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. 

S-P-E-L-L

With huge thanks to my coworkers Beth D. and Marlene R., I've had something very productive going on in site ever since after the 15 day holiday in July. They had the grand idea to try to put together a spelling bee (in English of course-as we're TEFL volunteers) in various schools across the country. They found some information from Peace Corps volunteers that had done them in other countries and put together guidelines, word lists, and sent out information to volunteers. I was able to get the sixth and fifth grade teachers to let me come into their classrooms a few times a week for a month. It was tough at first, both with the kids seeing the time I came to class as the time to screw around, and with the English teacher at the elementary school having not done a great job of teaching the kids the alphabet. So, instead of starting with trying to spell words from memory, we started with trying to correctly pronounce the letters. But, I shortened the word list to seventy words, and with flashcards and persistence was able to make some progress. 

(me with all the students and the English teacher)

At the high school, I worked with the English teacher to identify some of the better students in English or those with lots of interest and formed a group of eleven or twelve students. We met twice a week for a month as well. The group wasn't always constant, as sometimes the students couldn't get permission to leave class, and shockingly, shockingly indeed some of the students said they were going to spelling practice but would skip out and head to town or to the woods. But, a committed group of students did a great job learning the words and had a positive attitude each week as I brought more and more words for them to learn. 

(a student grabs scratch paper to write his word before spelling it)

So, towards the end of August I arranged a spelling bee at the elementary school and the high school. The elementary school bee was a bit rough, for two reasons. The first was that I didn't have a whole lot of support from the principal or English teacher, the sixth grade teacher was helpful, but got called to meet with the principal just before I was ready to begin. So, I was both managing the behavior of thirty five or so sixth and fifth graders that decided to participate in the spelling bee and trying to run the spelling bee. It went okay, but due to so many students having such a poor background in English that my few sessions just couldn't overcome, a lot of students went out in the first or second round. I was down to the five or six students that I thought I would be down to (minus one unfortunate first round exit) by the third round. By the fourth I had just three students (which worked out great-because that's how many I would be taking to regionals) and by the sixth round one student had won. 

(handing the certificate and prize to the 1st place winner)

The high school bee went much better, both because I was just working with a small group, and because the teacher at the high school was more helpful in planning it with me. So, we had some treats for the kids and parents (two moms showed up!), the counselor and teacher were there watching, as well as José, one of my bosses-who was passing by that afternoon-so I contacted him and he worked his schedule around coming. The audience gave it a good atmosphere as well as the fact that two students had studied quite well, and although after five rounds only the two of them remained, they went until the 11th round until one of them committed an error.

Soon, I'll post about how my elementary school winners did at the regional bee! 

Ask the American

Two of the Peace Corps' three goals have to do with sharing-sharing American culture in the country in which a volunteer serves and sharing that country's culture with friends and family back in the States. I'm sure back in the '60s it was all about sharing the American values of freedom of expression and of the markets, as opposed to the principles espoused by the Soviet Union. While there are occasionally chances to share about some of America's great attributes (diversity, freedom of expression, great infrastructure, an entrepreneurial and adventurous spirit), more often than not I end up sharing about much more quotidian details of American life (or at least American life as known by me). Even more often than any of this, I get asked questions about the United States that are hard to answer without a lot of explanation. Many of these questions are hard to answer because the US is so diverse. When I lived in Jiangsu Province in China, which has over 99% of the population of the same ethnicity, people didn't like my long answer as to what a 'normal' American looks like. These long answers often tests my listener's patience, but more than that leaves them wondering whether I have any clue what I'm talking about. Added on to these simple questions that don't have simple answers are often very obscure questions. In a country like Costa Rica, which has less people than the Houston area, it's not that hard to know all the really famous people in the country. Yet, for an American, there are easily more than a few world famous Americans I know little or nothing about. Needless to say, again, people doubt whether I'm really American or criticize my ignorance about my country. 

The other day, within about an hour, I received two questions from my host family that were worth writing down-mostly because they both left me thinking about them far after I had finished answering them. The first question occurred when JuanCarlos, the husband of my host mom's cousin's daughter and my next door neighbor, had an English question for me. He came into my room with a piece of paper on which was written: "please rejoin group at the embankment." I went straight into it, and did my best job to translate it-the only problem being that I wasn't quite sure how to translate embankment. In checking later, I realized I didn't really know exactly what an embankment was in English. Either way, I gave it my best shot, and Juan Carlos seemed to understand exactly what I meant. I hadn't a clue why he wanted this translated. I asked him, and when he explained for a "war genre video game" I immediately understood. Granted, there are students that want to learn English to communicate with English speakers in order to get a good job. Yet, this afternoon, the culture sharing needed of me was to figure out where to go in a video game. 

