The worst thing about the holidays is that they have to end. I made it back to Nicaragua today after spending 2 wonderful weeks at home. The trip was uneventful (it's so fast), except that we left houston about an hour late and the guy that had the aisle seat fell asleep and held me hostage so I couldn't get up to go to the bathroom. He put on those sleeping shade things and fell asleep before we even took off. I poked him a couple times but he wouldn't wake up so I just held it. Luckily I have gotten good at that from the three hour bus ride I have to take from Yali to anywhere else. Here's a cool pic from the plane, it was like a sea of clouds.






I'm spending tonight in Managua and have a dentist appointment tomorrow morning. Then I'll head back to Yali and start it all over again! My parents will be here again in March for spring break, so we ar trying to figure out where to go. Have of you ever been anywhere in Central America that you would recommend to us?

Thanks to all of you who came into Austin to see me, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.
Happy New Year!!
Danielle

This is my friend Saretlly's baby Iker (ee-ker). I know, strange name, I think she made it up. He´s like 8 months old about and he´s the hugest baby ever. My family met him when they were here and now my Dad always asks if he´s blown up yet.

He doesn´t like to be held by anyone but his mommy. Which is fine with me...he weighs a ton!

Not alot new to say. The concert was kind of a let down. He only played for about an hour...and drinks were not free like we origainally thought! A couple people got some money stolen but nothing else. I didn´t get anything stolen- I only brought cash and I held it clenched in my fist the entire time!

October will not be too excting, I´m going to stick around Yali and see what kind of projects I can scrounge up . Monday and Tuesday we are having a HIV/AIDS training for the volunteer health workers from the surrounding communities. But November will be busy, I have to give a nutrition charla to the new trainees, I´ll be in Managua for a conference the week of Thanksgiving...and then it´ll be Dec. and time for my visit home! Now I just need to buy plane tickets...

Hope everyone is great!

Danielle

Ooh - It’s been awhile.

Two weeks ago we had our 5 month of service workshop in Estelí. On the whole it was pretty boring, just a lot of presentations, but I got to see my whole group for the first time in 5 mos so that made it fun. The next week was the celebration of their Independence Day, so there was no school and no work Mon or Tues, so some of went to the beach. We went to a beach outside the city of Leon. It was really pretty, but my favorite beaches are still San Juan del Sur and Ometepe, although they’re the most touristy.

I’m still going over to the little girl’s house to dance on Sundays (Jahaira is her name) but we have been dancing a little less lately and just hanging out, which suits me fine. Last time they taught me a board game called No Te Enojes (Don’t get angry) which is exactly like Aggravation!! They made the board themselves and play with beans, corn, and pebbles instead of little marbles. And they have this enormous block of wood they use for a die (?). They have a couple different rules but it’s almost exactly the same and it’s so fun! I might have to bring them the actual game when I come back after Christmas.

The other day the family bought a ton of corn so we spent the day making various things from it. I helped shuck and cut and then went with Nelly to watch it get ground. I can now say I have had an entire meal made from corn.

shucking with Yubelka and Nelly

grinding corn

Appetizer: Wirila with cuajada. (This is a big tortilla made with the ground corn. It’s different b/c it’s made with fresh “maiz verde” they say here, instead of from dry corn. Plus it has sugar. It’s really good.

Main course: Tamales. Again made with the maiz verde Plus milk and sugar. Then boiled in the corn husk. These are the ones we had on the bus, Mom,Dad,Aubree,Patrick


Dessert: Corn pudding. This was made by mixing the mais verde with milk and sugar again and then straining out all the corn, so it’s really like essence of corn pudding. Then I think it was cooked for a little bit. This I did not like so much.

Beverage: Pinolillo. Roasted ground corn+cacoa+sugar+water. An acquired taste

I finally bought a bookshelf (pictured below). It cost about $20 which is actually kind of expensive, but I have been searching for just this shade of God Awful Orange, so it was a must buy. It startles me every time I walk in my room, it’s so bright. Can you believe I’ve already accumulated this much crap?

This week I have an eye doctor’s appointment in Managua and this Saturday I’m going to a Daddy Yankee concert! I don’t expect most of you to know who that is and I‘m not a huge fan, but I think it’ll be fun. I wish I could say that I will take a lot of photos, but I’m not going to risk taking my camera. At the last concert some PCVs went to almost everyone got something stolen and one guy had his sunglasses stolen off his face.

Take care everyone!

Love, Danielle

Just thought this was hilarious and wanted to share. Sorry I missed you Mer! It´s good to catch up with old friends. It´s amazing what a difference it makes being able to see each other. I miss you all!!

I´m a bag lady...

I realized this the other day as I was yet again washing and preparing to reuse a little plastic bag from a pulperia. I've done that in the past with ziplocs and am still doing it (even though I brought 4200 ziplocs with me) but Ihave starting saving every little plastic bag that comes my way. And paper too. I cant bring myself to throw paper away because I might be able to reuse the scraps for something else, in my classes or something. Anything to avoid having to spend money. Also little bits of string...the list goes on. I guess i should say I´m a junk lady.

