Todavia tenemos temblores

If you can't tell =), my Spanish is getting better.   ( We still have tremors)

Anyhow, this is the promised update.  We still have tremors and mild eruptions.  But, not in my department of Leon so they brought all of us home to Leon last Monday but the volunteers from Chinandega, which is the department in which the active volcano, San Cristobal, is located are still on evacuation.  It is one week today and I am sure they are all more than ready to go back to their sites.  The first couple of days were sort of fun in a real nice hotel in Granada, but since then they have been sent to live with other volunteers or training site families so its not as cushy as that nice hotel, Hotel Alhambra, for any of you who are familiar with Granada.

BTW, while I was in Granada I ran into a woman from Denver.  I noticed her because her golden retriever was stretched out on the tile floor, panting while lying down.  She was shocked that I knew it was a golden as most people in Nicaragua ( with good cause) don't know the breed.  I was a little sorry for him, he looked so hot, but she says he is getting used to the change in temp and I am sure she gives him a cool place to rest at home.  We had a nice chat.  She retired early from some very highly paid job with a .com or IT firm and is looking for a place to live for a while.  She rented her home in Wash Park in Denver, so I am sure she is doing fine financially.  I promoted Peace Corps response to her with her IT skills but not sure what she'll do.  We exchanged Emails...don't know if we'll stay in touch or not but she seems like a real nice person.  Her name is Amanda so of course, she is very cool.

Anyway, can't say much here as we don't have electricity right now and my battery is runnng down.

Bottom line, I leave in a week for a week in US with my sis for serveral days and then she and I are driving to PA to meet up with our kids, grandkids, their families and our brother John and his daughter.  BTW, if you are in Ithaca, NY in early November, he is doing the musical/ play 1776 -Days of Revolution, which I am I coming home early to see....it will be worth it !!!! And on the closing night, Nov 6 we are having a bash to celebrate the reelection of Obama !!!!  Wouldn't miss that for all the world. 

Battery almost gone...no fan, very hot, going to take another shower.....

Pat

Temblores aqui !!!

Dear Friends of Mother Earth,

Well, she is finally fed up with us down here....and she is blowing her top !!

My companjeros and I have been evacuated out of our sites and about 45 of us are in a hotel in Granada...and its quite a nice hotel !!!  At first they collected us all and took us to Managua but then Managua got some more temblores so they loaded us back in a bus and brought us all to Granada which apparently has not suffered temblores in the past.

Also, we have a volcano, Mt. Cristobel, in Chinandega, near Leon, which is sending up a strong plume of smoke or ash and some lava has been reported.  I guess they'll be able to see more once it gets dark.  People were saying , "its time" for an eruption of some size so, quien sabe.

I guess when the earth shifts with a temblor, the volcanos react too.  Anyhow, as far as I know, Peru has had some temblores and I just heard on the TV that Costa Rica has had 4 or 5 late today of some significant size.  So....we have to wait and see.  Now they are telling us that we will be here until Monday at least.  It will all depend on what the volcano and mother earth decides to do.

We got the notice of the evacuation on our cell phones about 10 am this morning and we finally got into the hotel here about 6:30.  It was a tiring day of shuffling around but at least we are in a very very nice place for another day or so.  The other volunteers are very nice and its a great group to be with.

My neighbor is in charge of feeding my cats until I get back and I have asked her by text message to tell Helen, the little girl I am teaching to read, where I am and when I plan to be back. 

I'll post more news when I have something definitive.

Atentamente,
Pat

University of Nicaragua in Leon and Casa de Cultura

I am attaching some photos I took recently.  Maybe I've already posted some others of the U. of N. but I just LOVE this building.  Its the administration building and there are classrooms in it too. 

My Spanish classes are in the Casa de Cultura so I have included some photos of it too.  This used to be a private residence but the owners were Somosa supporters so they fled, abandoning their home,  to the US as the Sandinista revolution gained momentum in Leon in the late 70s.  I guess they still live in the US but in the 80s or 90s the US govt apparently gave Nicaragua the money to pay the family for this house and the title went to the Mayor of Leon and now its a cultural center.  Apparently there is some dispute about how much money was paid for the house ( a Sandinista told me it was 2 or 3 times the actual value of the property). 

