Volunteer Visit

I’m back from my volunteer vist my dear avid and dedicated followers (more than 10 of you now?  Wow your lives must be boring.  Kidding, thanks!)!  The visit was in one word, bomb.  Two words, da bomb.  You get the picture.

Sunday, took a moto with 2 of my sitemates to Masatape to catch a microbus to Managua at 7am.  6 of us took the hour long bus and loved it.  Our driver had a great mixtape of old school Luda, 50, Jay-Z Coolio and TuPac (apparently he’s being living in Nica this whole time, who knew?)  Another hour and half microbus (with A/C = heavenly) we arrived in Leon, Leon.  Instead of heading to my site (Telica) my volunteer, Pieter (I guess we should market our journey as Pete & Pete after their days at Nickelodeon), met me in the mercado and rode in a flatbed truck into the center of the city.  There we saw Central America’s oldest cathedral (or largest.  Or both.  I can’t remember.).

Old on the outside

Super nice on the inside.

After a little sightseeing, we, and I’m not making this up, met up with his PCV friend, Peter.  Then the three Pedros and my trainee friend Ben took a taxi (which had to be hotwired to start) to the beach.  The beach honestly wasn’t that impressive but after the nonstop busy-fest that is called training, it was like being back on Waikiki.  We sipped beer, swam and all around chillaxed.  It was AMAZING.  After four hours of swapping stories we went back into to watch “King” James miss out on yet another opportunity to rein the NBA or more commonly known as game 6.  We feasted on nachos (with Velvita cheese OHM NOM NOM!) and chicken in a garlic wine sauce.  Exhausted after a long day of traveling/laughing at Miami, we called it an early night after the game.

Monday: Pieter and I got up early and ate BACON AND EGGS!  Pieter is setting up a career fair for 100 students in Leon so went back into the city and met with a hotel owner.  After a couple other errands, we went to go teach market studies in a highschool a little outside of the city.  Because of the brutal heat and walking a lot we decided to kick back and smoke cigars after dinner.

Tuesday: School school and more school.  Pieter and I went and taught market studies to three other schools.  The students, for the most part, are awesome.  They’re energetic and come up with interesting business plans like ecofriendly jewelry and organic food products.  After teaching for 4.5 hours we made delicious quesadillas and played gin-rummy until the stifling heat was merely just tolerable.  We walked around and visited his friends for a couple hours then hit the sack.

Wednesday: nothing too eventful to report. Ate a BLT for lunch in Leon which tasted almost sinfully good and took four different buses to get back to little ol Nandasmo.  Oh, I did some haggling and bought a nice soccer ball and shower flip-flops for a steep 150 cords aka an “actual retail price:” $6.67.  Boom, winner.

Nos vemos,

Pedro