Five Nights in Candelaria

Today is the official FIVE-MONTH mark that we have been in MCC.  We can both say that the time is flying by and we continue to accumulate many stories and adventures of our lives.  If you want to learn some Nica Spanish, I wrote some words in italics throughout for you to try it out!

Ten days ago, we returned from a five-night visit in the country.  This time we went to the community-la comunidad- of Candelaria, where we will be working for entire term.  Candelaria was the first community that AsoFénix worked with to install a solar-powered water pump, which brings water to 42 houses. This project was initiated in 2004, and is still allowing families to access water from a faucet in their houses or right out their back door.  Before they had access to potable water, they would have to walk to the nearby river, which is a 5-30 minute walk depending on where one lives.   Everyone we spoke with was grateful for the convenience of potable water in their home.  Most people are on the national grid for electricity in their homes.  The average family has 5-7 children, significantly higher than in other communities we work in, therefore poverty is greater!

Our week went well and we learned A LOT!!  Many learning experiences made for an interesting week!  We weren't really "bored" at all, which was good.  We stayed with Maria & her husband Apolonia and their SEVEN children-niños (ages 16 to 4 months)!  So never a dull moment with that many people around, plus a new intern from AsoFénix, Arielle, also went with us for the week.  Maria is on the committee in Candelaria, and she is accustomed to hosting people from AsoFénix so that was nice.  She is a super-sweet woman (age 35) and talked with us A LOT about the community and the people.  We're grateful to be working with people like her, because other people we met were not too receptive to us and didn't have much to say, so that was hard! 

Highlights

• At Maria's house we learned how to make lots of new things in the kitchen!  
• Tortillas (included: washing the corn, grinding the corn, making the tortillas and eating them for every meal!)  

Washed corn kernels going through the grinder to make the dough.

• Baked Goods-Cosas de Horno (Direct Translation: Things of the Oven).  All items were corn-based with a few variations in ingredients and shape.  Baked in a clay/earth oven outside with the fuel being corncobs and wood.  All VERY DELICIOUS fresh from the oven and still HOT!

  

  Rosibel putting the ojaldras in the oven!

• Coagulated Milk-Cuajada- It's not "technically" cheese but the closest thing to it in the campo.  Maybe it’s more like cottage cheese, but without the liquid.   Need to do more research on what makes cheese, cheese!  We ate this with two of our meals every day!
• At Maria's house learned ALL about COWS-Vacas!!  We watched them being milked every morning around 7:30am.  We learned how to milk a cow....kinda cool but freaked me out a little!!  AND last but not least, we watched a baby calf being born!!!!  Pretty cool, but not a glamorous birth by any means.  The mother got freaked out by the neighbor dogs and promptly rejected the baby.  Apolonia was working with the mom and calf so hopefully she will start being more attentive to her baby.  The past two nights the baby calf-ternerito- slept in the kitchen (for protection).  He's a cute little thing!  At one point I woke up and heard a little racket in the kitchen, I think since his mom wasn’t feeding him he decided to make his own dinner.  
• Other projects that AsoFénix organized in the last year included a lavendero y jardin system in eight houses.  The lavenderos are made of cement where people wash their clothes and dishes.  The used water is piped to their garden-jardin nearby.  Seeing people's gardens filled with fruit trees of ALL kinds and lots of veggies was very exciting!  People were very proud to show us their gardens.
• Outdoor "bucket" showers at night=feeling like a million bucks before you retire for the night!  One night I almost showered with a scorpion.  I was rearranging the fabric on the shower with my headlamp on, I thought I saw a spider but looked again and it was a scorpion about 1.5 inches long.  Apolonia killed it with his machete as soon as Arielle took a photo. 
• Playing baseball and outdoor games at dusk with lots of kids (under 11).   It became the evening ritual, and on the last night we taught them Bocci ball. 

