Reflections on Retirement

In an essay for my Peace Corps application I was asked to write about my expectations. I wrote:

I expect my service will start with feelings of overwhelming excitement and optimism. As I adjust to my new life and language, the novelty will wear thin and the reality of two years of service will stare me down like an endless abyss. Frustration, loneliness, and worthlessness, will show up throughout the two years, but will always be trumped by satisfaction and success. I look forward to periods of high highs and low lows, both of which will grow areas of myself I never knew existed. My service will be mentally, physically, and emotionally challenging, but I will love the good and the bad.

As I was recently rereading that essay, I was shocked at how well it captured my thoughts as I end my service. Although it’s probably hard to believe given the title of this blog, “A two year retirement,” and my jokes since day one that this was a two year vacation, I joined Peace Corps and came down to Nicaragua with excitement, motivation, and optimism. I didn’t simply join Peace Corps to delay the “real world.” For a variety of personal and professional reasons, I was ready to lend my time, intelligence, and effort to try to do something more important than what I was doing at the time, formatting Excel spreadsheets and getting drunk with friends. I was ready to actively help with things that I had always passively agreed with. A few months later I found myself in Nicaragua, optimistic, excited, and motivated.

It will come as no surprise to anyone that’s talked to me for more than a few minutes during my time here that my initial optimistic feelings were quickly replaced by “frustration, loneliness, and worthlessness.” So I was correct in predicting those feelings throughout my two years, but what I didn’t understand, as I naively wrote that essay from the comfort of an Ann Arbor apartment, was the upper limit (and in some cases the very definition) of those feelings. (I’m not going to try to describe those feelings. I’ve found that unpleasant honesty often gives the wrong impression to people at home and they just end up asking me why I’m still here or if I regret my decision to join, or they tell me that a few years down the road I’ll appreciate my service, implying that I hate it now. These questions or comments normally just make me more frustrated.)

I was also naive in believing that those feelings would always be trumped by “satisfaction and success.” I definitely had months where frustration and worthlessness far outpaced any satisfaction or success I was feeling, but as my upper limit on frustration changed, so too did my definitions of success and satisfaction. In the traditional sense of the word, I haven’t had much success down here. Most of the projects I tried ending up failing and most of my students, I can confidently say, didn’t really learn much from my class. But I think that if you’re ambitious enough and you spend your time trying to solve or improve hard problems, you’re bound to fail some of the time, meaning your definition of success becomes a bit more humbled. I’ve learned to find success in the simplest and smallest forms, and my satisfaction hasn’t come from succeeding, it’s come from simply trying. In the end, these small successes and the satisfaction of trying (not necessarily succeeding) has been enough to trump the feelings of frustration and worthlessness.

So with the clarity of hindsight I would have to change some of the words or at least better define frustration, loneliness, worthlessness, success, and satisfaction. But if I wrote a reflection on my service after 24 months (I guess that’s what I’m doing!), I wouldn’t change a thing in the last two sentences of my initial thoughts. In a number of ways I’ve changed down here and I believe, now more than ever, that to change or to grow as a person you have to put yourself in uncomfortable, challenging positions. You have to test your upper limit on frustration, for example. The low lows and bad times are what make an experience significant. These two years in Nicaragua have been incredibly difficult and therefore, these two years have been very meaningful and worthwhile (at least personally). It has been “mentally, physically, and emotionally challenging,” but I did love and appreciate the good and the bad.

I’m just glad it’s all over! I’m not sure I ever again want to experience anything nearly as hard. At least not before a nice, long, comfortable break with hot showers, artificially controlled climates, trash meals, DTV, close friends, and family. USA, here I come!

Head Exploding

I nearly passed out after seeing this commercial, are we really that smart?

Where you live:



Where I live:



My head is exploding.

Nicaragua Wins

After two years I still plan meetings knowing that I'll be the only one to show up. I convince myself that it'll be different this time. I cancel weekend trips, I leave friends' houses early, I Inconvenience myself to plan an agenda, to show up on time, to wait an extra fifteen minutes after waiting for thirty. You think I'd learn, but I haven't. No one shows up and I take another punch in the face. I lose. Nicaragua wins.

In this video, I'm the cheerleader and Nicaragua is the basketball.
In this video, I'm the unsuspecting spectator and Nicaragua is the sprinter.
In this video, I'm the McDonald's customer and Nicaragua is Ronald McDonald.

Nicaragua-1,000,103 vs. David-2

Chicken Soup Nica Style

Peace Corps Resume

I’ve been working on my resume and have a few different versions to explain my Peace Corps service. Let me know what you think.

