CUMPLEANOS!

Yup as the Spanish speakers say, I now have 24 years.  I had several teachers at the various schools that I teach at guess my age and I received answers ranging from 22-28…  So not too bad.  Anywho, the super thoughtful and creative novia that I have organized a “Google Hangout”.  Don’t feel bad, I didn’t know what Google Plus was used for either…  In short, at 7:30 I entered a video conference with Michelle, her 2 roommates, 4 of my friends, sister, cousin and cousin in-law!  It was great to see everyone while drinking a classy half bottle of wine I had on hand.  Friday, is host mom’s birthday so Saturday we’re going to celebrate.  I’m going to teach them how to make omelets and they’re going to teach me how to make gallo pinto.  With any luck there will be some music, rum and something that resembles dancing.

Speaking of gallo pinto, I’ve had some pretty…simple meals recently.  Observe:

Dinner...Yum?

Oh!  Completely unrelated, yesterday I gave a presentation to 25 of my fellow professors about the importance of teaching.  We discussed the characteristics of good teachers and how the Peace Corps can help us.  It went well!  Tomorrow is hopefully the first of many meetings of the community bank I’m starting.  Stay tuned…

Nica Ballin'

To help keep up my stunning physique, I’ve been playing basketball.  Usually how it works is the gringo brings his fancy first world soccer and basket balls to the city court.  Then kids of all ages come to play with me.  Generally it’s very disorganized pickup games…Until last night.

Last night I arrived to see a large amount Nicas hanging around the court.  I soon discovered there is some sort of semi organized league in full swing.  Upon seeing whitey holding a basketball, they assumed that I was good and asked me to join their team.  Of course I couldn’t say no to being idolized, so I joined.

They asked me to play “center”.  For those of you followers who are not basketball aficionados, the “center” plays in the middle and are used to get rebounds and take close range shots.  Therefore, it is advantageous to be tall.  I haven’t played center since 8^th grade when I had my growth spurt but in Nicaragua, I’m a giant.

Anyways, I made America (semi)proud.  In the 12 or so minutes I played, I must have picked up 9 boards, 2 points, a handful of assists and 2 charges.  I must have played pretty well because they told me play in the game on Monday too.  Wish me luck!

Current Projects

While teaching and consulting are my primary responsibilities, the Peace Corps encourages us to take on secondary projects.  At the moment, I’m trying to start up a community bank and apply for a grant.

What is a community bank?  I’m glad you asked.  Well, Nicaragua isn’t exactly like the USA where you can just walk into a bank and apply for a loan or open a savings account.  In fact, as my dedicated followers know, the nearest bank to me is 40 minutes by bus.  Needless to say, that leaves millions of Nicaraguans unbanked without an access to credit.  Therefore, the Peace Corps uses the system of community banks as substitution for real brick and mortar banks.  Here’s how it works: a group of people who trust each other decide that want engage in financial planning (may take a little convincing from yours truly…).  Then they elect a president to run the meetings and a secretary to record the finances (obviously I’m not either for the sake of sustainability).  Now with some direction, they vote on a quota – the amount of money that every person invests monthly.  After the first round of deposits, people can lobby to take out a loan.  If the group votes to extend said person a loan, the person must repay the loan next month with 10% interest (sounds high but it’s easy to calculate and it’s much lower than real banks here).  After a predetermined amount of time, the bank expires and everyone receives their originally invested money plus any equally distributed interest.  Then after seeing the success, they restart the bank for another term.

Of course this is an over simplified example.  I suggest some basic rules and explain the benefits but they can vote and run the bank as they see fit.  Additionally, this system works because everyone knows everyone else and therefore would not risk social humiliation by defaulting on their loan.  Example, I plan on running the bank with my fellow teachers in the highschools.  Also, forget about the interest earned, just learning how to save money would be a huge accomplishment for them.  The joke is that they receive their monthly salary on the last Friday of the month and by Monday, it’s gone.

