Nicaragua Trip Day 3

Our third day in Nicaragua started off with a nice breakfast at the restaurant that is kind of paired with the hostel we stayed at. Soon enough, our tour guide came along, as well as a young Dutch guy who was finishing up a medical volunteer program in Nicaragua, a German tourist and an Australian tourist who didn't speak much Spanish. The tour was super interesting. We visited a medium sized cigar factory, with about 40-50 employees, all within about a city block worth of land. There is a larger and more famous one outside of Estelí-but they didn't have tour guides that met us at our hostel. The guide was very informative, as well as one of the managers of the factory (I think the son of the owner). He explained in great detail the selection of the leaves for the different qualities of cigar, all while passing around a cigar and helping us smoke it (I at least required instruction). 

It was awesome how open the tour was-we were walking all around the factory, right next to the people working, even picking up and examining cigars about to be boxed. One item of interest is that the rollers work in pairs-and always one man and one women. The man works the machine that presses the filling into the cigar and the women rolls on the outer cap by hand and trims the end by hand as well. Employees are not allowed to take products home (unless they pay) but can smoke as much as they want when working-and there were a few that were definitely taking advantage. The cigars are essentially made completely by hand, the leaves are picked by hand, sorted, soaked, and dried by hand. They are then further sorted by hand, and aided only a bit by the simple machine (hand powered) in the rolling process-and are then packed by hand as well. The manager explained that with Nicaragua's cheap labor, high import costs, and due to the size of the company, it still makes economic sense to do most of the work by hand. 

Nicaragua is a growing presence in the cigar production world, as we were told that Cuban quality leveled off many years ago due to a variety of factors. Cuban emigrants in the 1960s and '70s brought the know-how and seeds to Nicaragua, Ecuador, and other places, and these countries are now starting to reap the benefits after adapting the plants to their soils and climates, and especially with Nicaragua, it's benefitting from stability and peace after its long and destructive civil war. So, be on the lookout for Nicaraguan cigars-I certainly might've been to the factory where they were made. 

Barton, Brian, and I spent the rest of the day cruising around beautiful and tranquil Estelí-I really can't stress how much I enjoyed this town. We headed to some of the less worn parts of the town, into the dirt road, trash all over poor area-and peeked in on a pick up soccer game at a small stadium. We ended up chatting with the coach-who appeared to be an former player from the professional team. He talked about how they had started this youth soccer league to help keep kids off drugs and healthy. It was a great conversation, we shared a bit about what the Peace Corps does, things about Costa Rica. 

After getting our fill of the town, we headed to the bus station, grabbed a bus to León, met up with Andrew at the hostel, walked around town as the sun set, grabbed dinner in a pool hall that didn't serve alcohol or allow smoking (we figured it must be an AA pool hall). We got ice cream cones for something like $.25 (Nicaragua is awesome) and checked out the local scene in the central park. A nice and pleasant evening-which is what vacation is all about. 

The Final Fortnight

I have just two weeks left in my Peace Corps service. My original Close of Service (COS) date was December 17, exactly two years after myself and 43 other volunteers of Tico 21 swore in. (Tico 21 is the 21st input group since around 2000 when the Peace Corps Costa Rica post was reorganized). I moved up my COS date by 10 days, in order that I can travel around with my brother Peter and not have any problems with the Peace Corps regulations on vacations. 

The blog is about two months behind on my real life, and will probably be so for a while. I'll be crazy busy during these last two weeks, and want to spend it saying goodbye to the wonderful Costa Ricans I've met, soaking up the sun on some beaches (because that won't be happening in Des Moines!), and saying goodbye to Peace Corps friends I've made during the past two years plus. But, updates will come occassionally, and should be much more consistent and substantial after Christmas-when sitting under a blanket on my computer is what I will want to be doing. 

Thanks again for all who read, and don't forget to check out my Picasa web albums and my Tumblr page-links to the right. 

(here's me at a presentation I did at my school about the US--Peace Corps Goal 2)

Nicaragua Trip Day Two

Our main purpose in going to Estelí was to take a cigar factory tour, but as it was Sunday, we had to wait until Monday for that to happen. So we just walked around. And it was incredibly delightful. I had pretty much planned the whole trip, and the answer I got from Brian and Andrew was: whatever you want to do is fine. Barton had a few ideas about things to do, but they were mostly in León and Granada. I'm a big fan of walking around foreign towns. It's not that I'm opposed to seeing the famous cathedral, monument, museum, or natural wonder-but-walking around a regular town or city gives a great impression of what daily life in a country is like. We had beautiful sunny weather, and Estelí truly is a gorgeous little hub town in a mountainous tobacco and coffee region. When we got to the edges of town, with dusty streets and adobe colored houses, it looked kind of like the towns you see in old Western movies with scenes in Mexico. 