The front of the UNAN administration/classroom  building

This is the exterior of the Casa de cultura.

Exterior of the Casa de Cultura showing their list of activities and the sign for the Spanish language school ( yeah, I know, hard to read)

Obviously, the now empty swimming pool wiht overlooking balcony and the archway going to changing rooms, now bathrooms. 

One of the interior garden areas, pool is at this end.  The gate allows access for cars from that street.  The Casa is on a corner.

Open stairway with pretty ironwork

Mural at the top of the stairs

Anyhow, the pictures are pretty much self explanatory and the house must have been fabulous as the architecture is beautiful altho keeping up the maintenance is difficult.  I don't know what kind of funding they have, probably not much.  I think I have posted earlier a photo of the painting of Regan with a gun sitting on a Nicaraguan native woman's shoulders, she has slit her wrists and there are  little caricatures of Kissinger and Haig dressed as court jesters standing at her feet.  That painting is hanging in the Casa totally unprotected, altho it is under the overhang in the courtyard.  It should be in a much more protected place but......funding.

This won't knock your socks off but...

OK, I had to get this down in writing.  I just got home by way of a 15 person van with 22 people in it, plus the driver.  I don't usually use the vans because I have worries about the condition of the tires, they drive too fast and they often overload them.

Well, today I went to Leon for a Spanish class which got cancelled so I went to see Ice Age 4 in Spanish...it was good and I could understand a lot, not all, of it.

When it was over,   I asked the woman next to me ( she is a doctor from Malpaisillo who I have met at a couple different events here) when the last bus to Malpaisillo left.  She told me 5:30.  So I went to the grocery store for a couple things and sort of took my sweet ole time getting to the bus.  When I got there, I learned that it had left at 5, not 5:30 so I hustled over to the part of the mercado where the vans load up and luckily there was one there, with the doctor and her daughter in it.

So, we filled up the seats, plus the three that are contrived by putting these little homemade chair things in the aisle, resting on the aisle seats on each side...so we had 18 plus the driver.  I was not thrilled, but I was not panicked.  As we were backing out, a young couple showed up who clearly needed to go to Malpaisillo, so they got in and sat on a bench behind the driver,  facing the rest of us, ( so thats 20), then as we were pulling out of Leon, on the highway, two guys were standing by the side of the road who the driver recognized as being from Malpaisillo so he stopped for them.  They actually stood on the exit step with their backs to the sliding door.  That brought us to 22 and I was not thrilled. 

So, we took off  but....... stopped to get gas.  All I could think of was the added weight of a tank full of gas on those marginal tires.  But that was not the worst of it.  He did not turn off the engine and we people ( sheepeople) sat in the van, windows closed, doors closed , sweating our guts out.  I am a little hesitant to just blurt stuff out like " Why don't we open the door and the windows."  so I leaned over the kid in the "aisle" seat and said to the Doctor, " Porque los ventanas y la puerta estan cerrado ?" 

Well, god bless her she had fallen asleep but she shook off the sleep and blurted out something like, "Open those windows, its hot as hell in here." and the windows flew open.  The two guys standing i n the door opened it and stepped out to breathe.  Its amazing...its like they don't even notice when they are sweating.

So then we had air but the whole van starting rocking.  I looked out and the driver who was filling the tank was pushing the van to make it rock. 

So, again, I leaned over to the doctor and said, "Whats this all about?"  She laughed and said aloud in Spanish, " they think if they rock it they get more in,  a tanks a tank..its like a stomach, when its full, its full."  and she got a good laugh with that one.

So then I thought about the rocking causing  a spark with the metal against metal and I whispered to her," El moto no es apagado", she listened for a minute and then blurted out something about "explotado" and she got another good laugh."  They laughed !!!!!!!!!

Needless to say, the driver got back in, the two guys got in and closed the door behind them and off we went.

We made it to Malpaisillo....   this time !!!

Its been over two months since I wrote on this blog and I think that is a sign that sights and events down here have become my new normal and who wants to write about much less read about normal.

From time to time I am moved by a particularly tender moment ( usually involving a child) or a particularly shocking moment ( usually involving an animal) and plan to go home and blog but I have not done so, obviously.

This morning I have something to say that is not all that shocking but it will give a flavor of things here.