Difficulties

• Sleeping in a "twin" cot-tejida- for FIVE nights=lots of togetherness!
• Eating a lot of starches for EVERY meal-RICE, beans, and CORN tortillas! (arroz, frijoles, y tortillas)
• Conversation...sometimes it was really hard to figure out what to talk about with someone you've just met that could care less that you’re paying them a visit.  This lead to awkward moments on occasion.  Understanding campo Spanish has its challenges, and we have about three pages of new vocabulary words to prove it!
• Seeing how people live with very little! Small, deteriorating houses made out of sticks and mud, with 5-7 children per family, no variety in diet and lack of education (including high illiteracy rates).  Very hard to soak in all the sights of poverty. 

The baby calf is finally eating the next day!

The day we left we woke up at 4:30am to be off a little after 5am to catch the "last" bus out of Candelaria.  It’s almost a 30-minute walk to the main road and we missed the 5:30 bus by 5 or 10 minutes.  At 6:30 the 6 a.m. bus hadn't come so we caught a ride in the back of a pickup truck.  Had some great views of the countryside as the sun was rising, with a cool breeze blowing in our faces!  We arrived back at our house at 7:30 a.m., and the first thing Nate did was make REAL coffee.  I ran to the store-pulperia- and made us eggs and potatoes for a big breakfast(that didn’t consist of rice and beans) and we both showered up before we ate.  Glorious showers should not be taken for granted!!  They’re not even warm here but feel great!  

Well, that gives you a taste at least of what our lives our like when we go to the country-el campo.   If you come visit us, you too could experience some of what we are experiencing.  Looking for tickets yet?

Check out our album for photos from the week!  

http://transitiontimes.shutterfly.com/pictures/492

Our “Pet” Iguana

Iggy on his favorite jocote tree!

We’ve been watching our “pet” iguana outside on a regular basis.  He lives in the cement chimney of our sauna in our backyard.  Sauna you say, yes, we have a sauna in our backyard made by Finish people that lived here previously.  The stones for the sauna were even imported from Finland!  Why do we need to have a sauna when we sweat enough as it is?  Who knows!  That is besides the point, the topic for the moment is our pet iguana or as locals call the male iguanas, garrobos.  I have named him “Iggy” for iguana and Nate is calling him “Gary” for garrobo (obviously we haven’t come to a consensus yet on his name)! 

Every morning, he usually pops his head out of the chimney and props himself up for a good, long look around.  How he comfortably does this is still unknown to me!  He hangs out on the roof, being super stealthy and still, checking it all out.  Occasionally, he’ll move his head to have another view.  It’s fun to see him around our yard and it feels like we have a pet since we see him almost daily.  We’ve even seen him crawl up the orange tree beside our house to get into the area between the ceiling and the roof.  The first time we heard him, we thought it was pigeons on our roof.  We confirmed it was an iguana on my birthday (Dec. 10^th) when I awoke at 6 am to noises above us.  I looked up and saw something staring at us through the gaping hole we had in our ceiling panel.  When I went to grab my glasses to get a better look, he scurried off on top of the ceiling panels. 

Hopefully our landlord won’t kill him and eat him!  He killed one recently in our yard and told us about it afterwards.  From my understanding, iguanas are protected species (illegal to kill, catch or trade) because they are rapidly declining in numbers, from over-harvesting and habitat loss.  In terms of regulating and enforcing laws that do exist, that is another story.  I did a little research and I’ve narrowed down Iggy to either the Cetenosaura quinquecarinata (Club Tail Iguana) or the Cetenosaura similes (Black Spiney Tailed Iguana).  Iguanas are generally omnivores (eating fruits, flowers, foliage and small animals and insects).  This surprised me because I always imagined iguanas to be herbivores, but our neighbors who have a lot of chickens, have mentioned that iguanas like to eat their baby chicks.  They too have been keeping an eye on the iguanas in our yard. 

