Saying goodbye can be an easy thing depending on your situation-it can give you an escape from people and/or things that you do not want to deal with anymore. Like the cliche frase says more or less"When a door closes (or when you leave one place), another door opens (you go somewhere new)"- this means new opportunities, new friends, new adventures etc... I understand all of this, but at the same time, I am not quite ready to leave my home here in Masatepe. Before coming here, I was the kind of person who was always looking at the next step...in high school, I was ready for college; in college, I was ready to graduate; Americorps, I was looking for my next job- I was enjoying all of it, but if I was only in one place for a year, I did not allow myself to get too attached to anything. I was very concious that it was a temporary situation. Before Peace Corps-I made the decision to change this mindset. I decided that I would look at each day as it´s own adventure. Partially because of this change in mindset, I feel completely one hundred percent at home here in Masatepe. My room here is decorated in a way that someone from home could walk in and know it was mine. I have my Tuesday/Thursday yoga class, my guys that I play soccer with and hang with, the guy who peels oranges in the market, the internet cafe I always go to, the girl who works at the pharmacy where I buy saldo for my cell phone, my Nica, German and other Peace Corps trainee friends etc... I love walking down my street to a chorus of "Kati Kati Kati!" and playing soccer, hearing, "Chinelita". There are people who know me and who I know by name. And my family-I started talking to my host mom about how I was feeling about leaving the other day, and both of our eyes got teary. This will be the hardest part about leaving Masatepe. My wise younger sister here told me last night that "Pero tenes mi numero y el numero de Valeska, entonces puedes llamarnos cuando queres." (You have our numbers, you can call whenever you want). And she is correct-I can call, but it´s not the same. We´ve really bonded over the past 3 months-it´s interesting because 3 months does not sound like that much time, but I really feel like I know all of them and they know me so well. And the babies-although they do not say much (actual words, at least)-just hearing that Josue was looking for me when I was away for the week made me melt. I will really miss this place.
On a positive note, I do believe that after 3 months of living in Corinto, I will feel similarly and definitely after a year, I will know Corinto better than Masatepe. And I am extremely excited to move to Corinto-I really love what I know about it, so far. But because Masatepe was and always will be my first home in Nicaragua, there is a different connection.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Corinto, Chinandega
I love my site. The large earthquake in Japan caused there to be a tsunami warning for Corinto, as well as a 4.4 size earthquake off the coast-this was a minor setback in my journey to Corinto. I was banned from traveling there on Friday and Saturday morning, due to the possibility of being swept away by a giant wave. Saturday I finally made it! Took a 25 minute bus ride from Chinandega, which is the capital of my department; arrived at the Corinto bus station and waited for my PC site mate, Evan (he is finishing up his 2 years in a month), to come pick me up there. From there I headed to my host family's house to drop off my bags and eat lunch. I have a really great family-the mother-Aidalina-is a firey energetic ex-director of one of the schools here-she's almost 50 years old. She has a daughter and a son-Gina and Mario-who are 23 and 26 respectively. Mario's girlfriend also lives in the house. My room in their house is a fairly decent sized room, with a bed and a toilet (pretty excited about that!).
Some may call Corinto a typical sleepy fishing village, but the only true part about that statement is the fishing part. Sleepy it is definitely not! Fishy-yes. My first day, I went bike riding around the city to see what´s there-we went to the fish market. It was somewhat sad, but they were chopping up 3 huge manta rays, a pretty large shark and some massive fish. We also went to the beach, saw the mayor´s office, the central park-where the local alligator and his turtle friends live in the fountain, town market, supermarket, Health Center and where I will be based out of La Casa y Clinica de los Adolescentes(CCA)- basically its a health clinic/teen center where the youth of Corinto can come for health questions, youth group meetings etc... ALso working there is a volunteer from Germany-Christian, my Nicaraguan counterpart-Xiomara and a pyschologist-Marcy (I think thats her name). As well as all of the above mentioned activities, the CCA also has a comedor infantil, which literally translates to child feeding center (but that name sounds somehwat strange to me)-basically a soup kitchen for children. They feed 35-40 children 3 times a week and I probably will be helping out with this. There is definitely a lot of work that I will be doing, but a lot of it will not be 100% decided until I actually move there which will be happening in 2 weeks. I have 2 Peace Corps site mates- John who is a small business volunteer and Dave who is a TEFl (teaching english) volunteer- theyre both pretty awesome, so I´ll be excited to do some cross sectoral collaborating with them. In Chinandega there are 4 more volunteers- Lindsey who was my roomie in DC and Managua-shes a Maternal and Child Health volunteer, Nelson is a Healthy LIfestyles health volunteer, Craig is a 3rd year health volunteer and there is an agriculture volunteer as well, I think, but I have not met him yet.
One interesting place in Corinto is the bus station. There are always 2-3 busses waiting at the station to bring people across the bridge to Chinandega. This is the only place that the busses go-CHinandega. Corinto is an island, so really there are no other destinations other than Chinandega. Aunque this is the case, the men working on the busses, yell at the top of their lungs, "Chinandega, Chinandega, Chinandega" just in case you did not realize that Chinandega was your destination. If you are at a large bus station, this is important, but in Corinto, with only one place to go...it does not make too much sense. It´s pretty funny...they take this part of their job very seriously!