Later that same night, as we were watching Primer Impacto, a highly entertaining news program made in the US for Latin Americans living in the US, but shown throughout Latin America, they mentioned something that had been posted to Twitter. This prompted my host dad to ask what it was and then my host mom asked which was better Twitter or Facebook. Both my host parents have Facebook accounts, and are pretty active users. Hopefully you see the problem with this question, but I'll explain it nonetheless. As Twitter and Facebook serve similar, but different, purposes they can't really be compared so simply as one being better than the other. That's more or less how I answered-as my most mom cut in once or twice trying to get me to declare one as better than the other. My host mom and dad are pretty aware people, they've both worked in other countries, and although not very well educated, have been around the block once or twice. Yet, questions like this have happened more than once. I'm not really sure why questions like this get asked, or why people seem impatient with my explanation, but hey it's part of the job. 

Most wonderful about these two questions was that the impetus to my host dad's question about Twitter was that he had heard that it was where a photo of Sofia Vergara's thong could be seen-due to a wardrobe malfunction at the Emmys-and thus wanted to get involved with Twitter. 

Corcovado National Park

Rivaling the trip I took to Chirripó was a trip I took to Corcovado National Park in July. It was amazing-and reminded me yet again why so many people visit Costa Rica. I took advantage of the two week mid school year break to visit the park, as well as visit my friend Barton R., his host family, and his site. I stayed at his house a few days before we went to the park, and stayed two days afterward as well. It was super interesting visiting his host family-his host parents raise chickens-so the whole house smells of chicken poop-and right next to the sink where one brushes his teeth-they might be de-feathering and cleaning dead chickens. Because it was vacation-there was all sorts of family in and out of the house-add in five Peace Corps volunteers and it was pretty crazy.

I was lucky to visit the park with five amazing guys-Barton and Kyle from my TEFL group, and Elliot, Andrew, and Jonathan from the Community Economic Development group that formed the other half of Tico 21-my Peace Corps training group. Our trip to the park was three long days of action. We were up at 4:30 am the first day for an hour and a half ride into the park in Barton's host uncle's beat up pick up truck. Out of the truck, backpacks on, and we hit the beach. Corcovado National Park is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet-and maybe the most biodiverse in the Americas. In order to protect this-much of the trail to and from the ranger stations and the campsite are along the beach. We hiked all day-I want to say something like 21 K, arrived at the ranger station, got our tents set up, changed out of our shoes-and headed to the beach in hopes of spotting a bull shark or otters. Barton and Kyle saw the bull shark, I was too slow to follow their lead and spot it. We spent the second day making two different hikes in the trails surrounding the ranger station-as well as napping and relaxing. One of these hikes was at the break of dawn-as that's the best time to see animals. The third day we were up well before light again-made a quick breakfast-and were off to hike the 21 K back to the park entrance-where Barton's host uncle picked up back up.

Our packs weren't crazy heavy during the trip-and much lighter on the way out. At the ranger station there are rooms-but they were full-and we opted for the floor anyways. There is a large covered area where you can pitch tents-the park provides foam mattresses. We just brought mosquito nets and rope-which is pretty much a tent-just that everyone can see in! Along with that-we brought in all our food for the trip and packed out all our trash. Barton had a camp stove, so we could cook our breakfasts and dinners. We had oatmeal for breakfast, PB&Js for lunch, oranges, apples, granola bars, and trail mix for snacks, and spaghetti for dinner.

The main point of visiting Corcovado National Park is to see wildlife. We had great success. It has primary and secondary lowland tropical rainforest, which is pretty awesome to walk through and check out on its own-but the plethora of animals makes it a real treat. It's hard to take pictures of monkeys-as they move a lot between leaves and branches. Actually, this is true for most animals-so, I elected to take videos of some of the animals we saw. There are five of them, but most are short, and some even feature informative narration! Along with these animals, we also saw an anteater, squirrel monkeys, white faced capuchins, howler monkeys, a sea turtle (above), tinamou, great curassow, scarlet macaw, and all sorts of birds, lizards, and insects (lots of spider webs).

A video showing some of the ants we saw on the trip. Did you know the mass of all the ants on earth combined is about equal to the mass of all the humans?

It was crazy how close we could get to the coatis before they would scurry away. 

Monkeys are awesome. Many times the rest of the group had to get me going, because I could just stand and watch and take videos of them all afternoon. 

