Settling In

So I've spent about a week in San Miguelito.  Some Peace Corps Volunteers compare the Peace Corps life cycle to a chick maturing into a rooster...I'm definitely in the chick stage right now: kind of useless, but cute to laugh at, and in turn feeling a bit overwhelmed sensorially by everything going on in this world I've hatched into....Here are some things that have happened.

-My host family in Carazo took a road trip to drop me off in San Miguelito. In true Nicaragua form, we crammed into a pickup truck, with plenty of chinearing (sitting on laps). It was super delightful. I played DJ with my 7 year old neighbor, we stopped to eat lunch near the shade of a brook, we drove past hot dry lands, the mountains of Boaco and Chontales and down to the jungles of Rio San Juan. And of course, we took the requisite photo shoot on the muelle (wharf)in San Miguelito. After they left, I didn't know what to do, so I organized my room and passed out at like 6pm. 

-Rayos! It's supposed to be summer which means it's not supposed to rain all the time, but it still does. Two crazy scary thunderstorms this week so far. 

-So since I am not teaching until the following semester, I don't really have a ton of things to do right now other than get to know my counterpart English teachers and institutos and the commuity more generally.  After hiding in my room and having a lot of sadness and pena (shyness) for the first few days, I realized that the only person who really cares how awkward I am is me. So I am making an effort to get over myself and actually talk to the neighbors and it is making my life infinitely more fulfilling. People here are amazing conversationsationalists, and incredibly open to talking about their lives, which is humbling. People's lives here are marked by so much suffering: war, child mortality, the absence of loved ones in Costa Rica or the United States for work, bad weather, political faultines not working in their favor, strained family relations due to machismo, alcoholism....but most people are still so positive. Its inspiring for sure.

-I've won some celebrity for two things: my host mom thinks my windup radio and sporks are really cool. Also I got some chavalas (tweens) from the neighborhood to think I'm cool by teaching them the fabulous art of friendship bracelets. Thank you Klutz books! Now I have friends! 

-I tried two Nicaraguan standard refrescos for the first time- chica, bubble gum pink corn drink, and pinolillo, toasted corn with cacao & sugar drink. I'm a fan. 

-Buying food here is hard for this gringa. There is no super market in this department. Which leaves pulperias, small stores stocked with random things as the main option. Their name is derived from the word pulpo, or octupus, according to one explanation because there are so many, it's as if there were tentacles everywhere. Regardless of the origins of the name, you often can't see what they sell and have to ask. This is problematic for me because no one actually uses the Spanish name of the thing they want to buy, but instead the brand name. If you ask for leche you will get a lot of hesistation, but if you ask for CentroLac you will be rewarded with a bag o' milk. It's extra bad when the name of the thing is in English, because I have to figure out how they pronounce it. Corn flaake! The best was the other night when my host mom asked me if I wanted maruchan for dinner. "I've never heard of that! What traditional Nicaraguan food might this be?" I pondered, until she clarified by saying it was a soup with noodles. O! Ramen! Maruchan. Duh, I guess. People also sell things out of their houses without signs advertising this, which lends every house a blackmarket sort of quality from an outsider's perspective. So that's a whole different food buying system to navigate. 

-Fun tip from my neighbor who makes cheese: apparently milk is a hot comodity around here. If you want it fresh from the cow, you'd better get there before 6 am....otherwise, all sold out.

-I found out that the direct translation of my new favorite kind of cheese, cuajada, is "curdled." Less appetizing now, though it makes a lot of sense.

-Fish are going to be a big part of my diet here, which is pretty exciting. I woke up from a nap the other day to find my host sister hacking the gills out of some fish with their heads and eyes still on. I also watched a cock fight, which was oddly enough more beautiful and less bloody than I expected. However, my ability to feel empathy for animals is inversely correlated with the amount of sleep I've lost due to the chickens outside my room squaking with tremendous zeal at all hours. At this point,  I could probably personally wring their necks without feeling too much remorse. 

-I've watched an obscene number of Mexican soap operas, which feature characters who probably phenotypically represent at best 10% of the Mexican population and feature storylines that are generally involve a lot of cheating. Thanks to this I can probably pull off an excellent angry crazy woman impression, which could potentially come in handy for scaring my future students into doing their work.   

-I'm still bad at laundry. I washed stuff the other day and my host mom complemented me on how fast I did it and I was feeling so good until it dried and as usual, my black clothes were covered in white splotches. I guess it serves me right for not thinking ahead about how my big city black wardrobe might not be a smart choice for a hot, tropic region of the world where there's a lot of anxiety about devil worship. 

-Jane Jacobs sure was right...having eyes on the street makes on world of difference for public safety. Kids eyes are particularly observant. I talked to some cipotes (little kids) today who remembered  that I had arrived in a truck 6 days earlier, that my host family wanted to buy tortillas and that the kids were eating ice out of cups. I want a memory that good! Then they told me that I looked like a clown, and ran off to do impressive upside-down flips on a wire in front of my house. 

Well, there you have it readers. Week one in excruciating, mundane detail.