Iguanas and their eggs are a delicacy and worth a lot of money in the black trade market.  Our little buddy, Iggy, is about 2 ½ feet long (including tail) and would go for 200-300 cordobas (about 10-15 dollars).  On the highway from Teustepe to Managua, there is one area where we regularly see someone standing on the side of the road holding one or two dead iguanas in their hand, trying to make a sale to the cars passing by.  This activity is illegal, but not regulated by police.  We’ll try to keep our yard a safe haven for iguanas passing through.  They love eating the fruit from our massive jocote tree, plus there is a great comedor (little restaurant) next door in our neighbors’ yard, with plenty of chicks to choose from! 

He was still enough for me to walk around him and take a few photos!

Long Overdue Update

The 22^nd of January officially marked four months that Nate and I have been in MCC!!  We have survived 103 full days in Nicaragua (103 days equals 14 weeks and 5 days)!  Pretty exciting, I know…try to contain your enthusiasm.  At any rate, I feel we are LONG overdue for a more “formal” update. 

This past Tuesday the 18^th, we “officially” moved into our house in Teustepe.  We have been living out suitcases, backpacks and plastic bags for nearly four months.  Not to mention that we have spent the night in thirteen different locations since we left our adorable, little apartment in Boulder, Colorado on September 13th, 2010.  I felt an amazing sense of patience through this time of transition.  I knew we wouldn’t be settled into our home until sometime in January or February, and this has definitely been the case.  Amazingly enough, I have had the strength, patience, flexibility and resilience to stay positive and upbeat through this time.  With these sentiments, I feel my prayers were answered in this aspect of my life.  I know many of you were praying for these things for us as well.  We greatly appreciate your thoughts, prayers and support!

By no means do we have a “regular” schedule yet, and we are still all over the place, through all our transitions and our work.  Travel is a requirement, not a luxury.  More and more, we are settling into our home in Teustepe and making it feel like ours.  Our house has had an extreme makeover since November.  The owners have put a new plywood drop ceiling in our kitchen, bedroom and bathroom, plus repaired various panels throughout.  Having a drop ceiling versus just an aluminum roof overhead cuts the heat (and dust) immensely within the house!  We are VERY grateful the owners have spent the money to make these repairs happen.  Additionally, our whole house has been repainted a cheery, pale yellow with a brick-red trim along the floor, which matches our tile floors.  We are constantly cleaning up, unpacking and organizing our house to our liking.  Teustepe will be our headquarters, from where we will travel to Managua for Monday meetings (usually we spend a night or two in the MCC office where we have our “own room” with some things we have left there to minimize hauling things from one place to the other.)  Additionally, we are easing into our visits in the communities surrounding Teustepe where we are working.  We are meeting new people all the time and trying to keep people’s names and families straight in our minds (this will always be a challenge).

To summarize the last four months with a few action words—

Jumping—Through immersion, we have been jumping into the Spanish language with active listening skills and the confidence to make mistakes when speaking.  We have noticed our language skills improving, and daily we are learning new vocab words.

Easing—We have been easing in into our work with AsoFénix.  With about 6 weeks of language study under our belts, we have regularly gone to the AsoFénix office every Monday for staff meetings.  We are getting to know the staff and interns, and becoming familiar with the many projects that AsoFénix undertakes in rural communities.  

Swimming—We have been swimming through a new culture since our arrival—new norms, new customs, new foods, new rules, new etiquette, and so on.  In the literal sense, we have gone swimming five times since we been here, locations include the Pacific Ocean, a swimming pool and a volcanic carter lake.  

Laughing—We always remind ourselves to laugh!  Times of transition are not the times to criticize and critique oneself.  You just gotta laugh at yourself (A LOT) and laugh with others (even when you have no idea why they are laughing)!

Learning—There are ALWAYS new things to learn!

Favorite Motto: “poco a poco” (which means “little by little”)

"Poco a poco" we are learning the language, learning the culture, learning about the people, learning how to get around by public transportation, learning new foods, learning how to be together as a couple (in daily life and work), learning how to ride a motorcycle, learning how to live a life in simplicity and in alignment with those around us.