It started raining last night and as far as I could tell, it rained all night sometimes softly and sometimes hard.  I was awake a lot during the night....not because of the rain but because of two male cats who have started dining here on a regular basis.  Its OK if they choose different seating times, but when one crawls in thru the missing glass panel in the window to discover that the other one is already "a dentro"  all Hell breaks loose and its not easy for any cat to escape thru the same 4 inch wide space that he had just casually crawled thru.  When this happens in the "living room" which is about 5 feet from the "bedroom" and separated by only a partial wall, my two little innocent spayed females, Doris and Javiera, run like the wind and pounce on my bed or onto my mosquito net.  Either way, I then become part of the drama.  But, it is usually over as quickly as it begins ( not counting the gutteral sounds which emanate from the bushes under the escape window for the next several minutes.)

So, somehow I slept in this morning and awoke with a start at 7:15,  My usual time to amanacer is 5:15 due to the barking dogs and the vendors calling out their wares in the street in front of my house,( which is also separated from the street by only a partial wall).  But anyhow, it was great to sleep in and I must have been really sleeping soundly as I did not hear or sense the two cats who I discovered when I opened my eyes sleeping in my mosquito net right above my head.  It looked from my perspective like two bags of potatoes hanging in a hammock....they must love it...it looked very comfy. 

So, I had an English class scheduled  at 8:30 so I rushed around and headed to the school on my bike ( the rain had pretty much ended) only to discover that school had been cancelled due to "lluvia."  The kids and the teachers don't go to school when it rains during the night before.   Actually, if it had cleared up and the sun had been shining, they probably would have had school but few kids would have come.  But, it was still very dreary and sprinkling around 7:30 so they just all stayed home.

On my way home, I stopped at the market and bought a libra of tomatoes, a libra of onions, a dozen bananas and a jug of water.  Peace Corps warns us to be especially vigilant about not drinking local water during the rainy season.  The well water often gets polluted when the rios get full and the  ground gets saturated.  I have been drinking bottled water all along but some of the younger braver volunteers try to go native and eat and drink like the locals. 

One last unfortunate occurrence this morning....as I was riding my bike home I noticed a kid coming toward me on a bike in a cute hat and an umbrella in his hand.  I watched him as he rode up next to a dog who was innocently standing in the road, not in his way, facing the side of the road, and saw the kid reach out with his umbrella and poke or stab ( I couldn't tell how hard it was) the dog in the side.  Of course, the dog yelped and of course, I yelled at the kid.

 There is so much of that kind of thoughtless infliction of pain on animals.  I try to understand it as a function of the extreme poverty...that so many people are so powerless and in such pain themselves,  that they get some kind of relief by inflicting pain on someone or something else.  But, try as I might, I still don't get it.

Based on what I read in the paper, there is a lot of abuse of all types in the more rural parts of this country, but here in my town, it seems like the kids are well cared for and treated appropriately.  There is one woman in the mercado I've seen grab her son by his ear and twist it very cruelly so much so that he screams and when she lets go he rubs it and cries for a while. But, other than that I don't recall having seen a child hit or disciplined physically by an adult. 

I have two other classes today - one of which was this morning so I am sure its been cancelled.  I am building a garden and vivero with a 4th grade class at the Catholic school ( more about that school later) and we were going to work on that but of course can't after that heavy rain even if they had held school.  My other class ( actually three classes) are this afternoon with 7th graders.  We have a video about violence in "noviazgo" relationships ( boy/girl friends) that I have been taking to Ciencia de vida classes in the secondary school with great success.  They kids love to watch it and depending on the skill of their teacher, they have a good discussion afterwards.

Finally, regarding the Catholic school where I work.  I may have mentioned this earlier, but I was shocked to see how few resources they had, what disrepair the buildings were in, the kids have no books and the teachers even less.  The teachers are paid less than the public school teachers ( that means less than $200 a month)  and sometimes they are not paid on time if the coffers are low.  The kids pay about 100 cordobas a month, thats about $5.00.  They have a preschool class that has three levels of preschool mixed together ( 3, 4 and 5 year olds) and then then have one class of each grade 1-6 in the primary and 1st year thru 5th year in the secondary.  They have a really great PE/Music teacher and they have a computer lab with 5 computers so they sit in groups of sometimes 6 at each computer and take turns using it.  They have a partime English teacher so each class gets 1/2 hour once a week.  The teachers seem genuinely dedicated and seem to do a great job with VERY little.