PEACE CORPS NICARAGUA
Small Business Development Volunteer
May 06 – July 08
•Implemented entrepreneurship, business management course in conjunction with Ministry of Education, teaching 320 high school students and resulting in 38 temporary, profitable micro businesses.
•Created community bank offering an informal savings and loan program to 37 members who traditionally fell outside of formal banking environment. Loaned more than $2000 and promoted the creation of small businesses through micro-credit.
•Organized a local and regional business plan competition, coordinating with government officials, Ministry of Education, and local small businesses. Locally raised $100 to support competitions and strengthened relationships among public/private organizations.
•Provided consulting services to local businesses, improving accounting, inventory management, customer service, and marketing.
•Trained and evaluated 3 secondary school teachers in the instruction of small business course.

PEACE CORPS NICARAGUA
Small Business Development Volunteer
May 06 – July 08
•Completed more than 50 books (fiction and nonfiction), increasing reading output to more than 2 books per month. Read and studied more than 5 Pulitzer Prize winning novels.
•Acquired no less than 5 cases of acute diarrhea, defecting in a small, plastic receptacle 2 times to examine and identify contributing factors such as local worms and parasites.
•Eliminated 10 pounds of needed body weight in a 12 hour period with as many visits to a large hole in the ground which also doubled as a toilet.
•Banged my head against a large concrete wall in frustration, boredom, and craziness once a month for 24 months.

PEACE CORPS NICARAGUA
Small Business Development Volunteer
May 06 – July 08
•Humbled by a 27 month Nicaraguan, third world bitch-slapping.

I want to be safe at home

I was supposed to spend the day making cookies with my host family. Instead, I found myself frozen in the back of pickup truck racing backwards down a mountain. As the truck narrowly missed a tree and the steep cliff approached, I should have been trying to plan some sort of escape. All I could think of, however, was how good a no-bake cookie would taste.

My friend, Oliver, had called me in the morning and invited me to tag along to a rural community where an NGO he works for had built a small school. They had called him in the morning and wanted some pictures of the school with the smiling students in front of it. It seemed like an easy mission, and although I wanted to go I initially declined since, as I mentioned, I had already planned on making cookies for the day. Then, after a little further thought I decided I could make cookies any day, but I would never again get the opportunity to travel to this small, rural community. With the “you only live once” mentality I cancelled my engagements and said “vámonos!”

Oliver picked me up in a red, early 1990s Toyota pickup that he had hired at the bus station. Besides Oliver there was the driver, a mumbling older man that I didn’t understand, and two “helpers” along for the ride. I climbed into the back of the pickup truck with Oliver and one of the helpers, a guy about our age who introduced himself as Victor Victor, and we set out.

The first leg of our journey went well and as I enjoyed the view of the mountains I was pleased with my decision to go. Even better I had decided to let Oliver sit closer to Victor Victor who had started to badger him with questions about digital cameras, the Backstreet Boys, and other gringos he knew. I pretended I didn’t know Spanish and just listened in as Oliver awkwardly explained, “No, Victor Victor, I will not buy you a digital camera, but yes, I do like the Backstreet Boys.”

We easily made it to Telpaneca, a small town about an hour north east from my town, and then turned off the highway onto a small, mountain road towards our final destination. As we got higher up the mountain, the weather turned cold, rainy, and windy, and I soon realized that this community was a lot further away than I had originally thought. Two and a half hours into the trip, we came to an old, one lane bridge with a broken down truck in the middle, blocking the way. With no possible way of getting past the truck, we had to decide to walk the rest of the way or turn around defeated. Cold and wet, I tried to convince Oliver that another hour walking to the community wasn’t worth it. He wasn’t hearing any of it and decided to continue on in the rain. After a long, muddy hike up the mountain we made it to the community, about three and a half hours after we had left my town.

A couple of community members rounded up the students while Oliver and I enjoyed lunch at a teacher’s house. The rain let up, the students showed up, we took some good pictures, and things looked like they might turn out after all. Though it started to rain again on our way back to the truck, we made it back a little before schedule and thought the worst was behind us. Then I remembered that we still had a two and a half hour trip through the rain on a small, muddy mountain road in an old pickup with bald tires, no wipers and a mumbling old man driver. A little nervous, I got back into the back of the truck and we set out in the rain.