With that said, you hopefully have a taste of what we have been experiencing.  Our photos are also good windows into our experiences, but by no means can we capture it all in a photo, although I do try to take lots of photos!  We will continue to share the glimpses of our new lives here in Nicaragua through photos, stories and entries like this.  Thank you again for all your thoughts and prayers for us through these transition times!    

The Art of Being Flexible

Being flexible in a foreign country is key to survival and success.  I would put this trait over any other trait that is essential for traveling and living in another country.  Living in a Latin culture, it is especially necessary to realize the importance of being flexible. 

What does being flexible look like in American culture?  You are meeting a friend for coffee and she calls to tell you she will be a half hour late, traffic is horrible.  You say, “Okay, no problem. I’ll be waiting in the café for you.”  This is being flexible, right?  What about at work, when you have a meeting scheduled and someone important can’t make it.  Most likely you found this out earlier in the week or at least have a day to call others involved in the meeting to reschedule.  This is being flexible, right? 

In Latin cultures, like Nicaragua, there would be many similar situations, but perhaps a bit more last minute.  On two occasions, Nate and I have arrived to the AsoFénix office ready to go for our 10 am Monday meetings.  We are patiently waiting and time is ticking away.  Finally at 11:30 am, I ask someone if we’re having our meeting, they laughed and said no.  Well, now we know we don’t have to be waiting around for a meeting that isn’t going to happen!  The first time this happened, we were both a little miffed.  We had traveled about an hour on two buses across Managua to arrive on time for the meeting, which consequently didn’t occur.  A simple phone call would have aided us in this knowledge.  We left the office that day feeling defeated.  Six hours of our day traveling and waiting around for meetings that never happened, we felt like we wasted a day.  There could have been ten other things we could have accomplished in those six hours, but alas, we ride the buses back home with our heads hanging low.

‘Time wasted’ would be the North American viewpoint of this situation, because time is like a commodity.  Time has the ability to be bought, gained, saved, spent and wasted, all with an emphasis on the future.  If we save time now, we will have more time for later.  Then we can accomplish x, y and z tasks.  This would get me ahead for tomorrow. 

In Latin culture, time is not viewed in this regard.  Time is fluid and based on the present moment.  There is no necessity to plan tomorrow when it is today, because as we all know that plans change.  Plans may get in the way of living life in the present moment.  Not to mention that within the fluidity of time there is an emphasis on relationships.  It would be rude to not stop and chat with people along the way, so being “late” to wherever you are going is not important.  Fostering relationships and checking in with those around you is the most important “task” at hand, not arriving early to a meeting that will most likely start late anyways. 

How does flexibility tie into all this anyways?  Here is a perfect image a fellow North American coworker offered recently.  She said, “You have to be like a spaghetti noodle down here to be able to go with the flow.”  We (North Americans) all laughed and couldn’t agree anymore.  It was earlier that morning that several changes had occurred in the office.  The date for a renewable energy fair that AsoFénix is organizing changed dates for the THIRD time in six weeks.  Just nailing down a date more than a month in advance is practically impossible to do in a culture that doesn’t plan a week out!  This was frustrating for many involved in organizing volunteers and logistics for the fair.  Response:  Okay, I’m flexible!  Good thing we have a white board calendar in the office!  I’ll erase the date and change it!  Ironically, I choose the ONE permanent marker out of five other white board markers on the white board to write the “new” date.  I realized this after the fact and scrambled to find a way to erase it before it stuck for eternity!  Coincidence? 

