong months of training, I am now officially a Peace Corps Volunteer, aka a big kid.  The ceremony was held in the nicest hotel in the entire country and had all of the peace corps staff, the American ambassador, and all of our host families in attendance.  It was definitely really hard to leave my host family.  I know I’ve said it before, but it’s worth mentioning again: I literally could not have asked for a better host family.  From day one they were just the most caring, welcoming, patient, and just straight up fun family I have met since I’ve been here.  They truly are unbelievable people and I feel honored to have been a part of their family.  I still maintain that my host mom makes the best gallopinto in all of Nicaragua.  Even though I detested my gallopinto, queso, tortilla dinner every single night of the week (ok, sometimes I’d get an egg instead of queso) at first, by the end of training I’d have insane cravings for it if I ever missed dinner.  I still get cravings for it.

So anyway, after the speeches, bidding of farewells to the families, picture taking, and taking advantage of what is most likely the last time any of us will be in such decadent surroundings, I walked out the hotel doors into infinite freedom.  Ok, maybe not anything even closely related to infinite freedom, but still, it felt pretty good.  After having my life totally scheduled and micromanaged for three months, I all of a sudden can eat whatever I want(kinda), go wherever I want (kinda), and generally do whatever I want(kinda).  After basking in that glory for approximately 15 minutes, I had the inevitable freak out moment.  Oh shit, what am I going to eat for the next two years?  Where am I going to go for the next two years?  More importantly, what am I going to do for the next two years?  I’m just supposed to catch a bus and move all my stuff up to the side of a mountain somewhere and start… working? Where I don’t know a soul and can barely communicate? Are they freaking joking?

Then I suddenly remembered, oh wait, I’m not actually expected to do anything of any real value at first.  I’ve got a couple months to get to know my community, my coworkers, learn more Spanish, before I need to embark on any large projects.  Ok, cool.  I can totally do this.  So I get to the Centro de Salud my first day all excited to talk to my counterpart and get down to business.  Huh, my counterpart isn’t there, that’s weird.  Ok, stay calm; I can just shadow some of the other educators for the day.  Day number two: same story.  Oookaaaay… About halfway through the day I get a phone call from my peace corps project director.  Here’s how the convo went down:

 Pilar: Hi Jessie, how’s everything going?

Me: Not spectacular, but I’m definitely hanging in there.

Pilar: Ok, good. .. Listen…do you have time to talk?

Me: Yeah, sure, what’s up?

Pilar: Well…You see… Ummmm… Your counterpart (who had worked with like a million PCV’s and apparently is like the best counterpart in the history of PC Nicaragua)… yeah, she resigned from the Centro de Salud and didn’t feel a need to tell Peace Corps… So you kinda don’t have a counterpart anymore.

Me: Really?...  Well that’s… not good. 

Pilar: Ummmm…. Yeah…. Well I’m kind of not done yet…

Me: Ooookaaay…

Pilar: The family you’re living with… (with a private bathroom, private entrance, super nice family that included the governor of the entire department, WASHING MACHINE, etc, etc, etc) yeah… they’re going to Miami for a month and didn’t feel a need to tell Peace Corps either… so yeah… you’ve got about five days to find a new place to live.

Me: Huh.  They didn’t talk about this in training.

 

So yeah.  That kinda blew.  The one good thing about having to scramble to find a new place to live is it’s a great way to meet people.  I had random strangers coming up to me on the street trying to take me to their sister/mother/cousin’s place to look at rooms.  In a town of 40,000 people that’s a pretty big deal.  Once I got the house situation squared away I started to get into a business as usual routine.  So far work has actually been pretty similar to many of the jobs I’ve held in the past, where I just spend a lot of time trying to look busy.  Everybody says that the first three months in site are the hardest, so I’m just trying to make it over the hump.  It definitely has been tough, especially not really having much to do with work right now, but if this is the toughest part of my service I think I’m good to go.

I really really like Ocotal.  It’s big enough to have plenty of stuff to do (relatively speaking) but not so big that it’s completely overwhelming.  The mountains are absolutely gorgeous, especially now that the rainy season started and everything is changing from brown to green, and the weather can’t be beat.  Still hot, but it cools down and is really nice at night.  It makes me glad I’m not living in Chinandega, the hottest part of the country, where the forecast one day called for a high of 104 and… smoke.  Yep, smoke.  The people in Ocotal couldn’t be nicer, and I’m really starting to like a lot of the people I’m working with.  I feel like I’ve got a lot more to report on, but my mind is drawing a blank right now and my internet time is about to run out.  Sooo… guess that’s it for now.