News from Nica!

How do I put into words the last couple of weeks? First of all, for those of you who have been checking this I am sorry I have not had a chance to post yet. In a few minutes you will understand why. I landed on Monday, January 15, 2007 at 12:30 pm. My first flight was very crowded and my second flight only had about 40 people on it. The second one was amazing. I ended up sitting next to a man who works for the U.S. Embassy in Managua. He was very nice and he listened to me cry for most of the flight. Poor Man! I was greeted by my friend Callie and Roger. Roger is one of the drivers for Fabretto. And Callie is my new best friend down here. She is an amazing woman! After I had arrived I started ESL training for one afternoon and then we were taken to a hotel. It was more like a hostel but the food was great so it did not really matter. The next day we were told to just take what we needed for two weeks to language school. Language school was also amazing! I was able to stay with a family. They were very lovely. I had a flush toilet and a hot bucket shower every night. What I would give for a hot bucket shower now! I was able to travel during my two weeks in La Concha. We went to the Massaya Volcano, Granada, Chocoyorro, which is national park here with lots of pretty green birds if I remember correctly they were parakeets. I was also able to go to Diriamba where they celebrate the feast of St. Sebastion and two other saints. The whole town closes down for three or four days and celebrates. We went on Friday and were able to see the masqueraders it was amazing!
The Hotel/School I went to was very nice. I am not really sure how to explain it except how I just did. It is a hotel where Spanish is taught. Paulette, the woman who owns and runs it is from England. She first came to Nicaragua in the eighties during the war. She was a social worker here and came across a young girl named Guillermina in an orphanage in Managua. At the time, Guillermina was two years old; they think she was a victim of one of massacres that happened during the war. She has a mental disability because of the trauma she went through at such a young age. She loves to swim and horse back ride. She is also very bright, English turned out to be her first language and she has a lovely English accent that I found to put a smile on my face everyday. She also knows Spanish and was also anxious to find out what everyone at the hotel is up to during the day. Paulette adopted her and then moved back to England to work until she finally decided to move back to Nicaragua. In the mean time, she was able to build the hotel with the money she sold her house for in England. The hotel is not small by any means either. It runs off of solar power and just a small amount of energy when the sun doesn’t come out for a couple of days. It also has flushing toilets and hot water showers! What I would give for a hot water shower right now! It is a wonderful place to stay and for $125 dollars for a week plus food it is a great deal! Paulette has started a chicken project so she can raise them and then teach other people how to for food. She also has her own small coffee farm. It is probably about 10-15 bushes. She also rescues horses and other animals. She is a very strong willed person and very intimidating. Maybe some of you imagined that. Her place is great for the community too because it creates jobs for people and brings in a small amount of tourists who’s money also feeds into the economy.
I met a lot of fun new people while I was at the hotel. The first two people’s names were Sky and Aybss. I hope I spelled that correctly. Aybss was from Turkey but he goes to school in upstate New York and Sky was here from New York. She was wonderful! So cheerful…she has lived all over the US and is planning on building a boat in Georgia. It is nice to hear other people’s wild ideas for life. I want to say that it really makes you feel alive!! There were also two girls from Australia there. They were vegans and very into the environment and animal friendly things. I learned a lot from them about different products and non-profits in Australia who publish all kinds of things about the products and how they are tested on animals. I am sure we have something like that in the U.S. but I just never really cared or thought about it! Oh! And then there was Becky. She is from England and is the sweetest woman I have ever met. Well except for my mother of course! She was here doing research about some pesticide that is killing 4 people an hour. It was used and I think is still used here and in India. That was a couple of weeks ago so I could of just made all of that up. Bo par is what I think the whole thing is called. I am sure if you googled it you could find more about it. I would…but I don’t have the internet!

The family I stayed with was amazing. There were six people in the house, Mom and Dad, Veronica, 21, their daughter and their son Eric, 25, who was married and had a child. We were all in the same house. Three were bedrooms one bathroom, which consisted of a toilet, and a couple buckets. One for showering and the other for dumping water down the toilet when it did not flush. I had previously said that there was no running water but there was on faucet in the kitchen. In the back yard there were two sinks for washing cloths, your face, your hands and brushing your teeth. There was also an outhouse out back. I managed to not use it for two weeks! Going to the restroom here is no fun at all. You cannot send toilet paper down the toilet because it will plug up the pipes so you get to put it in a wastebasket that is usually next to the toilet. This is a very hard habit to get into. Not to worry though…when I messed up I just kind of flushed anyways. The family would make fresh juice every day. It was amazing! Unfortunately, it was made with the water here but it didn’t stop me from drinking it. Which probably lead to the parasite I had for about three weeks. I am doing better now though. They have an over the counter medicine that will zap almost any kind of parasite possible. It is amazing. I lost about 10 pounds in those three weeks. When I told my boss that he suggested I take the anti-parasite meds. While I was with my family we would watch TV and eat. My favorite thing that they made me was queso frito, fried cheese! Oh…I was not supposed to eat the cheese either. It was so great though! Every night for dinner I would have Gallo Pinto which means spotted chicken. I guess they call it that because when you mix the rice and beans together it looks like a spotted chicken. So, I would have gallo pinto, a tortilla, gueso frito and usually some tacos that don’t look anything like an American Taco. Which is probably a good thing because I am not in America. I would have the same for breakfast and I when I ate lunch there on the weekends I would usually get chicken which is always a great surprise! The family would always heat up water for my bucket shower too. It was wonderful! La Concha is the town I was in and it was pretty small. It was quite a bit larger then where I am now. There were a lot of stray dogs, which I think, are more dangerous then Nicaragua is and you have to worry a lot more about the flies that land on your food then the mosquitoes. I have had only two bites in three weeks and I do not wear bug spray at all. The dogs would fight in the middle of the night and you could hear them all night long. The roosters were also a nice alarm clock at about four in the morning until seven or so. I would wake up and just laugh to myself sometimes and ask where am I? I was able to stay at the house for two weeks. When I said goodbye the family cried and well so did I. For about the first two weeks I cried almost every day sometimes a couple times a day. I do not know what came over me. I was able to communicate with home and I was safe. Maybe just so much change so quickly. The weather was beautiful there! It would get pretty hot during the day but would always cool off at night. Callie and I were picked up last Tuesday and spent the day in Managua and then were able to spend the night in a hotel with big beds and big pillows and a flushing toilet and hot water! I love hot water! That is one of the things I miss the most. Having water is one of the things I miss the most.