As mentioned earlier, this was one of those mornings that our 10am meeting was cancelled.  All the Nicaraguans seemed to know the meeting was canceled, but none of the North Americans knew of this until 10:10 am that morning.  Response:  Okay, I’m flexible!  I’ll just learn how to use GoogleDocs and have an impromptu meeting with the interns about a project we are collaborating.  In addition to our “usual” Monday morning meetings, we usually have a staff lunch prepared for everyone.  We found out there would be no lunch for us at noon, or any other Monday in the future because of budget cuts.  Response:  Okay, I’m flexible (but hungry)!  We’ll eat lunch later or pick something up on our way to the bus stop!  To top it all off, Nate and I had our bags packed for a week to travel to the country to live with a local family.  We were ready to leave after our supposed lunch.  The man we were going to travel with tells us around 10:30 am that he has to buy more materials in Managua the following morning, and won’t be leaving until after that.  Response:  Okay, we’ll go with you tomorrow!  Our bags are packed and ready to go!  We’ll leave them at the AsoFénix office, and return to the MCC office, where we always have a bed to sleep in!

This is what flexibility has looked like to us “cheles” (gringos) here in Nicaragua.  We are learning that the ability to adapt and go with the flow in any given situation will aid our survival, and ultimately our happiness here.  If we got all bent out of shape with our panties in a wad every time our plans changed, we would never last in this culture!  Instead, I opt for new lessons—cultural adaptability, flexibility and going with the flow!  I challenge each of you to try it out in your own culture and see how you fair.  Can you be any happier when you realize that you are ultimately not in control?  Can you be open to things changing as you go?  Practice the “Art of Being Flexible” in 2011!

Our First Christmas in Nicaragua!

An update from us is long overdue, and now I'm not sure where to begin, so I decided that I'd start with our Christmas, since I just added a whole album of photos to our site for your viewing pleasure.

We had hoped that one day we would get to have a Christmas vacation just the two of us... Well that day finally came!  Here we are in Nicaragua with no family visits in sight!  So instead of pouting, we took the opportunity to explore new territory and went to the Spanish colonial city of Granada for three nights.  It is only about 45 minutes by bus from Managua, so it's an easy, stress-free trip.   

Granada's Famous Cathedral in the Central Park.

From the bell tower of La Merced.

Our Hotel - Santa Lucia Social Club.

Merry Christmas from tropical Nicaragua!

We stayed at a lovely hotel with only two other guests at the time.  So basically, we had our own private hotel equipped with a pool, full kitchen and cabana.  Our room was spacious and all the doors and windows were round!  It was a great place to relax and soak in the sun.  We strolled throughout the city exploring churches (from the altars to the bell towers), learned about cacao and sipped on hand-crafted hot chocolate in a café, and ate delicious meals after dark in outdoor patios of quaint little restaurants.

On Christmas Eve, we found two masses that were going on in the beautiful Catholic churches in the city.  Check out more photos of the churches, manger scenes and decorations at our photo site.  We soaked in the spirit of Christmas as incense drifted through the church, while listening to a choir and a message encouraging us to see past all the commercialism and seek the true meaning of Christmas.  Firecrackers went off throughout the night, culminating in a grand finale at midnight.  It was energizing to experience new traditions in a new culture. 

On Christmas Day, we rented bicycles and biked along a back road to a peninsula.  We found a restaurant along Lake Nicaragua with views of the Granada Islands. and in the distance, Ometepe Island that holds two towering volcanoes.   On Christmas Day, everyone goes to the beach or the lake to swim. This was indeed the case as we biked along the main beach.  Street vendors selling everything from ice cream to fresh coconuts, children swimming, parents hanging out, people biking around, BBQ grills, coolers and lots of family time!  If I was in the States, I would have thought it was the 4th of July.  It was wonderful to see all the action and great people-watching from our bicycles!

Spanish lesson:  nadar = to swim; bañarse = to bath oneself
Most Nicaraguans do not know how to swim, so instead of using the verb nadar, they use the verb bañarse.  If you ask someone if they will go swimming with you, they'll say NO, I can't swim!  But they they may go in the water anyways, and cool off where they can stand.


We returned to Managua 110% relaxed and refreshed from the holidays.  Here's the link to more photos on our Shutterfly site!  Check out our Granada Christmas album and more!    http://transitiontimes.shutterfly.com/pictures/345 

Locked-In & Locked-Out

The pigs that live across the street!

