So what a crazy month this has been! As you all know I have not posted in a month and that’s for a couple reasons. Mainly though Peace Corps rules don’t allow me to leave my town overnight for my first three months in my site, thus I only have roughly four hour to get everything I need done in town. This includes grocery shopping, eating (need a little meat in the diet), answering emails and checking up on the happening in the world (aka SPORTS). Also, to upload pictures takes just under an hour. Thus when I do update the blog it is usually one of the few things that I get to do while in town.
Anyway, the month started off with the New Years celebrations. This was an exciting time as roughly twenty of the other Ag volunteers that I trained with all met in a beach town for four day and relaxed. We enjoyed some time in the beach but not after a little scare. The first fifteen minutes we were playing with a football in the water when my friend felt a sting in his foot and it was bleeding profusely. After talking to the people in the hostel we were staying at we found out that what stung him was a sting ray (Yes the same thing that killed the Crocodile Hunter) immediately after that he was sent to get the poison removed from his foot. After a day of total pain and a week of walking with a limp he is now fine, however, needless to say everyone entered the water a little slower for the next couple days. But overall it was a great trip, great seeing everyone and some amazing sunsets as you saw in the pictures.
The next major event was a visit by the Peace Corps Director for the entire WORLD!!! He decided to make a four day stop in Nicaragua for some meetings with the government and to check on the volunteers. Well during his time here the PC Nicaragua directors decided to have him visit two sites. Well lucky me, my site got picked for one of the sites for him to visit. See here we are working on that bean project that I have mentioned before, however the PC Nicaragua staff loves this project because it involved cross sector work between volunteers. I help the town with quality control and Ag practices while a small business volunteer comes in and helps with business and selling practices. Before moving on I want to also mention that immediately after leaving my site he returned to the capital of Nicaragua to have a meeting with the President of Nicaragua, yeah I like to say I am about on the same level as the President of Nicaragua.
So anyways back to the story, we are told that there will be three PC vehicles coming and we are supposed to entertain the Director and eleven other high ups for roughly an hour. Thus, myself and the business volunteer set up a presentation accordingly. We start with a welcome by the community, a brief history of the volunteers, a talk on the bean project and a quick mention of our future pig project. It was set to go all smoothly, which for a small town in the middle of nowhere Nicaragua is almost impossible to do when you have three big SUVs rolling into town. (I know I have mentioned before that there are only two trucks in the whole town, thus when three big white SUVs come in needless to say they are noticed.)
Now the quick little hour of my life turned into a HUGE circus. The PC staff failed to mention that they were also bringing a bus of news people. All four news channels in Nicaragua brought in reporters and cameras, two newspapers had reporters and regional news channels for Central America also brought in news people. It was a bonafide circus and I’m supposed to be one of the ringleaders. Well it all turned out well and the town got all excited as they all got to see their pretty little faces being interviewed on TV, however it was a freak show for me the little volunteer who doesn’t know enough Spanish to give an interview.
One interesting thing I learned on the Directors visit though was the difference from a translator and an interpreter. See a translator takes things and translates them verbatim (or as much as possible given the difficulty of that some words just don’t translate or can translate multiple ways) and there is the title of interpreter. This is a glorified word for a person who interprets what one person is saying in one language and translates it to another language who doesn’t speak the original language, they supposedly are better at translating the meaning of what the person is saying. So why is this important? Yup, the director of Peace Corps does not speak Spanish (Side note: I find this incredibly interesting as most volunteers, sorry I don’t have time to look up the statistics, work in Spanish speaking countries.)
So, I am giving a short little ten minute speech about the upcoming pig project to the Peace Corps Director. However, lucky me it has to be in Spanish because we have some community members present and thus we don’t want to alienate them. So imagine this, I am sitting there thinking in English, translating it in my head and then speaking in Spanish. Now, every half sentence or so I have to stop so this fancy little interpreter lady can translate the sentence to English. So I’m sitting here trying to maintain where I am at in the sentence and trying to make sure she is saying what I am thinking in my head…and guess what…she is twisting it ever so slightly, but this small little twist in changing the meaning of the presentation. Essentially her interpretation was giving the benefits to the people in the project but not emphasizing that the people are representing families. Small little tidbit but to me it was quite large, as there are 55 people in the project but they represent over 70 percent of the families in the town, or roughly 280 people. So what are you supposed to do? I’m sitting here thinking to myself, should I just stop the Spanish and speak in English or is that too blunt, and what happened to this whole part that she is an interpreter when she cant even interpret an American speaking Spanish. I know it was probably my fault I think a highly paid interpreter should pick up on this small little interpretive detail. So yeah if you can’t tell I am not a big fan of these famed interpreter types.
