Land of Lakes and Volcanoes

This is the Jesus purisima we had at my house in Mérida before I left for Christmas. Well, Christmas has come and gone, and here's a brief recap of my experiences. I went to Managua and actually managed to get a lot done at the office. Then went Masatepe for Christmas with my host family. In the middle there, I managed to go to the Laguna de Apoyo with some other volunteers, which was a relaxing opportunity to catch up and cook a lot. A-A and Cris came up with a menu and we all contributed money and had some absolutely DELICIOUS food, gringo style. Not to diss the Nica food, I love it as much as the next girl, but none of us have houses yet, and for at least a few of us, one of the things we look forward to the most is cooking again. We had Mexican style beans and mashed potatoes with a vegetable medley salad for dinner. For breakfast, there was french toast, eggs, orange juice, and banana milkshakes. For lunch pasta primavera. We also made coconut cajeta, which means yummy Nicarag...

As my last post described a Catholic ritual, let me make it clear that there are a number of other sects present here in my little metropolis as well. There is a very active Evangelical church on our main street, a very modern center for the Jehovah's Witnesses, a tiny Presbyterian church, and a church in progress for the local Mennonite families. While I haven't seen a church here, I have also heard that there are Baptists, and there was quite a large Baptist church back in Masatepe. Back to the Mennonites for a second. I have only seen a few of them, but they are definitely a presence here. Unlike in Belize, where I saw quite a few Mennonites, all the ones I have seen here are native Nicaraguans. In Belize, they were clearly Caucasian immigrants from other places. While the religion was obviously brought here by European immigrants, it is interesting that it has taken hold enough here to have native Nicaraguan converts. Right now I don't know much about the histor...

November 16th is my volunteer birthday, and as of yesterday I have been a volunteer for one month! Now down to business... One of the things I have totally managed to not mention so far is La Purisima, not because I don't feel like it's important, but because everyone else is writing about it, and well, there have been more pressing things going on. However, I feel it's time to shed a little light on how Mérida celebrates the Virgin. I was also reminded of my oversite on the 14th by the celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe in our yard. Some background. La Purisima is 9 days of celebrating the Virgin Mary. Here it began each day at 4 AM with fireworks every morning, and these are the most amazing fireworks because they sound like bombs going off and you can feel the vibrations from them. Really, it was amazing. The first time it happened I thought someone was bombing Mérida. It reminded me of the night the tree fell in my front yard and made my whole house shake. I...

Let me begin with the most recent work related thing. As in, I have actually begun to work!! In reality I have been working. I am translating a charla I gave the other volunteers called The Teacher's Toolbox into Spanish for future use, I've been sort of editting our guía, and I've also been meeting everyone possible, listening, learning, and most futilely looking for a place to live. However, while I have been doing all that, I have also been noticing that my sister Tereza is really involved in things here in the community. The latest example is that there is a German NGO here that everyone just refers to as Project Aleman, and they are starting a comedor infantil project, which roughly translates to "kid eatery." In our town there is a child-development center that is run by the Ministry of Education (MINED) that is actually quite nice (see photo), called the CICO (pronounced see-co). The CICO is like a headstart center in the US, and as you can see, it...

I´m getting settled here, slowly but surely. And to cement my new involvement in the community, I attended the preK graduation this past week. First, all the graduates line up at one end of town with their opposite sex parents, and they walk in a grand procession through the whole town, ending at the school. Then they get to walk under these cool palm frond arches one at a time while their name is called. Then they´re are a bunch of speeches and each kid gets to walk up on stage and receive a certificate. There are also awards for best conduct, etc. Finally, there was some folkloric dancing, two to be exact. Here´s a photo of one of them. The kids are my niece and nephew with my current host family. She also won the best student in preK award. And a wild life update. This gigantic spider was in my letrine the other night and about scared the crap out of me since I didn´t see it on the door until after I had already entered and sat. After my...