That´s all for now-I will find out more about everything once I get to Corinto, but please continue to post questions and I will continue to answer them!
One interesting place in Corinto is the bus station. There are always 2-3 busses waiting at the station to bring people across the bridge to Chinandega. This is the only place that the busses go-CHinandega. Corinto is an island, so really there are no other destinations other than Chinandega. Aunque this is the case, the men working on the busses, yell at the top of their lungs, "Chinandega, Chinandega, Chinandega" just in case you did not realize that Chinandega was your destination. If you are at a large bus station, this is important, but in Corinto, with only one place to go...it does not make too much sense. It´s pretty funny...they take this part of their job very seriously!
That´s all for now-I will find out more about everything once I get to Corinto, but please continue to post questions and I will continue to answer them!
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
SITE ASSIGNMENT and FOTOS!
1. There are pictures posted on my facebook page! http://www.facebook.com/album.php?fbid=674540727880&id=6900939&aid=2258325
I think you should be able to just click on this and check them out. If not let me know! I will start adding photos to my blog as soon as I can!
2. SITE ASSIGNMENT! I´m going to CORINTO, CHINANDEGA! Corinto is located on the northwest coast of Nica-it´s the only deep water port city in Nicaragua. My next 2 years will be spent eating lots of seafood (there´s a huge Seafood Festival here at the end of April beginning of May every year!), biking (apparently everyone bikes everywhere there), playing soccer-on the beach, on fields, pavement etc...big sports city!, working with youth-huge focus on youth work-with youth groups, in schools, youth health promoters and I have no idea what else. Friday/Saturday-we head to our sites for a site visit for a week, when I will meet my Nicaraguan counterpart (boss), my next host family, neighboring volunteers and will get to explore my new home!
I´ve already been at the internet cafe for 2 1/2 hours uploading photos, so I promise to write a lot more when I return from my site visit!
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Nica 55 HIV Week
(AKA: We actually got to leave our training sites and see some of Nicaragua!) 
The idea behind HIV week is that we get to travel outside of the departments that we have been living in for the past month and a half to practice what we have learned so far and to learn more about Peace Corps service. The Healthy Lifestyles group (the name of my health program) was divided into 2 groups-half going to Corinto and the other half going to Chinandega-both cities are located in the department of Chinandega. Chinandega is located in the northeast corner of the country.
While in Chinandega and Corinto, while having our own Peace Corps charlas to attend on a variety of themes, we had to give a charla in a school, 2 charlas in a health center, a charla to a group of police officers and we had to attend an HIV Pool Tournament that the current volunteers were putting on. We started the week by dividing into our school groups to prepare our lessons-my group chose to do ours on Communication. We prepared for a group of 25 to 30...not really knowing exactly what to expect-number wise, participation etc... I have not been in Peace Corps for that long, but I know that if you try and expect what will happen and you are not open or flexible enough to change it...you will be extremely frustrated with life. We arrived at the school and made our way through the open air center of the school area, where there were students running around everywhere. When we walked into our classroom, I was somewhat surprised because it looked exactly like a classroom in the US-the chairs were arranged in a horseshoe shape, which worked out perfectly for the activities that we had planned. After we set up, the students started to arrive and they kept arriving and they kept arriving. The class of 25 to 30 that we were expecting had turned into 38. Our first name game that we had been planning to do was a complete failure as there were 10 extra students...it would have taken us 2 hours just to complete that one game. We went on to recover from this first mishap and the rest of the charla went really well. We talked about the different types of communication-aggressive, passive and healthy, by myself and a friend acting out these rediculously overdramatized scenes...they loved them! The students overall were very participatory and interested in the topic which made our job easier. I had a blast!
The next day we started out with our 2 health centers charlas. Health centers here in Nicaragua are fairly similar to health clinics or even emergency rooms in the US (at least the way they function). Everyone waits in a big room-you could be there for 10 minutes; you could be there all day. This health center in Chinadega had the waiting area outside which was nice-there was a nice breeze running through, so it was not as warm as it usually is. The first charla we did on HIV transmision, which went well but was extremely short...I guess we were all a little nervous and spoke extremely fast. The second theme was HIV prevention, which went a lot better. I presented on the importance of being faithful to your partner by telling the story of a Nicaraguan housewife and how she ends up being HIV positive. The people really liked the story and were laughing a lot (hopefully at the jokes I was making and not the mistakes I may have made speaking Spanish!)
Later that day we completed our final charla with the police officers, also on HIV transmission, prevention, testing, all complete with a fantastic condom demonstration by one of my colleages, Gabe. We divided all of the cops up into 3 groups, where they had to put in order the steps on how to put on a condom. They each had to present their steps with a condom demo-it was hilarious. Nicas are really into ratting on each other, so it was a very easy and fun charla to give.