Corcovado National Park is full of hermit crabs. I couldn't not take a video. 

This is kind of the grand-daddy of the animals to see in the park (besides jaguars that no one sees), as there are only four species of tapir in the world, and the Baird's is the only one in Central America-and Corcovado National Park is by far the best place in Costa Rica to spot one. We saw a guide stopped ahead on the trail-he held his hand up to quiet us-and then we saw this tapir-super close-just going about its business eating vegetation. 

Costa Rica's Best Holiday

Since I last posted I've returned from Nicaragua and gone to the official close of service conference-which is a conference that Peace Corps volunteers go to three months before we officially end our service. But-as some people leave early-it's the last time my training group was all together in one room. In the middle of coming back from Nicaragua and going to the conference, was Costa Rican Independence day. I posted briefly about it last year, but this year was able to participate in activities at the elementary school and take my camera down to the parade. I went to the parade in downtown Limón-the port city 20 minutes away from my town. Sadly, my elementary school nor high school had marching bands-so they weren't in the parade.

(the raising of the lanterns)

(raising my lantern)

First, a brief note on the history. Due to both Spain being embroiled in a war with Napoleon (the Peninsular War) and growing tension between Mexican born and Spanish born citizens, Mexico fought a war of independence against Spain from 1810 to 1821. Taking advantage of a Spanish state troubled by the Peninsular War and much weakened in the Americas by the Mexican war, the Central American provinces-all ruled from Guatemala, drew up independence papers and declared themselves independent on September 15, 1821. So, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica all celebrate their independence day that day. One of the independence day activities is a torch run, which represents the original riders riding by torchlight to bring news of independence from Guatemala to the other countries.

(1st-3rd graders perform a traditional dance)

My host parents went to Heredia (a big city in the Central Valley) to spend the holiday with their kids and other relatives that live there, but there were some complications with an in-law, so there wasn't really space for me to go. But my host mom left me something important: a very well done lantern that my host brother had made the year before. This was important because last year, I was busy taking my pre-all night party nap and didn't get to to go to the lantern activity. 'Faroles' as they call them here are an important part of the independence day celebrations-especially in the elementary schools. Somewhat  like Paul Revere's ride, a women in Antigua Guatemala ran around, using her lantern, telling her neighbors of the great news of independence. So, elementary school kids make and decorate lanterns, then after an assembly and then singing the national anthem at six p.m., light their lanterns and raise them to celebrate independence. Because my host mom dusted off and showed me the lantern, I got to participate with the kids! I was also pretty excited that the national anthem was played with a slideshow-featuring pictures of Costa Rica-but having the lyrics at the bottom. Sadly, I haven't memorized the lyrics yet-but the slide show saved me!

As I said above, the next day-independence day itself-I went down to Limón Centro to catch the parade. I had been told it would start at ten, so went to catch a bus around 9:30. After seeing three buses pass by completely full (apparently everyone was going to the parade) , I got into a bus that was operating as a bus taxi with about 15 other people. I was worried I would have missed most of the parade when I arrived. Yet, true to Costa Rican form, despite arriving at 10:30, I was able to Limón's corpulent mayor lead off the parade. The parade was great-the bands here only play percussion instruments-which gives the parade a pretty amped up feeling. It was super hot-but I'll take that over rain. Lots of the kids had their hair pretty done up-both guys and girls. My favorite high schools were the ones where all the teachers helping with the parade (read: giving kids water) had coordinated outfits with the school's color. I grabbed two patty (spicy meat pastries) and a coke from my favorite patty place, as well as a Gatorade later-but after two hours baking in the sun and feeling the parade was about done-I grabbed the bus home. I've seen every holiday in Costa Rica, and independence day is by far the one they do best. More pictures at this link.

Quick update

I'm currently on vacation in Nicaragua with three friends from my training group. Soon after we return to Costa Rica we'll all attend the Close of Service Conference. Although I don't finish service officially until December 17, we meet three months in advance to start all the end of service paperwork. This is a government agency funded by you, the taxpayer, so there's plenty of it. As of the last email, it looks 38 of the original 46 volunteers that flew to Costa Rica on October 4, 2010 will be attending the conference. It will be great to see the whole group together, for the first time since our mid-service training in January.

Fun and interesting things have been happening (every once in a while-at least), and there will be plenty more posts to put up after my trip in Nicaragua, and I promise to get to that eventually, but for the meantime, my tumblr picture blog will update every day (moving its way through my service chronologically), so click on over there and check out those pictures.

http://kferr027.tumblr.com/