When the truck picked up any type of speed, it was difficult to see where we were headed with the rain pelting us harder and harder. I just knew that driving in this weather on this road was not a good idea. Tensely gripping the side of the truck, I watched through the rain as the truck dodged potholes, rivers, and cliffs. It was freezing cold, we were 30 kilometers from the nearest town, and I was sure we weren’t going to make it. Luckily, when we had to stop to wipe the windshield off, the guys in the cabin threw us a large plastic tarp that we could throw over us to shield the rain. Oliver, Victor Victor, and I huddled together, threw the tarp over us and the truck took off. Out of site, out of mind. Now that I couldn’t see what was coming or where we were heading, I relaxed and convinced myself that the driver knew what he was doing.

Another 10 minutes we drove like this. Oliver, Victor Victor and I sitting down in the back of a pickup truck covered with a black tarp reeking of gasoline. I made the unfortunate decision to let Victor Victor sit in the middle of us, so not only did we bump shoulders every thirty seconds as the truck maneuvered through the potholes, he also fired questions at me. Freezing cold, soaking wet, and completely annoyed that I had even decided to come on this trip, I was in no mood to explain to Victor Victor that I don’t like Linkoln Park and that a discman costs $60. When we stopped a second time on a steep incline to clean the windshield, Victor Victor hopped out of the bed of the truck to help and I thought I might take the opportunity to put Oliver in between us again. We didn’t make it any further though.

The truck had stopped on a huge hill. Victor Victor quickly cleaned the windshield and was helping push the truck when the tires started spitting up mud and the driver realized he didn’t have enough momentum to get it going again. Stuck on the hill, the driver put the truck in reverse and slowly started to descend the hill, looking for a flat piece of the road where he could potentially gain enough speed to climb the hill. At this point, Oliver and I were still in the back of the truck peering out of the black tarp. The road looked like a small stream, the hill looked really steep, and Oliver and I traded expressions that said one thing, nervous.

The truck begin to crawl backwards down the mountain before it started to gain a little more speed than I thought necessary. Then, like a rollercoaster at the top of the hill releasing the train from the belt, I felt the brakes give out and the truck started careening down the road gaining speed. Oliver and I sat there frozen, watching as a large tree got closer and closer. It was at this precise moment when I should have been thinking of a way to bail, but things were happening too quickly and all I could think of was the chocolaty, fudgy taste of the cookies I should have been making. I hated myself for deciding to come on the trip and for convincing myself that I could make cookies any day.

I snapped back into reality as I watched the large tree narrowly miss the back bumper and the truck continue towards the cliff. Almost immediately after the tree, the truck fell into a large pothole on the edge of the cliff and it sat there balancing, deciding whether she wanted to fall and take all of the truck’s passengers with her or if she wanted to stay, nervously shaking…cliff, road, cliff, road. Oliver and I jumped out the back and the three men in the cabin hurried out as well. Safe on the road, we rehashed what had actually happened and reviewed the precarious position the truck was in. Then we realized the precarious position we were in. We were all dripping wet and cold, we were 20 kilometers from the nearest town/house, we didn’t have cell phone service, and we were left with only about an hour before nightfall.

Walking up the mountain with his cell phone over his head, Oliver ended up finding service and we were able to call Telpaneca’s mayor’s office and a fellow volunteer that lives in Telpaneca. Since we only had a couple of minutes left on the phone card, we weren’t able to talk for long and we were left a little confused as to whether or not the mayor’s office was sending someone, but they rolled up an hour or so later with a large Toyota Hilux (this story would have been exceptionally better had they arrived in a Chevy Silverado). They managed to pull the small truck off the edge and out of the pothole with a large chain attached to the Hilux. As they were working, the mayor told Oliver and I about another truck and three guys that tried to get up the same hill and weren’t so lucky. The truck’s brakes went out and rather than veering to the left-hand side of the road like we did, it drifted to the right and raced off the steep cliff, killing all three people on board. I felt sick to my stomach when he finished his story.

Victor Victor, Oliver, and I hitched a ride back into Telpaneca with the mayor, arriving around 9pm. Victor Victor was going to Somoto to find a mechanic while the driver and the other helper stayed in the mountains by the truck to make sure no one tried to steal it through the night. We stayed in a hostel and though I was wet, stinky, muddy, cold, and still hanging out with Victor Victor, it felt really nice/secure to lie down safely in a bed. We took the 5am bus back to my town and after saying my goodbyes to Oliver and Victor Victor, I got back into my house around 6:30am, 16 hours after I had initially planned on getting back. I relaxed a little, took a shower, washed my muddy clothes, and then made my way over to my host family’s house. That afternoon we made the best damn cookies I’ve ever tasted.

Leisure

My friends and I recently built this hammock system. Not as nice as a proper wallow spot in a L-shaped couch but about as close as you'll get in Nicaragua.

Teamwork!