One thing we immediately noticed was the amazing painting on the sides of buildings. Like in much of Costa Rica, the general construction model is cinder blocks with corrugated tin sheet roofs. Well, in all of Nicaragua that I saw, and especially the smaller towns, instead of printing posters or signs to put on the walls outside a commercial establishment, they just paint the cinder blocks. It was gorgeous and at times hilarious. It certainly gave lots more character to the car parts store, barbershop, supermarket, etc. Another thing we discovered about Nicaragua was that not only do they love baseball, but they also love hot dogs and hamburgers. There were food carts with empanadas or meat on a stick, but there were a lot more with hot dogs and hamburgers. And, holy cow, do they load up their hot dogs. Sadly, I think I was too hungry to take a picture first-but it had onions, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, and perhaps a few more fixings I'm forgetting.

(where we had more than one meal during our time in Estelí)

*Remember-lots more pictures on my tumblr or on my Picasa album-links to the right. 

Nicaragua Trip Day One

During the first two weeks of September (actually in between the local and regional spelling bees) I took a trip to Nicaragua with fellow Peace Corps volunteers Barton, Brian, and Andrew. Barton and Brian are in my TEFL project and Andrew is in the business assistance project, but was also among the 46 Americans that got on board a plane to San José, Costa Rica on October 3, 2010. This trip would have been my biggest vacation during my time in Costa Rica-had an earthquake and volcano eruption not shortened it-but I'll get to that later. While Peace Corps gives us a generous amount of vacation days, unlike when I was in China, I don't have a lot of extra money to take advantage of this. Of course, I've spent more than I should have on trips in the last five years of my life-but that money's spent. So, this trip to Nicaragua was the big one of my two years here in Costa Rica-and it was a blast. Andrew, Barton, and Brian are awesome guys to travel with and Nicaragua is a beautiful country with a  very interesting and event filled history. 

We rode up on the bus with TransNica. It was a comfortable ride, the bus wallah was helpful, they charged us an extra $3 to get into Nicaragua-but also took care of getting our passports stamped and did so quickly-a service I'm willing to pay for.  Of note at the border was that we were able to buy a SIM card and put minutes on Barton's phone-in a matter of maybe 5 minutes (we had to figure out which carrier would work with his brand). So, Nicaragua is added to the list (Thailand, Hong Kong) of amazing countries where you can get going on a cell phone just like that! We had a 30-40 minute delay because there was a political riot/truck with speakers/barbecue in the middle of the road. Maybe all three were related-we never knew. But, we arrived in Managua, taxied to the hostel, grabbed dinner at a mall food court, and headed to bed-looking to take advantage of the next morning.  

So, two paragraphs in and we're finally to day one. We got up early and set out to see what Managua had to offer. Most of the guidebooks advise skipping it, but it is the capital city-so I figured we could give it a half day. The new cathedral's gates were all locked (it was a Saturday morning). All maps indicated we should have seen a giant statue dedicated to Rubén Darío, a famous poet, but all we saw was a big rotunda that looked like it used to have a statue. Besides those two hitches, the rest of the day was a great success. We saw the old cathedral-which was either burned or ignored-but appears to be in a restoration process. We toured the national museum, which was a kind of natural history and art museum combination. We visited the silhouette statue of Agosto Sandino-up on a hill with great views of the city. We ran into an American guy on the street that chatted us up a bit (more on this later), had a nice walk through parts of downtown Managua, determined that in Managua people sleep in on Saturday mornings (the city was eerily empty until about 11 as we walked back to our hostel). 

(me with 2,000+ year old statue and mural at the national museum)

We then took a taxi to a bus station in order to take a bus to Estelí, a small town in northern Nicaragua. Only it wasn't really a bus station. Instead it was just a big open area, full of puddles, food vendors, bus touts, and street kids peddling candy. Luckily, I'd seen this set up a few times before-and in a language I didn't speak. So, we ignored the bus touts grabbing us and trying to put us on buses we didn't need to get on, and asked where to buy tickets. Soon enough we were on our way to Estelí. Being in the front of the bus, we had an opportunity to observe something I'd never seen before. On the bus in front of us, a man climbed out the back door onto the small platform on the back of the bus (an old American school bus). He then proceeded to unzip his pants and pee off the platform. He appeared to have been an expert, as he knew how to turn so as to not urinate all over himself. We arrived in Estelí, safe and dry, found our hostel, and grabbed a delicious dinner at a little family run joint. We bought half a chicken, plus salad, rice, beans, and Cokes-and got out of there for like $4 a person. Nicaragua is awesome!