The third and final big event of the month is the Fiesta Patronales, or Party for the Patron Saints. See each town has a Patron Saint and every year they celebrate the Patron Saint, yes there is actually religious celebrations but I think it is more of another excuse to party. Sort of like our Halloween, everyone has heard of some good excuse for the holiday but no one really knows why it now promotes little kids to dress as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and beg for a trick or treat (when was the last trick ever given out?). Anyways back to the story along with a couple small religious ceremonies there is also a huge fair like area set up (think state fair).
However this is also accompanied by lots of beer drinking and BULL RIDING!!! No we don’t have Nascar down here, instead we have beer drinking and bull riding. Well this year my community leader is one of the nine sponsors, thus I have been trying to go to as many of the events as possible. Three weekends, bull riding every Friday, Saturday and Sunday Night. I had other plans the first weekend, however the second weekend I managed to go to two out of the three nights. It was quite the spectacle, but also a lot of fun as well. I am not quite sure on this but I believe a mixture of the bull riders are professionals, while the other half is people from the stands that want to ride. Or this is at least my assumption as several of my community members attempt to have me ride a bull. I try to get out of this by telling them that this year is only for learning to ride horses and we will see what next year brings…
Back to the fair part of the events, one thing I learned the first night that I went was that they build tents for several bars around the fair area (which is about the size of a football field). The fair area has various food vendors and little games set up in one area and fair rides, farris wheel and tea cups set up in another area. Well quite the surprise for me was that these bars they set up are a big hangout for homosexuals and cross dressers. This was quite the surprise as well they are quite the cultural taboo here in Nicaragua and seeing them next to bull riding, I guess I just don’t quite see the connection there. Anyways it was a blast, we left for the fiesta around 3 pm and didn’t get home until 1 am, which in Nicaragua time is like 6 am in the USA as most nights they are in bed around here at 8pm.
And with that I hope this two and a half page entry will suffice for a month of not posting and hope that I will be able to post more frequently in the future.
This first picture is my lovely living room, here you can see the elegant couch and chairs. Also in the pic you get a quick look into my kitchen as well. Basically my house has two room, this is the kitchen and living room and then there is the bedroom that follows. Got my nice little hammock here for reading and relaxing and the bookshelf on the left there has all my work shit.
Here is my bedroom, quite simple. Got my dresser and closet, just outside of the picture is a little table that I have all my dailies on. 
The next two picture are from a youth group beach trip I took some kids from my community on. I managed to stuff 23 kids into a truck and we drove for 3 hours to the beach. We did manage to stop in Leon on the way for a museum and also to see the biggest church in Central America. It was an awesome trip as none of the kids had ever been to Leon before or seen the ocean. All the kids were asking ¨why are there waves?¨ and ¨why is the water salty?¨.
Here you can see the beach in the backround and the overcrowded bed of the truck. In total we stuffed 20 kids in the bed. The girl standing up in pink is another of the girls that I stayed with the first month, her name is Damirel.
This is my neighbor and fighting buddy, his name is Everet and is the most well behaved little kid I have met. Which is saying a lot as most kids down here are brats. Anyway, because he is so well behaved he always gets what he wants, so when you tell him no it is absolutely hilarious because he just doesnt understand the word ¨no¨.
Here is a picture of the Peace Corps Director in my site. If you don´t remember what I look like I am behind him in the white shirt. Yes, my hair is completely short, and no I don´t like it.
Here is a scorpion that was in my house, one of four that I have killed in my house. 
Here is a picture of my cat, the big one, and her kitten. The kitten I gave to my sitemate Marlena as cat food is rediculously expensive down here and I didn´t want a second cat. But she is cute none the less.