Anyhow, I heard somewhere that this town had a sister city in the US which had given generously to the local public library.  So, it occurred to me that our sister city might have a catholic church that could help out our catholic school.

To make a long story short, I did find out that the catholic church in the sister city had indeed been very generous with the catholic school here many years ago but had gotten badly burned by the "loss" of quite a bit of money which was under the control of the local padre and furthermore , had lost more money when the local farmers had defaulted on their farm loans ( in a program set up by the catholic sister church).  I was told that when they learned that "someone" had absconded with the school/church money they decided they would not pay back their loans either.  There's some logic there ???  But being a country flooded with relief agencies and NGOs does something to the folks....

Not sure of the details, but that padre "left" and a new padre came but he "left" too after what some people told me was having "inappropriate" conduct with young people in the church.  So, now they have a padre who is a monsignor and who the school directora ( principal) tells me is of a much higher level than the previous two.   So, after some detective work and communicating by email with some folks in the sister city who had worked on the public library funding, I made contact with the catholic church of days gone by and have reestablished a relationship between them and the local church/school.  We have a SKYPE meeting scheduled for July 5 between the school directora and the Monseignor and the Human Development committee of the church in NY.   So, I count that as a success.....they are few and far between, unfortunately. 

I did go on a little junket to the Carribean Coast of Nicaragua and will attach some photos from that.
Before that, I had spent  a couple days at San Juan del Sur with a former PC vol. who was in a Spanish Language school there for a month. 
All for now,
Appreciate what you have,
Pat

A tree in our town park which just has to be the inspiration for the Trufula trees in the Lorax.



A group of the teachers from the Catholic School doing an inservice.

Pedestrian bridge from one part of San Jual del Sur to the other.  One side has the commercial stuff and the other side is exclusive homes and condos

San Juan del Sur

San Juan del Sur

The immediate view from the room where I was staying in San Juan del Sur.   A more panoramic view is of the lovely beach and sunset but this is the reality of the community, for the most part.

The longer view from my room, averting ones eyes from the immediate surrounding.  Tho you can see at the bottom of the picture the fence lining the foot path up the hillside which is the only access....no roads up this hill.

I took this in the small plane on the way to the caribbean coast.  My counterpart, Adelayda, sat right behind the pilots.  TSA would go nuts.....no security on this flight. 

In the port of Bluefields, on the carribean coast.  Plantanos either going out or coming in.

A Moravian church in Lagoon de Perla.  The Moravians have a lot of churches on this Coast.

A colorful little photo of the harbor in Laguna de Perla.

My street again with my neighbor ( who is very cute but an awful brat) buying an ice cream from the cart.  This old man pushes this cart all over town in all kinds of weather.  The brand is Eskimo which they pronounce Eskeemo with the accent on the kee.

These clever children are swinging on this trash receptacle which is good use of it since its bottom has rusted out and the trash goes straight thru.  The kids are very very hard on things...don't understand that but trying.

A load of firewood on an ox cart at the end of my street.  The water standing is wash water directly discharged into the street in violation of health dept. regs. but...........there is little enforcement of many regs.

Good ( and incredible) news

The guy who pinched my mochilla and Iphone out of my bicycle basket, is in the Malpaisillo jail !!!!!  His lawyer paid me a visit today to ask what I would need to drop the charges.  Turns out he is in jail for crimes "mas grave" than mine so I told her I wanted my phone, mediation and for him to be court ordered to return to high school. He's only 16.  If he's convicted and sentenced to jail for  whatever he is charged with he could go to jail for 4-5 years.  I don't think I would wish Nicaraguan prison on anyone.....unless his other crimes were really heinous.  Anyway, the mediation is scheduled for next Friday and I guess that is when I'll learn whether I will get my phone back.

I am just astounded.  I thought it was all over...done deal. 

Pat

I forgot this....

We both worked as volunteer mediators at Neighborhood Dispute Settlement in Harrisburg...tho at different times.  We know a lot of the same people in the legal/mediation communities in and around Harrisburg. 