Remember you can see more pictures by clicking on the My Photos-Picasa Photo Gallery link to the right. 

Spelling Bee: Regional Style

The idea of the spelling bee (see post) was for the best kids from each volunteer's community to then meet up with students from other volunteer's communities. One complication was that none of the volunteers near me did the spelling bee-so, that made the "regional" bee a bit more of a challenge. The two volunteers that organized it live near my old site, in Sarapiquí, which-although it's on the same side of the mountains as my site-isn't really that close. But, they were the closest volunteers that had done the spelling bee. As they only work with elementary schools, our regional bee was only with elementary kids. 

(Andreina writes her word before spelling it)

So I practiced and practiced and practiced with the three students heading to the regional bee. They were great, coming early or staying late to practice with me-of course they didn't always have the greatest attitude-but practiced nonetheless. We met at 6:15 in the morning and headed into Limón, from there getting a bus to Guápiles, and from there to Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí and with a quick taxi ride to La Guaria-my coworker Marlene's site. Thus, after about four hours of traveling and waiting, my students had a chance to relax, grab a snack, and then it was time to start the spelling bee. There were three students from my school, three from Marlene's and three from Beth's.

(Tiffany writing her word before spelling it)

Much like the local bee, the kids came up one by one, we picked a word out of the envelope, said the word, read a sentence with the word, and said it again. The kids could write it on a little white board if they wanted, and have us repeat it. They only got one chance to spell the word-and we had an impartial judge (Athena another PCV). In the local bee I was a lot more lenient, but I had prepared my kids for this. Sadly, Beth's students all went out in the first or second round. She had been away on vacation and traveling to help with other projects just before the bee, and it appeared they didn't practice too hard on their own. Crazily, the winner of Marla's local bee went out early-which was a surprise to us all. So, by the fourth round, all three of my students, and two of Marla's remained. Unfortunately, my first student went out with the word 'walk'. This really was a bad turn of luck, as I later realized that there were two or three words out of the 150 that I had missed when I made flash cards. Granted-we still had read through the whole list-and they had it to study on their own. But being 6th graders, not much studying got done on its own; so-me having not made that flash card (which we had reviewed incessantly) very much hurt her chances of getting the word right. Although, she's kind of a punk and had the audacity to claim I pronounced the word wrong. Getting the 'silent letters' concept across to Spanish speakers is often quite hard. 

(Edwin waiting to spell his word)

In the next round, another one of Marla's students went out, so I was feeling pretty good, and pretty nervous. I was now guaranteed at least third and second place for my students. They later told me they weren't that nervous, but I can tell you I sure was. Tiffany ended up in third place, unable to spell 'scared' correctly. We had practiced it plenty, but it was always a word they had trouble with-often messing up the vowels, and sometimes using 'k' instead of 'c', which is what she did. So it was down to Edwin, one of my students and a student of Marla's. Her student was sharp, and I think they both spelled their words correctly for two more rounds. It was impressive, they both were very confident, spelling their words right away in a strong clear voice. But, lucky for Edwin-Marla's student misspelled her word after he had spelled his correctly. He then spelled his next word correctly, becoming the champion of the regional spelling bee! I was proud of him, as he had taken me up on my offer to practice on the weekend before and had a better attitude than the other two students. He certainly deserved to win! 

(me with my three students and my school's English teacher)

Unfortunately, we won't be able to hold a national bee this year. As it was the first year that Peace Corps volunteers organized such an event in Costa Rica, it was a grand learning experience. We learned that it took the students longer to learn many of the words than we had planned-as many of their English levels were far below what we had hoped. Scheduling regional spelling bees between the school's, teacher's, volunteer's schedules-and getting approval from the parents and principals also pushed us behind schedule. So, more than anything, we learned that it's important to start it earlier in the year and even more importantly, get it on the official ministry of education's calendar and list of events. Not having the national bee on these two lists severely limited us from getting support for a national bee. Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed working with the students at both the high school and elementary school, and it provided a great use of my time and skills-as I've had a tough time working with my teachers here in Liverpool.