The Sad Truth

Two months ago one of my best friends in my town collapsed in her backyard. Her family quickly found her and rushed her to the town health center where they took her to the department capital, Somoto, in a small, run down taxi. From Somoto, she was taken for a three and a half hour ride in an ambulance to a public hospital in Managua where she and her husband were told to go back to Somoto. There was no space and the doctors weren’t available. Since the ambulance had already left, they made the return trip in a school bus. After a stroke, eight hours of travel, and little consultation with any medical professionals, she returned to the same spot where she had collapsed in the morning.

A couple of days after the stroke, I was able to visit her in her home where she was recovering, and though I had been in her house several times before, I wasn’t prepared to see what I saw. Her husband led me into their dirt floor room where they had the small bed that she, her husband, and their 3 year old daughter share. My friend was half asleep with a bandana tied around the lower half of her face, covering the drooping, right hand side of her mouth. Her face was swollen and her glassy eyes rolled around cartoonish-like. A four inch foam mattress sat atop an old metal bed frame that sagged under her weight, nearly touching the ground. Above her, two plastic trash bags were tied to the cinder brick walls in what appeared to be a feeble attempt to catch the water that got through the old tile roof when it rained. The room was damp, dark, and horribly depressing.

I stayed in the room and visited with her and her husband for about 45 minutes. In my year and a half here, I’ve never felt so distinctly the divide between rich and poor. She was struggling to recover from a stroke, holed up in a damp, dirt floor room, sleeping on an old mattress under a leaking roof because she happened to be born in Nicaragua. I wanted to take her to the States. Take her to a hospital where they wouldn’t kick her out. Get her the care that would have prevented a 30 year old woman from having a stroke. Put her in a room worthy of a human being. Give her a small handful of the opportunities that I’ve been given.

While I was sitting in the room, her husband handed me what they always share with me, a cup of coffee, a warm tortilla, and a Nicaraguan cheese, cuajada. In her normal, joking fashion, my friend said, “Ahh, David, you’re used to everything now, even tortillas with cuajada.” I smiled and agreed, but it wasn’t true. I’m not and will never be used to the cruelty of chance and circumstance.

The next Daddy Yankee?

Sometimes I hate Nicaragua

This happened to my house a week ago.


Then I found this the following day. I've slept with one eye open since.

Roads in Nicaragua

This is why I'm currently evacuated to Managua. I took this movie when I was stuck in a rural community 6km from my town. It used to be a road, but with the rains it turned into a river.

What's New With Me

Since I last posted, I've been home to the states, finished up a major part of my project and survived a "hurricane." Here it all is taken from an email I sent out a couple of weeks ago.

As far as getting back from the states, it was a lot easier this time than it was when I came back after Christmas last year. It was still hard, but I’m just in a much better position now. When I cam back from Christmas I still hadn’t even started formally teaching, so all my work was ahead of me and I still didn’t really know what I was doing. I also came back and the entire month of January was vacation here so it was long and boring. This time most of my teaching is done for the year and everything is just so much easier now that I’ve been here awhile longer. I’m much more comfortable with my work, with my Spanish, with my friends, etc. so it was easier to come back to. It also helped that I have less than a year left to go and am planning on coming back again in December.

When I got back I had two really busy weeks. My class ends with a competition where all of the student business groups present their work and their business plans in the town. The best groups move on to a regional competition where they compete against other schools that have a PC volunteer teaching the same class, and the regional winners go on to a national competition in Managua. So, when I got back I had two weeks to finish teaching the class and organize the local competition. It was a lot of work, but ended up going pretty well.

I had all my groups present in class and from each section I picked the two or three best groups to present at the local competition. We used the town rec-center to hold the event. The first hour the kids sold their products at little tables and whoever showed up could walk around and look at the projects. Then when the power finally came back on (we had to wait for about an hour) each group presented for 8 minutes in front of 4 judges from the town and turned in their final reports. After the presentations, the judges picked the 3 winners that will now compete at regionals. It sounds like something pretty easy to pull off, but it was hard.

The night before I finally got the certificates sent to me from Managua but they ended up having an incorrect name on them, so I went to the internet café at night to make new ones. In the middle of making them, the power went out. The power goes out everyday here from 7:30am until 2pm so I asked the owner if she would open the next morning at 6:30am! She said yes, so I woke up at 6am and made the certificates. Unfortunately she didn’t have certificate paper so I went to a little office supply store here and banged on the door at 7am to see if they had any. They didn’t so we just had to use normal paper. Then I showed up at the rec center and realized I was the one who was supposed to clean it before the event, so I had to recruit kids around the town to bring mops and brooms to help me. When I finally got that done, I went back to the school to take the speakers, microphone, tables, and chairs over with the truck I had arranged to use. Not surprisingly the owner of the truck had decided to go to a different city that day even though he told me he’d be around. So with no other truck available, I recruited more kids to help me carry everything over by hand. I made two or three trips carrying tables and speakers on my back! The people in my town kept yelling at me, “David!! Por que esta trabajando como un burro?” David!! Why are you working like a donkey?

