October Update... AT LAST

Another month down, 22 to go. Yup, we are kind of at that count down stage, which they say will pass. Things are good, there is no real reason to complain other than that the newness has worn off and it is slowly becomimg work as normal. I should mention though that “work as normal” here is far from our U.S. definition. Community integration is actually a part of our job description, so when we are walking around the city, talking to the owner of the paint store about how to eradicate the bugs who are feasting on our rustic furniture (see the book shelf photo), and eating ice cream at the director’s wife’s shop, we are actually on the clock.

We had about 18 days of school canceled during the month of September, which if you do the math leaves about 3 days of actual classes. We managed to stay busy enough with Peace Corps reports and planning classes that were sadly never taught. We put on another teacher workshop; this time the theme was pronunciation. A fun fact that we learned from our linguist friend, Anjie, is that the direct correlation between written English and spoken English is only about 20%. This makes teaching pronunciation quite tricky. For example, the vowel sounds in the words hot, caught, talk, awful, and bought are all the same, but with very different spellings. So Mom, that’s why I’m a bad speller, it’s not me, it’s English!

Adam had some pretty substantial bumps form on his hands and his feet. As it turns out, he was having an allergic reaction to the vitamins we have been taking. Some people are allergic to penicillin; Adam is allergic to vitamins A, C, D, E and iron. Let’s hope he doesn’t get scurvy. Emmy, you’ll be happy to know that he is on a strict skittles diet to prevent this from happening.

We celebrated Lara’s birthday with a nice weekend get-a-way to a place called Selva Negra (Nicaragua’s version of Germany’s Black Forest). It is about a 4-hour bus ride from scorching Leon, in the cool and refreshing mountains between Matagalpa and Jinotega (damn the volunteers who call this wonderful climate home). We stayed at an organic coffee farm/hotel/restaurant. We enjoyed good food, coffee and hiking, and in general, a change of pace and scenery. Selva Negra has a great trail system, which we took full advantage of. After breakfast, it was our plan to go on a short hike up to the viewpoint. Since we didn’t have a map, we didn’t realize that we had in fact reached and passed the viewpoint. So we continued on, and on and on and on and got lost in the mountains until finally we ended up on someone else’s farm, who may never have seen white people before and seemed a little scared of us. When all was said and done, our short hike turned into a 5-hour vigorous trek through all of the trails Selva Negra had to offer, plus a few extras that we blazed ourselves, like onto the private property of local farmers. (Photo- Shade grown coffee)


We are happy to report that we have completed the final steps in the pineapple winemaking process. It is now strained, siphoned, and after a week of “resting,” siphoned again and bottled. It was a bit dry for fruit wine, so we added a little more sugar between step two and three, along with a pinch of rum to kill the yeast so that it wouldn’t make more alcohol out of the extra sugar that we added (it is kind of strong as it is). We began with about 5 liters, and somewhere between the straining and the bottling, we seem to have misplaced a few liters… into our bellies. It was such a success, that we have started a new batch of pitaya wine that should be ready in about 6 weeks.


Looking back, it turned out to be a busy month in comparison to September. Our friend Elizabeth came to visit from the only department hotter than Leon, Chinandega. We kicked it at the beach and cooked some tasty food. Then came a huge tropical depression, which meant that we had to contact all the volunteers in our department and tell them to stay put (we are the emergency action plan coordinators, basically that means we get a free cell phone and have to call about 20 volunteers to warn them of impending natural disaster, civil unrest or apocalypse). This past week we spent many days in Managua for Lara’s Peace Corps birthday present… a colonoscopia, that’s Spanish for camera up the butt. To make a long story shorter than her intestines, all is well and we were sent home a few pounds lighter. Last but not least, Adam grew a fantastic goatee! He even went and had it trimmed at the barbershop. It was a bit pricey, but he was treated to the works; brute aftershave, baby powder and an electric face massager that a man rubbed all over his face and neck.

Thanks for the packages, magazines and birthday wishes! We are now happy to report that our magazine supply is ample and should serve us well for quite a while.
Adam´s new look.