Incredible

Small world

I was invited to join another volunteer yesterday for lunch as she wanted to introduce me to another volunteer from her group who is in the "older" category.  Well, get this.   The other volunteer, Carol, is exactly my age, she practiced law for 25 years in Carlisle, PA, graduated from DU law school ( night division) one year after I did ( 84 and 83) and ...of course...is here as a PC volunteer in Nicaragua.

Now, that's a  pretty good coincidence !!!!!

Pat

I have not died or gone native

OK, I have no excuse for the hiatus.....I have a series of them and when I look at them as a group, none of them should be accepted.

I have not posted for a long time and I want to thank my friends who emailed and asked about my well being.  I was so embarrassed to respond with my lame excuses and now I am finally blogging.

I have gotten a lot busier... my Spanish is a lot better so I am able to spend more time in the community just chatting.  My work in the schools has taken a little different direction so now I am working with high school kids too.  I know my way around Nicaragua a little better so now I am taking off on weekends to see some of the other parts of the country.  And, to add to these lame excuses, we have power failures and internet signal fails on a frequent basis.

But, to be truthful, I also downloaded 4 seasons of Breaking Bad from Itunes and later 2 seasons of 6 Feet Under and watching those has not helped.

Enough already.   Last night I went with my counterpart to a Nicaraguan wedding ( boda) out in the country.  We took her family's camioneta ( pickup) and it was quite a ride. First we had to jump start the truck and then we went to buy diesel ( which you buy from the same house that sells milk/cheese products so you can imagine the variety of smells when you walk by their gate) which they have in a big steel drum and they dip into with your container ( quart, gallon whatever you are buying this time) and then they pour it into your vehicle.    It was dirt roads all the way and it was about a one hour trip.  Lots of dust in our wake and in our vehicle should we have the bad luck to come upon another vehicle.  We only saw one other truck and several motorcycles, a  couple head of cattle and a couple bicycles. It was pretty remote.

But, the boda was another story.  Apparently everyone one in the comarca is expected to attend so there must have been 3 or 4 hundred people there.  The groom's family provides food and drink for all of them and later the obligatory cake.  It was not a "sit down" dinner but they did have some tables and chairs set up.  They also had a bunch of plastic chairs set up around the dance floor.  Everything was outside, of course, and this is the dry season so there is no chance of rain.  They obviously had watered the whole place down very thoroughly as there was no dust from the hundreds of people dancing to the blasting music under the giant screen showing the music videos. There was the typical lighting and the bride in her white dress ( which I watched sweep across the open dirt for several hours) so I am sure it was filthy by the end. There were the usual older folks sitting around in little groups watching the activities. All in all, not too unlike what we do.  The only different part is that they somehow can put this all together and have a wonderful time knowing that their homes have dirt floors, they cook over open fires fueled by wood, the kids will likely not get further than 6th grade in school, etc.  This all seems so hard for me to understand.

  Anyhow , we left around 10:30 and brought a couple from the wedding back with us to Malpaisillo.  They rode in the back of the pickup the whole way and when we got home, they climbed out in their wedding clothes with their little overnight gym bag and walked a few blocks to the mercado where they were going to sleep for the night .  No, there is no mo or ho tel, they would have just curled up together in a corner to wait for the first bus in the morining which is about 5:30 am.  Ohhhh, to be young again. 

Otherwise, last week I had a great meeting with 2 ladies from the community and one of the teachers from the Catholic school to plan a vivero ( nursery) project for the kids at the Catholic school. One of my goals with  Peace Corps is education about the environment and to do that thru teaching the kids how to collect seeds, extract and dry them, and plant a tree nursery in the schools.   I was sort of paralyzed about how to get started when I learned that the mother of one of the boys has a "commercial" vivero at her house.  Anyhow it was crazy for me to be teaching about viveros when we had an expert in our midst.  Then, later when chatting with the lady who sells me my newspaper, I discovered that she and her husband ( who has been dead many years) were part of the Sandinista agricultural movement back in the early 80s, starting and running agricultural cooperatives, and that they used to do viveros with the retired people in the communities to plant trees in their communities. ( she later explained to me that many of the trees they planted were wiped out by hurricane Mitch- that is so typical of the luck of this country....one step forward, two steps back)   So, I got these women together with a teacher and we planned the whole thing, with me doing very little.  I have decided that my primary goal with the Peace Corps in to teach the teachers how to use the resources they already have, rather than start new projects which likely will dissolve when I leave.