When we finally got started, things went well and I was actually really proud of my students. You think throughout the year that no one is getting anything, but some of them were listening. Granted these were the best 8 or 9 groups of the 24 or so I had so I’m not working with a high percentage of listeners, but nonetheless, I was really happy with the work they did. And it was nice to see them excited about the project and what they had done. It was funny watching them present…they were really nervous, shaking even at some points. My students are mostly 15 years old so most of the time they’re all tough and too cool for school, so it was great to see them so out of their element. When we were finishing the competition I even remember thinking that I wish I could be around for next year’s, so that goes to show what a high point it was for me.

Anyway, since then it’s been great. Now that most of my teaching part is over I’ve told my teachers that I’ll happily still plan class with them, but I’m not teaching anymore. This means I show up for class and help, but really don’t need to do anything…I’m really just preparing the three groups that are going to regionals. It’s a lot less stressful and less frustrating like this. Now when class is cancelled or it doesn’t go well I can just shrug my shoulders and go back to my hammock.

As you can imagine though I have a lot more time on my hands now, so I’m starting to plan some new projects. I’m currently rounding up about 20 names of good students in third year that I can give little classes to after school. These are the kids I’ll teach next year and I would like to give them some classes on leadership, teamwork, communication, presenting, math etc. that will really help them next year with my class. I’m going to try to do this after school where the youth group normally meets so I can kind of kill two birds with one stone. Prepare next year’s students and revitalize the youth group building which isn’t being used at all right now. We’ll see if it works.

I’m also going to try to start a bank like the bank I started at the local school at the community school I teach. I’ve had one meeting with them and things went well but then we never followed up on it, so I’ll have to be a bit more proactive. It sucks to always have to be the cheerleader.

The hurricane was really anticlimactic. All the volunteers around my area were moved to a larger city where we stayed in a hotel for 2 days. Nothing happened where we were (it was actually fairly nice out) but it did hit Nicaraguan’s Atlantic coast really hard. It’s actually been a lot worse here since. Last weekend I wasn’t around my town but apparently it rained horribly hard which explained why half my house was flooded when I got back. You can imagine I was happy about that.

Currently, I'm out of my site and staying in Managua until further notice. It's been raining for a week straight so Peace Corps evacuated a large portion of volunteers to Managua. My town is fine, but I couldn't get out to my rural school because the rivers have risen so much. On my way into Managua we passed a huge sink hole in the middle of the highway. It looked like an earthquake had hit. It'll be interesting to see how long we're holed up in Managua.

Third World Safety = First World Lawsuit

Mid-Service Interview

Peace Corps volunteers here in Nicaragua put out a quarterly magazine for volunteers which among other things includes printed interviews with all the volunteers that are ending their service and all the volunteers that are beginning their service. An exit interview and an entrance interview. I’m obviously not quite finishing my time here yet, but since I’m exactly half way through my service in Palacaguina, I’ve decided to post a mid-service interview. Here it goes…

Nicknames:

Dabeeeed (long “e”), Daveeees (long “e”), gringo de cero, Saquir del futuro (my neighbors claim that a six year old kid named Saquir looks like me. Hence, I’m the Saquir of the future.), chele (slang term/name used for anyone fair skinned), Profe, Teacher, Hombre David

Favorite Saying:

Va a dar su vuelta? – This is asked when I’m wondering around my town making the three or four visits to the houses of the families and friends I have here. You making your rounds?

Voy a hacer un mandado- Living in a small, small town is hard and the gossip is fierce. I can’t leave my house without one my neighbors asking me where I’m going or running into someone I know who asks me the same. Initially, this was annoying…why do I have to tell them where I’m going every time I leave my house? Now, I’ve learned how the Nicas handle it and it works like a charm. All I have to say is “I’m going to run an errand.” I can say this no matter what time it is and what I’m actually going to do and the questions stop. There’s a nice, unwritten agreement to quit asking questions when you get this response.

Adioooos- If you walk by someone here and say “hello” it means that you’re planning on slowing down and chatting for a few minutes. Luckily, you can conveniently say “goodbye” and quickly convey that you have no intention of talking at the moment. This is great at ending unwanted conversations before they even start.

