Just another Thursday in Nica…

Sarcasm, gotta love it.  Today since my normal class was canceled, I decided to try to investigate that coffee cooperative in town.  With the help of host dad and a simple phone call, an appointment was made.  So at 9am, I walked the 15 minutes to PRODECOP (one of Nica’s largest coffee producers as I would soon discover).  After a quick introduction and pretending to be overly city like, (“I’m from Chicago—we only grow corn and soybeans.  I’ve never seen a coffee plant/tree before”) a free tour was clearly required.  So I got my own little private tour of the 46 manazas (means both ‘apples’ and ‘acres’ but I’m pretty sure it meant acres in this context) coffee plantation.  In short, it was very interesting.  I got to see what a coffee plant looks like and tour their facilities.  At the end, I got to drink real BLACK coffee (Nica’s always load it up with way too much sugar) and munch rosquillas (Nica’s versions of doughnuts, but not really.  Hard to explain but delicious with coffee).  They’re looking to expand into the world of agricultural tourism so I’m hoping that I can work with them in the future.

Then I DID go teach a class (not my normal one—a profe wanted help teaching stock appropriations which granted is a hard idea for Nicas to grasp with the whole “We don’t know what a stock market is.  To be even fairer, the word for ‘stock’, acción, also means ‘action’ so some confusion is to be expected.) in a different town.  Afterwards I met up with the volunteer that lives there and we went for a hike because there’s this big hill/mountain that we wanted to climb.  After wondering aimlessly for quite some time, we had to call it quits on account of the river we couldn’t find a way across and ominous thunder.  Still very fun though our mission wasn’t realized and I got sunburnt (curse you Cloroquina Fosfato 250mg, my malaria suppression medication with side effects of increased photosensitivity!).  Also after I got off the bus ride home, the ominous thunder turned into very real thunder equipped with an equally real downpour.  I hadn’t really got caught in the rain yet and it was actually quite refreshing and entertaining.

One of the many streams I had to cross...

Lastly, has anyone noticed that the style of my writing is changing?  As in, I think I’m using common Spanish phrases and translating them into English.  Maybe you can’t notice unless you understand Spanish…Anyway, what did YOU do with your Thursday?