Incidentally, the woman who has the commercial vivero ( Sandra) just got back from 21 days in England.  She went there as a representative of her local cooperative which grows sesame and she was hosted in England by the company they grow for.  I don't know all the details, but it just another one of those contradictions..she lives in house with a dirt floor, they cook over wood, their sewage and gray water goes into a hole in the ground, etc. and they fly to England for 21 days of meetings.   It just blows my mind.

Incidentally, as I write this , a horse just galloped by my front door. 

One other random incident....I got robbed again;   its been about a month now so I have given up hope of getting my Iphone back.  Anyhow, I am partly to blame for this one.  I have a basket on the back of my bike, which I got originally to carry plastic bottles in when I was hot on the plastic bottle recycling kick.  ( as a side light here....there is a man in town who collects them and recycles so now I take my bottles to him.  He used to be a teacher but he is of the wrong political party so he lost his job teaching when the politics changed)    I have a plastic bag hanging on my front gate and my neighbors are putting their bottles in there for me to take to him.  Also, a kid showed up the other day at my door with a big bag of bottles so I gave him an  apple.  A few hours later 2 kids showed up with bags of bottles and I  gave them each 1/2 an apple.   As luck would have it, a couple hours later 4 kids showed up with bottles and I gave them a bag of peanuts to share.  I was REALLY scared about what would come next but no one has been back since.  Either they didn't like my peanuts or they got distracted by something else. But, maybe I made a little progress on bottle recycling here)

Back to the robbery:  So, I was riding my bike home one night, just before dark, with my mochilla ( back pack) in my basket behind me and a kid came up beside me on his bike, deftly leaned over and snatched up my mochilla and took off into the semi darkness.  At first , I thought it was a joke and that it was a kid I knew just teasing me. But, no, it was for real.  I chased him for a while and I think he was really shocked when he turned back to look and saw grandma bearing down on him cause he really took off then.  We got into some darker parts of the street so I turned back.

I went to our local police to report it ( with the help of my counterpart) and they loaded us into their pickup and took us for a hair raising ride around the area looking for the kid.  Of course I did not see his face as he swept by me with my mochilla so I could not identified him even if we had found a suspect ( unless he was actually using my phone at the time.)

Anyhow, I did not get my phone back but another kid did find my mochilla tossed into a basuero ( open trash pit) and he returned it to the police and then his mother came to my house and told me about it so I gave him a reward.  My wallet ( sans the 50 cordobas which must have been a deep disappointment to the thief since they all think we gringos carry wads of money around with us) was there along with my appointment book, journal, copy of my passport so I was pleased to get all that back.  What has been so rewarding about this story is that people all over town, including those who I have never spoken too or even noticed, have commented to me about my robbery and expressed their sorrow for it.  A random girl in one of my high school classes the other day even knew that it was an Iphone that had been stolen....so I guess that makes me a legend of some sort around here for a few days at least.

In closing,  recently I have had the pleasure of meeting an adventuous Italilan couple who are "homesteading" on about 7 hectares outside of town ( they are currently living in tents while they build their house with stones ,etc from the property) and have agreed to take my 2 cats when I leave.  I also spent some quality time with a delightful young lady from Austin, Texas who was down here for a month getting some "public health" experience for the master's in Nursing she is working on at U. of Texas.  She commented to me that she was amazed and impressed by how hard the nurses down ehre work.  She is also a flight attendant  ( asafata in Spanish) with Frontier Airlines and lived in Denver a while.  Next, she is going to Barcelona for a year on a Rotary International scholarship so no one can ever use lack of resources as an excuse for getting stuck in their town.  She knows how to get out t here and LIVE !!  She will be a great nurse or diplomat or whatever she decides to do.  I tried to sell the Peace Corps to her and all the benefits she could later reap with Peace Corps on her resume.....so, who knows?  She would be a great representative of the US, should she decide to join up.

That's it for now.  I did get approval to come home in Sept. for our family reunion in Port Royal, PA so that was great news.

Love to all...count your blessings.
Pat

A cacao fruit containing the seeds we are going to plant to grow more trees.  This what they look like before they are roasted and turn chocolate colored.  These are the hands of the older woman who, with her deceased husband, were true fighters in the Sandinista rebellion.