Ni quiere a dios – God doesn’t even want it! After anything describing something undesirable, you can add emphasis to just how undesirable it is by saying “God wouldn’t even want it!” This is used A LOT. In my case, I like to use it with older people that I don’t know well because it’s a surefire way to make them laugh. For example, they might be asking me what Nica foods I’ve tried and when they ask me if I’ve tried their famous cow stomach soup, I’ll reply with all the emotion in me and a wrinkled up, disgusted face, “Ehhhhh…Ni quiere a dios!” This is met with all the little, old ladies looking amongst themselves confirming that the gringo actually just said what they heard, and it’s normally followed by hearty laughs. Stupid gringo.

Si dios quiere – If God wants it. After you make any type of commitment to do something in the future, you can end your promise with “If God wants it.” This is super convenient when you’re not sure if you really want to be a part of the commitment. For example if I try to set up a meeting with someone, we’ll plan it for the following day at a given time, but the conversation might end with me saying “see you tomorrow” and the man or woman saying “If God wants it.” How do I argue with that? If they don’t show up (this is often the case), I’m comforted knowing that it’s not their fault. God just didn’t want the person to walk the three blocks to my house or call me to say God didn’t give him the motivation today to have the meeting.

Hay mas tiempo que vida – There’s more time than life.

What have you done during your service?

I’ve learned Spanish, I’ve been laughed at, I’ve lost my dignity, I’ve read a lot, I’ve written a lot, I’ve cleaned my house one million times, I’ve taught a business course to 16 year olds, I’ve sweat, I’ve started a community bank, I’ve filled my quota of awkward moments for the rest of my life, I’ve helped out some businesses with accounting, I’ve appreciated my family, friends, and life back in the states more so than at any other point in my life, I’ve pretended like I know what I’m doing, I’ve learned a lot and taught a little, I’ve spent countless hours hanging out in rocking chairs talking about when the power will return.

If you could change one aspect of your time here so far, what would it be?

I’d make a little extra money every month. I’d come into my service knowing more Spanish than I did. Though the latrine really isn’t that bad, I might spend some more time searching for a house with a flushing toilet. I’d also change my roof to the much cooler tile roof.

What will you miss?

I’ll miss my five year old best friend/son, Sergio Luis. I’ll miss being able to show up at anyone’s house around lunchtime and be given a huge plate of food. I’ll miss the collective scream of excitement of an entire town when the power returns around 7pm. I’ll miss the coffee and biscuits that I get when I’m hanging out at my friends’ houses. I’ll miss being able to immediately round up a countless number of kids to play soccer, Frisbee, football when I’m sitting in my house bored. I’ll miss my hammock. I’ll miss the excited looks I get when I say “adios” to the 5-10 year olds that stare at me. I’ll miss my students that want to learn. I’ll miss working within an organization that is filled with passionate, caring, optimistic hard workers that believe in what they’re striving for.

Who/what would you bring back?

I’d definitely bring back Sergio Luis. It’s not that he has a terrible life here…quite the opposite, but I wish I could give him all that I’ve been given. I’d bring back the finger wave gesture to say “no” to anything. The lazy days…not all of them, but it’d be nice to have one or two every week in the states. I’d bring back the ability to have a best friend that is 5, another that is 25, and another that is 65.

How has the Peace Corps changed you?

I shave once every other week, not once every other day. I haven’t worn a shirt and tie in a year. I walk more slowly because really, there’s no rush. I no longer use the most efficient routes from point A to point B, I use the routes that offer the most shade. I’m much more patient. My friends in the states are 21-28 years old, while my friends here are less than 16 years old or older than 50 years old. I’m more outgoing. I dump a lot of salt on everything. My table manners are worse. I’m less judgmental. I’m over my aversion to public toilets. I’m more assertive. I show up to all engagements 30 minutes to an hour late. I’m more laid back.

Gained weight/lost weight:

I’ve lost about 10 pounds that I couldn’t afford to lose in the first place.

Would you do it all over again?

This is hard to say. I would definitely still do it if I was the same age and in the same situation I was in last year when I started, but I’m not sure if when I’m done here I could sign up again for another 27 months. It might just be too hard to ever want to do it again. Ask me two years after my service.

Have you thought about leaving early?

I’ve dreamt about it a lot, but I’ve never considered it seriously. I’ve just occasionally wanted to get Dengue Fever or break a bone so that I can get a couple of free weeks in Managua or the states.

Things you’ve missed the most:

Family and friends, trash meals, hot showers, carpet, couches, delivery pizza, Fall, Winter, anonymity, customer service, manners, having my own car, draft beer, Big Ten Burrito, Qdoba, clean streets, UM football, privacy, washing machine and dryer, new music, Best Buy, Borders, American convenience.