Im running out of time here at the internet cafe, so the rest of this blog was written very quickly-I apologize!
Beach-we went to the beach in Corinto!! The water was absolutely gorgeous-extremely warm and very very wavy, which I love. Alyssa, Angie and I walked down the beach to watch the sunset from the other end-to be able to see a sunset over the ocean is really incredible. That{s all for now about the beach, but I cannot wait to go back to visit.
Pool Tournament was a blast. This is something that most health volunteers will end up doing at least once or twice in their service. You basically join up with a pool hall in your area, which usually there are a lot of-its a huge place for Nica men to hang out. The night started out with a basic charla on Sexually Transmitted Diseases and then the tournament started. The men are really interesting because you have these machista Nicaraguan men drinking, playing pool and yelling and screaming at each other, but at the same time-I had multiple men come up to men with follow up questions to the charla topics. They are very interested in the theme and were actually paying attention.
About to lose my internet-just quick in the future update on what is to come-Monday March 7th-I find out my site where I will be living for the next 2 years!!!!!!!!!!! I and everyone else here are more than ready to find this out!
Love and miss you all!
The idea behind HIV week is that we get to travel outside of the departments that we have been living in for the past month and a half to practice what we have learned so far and to learn more about Peace Corps service. The Healthy Lifestyles group (the name of my health program) was divided into 2 groups-half going to Corinto and the other half going to Chinandega-both cities are located in the department of Chinandega. Chinandega is located in the northeast corner of the country.
While in Chinandega and Corinto, while having our own Peace Corps charlas to attend on a variety of themes, we had to give a charla in a school, 2 charlas in a health center, a charla to a group of police officers and we had to attend an HIV Pool Tournament that the current volunteers were putting on. We started the week by dividing into our school groups to prepare our lessons-my group chose to do ours on Communication. We prepared for a group of 25 to 30...not really knowing exactly what to expect-number wise, participation etc... I have not been in Peace Corps for that long, but I know that if you try and expect what will happen and you are not open or flexible enough to change it...you will be extremely frustrated with life. We arrived at the school and made our way through the open air center of the school area, where there were students running around everywhere. When we walked into our classroom, I was somewhat surprised because it looked exactly like a classroom in the US-the chairs were arranged in a horseshoe shape, which worked out perfectly for the activities that we had planned. After we set up, the students started to arrive and they kept arriving and they kept arriving. The class of 25 to 30 that we were expecting had turned into 38. Our first name game that we had been planning to do was a complete failure as there were 10 extra students...it would have taken us 2 hours just to complete that one game. We went on to recover from this first mishap and the rest of the charla went really well. We talked about the different types of communication-aggressive, passive and healthy, by myself and a friend acting out these rediculously overdramatized scenes...they loved them! The students overall were very participatory and interested in the topic which made our job easier. I had a blast!
The next day we started out with our 2 health centers charlas. Health centers here in Nicaragua are fairly similar to health clinics or even emergency rooms in the US (at least the way they function). Everyone waits in a big room-you could be there for 10 minutes; you could be there all day. This health center in Chinadega had the waiting area outside which was nice-there was a nice breeze running through, so it was not as warm as it usually is. The first charla we did on HIV transmision, which went well but was extremely short...I guess we were all a little nervous and spoke extremely fast. The second theme was HIV prevention, which went a lot better. I presented on the importance of being faithful to your partner by telling the story of a Nicaraguan housewife and how she ends up being HIV positive. The people really liked the story and were laughing a lot (hopefully at the jokes I was making and not the mistakes I may have made speaking Spanish!)
Later that day we completed our final charla with the police officers, also on HIV transmission, prevention, testing, all complete with a fantastic condom demonstration by one of my colleages, Gabe. We divided all of the cops up into 3 groups, where they had to put in order the steps on how to put on a condom. They each had to present their steps with a condom demo-it was hilarious. Nicas are really into ratting on each other, so it was a very easy and fun charla to give.
Im running out of time here at the internet cafe, so the rest of this blog was written very quickly-I apologize!
Beach-we went to the beach in Corinto!! The water was absolutely gorgeous-extremely warm and very very wavy, which I love. Alyssa, Angie and I walked down the beach to watch the sunset from the other end-to be able to see a sunset over the ocean is really incredible. That{s all for now about the beach, but I cannot wait to go back to visit.
Pool Tournament was a blast. This is something that most health volunteers will end up doing at least once or twice in their service. You basically join up with a pool hall in your area, which usually there are a lot of-its a huge place for Nica men to hang out. The night started out with a basic charla on Sexually Transmitted Diseases and then the tournament started. The men are really interesting because you have these machista Nicaraguan men drinking, playing pool and yelling and screaming at each other, but at the same time-I had multiple men come up to men with follow up questions to the charla topics. They are very interested in the theme and were actually paying attention.
About to lose my internet-just quick in the future update on what is to come-Monday March 7th-I find out my site where I will be living for the next 2 years!!!!!!!!!!! I and everyone else here are more than ready to find this out!
Love and miss you all!
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