My attempt at artistic photo of rooftops out the window of a hostal in Leon.

An intersection in Leon

I met a family of 4 traveling thru the Americas roundtrip from Ontario on two bikes with two kids for a year.

Another view of the bikes. The family was across the street having ice cream and letting the kids play on the playground equipment.

Javier trying to find a cool sleeping position.

This is a Hicaral tree...the fruit sprout  out of the bark.

A little dance class at the public primary school.

This sad little bird calls out " Buenas" all day in his little nasal bird sounding voice to people who walk by.

A

Lisa , a young PC vol who joined me for brunch at El Convento Hotel in Leon.   I was meeting my Spanish teacher afterwards.  She is from Maine and is here teaching English with PC.

a typical little house

another typical scene

A group of kids off to school.

Review of Christmas and New Year's in Malpaisillo

OK, the easy news to start with is that Peace Corps is "closing" its program in Honduras.  Apparently, Honduras has the highest crime or homicide rate in the world and the narcotafficking has gotten totally out of control.  Technically, and this is in the newspapers so I'm not violating any secrecy code, PC is sending all the volunteers home for 30 days while the staff visits all the sites to make sure they are safe but its not likely that the volunteers will be allowed to return for the forseeable future. 

El Salvador and Guatemala are not in very good shape either but they are not closing those programs at this time.  I am told that Nicaragua is not in danger because it has always had and continues to have a very strong police force and Army which has been able to keep a cap on the organized drug trafficking here.  Hope so.  In the paper they report that there is a lot of it on our East/carribean coast but not so much on our side, the west side, where the bulk of the population and commerce ( and PC volunteers ) are.   We do have some volunteers on the carribean coast but apparently they are are in places that are considered safe. 

Another christmas and new years has passed here and they were both much as I recall last year.  I spent both in site without much excitement...which was just fine.  On Christmas day, I went to the beach with my counterpart and her family...photos attached.  I took along another volunteer from a nearby town who has just recently gotten here but I was really disappointed in her manners.  Never said thank you or in any way showed appreciation to the family.  I won't be inviting her anywhere soon again. 

One thing I have noticed is that there are a lot of families visiting around and that many people take a chicken with them when they go to visit on Christmas.  The chicken is usually hanging upside down along side the person, or off the side of a motorcycle, sometimes stashed away in a sack under the seat in the bus and you don't even know they are there until they get pulled out to get off the bus,  The most unlucky ones are tied on top of the bus for what I am sure is a harrowing ( because it is harrowing inside the bus ) ride to their final destination.  Hopefully, they don't know it will be their final destination.  Anyhow, as much as I feel sorry for the chicken, it is sweet that people bring them with them when they go to visit.  A little bit of a skinny  thigh or wing is treasured by many people here and I am sure is considered to be a quite nice gift.

On Christmas eve, I went into Leon and had lunch with another "over 50" volunteer and her daughter who is visiting from CA.  That was nice....a diversion.  I am actually used to the bus craziness...it does not even phase me anymore.   I have learned how to pick and choose which bus to get on and where to sit or stand so as they say....knowledge is power....that even applies to riding a bus.

 One bus story.....I got on this bus early so I was in the seat right behind the driver...close to the door, etc. and a young woman got on assisting an older woman and it turned out that she was just putting the older woman on the bus..probably sending on to another sibling somewhere.  Anyhow, this older woman started mumbling about " cosa de horno"  ( translates literally as "thing from the oven")  clearly she wanted a cosa de horno.  There are a lot of women in the mercado/bus station who sell all types of food, including cosas de horno.  Well, this older woman knew what she wanted and was relentless.  No matter what anyone was selling, as they passed her she tugged at their arm or shirt and babbled, Cosa de horno.cosa de horno.  One young woman assured her that she would send over the woman who sells cosas de horno, but.....she never came.  After about .5 hour, the bus started pulling out and the older woman looked forlornly at  the mercado passing in the windows, continuing to babble cosa de horno, cosa de horno.    Soo sad.  She never got a cosa de horno.  But, happy ending.  As the bus pulled out and turned the corner on to the main road, leaving all cosa de horno vendors behind, she opened her little suitcase type thing,  pulled out a bottle of coca cola and a bag of chips and chowed down.   All's well that ends well. 