Parasites

The most recent parasite that I had. Disgusting.

"It can also be transferred from animal or human feces."

Check out my published photo in the newest edition of Schmap Atlanta. Click on "Photos" and scroll through to find my name under a picture of Atlanta Underground. Cool.

Pictures

Two links to pictures taken while Zach and Brent were braving Nucca-ville. Enjoy.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/14075148@N00/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sweettasteofindia/sets/72157600396363715/

Teaching

During the first few months in my site, I became more familiar with the book from which I’d be teaching, and I thought that it was fairly straight forward. I had been here long enough to realize the Nicaraguan public school system would present a lot of challenges, but as for the class material I figured we could manage. Unfortunately, I greatly underestimated the challenges and the difficulty of the material.

As I’ve described in previous blogs, the Nicaraguan classroom is generally a small room that shares a back and front wall with other classrooms (picture a large rectangle split up into three or four classrooms). The upper half of the side walls are windows that allow a bit of air to pass through, thankfully. Unfortunately, those windows also let passing students to stand “outside” of the classroom to stare, whistle, cat call, or disrupt the students receiving class. This additional noise is added to the general chaos that results with 50 fifteen year olds inside a small classroom at the same time. I have to yell to teach. In short, the classroom environment is not conducive to learning. The lack of school-wide rules creates more problems.

In general, a 45 minute class lasts 30 minutes at most. Just long enough for the teacher to sit down in front of the class, read a few definitions, and then quickly return to the teachers’ lounge. She might leave the class with some work to do or let a student finish dictating the lesson to his classmates, but regardless, the class is left unsupervised. So, the last 15 minutes of class is normally recess, meaning the following teacher spends 15 minutes rounding up her students and getting them in their seats. This is, of course, when the teacher shows up. It’s not strange to have two or three teachers just not show up to work, leaving more than a few sections of students free, without supervision, for 45-90 minutes blocks. With short classes and absent teachers, it would make sense to have a rule that requires all students to remain in the classroom during class hours. There isn’t and the students, not surprisingly, take advantage of their free time. Last week, as I was arriving to my class, I watched a kid outside of the classroom pick up a desk, raise it above his head, and body slam it to the ground. Not once, but three times. I shrugged my shoulders, hid a smile and ignored the problem. If it were my way, that kid wouldn’t even be allowed outside of the classroom, thus avoiding the body slamming problem. So, in my book, since they (the teachers and principals) created the problem, they can fix it. It won’t be fixed though. To go along with the lack of rules, there’s also a lack of consequences.

Now, I’m not yet old enough to have completely forgotten about my high school experience. I can remember the troublemakers, the disruptions, the lack of respect for authority, etc. I imagine that I share a lot of my frustrations with any teacher in the states. But, in the states, the teachers and principals always have the trump card…grades. If you acted up too much or didn’t turn in your homework your grades suffered accordingly. I thought I would have the same leverage here.

We are asked to turn in grades about once a month. In my first month, I graded all of the homework and was slightly discouraged when many of my students didn’t turn in anything. I put their names on the board, I talked to them after class, I told them they could still turn it in and get some points. Most of them didn’t care or listen, so when I tallied up the scores, I had almost 20 students in every section who were failing the class (below 60%), not because they were doing poorly on homework or quizzes, or because I was grading strictly, but because they didn’t do anything. Nothing, zero, not one piece of work handed in. I turned in the grades to my counterpart so that she could turn the final copy in to the principal’s office, and when I saw the final grades that were on the students’ report cards, two kids had failed. The 18 or so other students that should have failed were “bumped up” to 60% or above. Why? Because a teacher that gives too many failing grades will lose her job. I have since left all of the grading to my counterparts.

I suppose the line between passing and failing is arbitrary anyway, right? The difference between 59% and 60% doesn’t mean much unless a school system has decided that 60% means you’re passing and 59% means you’re failing. And if you’re applying to college an admissions officer doesn’t care if it was 59% or 60%, passing or failing, you’re still not getting into college. But, again, that’s not the case here. Students who move on to university take a short entrance exam and if they have the money to pay tuition, they’re accepted. So, a student here could do very little in high school, count on being “bumped up” to 60% in his classes, graduate high school, take a university entrance exam, and become a university student the following year.

All of this can probably explain why Juan Antonio turned in a recent test half blank. When I quickly looked over the test and handed it back to him, mentioning that half of it was blank, he took the test back, waited five minutes and turned it in again half blank. It wasn’t that he didn’t know the answers, (immediately before the test we had done a review which included all of the answers) he just didn’t want to do it. He scored a 14/60…and passed with flying colors. I’m not sure I would be bothered to write the definition of a market if my grade didn’t matter either. Whether you’re body slamming desks, failing to turn in homework, or turning in half finished exams, there are few consequences.