This may sounds super Peace Corps-y but I’m helping write a grant to build some wells in rural communities near me.  I’m working with the mayor’s office to price supplies, labor and create a presentation to give to the decision panel.

I’m excited for both these projects; cross your fingers that they get realized!

Second America Trip

Just finished off my second trip in America!  For those of you keeping track at home, of my 10+ months in Nicaragua, I’ve been in the USA for a whopping 20 days in total now.  But man, are they worth it!  And I’d like to receive some praise for all of the nice weather that I brought with me…80 degrees in Chicago in March?  Where do you think that comes from??

After traveling for 30 hours, I finally reached my home in Wheaton.  After some wheat pasta and a liberal amount of red wine, I hit the sack suffering from near exhaustion.  Thanks to a night in a temperature controlled environment, I was reenergized for a day at the dentist and then the zoo!

Thursday led me and my lucky date, Michelle, to Michigan my friend Wes’ rehearsal dinner.  Michelle and I completed the night with some late night delinquency gambling at the shockingly nice Blue Chip Casino.  The wedding on Friday was SO NICE!  Great food, weather, wine and dancing; I’m ecstatic that I got to take time off to attend.

Saturday was St Patrick’s, or as some of us like to call it, St Pedro’s Day!  Girlfriend Michelle and roomie Caroline were nice enough to offer up their apartment in Chicago as a party pad for the day.  Between 10am and 9pm, more than 30 of my highschool and college friends must have stopped by.  Super mega fun!

Sunday consisted of family bonding time and Monday they saw me off back to the jungle!  To rival the inconvenience of the journey to the USA, my return flight landed in Managua at 12:15am.  It’s great that my flights were actually on time but I’m now forced to wait until 5:15am when the buses start running…  So close but yet so far!

Homeward Bound

Chance, Shadow and that dumb cat have nothing on me (those of you who don’t get that reference, ask your kids).  So apparently a popular way to show dissatisfaction with the government is to set up roadblocks on important highways.  As my (lack of) luck would have it, a municipality set up a barricade on the Pan American Highway and, therefore, blocking me from traveling directly to Managua.  How much of a hassle is this?  I’m glad you asked!  Well it normally takes about 3 hours via one bus and one taxi to get to the airport which equals less than $4.  Today I had to travel south and cross over to the west coast of the country to finally continue going south.  Also known as FOUR different buses and a taxi totally EIGHT hours and $13!  Only to begin to show how INCREDIBLY uncomfortable this is, this is where I sat for an hour…:

I guess that's why they're called chicken buses

 So EXCITED to come home!

Weekending

After my 8:30am class on Fridays, my weekend freedom begins!  Last Friday, I went on a hike in Condega.  There’s this mountain/hill a couple clicks from the city so we decided to check it out.  There wasn’t exactly a trail, per say, but we made it!  Poor qualitycell phone foto:

Looking down at Condega

Then I went straight to Esteli for a fellow PCV’s birthday.  There were about 13 of us in total and we went for Italian food (shrimp scampi!)!  After dinner a couple of us went to the local disco to show off our dance skillz.  There was a live band and they played “Final Countdown”, “Living on a Prayer” and “Eye of the Tiger”.  Needless to say, the 5 of us were the ONLY ones rocking out on the dance floor while the Nicas stared jealously.  The night was then successfully completed with some 3:30am tacos.

Saturday morning we were in need of food to shake off the previous night’s libations.  I had a milkshake with nutella in it and waffles with fresh fruit.  Feeling much better we created a scavenger hunt to occupy the time.  On the list included: a peach, a mango, a foreign beer, a cigar, get something pierced, high five a town drunk, give a stranger a piggyback ride and since we were with health volunteers, give a condom demonstration to a stranger.  My team won, abet on a technicality, but a W is a W in my book.  To celebrate I ate some jalapeno poppers, nachos, and tacos for a lunch/dinner.  After dinner we went to a concert of a famous Nicaraguan folk band.  Here’s a song that he sang about where I live!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IktY_Hwg6sc

Now to unpack, repack and I’m CHICAGOING HOME!