I finish this week with my sex ed charlas with the 5th grade and will start next month with 6th grade. It's been a fun experience although as soon as my newness wore off they turned into little hellions. And just because the teacher is present does not mean that they will help me with discipline. Usually they just kinda laugh and comment on how terrible the kids are acting. Pretty annoying. But mostly I've had a good time and I met a lot of new kids that can now yell out my name as I pass on the street. Better than gringa. Last night I went over to a little girl's house to meet with her and a group of her friends that had invited me over to dance. I thought they were going to be teaching me folkloric dances but what it really was was hiphop/reggaeton dancing. Do you remember that scene in mean girls when they pass thru the living room and the little girls is there doing some kind of booty dance video? Thats what it was like, five 10 year old girls (and me) booty dancing in the living room. With this group of boys and 2 women watching. Akward.

I kept my promise of staying in site this month; I only went on 2 daytrips- one to Esteli and one to Jinotega to pick up a package (thanks mom and dad. katie-yours wasnt there yet, but ill go again soon, thanks!) In Esteli as I was leaving the Peace Corps office I met this retired couple that had come to donate us books. The man, Ralph, was from California and his wife Andrea is from Esteli. They were so nice and so excited to talk to me and invited me repeatedly to come for coffee or dinner to their house. Apparently she makes really good chicken mole, yum!! I would love to actually start up a friendship with them, Elise and I are thinking of going to Esteli this sat, I might try to find their house (thye gave me total Nica directions- from the banks 3 blocks west, 1 block north, no such thing as house addresses) I´ll let you know if i actually do it.

That´s all for now, sorry no pics. Hope you are all doing great!
Danielle

In Granada

I have been trying to do this for forever now, but the electricity keeps going out. It's August! Some of those weeks really flew by, others not so much. The 12 days my family was here went really fast, of course. We had a great time! It was so great to spend so much time with them and we got to see a lot of Nicaragua. The whole trip went really smoothly, except for a small hiccup when Patrick got turned away at the gate because his passport expired in a month. But he was able to get one expeditited and arrived the day after. The part I was most nervous about was renting a car and driving all over the country, especially since we were going to be doing the bulk of our driving on the day they were celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution. Luckily we didn't have any problem at all, in fact I loved having a car again! So much more freedom and you get places so much faster. We were lucky though, I think, because I talked to a girl in my group whose parents were here at the same time and had rented a car and they had some trouble with the police. They probably couldn´t tell we were foreigners. hahaha


The Shays reunited

Because we had to wait for Patrick, the family got to see more of Managua than they wanted probably (it's not the prettiest city) and little glimpse into volunteer life. They saw the Peace corps office (i.e. the huge wall surrounding it) and we stayed at a hotel where most volunteers stay when they are in Managua. We ran into a couple of them, in fact. Then we headed to Yali. As soon as we arrived we got swooped in upon by my friend Saretlly who had wanted to make us lunch, but we arrived later than planned so it turned into dinner. We first had to go to my counterpart Johana's house so she could meet the fam, and she served us this very rich mango smoothie thing called cuznaca. So none of us were hungry for dinner but we all dug in anyway to be polite. I'm glad we went though so they could meet saretlly and understand the insanity i'm dealing with. She's more than a little crazy, in my opinion. But so nice.

The next day we walked around a bit and drove around a little then went to my host family's house for lunch. Again good food, but too much! And I guess it's customary that the host not eat with the guests but neither my host mom or saretlly would eat with us. they sat/stood and watched us eat. Both families really liked each other and were able to communicate enough to really enjoy themselves despite speaking different languages and having me as translator. We were going to stay another night in Yali, but after lunch there was really nothing left to see in the town and we couldn't go visit anymore people because they will want to give you food and we were sooo stuffed. Also the hotel was a little creepy... It was 2 rooms inside someone's house, in their living room. I went by today to see if they had Dad's toiletry bag that he left (they did) and saw that one of the rooms is actually used by a family memeber when there aren't guests and they just clean out all the stuff when there is!! haha So we left a day early and stayed in Granada and everyone was more comfortable.


USA meets Nicaragua

From Granada we took a bus to San Jorge, Rivas to catch the ferry to the Island of Ometepe. It´s an island formed by 2 volcanoes in the middle of a huge lake. We stayed there from Monday to Friday and it was great. Very beautiful and relaxing. Except for the day when we decided to hike one of the volcanoes. 8 hours later, completely covered in mud, we were not relaxed. In fact we were all in a pretty bad mood when we got done. Patrick tried to stay positive and win the Good Attitude Award (which I guess he did because Aubree and I were not even trying). The worst part was that everyone talks about this awesome laguna at the top where you swim, etc. But we got there and it was sooo foggy and freezing. You couldn´t see a thing. I figured out that hiking is pointless to me if there´s no view when you finish. But the rest of the stay was great.


