Dear sweet people,
Remember that other Peace Corps I was in for two years in Nicaragua...well, I think I am in the other one....:)  I hope some of you are old enough to remember that line from the movie Private Benjamin when Goldie Hawn joined the Army and they have her marching in the rain with a heavy pack, etc. and she says something about wanting to be in that "other" army( the one the recruiters had told her about, the one with the condos on the water), well, I am embarrassed to say this since I am here on the taxpayers' dime, but........I'm in that " other army" Goldie was talking about. 

This is my first blog post from Sofia, Bulgaria.  I have been here exactly two weeks ( as of yesterday) and it has been all good.  I am in a decent apartment but will be moving to another one closer to the center of the city and closer to my work assignment.  I don't have any photos to send you right now but  my assignment is working in a clinic which is part of the New Bulgarian University which is a private university here.  Its a liberal arts school with a very active arts program - I went to a play there last night which was presented in Bulgarian so I did not understand much at all but it was still very enjoyable.  Kids are kids and they were terriffic.  I am going to ask my language teacher to translate the playbill for me so maybe I can read the play on line.  I can't even read the cyrillic language well enough to decipher the playwright's  name.

Anyway, the clinic is part of one of the University's education degree programs which offers  a dual degree in speech therapy and social work and they opened this clinic to give their students an opportunity to have some clinical experience.  The director of the clinic program is an associate professor of speech disorders at the University. She is a medical doc with a Ph.D. in speech disorders.   Many of the very young children who are enrolled in the clinic seem to be on the autistic spectrum and others have a variety of communication disabilities ( one girl is deaf and has huge behavioral problems in school) ...not sure of them all.  So, I am assisting with the therapy in a variety of ways but another of my assignments is to help them identify funding sources locally so that the clinic can continue.  The university provides the therapy offices and space, utilities etc but the salaries of the therapists apparently are paid by the fees charged the students who come to the clinic for therapy.

The therapists seem to be very dedicated so they are very easy to work with.  Also, almost everyone I come into contact with ( other than the little children) speaks English which really makes things a lot easier.  I am trying to learn some basic phrases in Bulgarian, like "how much does this cost ?" but I am not going to work real hard on that...I am going to spend most of my energy on the goals at the clinic and working with various groups who want to practice their English.  I start next Wednesday with a group at the "American Corner" in the public library.

Today I went on a venture with another PC volunteer to see the ski mountain that is about  1/2 hour from downtown Sofia.  Its Vitosha and beautiful.  We rode the city bus up to the bottom of the lift and had planned to ride the lift up but decided to eat lunch in a beautiful restaurant at the base rather than get on the lift.  It looked pretty cold but we might do it next weekend.  I am attaching some photos of our outing.  You'll see what I mean about this being the "other army."

Turns out I can't attach the photos from home as the internet connection is too slow so I'll go into the university tomorrow morning early and use their fast wifi to post the photos.

More later...

Pat

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