Given the poor environment and the lack of consequences, it should come as no surprise that my students are a lot further behind than I had anticipated, making my class much more difficult. For example, I did not anticipate that my students would have a hard time with a market study because I assumed they knew what a market and a survey was. When I realized that wasn’t the case, I explained that a market is a group of people with specific characteristics. Going on our third week teaching market study, I still have most of the kids yelling out “a place where you sell and buy!” when I ask them what a market is. As for explaining what a survey is, I patiently described the purpose and how we do one. I have kids in the front of the class act out surveyor and surveyee. I give them examples and finally, ask them to come up with 10 survey questions about their business to ask potential clients. Why would creating 10 questions be easy though, if you’re 15 and have only ever been asked to copy and memorize? In the end, I have a counterpart that says I give the students too much work and maybe 5 or so kids in each class truly understand what I was trying to teach.

In the coming weeks, I’ll start teaching unit cost for a product and the groups will begin setting the prices on their products using a defined % profit margin. If a group has a product that costs C$10 to make and wants to make 10% profit on each product they will set its price at C$11. Simple enough…if you know some basic math and understand percentages. Unfortunately, the teachers don’t even understand percentages. Each month when we turn in grades we have to have 100 points exactly because no one understands how to turn 140/150 into a number between 0 and 100. I foresee problems for my students and partial insanity for me.

This insanity will be added on to the feelings of frustration/worthlessness that surround me when I show up to class and find an empty classroom because class was cancelled for unexplainable, inexcusable reasons and no one bothered to tell me, or when I lose the first 15-20 minutes of class because most of my students and my counterpart don’t show up on time, or when my counterparts are changed in the middle of the year without telling me. Two or three times a week, I want to throw up my arms in the air and quit. I want to shake all the people I work with and get a logical, rational answer to my question, WHY???!!! I want to pick up a desk and body slam down to the ground.

But, when things go well, when I can tell my students are paying attention and learning something, when someone answers a question correctly, or when I have a counterpart teach a class correctly-beautifully!-I want to move on, continue trying and improving. I’m losing on most levels, but the few wins and the small successes keep me in it.

So, here I am just shy of the halfway point in the year. We’re certainly not where I thought we would be at this point, but I didn’t anticipate some of the problems/challenges. My expectations and standards are drastically lower than when I started the year, but even with the drop, they are higher than what my students are used to; and that’s what I hope for now, that my students are challenged and held to a higher standard than what they’re used to. They’re not going to learn everything that I want them to learn in the class. Maybe they’ll pick up a few things here and there…maybe not. But, I hope, in the end that they expect more from themselves because they had a teacher that expected more from them.

Communicating like a Nica

When I was home over Christmas, I shared with my family the Nicaraguan custom to point with chin and lips (not your hand or finger) when you want to point out a location. So, for about two weeks we walked around the house puckering up our lips and laughing. With this in mind, I share with you how to communicate like a true Nicaraguan.

· When you want someone to repeat what they said or you don’t understand: Squint or scrunch up your nose.

· When you want to say hello to someone across the street: Extend your arm parallel to the ground at waist level. Put your palm up and extend your neck so your chin points up.

· When you want to say someone is stingy or cheap: Flex your bicep and tap the bottom of your elbow with your opposite hand.

· When you are talking about money: Extend your pointer fingers and slide one across the other as if you were peeling a carrot.

· When you want to say no: Extend your pointer finger and aggressively wag your hand back and forth.

· When you want to say someone has a lot of money: Extend your pointer finger and thumb and hold them out in front of you so that they form an invisible outline of a giant stack of money.

· When you are talking about drinking beer or rum: Extend your thumb and pinky finger (the hang loose sign) and hold your thumb at your mouth. Move your hand up and down as if drinking from a glass.

· When you want to say something is crowded or full: Touch all fingers and thumb together on one hand.

· When you want to eat or are talking about eating: Hold your palm in front of your mouth, fingers together. Snap your fingers back and forth near your mouth.

· When you want to refer to your diarrhea: Make a fist and lock your elbow into the side of your body. Move the lower part of your arm up and down while grimacing.

· When you want to point to something: Pucker up your lips and aim where you want to point (also works to jokingly indicate that your friend is crazy when he’s telling a dumb story).

· When you want to get someone to come towards you: Extend your arm in front of your body and move your wrist up and down with your fingers pointed towards the ground.