Last week when I was dropped off my immediate reaction was to cry. Once you see the pictures of my house you will understand. The people seem to welcome me with open arms. Most mornings I have absolutely no idea what in the world I am doing here but I feel good doing it. I have had a lot of problems…well maybe not problems but situations where the people make fun of me to my face but they know I do not understand Spanish very well. It can be really frustrating, I find myself getting over it. What is harder then being frustrated is trying not to build myself up to myself. I say to myself because I do not have anyone else to talk to about it. For example, something will be said and my initial thought is “Stephanie you have no reason to let these people affect you, you have so much more going for you then they ever will”. Then I have to hit myself and come back down to earth and realize we are all humans and I am here to try to give them what they do not have. It is just such a struggle and a test everyday. I had a one of the teachers say something about me yesterday and I just glared at her and she stopped then today I decided to go and sit and have lunch with her and the other teachers. Talk about swallowing one’s pride. Yikes! I did not know I had so much of it or so much self-righteousness in me. Someone is stealing my food too. I do not have a kitchen in my house and so I keep my food over in the kitchen. I am lucky because most of my meals are prepared for me so I haven’t had to spend any money while I have been up here. I did buy some canned food and peanut butter and other things because one can only take rice and beans so many times a week. I had like 8 of my cans of food missing and tonight my Chicken Noodle Soup was open and everywhere. I just want to put a sign on it that says “THIS BELONGS TO THE GRINGA” but it would be in English and not do me any good anyways. Oh! I am also called gringa…which I think might not be a good thing. It is not bad per say but when your students are calling you that it is not a good think. I did have a good day with the teachers today. One of the children called me a Gringa and she yelled at them and said her name is Stephanie. That made me feels all warm and fuzzy inside. I do not think most of the people here have ever seen a white person. Well that is a lie there was a volunteer here who did not live here or come up very often. So being apart of their community is very different for them and me of course. I think it will all work out with the people they just need time and so do I.

My house is right across the street from the school and is livable I guess. I spend most of my time out in the sun or at the school trying to get work done. I have eight English classes and three art classes. Yea! I have to come up with all of my lessons plans! It is um…scary…and fun…and mostly scary. If I could speak in English all day that would be fine but the students do not speak English, hence me being here! Back to my house it is probably 15 ft by 10 ft. It’s all cement and I have one light and no outlets. There is an outlet in my living room along with machetes and rakes and a wheelbarrow. I have a lot of friends in my room they are called spiders and ants and miller moths. The spiders are about the size of my palm. That is including their legs. No rodents yet. Or at least I have not seen any yet. When I got up to use the rest room the other night I was chased by this pig thing. It was not a pig but it sure did look like one. I do not know what it was. I do know it scared the crap out of me! I also found out I am afraid of the dark. Yes, at 24 I am afraid of the dark. Since I live in a concrete cell I have a window that is like a door and at night it is dark. I woke up the first night I was here and I could not see anything and I panicked. So, now I sleep with a flashlight that was given to me by one of my professors. The flashlight and my Spanish/English dictionary are about the only two things I need here. They get used the most. Bayardo is the director of our program here in Quebrada Honda. He is a wonderful man. He prays the Liturgy of the Hours every night and morning along with one of my neighbors and another teacher from the school. There is a church right next to the school. Tonight, they let me read and were so patient with how slow I am at it. I really love Bayardo! Another one of my neighbors and I are pretty good friends. He speaks a little bit of English. I think he secretly knows English and just doesn’t tell me that. His name is Henry. He teaches computer class at the center and we get to hang out quite a bit. It is funny, because we joke around a lot and neither one of us speaks the other language very well but we seem to get each others jokes and well he helps me out with a lot of things. He is unfortunately good looking too. And then there is Freddy. He lives next door too. Last Friday night we all hung out in my living that consist of a filing cabinet with a TV on it and three folding chairs and weapons. Anyways, the boys played the guitar and taught me how to play the bongos. It was great. Pretty lame for a Friday night but at least I was not sitting in my room by myself. My clothes hang out two wire hangers that spread from one wall to the other and are connected together it creates a kind of drying rack. I hang my pants and skirts on it. It is a pretty simple place. Not much to do in the town either. There is no such thing as a bar or a restaurant. Or even a grocery store. I am going to have to find something to do with my time. There are not very many Roosters here so I am not woken up in the morning so that is nice. I am usually in bed by 9 and up around 630 or so. I will admit I am going a little stir crazy with nothing to do. There are no telephones either. When the Internet is down I have no way to communicate with back home. It has been out since I got here. Such silly things seem to make life complete.

All in all things are going well. I am feeling a lot better and I feel like my Spanish is coming along. I am sorry this first entry is like a paper…but a lot has happened! I hope you enjoyed and I hope you enjoy the photos that come with it! Please keep me in your prayers!! Love and Miss you all so very much!!!