August-September Update

The big news for the month is that we have moved into our very own house! It is a bit sparse inside, but it’s coming along. The neighbors loaned us a stove and insisted that we take advantage of their cable, which they offered to us at the reasonable price of $0.00/month. We haven’t even had a TV let alone cable in three years so we fought it, but they won and brought over the necessary cords, ladders and low and behold, we have cable. I kept reminding my self that cable is just a black wire if you don’t have a TV to connect it to, which we didn't have. Then out of nowhere, our landlady showed up at our door with an old TV. At one end of our living room is a bookshelf that Lara made from cement blocks and wood, at the other end, an old television sits on the floor connected to a black tube of TV life-support hanging down from the ceiling. We keep them separated because bookshelves and TVs are, by nature, mortal enemies. At night we hear the two arguing with only cockroaches to mediate. Yes, the cockroaches also came with the house. I don’t know where they hide in the simple, adobe structure, but they are big and hard to kill. We have put out poison, which promises to kill them in 48 hours, which in Nicaraguan time means 3 days. Television and pesticides in our new home?! I guess we left our ideologies back in the States :).

Other notable information is the early start to what looks like a powerful hurricane season. We had a fierce day of rain, which was a by-product of some distant hurricane, Gustav I think. Our house flooded, school was canceled and it looked as though the whole city was going to be enveloped in water. We were told that this is a pretty normal occurrence in September, and that it only gets worse in October. Last year, the volunteers from León and Chinandega spent a good portion of October in consolidation, which means that all the volunteers in the department go to a designated safe place and wait it out. Chinandega waited almost 3 weeks to be sent back to their sites. We are all on the Pacific side of the country, so we don’t get slammed by the hurricane itself (with the exception of Alma which hit hard about two months ago), what we get is torrential rain and flooding as the hurricane passes through. Hurricanes have always been a distant concept to us as Oregonians, so the reality of what Cubans, Floridians, Haitians, Texans, Caribbean Islanders and the like face every year is an eye-opening experience. Without the infrastructure that exists in the U.S., it is easy to understand how the effects of even minor storms can become severe.(Out our front door)
On a lighter note, what would Adam and Lara do with an abundance of cheap tropical fruit? Make fruit wine of course. Adam brought home four pineapples and a few feet of plastic tubing and we went to work chopping, boiling, sanitizing and constructing a fermentation device. In 8-10 weeks we should have about two gallons of tasty pineapple wine.

Last but not least, we participated in our first TEPSE, a time for teachers from the department to plan together, share ideas and discuss the national curriculum. We met the new delegate from the Ministry of Education and put on a workshop about the thrilling and stimulating topic, Teaching Prepositions to all Levels! Fortunately, we were able to work in the Beatles “Octopus’s Garden” and a little bit of the Hokey Pokey to spice things up. (This is a really nice private school called La Salle where the TEPSE was held)

(The patio at our last house, our room was the first door you can see on the right)

(Our new patio... it needs a little work)



Here is footage of Adam building a dam to divert water from our kitchen.