Beans, Corn and Tortillas

Nicaragua! I arrived here on the 10^th on October and it has been pretty awesome from the start. We were placed in with the current agriculture training group that was already in progress. We started a sort of independent training program because our Spanish levels were acceptable and a lot of the training is similar to what we did in Bolivia. At times it is a bit redundant but over all it is a great experience. Even now and again we have to met with a language facilitator and go over some of the differences in the culture and language but this is usually and very entertaining time. The differences in the language are not that great but you have to get used to the words that they use here and sometimes it can be a bit difficult changing. For example, something as simple as saying goodbye is different. In Bolivia the word adios is sparsely or never used. Here they use it not only when saying goodbye but also as something you would say to a passerby. Some how in English if you just say bye and nothing else it just does not fit.

Ride your bike get water!

During training I am living with a really nice family. They are a be traditional Latin family in that they have their grandparents and other extended family members living with them too. My host-mom is a great cook and I just had the best carne asada ever. The potato to Bolivians is the bean to Nicaraguans. In Bolivia there is usually always a potato at every meal. Here you get beans three meals a day. On the bright side my host-dad is a farmer with lots of fruits trees so I get fresh juice all the time.

El Tigre... kind of looks like the windows desktop

Coffee beans...

I just come back from the place I will be living for the next two years. It is a little place called El Tigre in the department of Jinotega. There is only about 45 families and 500 people in the whole community but it is spread out. My host family there is really cool. They don’t have a lot of money but they are always smiling, singing and laughing. My host dad is missing one of his front teeth so when he smiles it is even funnier. One day on my site visit we were coming back from the fields and we stopped at an orange tree along the way. I had to climb up and try to get some. We I was up there he was telling me were all the big ones were and so on. Then he keeps telling me something that I didn’t understand. I look at him with a black look on my face and try and guess what he wants. He keeps repeating himself and I keeping looking at him with a, “what are you saying” look hoping he will use a different word. Nope he keeps on going finally I figure out that he just wants me to shake the whole branch. So I start shaking the branch and a few fall the ground and he bends down to pick them up, needless to say I keep shaking the branch and then about two or three oranges hit him right in the back of the head. It was like something out of a cartoon. He just looked up, smiled his one tooth smile and started laughing. It was a pretty funny moment. I am looking forward to living with them for six weeks after that I can rent my own house. There are a couple houses open so I am already looking forward to that. El Tigre is absolutely beautiful. It is in the mountainous region which means that there is a lot of coffee production. The three main things that they grow in the region are coffee, beans and corn. Those three things made up about 80% of my diet the last week. The rest was made up of rice and quajada a type of chesse that is made in a day. A sample of my culinary diet for a day consists of fried beans, quajada, corn tortilla and a cup of coffee. Lunch consists of bean soup which is beans and salted water, quajada, corn tortilla and a cup of coffee. Dinner consists much of the same. Meals don’t vary much, sometimes it will be accompanied by rice or fried bananas. The dish that Nicaragua is famous for is Gallo Pinto with is basically rice and beans mixed together and cooked in oil… it is delicious. Of course not all Nicaraguans eat like this but they live a hugely subsistence lifestyle in the campo. During my six days at my site I did not eat one piece of meat and went to bed before eight every night. Not because I really wanted to but because there is neither electricity nor running water. This also has to do with the fact that people get up way too early here. Every morning I woke up at 4:30 to the smell of smoke and a thumping sound… this is when they make their tortillas. Did I mention that the family I will be living with has ten kids? That is a lot of mouths to feed and a lot of tortillas to be made in the morning. The smoke comes from the open fire stoves that they use to cook everything. I am involuntarily becoming a vegetarian, don’t have electricity or running water and take cold bucket showers. It could be a lot worse I could have everything… and be unhappy.

Papaya trees

My host dad and his ride...

Life after the storm

So I guess this is my first full update in quite a while. So I guess I will start where I left off… After a somewhat hectic time in Lima, Peru filling out paperwork and trying to figure out what I was going to do next with my life I decided to spend even more time in Peru and go on vacation for a bit with my girlfriend. Lima, Peru is not a very nice city… it is full of pollution and it is never sunny so we took the next flight out of there… literally. An interesting side note, the population of Lima is around nine million people and the entire population of Bolivia is around eight million people. Our first stop was Cusco which is the major stop for Machu Pichu on of the new Seven Wonders of the World. M.P. is in a very remote part of Peru way in the mountains but of course with the wonders on tourism they have made it easily assessable. In my opinion, maybe it is a little too easy. There is a little town at the base of the mountain where once you get off the train (there is a four day hike from Cusco to here if you feel up to it) you can walk a little way and board a bus that ships you to the top of the mountain (you can also hike up that too). Since we were short on time we had to opt for the faster methods… reluctantly. When I boarded the bus my first thought was, is this bus going to Machu Pichu? You would think they had just finished up an AARP conference and were all headed to Super Senior Day at the local diner. All jokes aside we were outside our “demographic” as my friend Garrett likes to say. So we finally made it up to the top and literally had to empty our wallets to get in. After paying for an overpriced train and bus ride we did not think they charged to get in… we were wrong. On the bright side, now that each of us were forty dollars lighter it was a lot easier to hike around the ruins. So we spent the day there and since we had no money to pay for water or the bus ride back down the mountain we had to hike down the mountain. We spent some time relaxing at the river below and lost track of time and ended up sprinting to catch our train but oh well we came, we saw, we conquered. Our next stop was Lake Titicaca and the floating islands of Uros. The islands are made out of reeds and they just add more and more while the others in the water are decomposing, it is a really interesting way of living. We tried to avoid the gringo tourists and decided to travel like the local tourists… they use boats that are not a posh and sometimes downright crappy. We happened to get on of the crappy ones. They steer with a rudder stick and there is not a variable spend transmission, there are two modes… go and stop so they have to get a safe distance from the dock and other boats before starting up the motor. So after we get out in open water the captain attempts to start the motor… after ten minutes of him tinkering with the motor and siphoning the fuel we are on our way. It was definitely not running very smoothly and back firing constantly but I was happy that we were on our way, well halfway through our trip the engine overheats and we are stranded in the middle of this lake for about 45 minutes as all the tourist boats passed by… I just smiled and waved. We finally made it out to the islands and toured several of the islands and then we had a trout lunch at one of the islands that had a restaurant. Sadly the trip back was uneventful. A couple bus rides and flights later I was back in the homeland enjoying micro- brews, good pizza, clam chowder and even scallops.

I UPDATED MY ADDRESS TOO LOOK UNDER THE B IN NICARAGUA TAB