Another bus story, I went to Managua on the 30th for a couple things and at the end of the day got on the wrong bus heading back to Leon.  It was a bus  to Leon but it was going on the caretera viejo ( old highway)  rather than the caretera nuevo ( new highway).  Well, when they say viejo...they mean viejo.. I did not know of the alternate route until I was too far into the venture to get off and take a different bus.  I am pretty sure when the gobierno build the neuvo caretera, they gave up all interest in the viejo caretera.  Most of the time, we were riding, in a full sized school bus, alongside the asphalt because there were too many holes ( big ones) in the asphalt and the dirt shoulder was much more usable.  Problem was, oncoming traffic often was vying for the same shoulder we were on so I would spot this huge 18 wheeler heading at us at  a reasonably fast speed, but, just as we were about to collide head on, one or the other of us would find an alternate route, perhaps on to the asphalt, perhaps not, perhaps onto the shoulder of the shoulder.  Very exciting !!!  It took exactly twice as long as the normal trip, so that is 3 hours, but I saw some new countryside and got to Leon in time to get the last bus back to Malpaisillo.  Another case of alls well that ends well.   Didn't have anything else pressing.

My best story to report is that when Helen came to me for her first class after returning from Managua where she had been with her mother for at least 3 weeks, she rememberedEVERYTHING !!!!!!  It was so great...I kept smiling at her, and saying how good she was doing, and then finally I just grabbed her and gave her a big ole hug.  I'm lucky I didn't break some of her ribs..she is very skinny.  But, she clearly was excited too ...a she was reading certain words aloud, she even seemed to surprise herself once  in awhile.  IT was so cute.  When she started with me,   she guessed at every word she saw...she had no way of figuring out a word.  Now she is sounding them out and counting syllables and telling me how one word is different from another....its amazingly wonderful.

This all makes me want to go back to teaching reading but reading in Spanish is soooo much easier than English.   Its a whole different ballgame, but of course still doable...but the rewards are slower coming and it takes a whole lot more work on the part of the teacher. 

Now for some photos;

This is a shot of a hotel in Leon where PC had a meeting.  Its especially charming.

Another view in the same hotel.

I was sitting on the stage, looking out to the kids and parents at the 6th grade graduation at one of my schools.  They do the 6th grade up big as many of the kids don't go any further in school, and many don't make it this far.

This is my other reading student, Marin.  He will be 8 at the end of January and does not know his color words, number words, and lots of other stuff.  He does know some vowel sounds so we have something to work with.  He loves the milk I give him and he found this puzzle on my shelf and could not do anything else until we did it together.   Hes making good progress...slow, but steady.

Doris relaxing in the good chair.

Loading up the truck to go to the beach on Christmas day.  I got to ride in the front since they know PC won't let us ride in the back of pickups.  Its actually illegal for anyone to ride back there but its another law that is not enforced.  Everyone does it. At least  all these people could sit, often they are standing cheek to cheek holding on to that bar.

The Cruz Roja was giving rides in their boats as a fund raiser.  Of course, there were no life jackets.  I just watched.

This was a public well where you could turn that wheel to get water to wash off the sand.  Notice the guy lying in the dirt.  He is drunk, passed out and people just walked around him as tho he was not there.  I tried to get someone to help me drag him into the shade away from the well, but no takers. 

The significance of this photo...thats a goddam tortuga egg.  Yep, illegal but served openly and this family, which is supposed to be "enlightened" ordered them.  What they do is poke a hole in the shell and then suck the raw egg out...yummy !!!

The fishing boats came in and threw these rayas up on the sand.  I think there were 3 or 4 of them.  Their tales had been cut off so maybe they were the stinging type.  Don't know...but so much killing and abuse of animals...its gets sickening after awhile.  The fishermen stuck their fingers in their eyes to pick them up and throw them on the beach...hopefully they were already dead.

The people gathered around when the fishing boats pulled in.

Loading up the truck about 4 pm getting ready to head home.  Pretty sunset.

Its a little hard to read ( I don't like to get my cell phone out too much in the mercado) but the bus is called Arco de Noe, Noah's Ark for the uninitiated.

Ththththththats all folks,
Pat