On Saturday, December 4th, we packed up our things and said goodbye to our host family in Managua.  It was time to head to Teustepe for the week so our house could get some needed repairs!  We were excited to get out of the city and see our place again since it had been one whole month since we had been there.  We arrived safely with clothes, towels and bedding, in addition to a week's worth of fruit and veggies.  The following morning we went to our landlady's house to pay our rent and check in about the repairs that would be done.  We returned to our place and unlocked the front gate when I noticed a mother pig and her baby were being let outside down the street from us.  They were walking around like a pet dog would be, sniffing in the grass and walking up the sidewalk.  I found this to be quite amusing and ran inside to get the camera.  After a few photos, I locked our front gate (from the inside) and went in our front door (which we usually leave open for more of a breeze.)  I heard someone at the door, so I went to see who was there.  A woman was standing at our gate, and she introduced herself as Megan, who just arrived in town with the Peace Corps.  She lives across the street in the house where the pigs live.  How ironic, right?!  Another gringo living a couple of houses down from us.  Nate heard that I was speaking English with someone and came to introduce himself.  Moments later a gust of wind blew our front door shut.  Our mouths dropped, as we realized that neither one of us had keys - we were locked out of our house and yet locked in our porch.  The front door can only be opened with a key, and the gate needs to be unlocked with a key to get out - plus there's a roof over this area, so there was no way to climb over the gate, and metal bars over the window prevented us from entering that way.  We stood sheepishly on our little isolated porch, and asked our new neighbor to go to our landlady's house for help.  Off she went, and returned with our landlady and her husband.  They looked worried and weren't laughing.  Nate and I were just embarrassed and felt stupid that the situation occurred.  Luckily, they had a key to the gate, but not to the front door.  So we went around to the back yard and scaled the the fence .  We have two doors in our backyard (one to our bedroom, one to our kitchen), and each of them has a metal gate with a padlock and a wooden door with locks on the inside.  Luckily we had left the wooden doors open, so we just had to somehow access the key for the metal gate, which was on a table, out of arm's reach.  Sticks were not long enough to reach, but then Nate had the brilliant idea to reach in and move the table towards us so we could access the key on the table!  WOW, quite the impressive break-in!  Could have been much worse, but we learned several valuable lessons.  #1: Keep your keys in your pocket at all times.  #2: Use a brick to hold open the front door.  And #3: Make sure your landlady has a copy of your house key as well!!  The adventures never cease in the lives of Nate and Liz, so stay tuned for more!!

La Playa

Last Sunday we went to the beach!  To be exact, on November 29^th we floated and swam in the Pacific Ocean….so awesome!!  One of the perks of living in the tropics!  It was a great Sunday afternoon get-away to the beach!  We went with three others in a personal truck, which made getting there a breeze!  It’s only about one hour to the closest beach from Managua.  We landed in Masachapa around lunch time and found a great hotel/restaurant to dine in.  The second-floor patio over-looking the beach at Hotel Summer was a winner.  We enjoyed delicious grilled fish and fresh-squeezed lemonade (without excessive amounts of sugar—quite a surprise).  Then we strolled along the beach and soaked in the sun. It was hard to believe that we were actually at the beach.  The five of us swam a while in the calm waters.  We were in an inlet of sorts, so the water was very calm and boats could easily launch from shore, to set off for an all-night fishing spree.  We saw many men preparing for this on the shore.  It wasn’t a surfing Mecca by any means, but it was a perfect place to float tranquilly.  I felt the stressors of the city melt away and I slowly surrendered myself to the salty waters.  Nothing more perfect in that moment!  We watched the sun set in all its splendor from the restaurant veranda and piled into the truck for our journey back to Managua.  A time for relaxation and self-care is sometimes a necessity.


If you want to see more photos, check out our album we posted!  
http://transitiontimes.shutterfly.com/pictures/275