View from halfway up the damn volcano we climbed. This was the best view, we should have turned around here


View at the top of the damn volcano we climbed. This
is the supposed laguna that it was too foggy to see.
The guy second from the left climed up barefoot!


the beach at ometepe

From Ometepe we went to Granada and spent the rest of our time there. We went to 2 more volcanoes (no climbing) and ate lots of great food and drank lots of great wine! Great vacation!



Mom and I getting drunk in Granada


So we had a great time, hopefully they feel the same! 6 months is the longest I've ever gone without seeing my family and for me it was a great relief to see them. From where I am it's easy to imagine that I am missing important happenings in their lives (which I am, but not to the degree I imagined) and it was good for me to see that none of us has changed dramatically and we're not missing out too much on each other's lives.

Since they left I have been trying to work hard here in Yali. I´m still not super busy but I know things will develop with time. I went to Esteli my first weekened back for Volunteer Trivia Night (I don´t even want to get into how my team was robbed of victory), but I'm going to try to stay in site from now until my 5 month in-service training in Sept. (day trips don´t count :) ) We´ll see how that goes...

Hope everyone is doing great!!!
Love, Danielle

I'm still here!! I wanted to wait until I had something interesting to write about before posting again. It took a couple weeks for that to happen :)

A bunch of people from my group all met up in San Juan del Sur to celebrate the 4th of July. Before going I was kind of dreading it because it's a 9 hr trip and expensive (for me) and all the other volunteers that I mentioned it to that had been said it wasn't that great...BUT I had a great time and I thought the town and the beaches were really beautiful. It's true it's pretty touristy, you could forget you're in Nicaragua, but I actually kind of enjoyed that part of it. I got there early on Fri. with Elise and Braden and we checked into our hostel and then went directly to the beach. The beach in the actual town is pretty small and really not that crowded because it's not good for surfing. It's in a little cove so the water is a lot calmer, which was perfect for me because I barely like getting in the ocean anyway (it hurts my eyes :( ). The sun was only out for about 2 hours and then it got overcast, but in that time I managed to get really burned on any place that sunscreen had missed. Nick, Penny and Craig got in later that day and we cooked dinner (spaghetti! with REAL tomato sauce, not ketchup) in the hostel and then went to this bar that had a fire on the beach and live music. It was really beautiful and Elise and I enjoyed our first taste of Tequila in almost 6 months!

Saturday we got up and had free pancakes at the hostel-you had to cook them yourself but so what- and then caught a ride to one of the surrounding beaches. It was about a 45 min ride on a poorly maintained dirt road and when we arrived we found 1 little restaurant and nothing else but an almost empty (and beautiful) beach. Then we remembered that we were still in Nicaragua. But more people arrived as the day went on and one of the hostels in town was sponsoring a 4th of July party so they brought out drinks and "BBQ". We left around 5 but not too long before we left they started giving out free rum shots, so I'm sure it got pretty crazy. We cooked dinner again (tacos!) and went out dancing. It never did feel very much like the 4th of July but it was really great to see all the people in my group that I haven't seen in months


Nick, Craig, Penny, Kerri, me, Braden, Elise


the almost empty beach on Sat.


Elise, me, Lorna


The weekend before that Elise and Braden came into to town and we all (w/ Owen) hiked to the cloud forest reserve Miraflor nearby. When I say nearby I mean in bus or truck which is how we planned to get there, but not one passed us as we were walking so we ended up hiking the entire way there, uphill (4 hours). I was already tired by the time we got there and so maybe not as thrilled with it as I would have been. But it was still really pretty.


in the forest


pretty hydrangeas -mil flores in spanish. One of my favorites!





view- you can see why they call it a cloud forest!


You've probably noticed that I'm only talking about the weekends and that is because not alot has changed in site. I'm still doing nutrition consults in the health center, and I've had a couple patients. I think they're finalle ey remembering that I'm there and referring people.Yesterday one of my bosses came with Danny the volunteer that I visited in Rio San Juan. He extended his service to a third year, but is also working with Peace Corps as a Volunteer Coordinator. He leaves not too far away in Matagalpa, so I think he'll be good support for me. Anyway they came to check up on me and monitor my progress (or lack thereof) and we had a meeting with Johana, my counterpart to address any concerns or questions she might have. It was a good visit and the best thing that came of it is that Johana and I decided we'll have regular meetingd to discusss my schedule and talk about project ideas. This is totally something we should have been doing anyway so I'm glad we're going to start that.

But that's going to be about it for July...Sunday I leave for Masaya and have a Spanish workshop until the 16th and then my family arrives!!! We'll travel around until the 28th, when they leave me, and then it will practically be August! I like it when it feels like time is moving quickly!

I hope everyone is doing great! It will be a couple weeks again before I post, I don´t want to waste family time on the computer! But we´ll take pictures!

Love, Danielle