Saludos a Todos!
Before I say anything, I'd like to mention that you may want to read this post in a few sittings as there is a ton. It has now been a month since I have been in my community of Las Salinas. It's definitely been a good time so far but I must say, my patience will have reached the level of impenetrable by the time I leave Nicaragua. I have decided that I can't go on the Internet more than once a week or I get seriously overwhelmed. Life in this community is just too slow-paced for me to keep up with anything online and so I'm going to keep it that way. While the slow speed of everything in this community makes me happy a lot of the time it also is where my patience is growing dramatically. So basically the mission of the Foundation for Sustainable Development is to create projects and initiatives that the community members can sustain on their own after the interns leave. Hopefully these projects will improve the environment, generate income, or build capacity. However, while this is definitely the right approach to take, it is also the one that the community members want to take least, because it requires them to actually do something rather than have something done for them, which is what most volunteer organizations do. For example, when my work started the week after I arrived in the community, I started with computer classes, which I finally decided to quit because they were wasting my time in the community and not accomplishing anything. The kids figured out how to use the computers after a few days and then just went to play games. However, I was still giving these classes three days a week for the entire day. So I talked to my supervisor and said that I know I am an intern at the library but just because I am an intern at the library doesn't mean that I need to spend all my time at the library when there isn't very much to do there. They agreed to let me stop the computer classes and focus all of my efforts on other projects in the community. As I had predicted, these projects are different than the ones I tried to start before.
First and foremost, I started work on creating a miscellaneous store with a women's collective in the community of mothers whose children come to the library. None of the women work and so they would like to be able to have something during the day to generate some income. So I held a meeting and told them that I have the ability to write a grant for up to 800 dollars for a sustainable project in the community. Their idea is to create a miscellaneous store where they can sell cheap basic products, bread and other bakery items, and art made by local artisans. With the help of this women's collective, over the next few weeks, I am going to write a grant to the Foundation for Sustainable Development for the funding of this micro-business. FSD's grant-writing process is extremely complex including more than ten pages of justification for the project, a business plan, a budget outline, and resumes of all the members involved. Also they don't approve any projects that don't include any capacity-building so it will be my job to figure out a way for there to be something educational in this business. Hopefully there will be a new business when I leave the community. My second project is based on cleaning up the community and getting the community members to take advantage of the truck that comes every monday to pick up trash in the community so the community members won't have to throw all their trash on the ground or burn it. This project is going to go in conjunction with the daily environmental hour I am starting at the school, where I am going to teach about the importance of protecting the environment. The idea of this project as a whole is to hopefully leave the community with a functioning recycling and compost system to sustain. However, I have a long way to go before that happens. My third project is the photography project I talked about before that will document the history of the community through photography as well as interviews with the owners of the salt mines and the oldest members of the community. There is also talk about two more projects: starting a community garden and selling the produce at the miscellaneous store as well as holding consistent movie nights to raise funds for the store or simply to give people a chance to sell homemade items.
I finally figured out that if I don't make myself a "NEEDS to get done list" every week, I will get lost in the slow-paced life of this community as well as in the Foundation for Sustainable Development's essentially structureless internship program. Looking back at all of this and the fact that that I was able to set up all these projects on my own, I almost feel happy that I was sad last semester because it prompted me to do something new from which I am learning a ton of skills that will be extremely valuable for the rest of my life. Also, this program really seems like the best gap between Amigos and the Peace Corps, which is eventually where it looks like I'm headed. Plus, I've secured my credit for this internship with an independent directed study I'm doing next semester.
Anyways, on to the fascinating stuff, where should I start? So every weekend I've been in the community, I've gone to a discoteca on Saturday night that residents from around the area go to. The dances here are really interesting. Basically, you can't go on the dance floor without a partner and you always keep kissing until you're off the dance floor. Although you guys are going to think I'm crazy for saying this, I think this a lot better than what we have in the states. There isn't any awkwardness and people like me who never get any action don't have to dance by myself and watch miserably while other people hook up on the dance floor. Also, it's nice that beers and the entrance fee are both only a dollar. In fact, the only people who dance by themselves at discotecas here are the other gringos. A bunch of gringos live on the beach nearby, surf every day, and come to the discotecas on the weekends. It makes me laugh because apparently they buy local girls motorcycles or cars so they can get with them. This may be an urban legend, but it is still hilarious. While I have met a few cool foreigners who are working on the organic farm down the road in my community, a lot of the gringos here piss me off majorly. Especially after going to a dinner at the exclusive, gated, beachfront mansion community of Rancho Santana and San Juan del Sur, which is basically a city made up of gringos and enormous houses that I'll mention later, my opinion of gringos here has dropped even lower than it was before. I mean who the fuck do gringos think they are to exploit poverty and build enormous mansions in a country where 50% of the population lives on less than two dollars a day without making even the slightest attempt to give anything decent back to the population? I mean I guess they provide jobs, but still it seems fucked up to build mansions walking distance from dirt roads with chickens, pigs, cattle carts, and beggars. Also, these expatriate communities of Rancho Santana and San Juan del Sur are basically made up of people who barely even make an attempt to integrate into the local culture. They hang out with other expatriates and speak English all the time. I wish I wasn't so judgmental of this, but I just don't understand the point of going to a foreign country if you don't want to integrate into the culture at all. Anyways, I need to stop ranting.
This past weekend I left the community for the first time since I've been here to go to San Juan del Sur, which as I said before, is basically a gringo backpacker harbor town about two hours down the coast. I originally left just with my host brother Franklin but ended up running into the foreigners that work on the organic farm in the community who we tagged along with for the rest of the trip. After getting a room at a guest house in San Juan del Sur, we went down to the beach where we had some Toña, which is the most popular beer in Nicaragua. Afterwards, our group expanded to include some friends of the foreigners I knew. Everybody was going to a huge music festival that was going on that night so they said it was alright for us to just tag along. This brought us to a mansion on the hill overlooking the harbor, where a few of the people in our group were staying with a friend. I later found out that thier friend is the niece of the wife of the last president of Nicaragua who apparently owns the mansion. I could tell the whole time that Franklin was just in awe of everything at the house. Afterwards we went to the music festival in the town and drank a bunch of cheap beer. It was a blast even though the Nicaraguan rock n roll was awful. It was so weird that almost everybody at the concert was a foreigner and everything was in both English and Spanish. Franklin told me that he felt like a total minority there, even though it was in his own country. The next day we walked all the way down the beach and up to the huge statue of Jesus that overlooks the San Juan del Sur harbor. It was absolutely gorgeous, but unfortunately I still haven't found the time to upload my pictures because I have over a thousand now and it's gonna take a long time to upload. I forgot to say that I've been working on various photo projects on my own, but I'll get into that on some other post. The next day I did the one thing that really made me so happy to be in Nicaragua, which was riding on the roof of the bus back to Las Salinas. The ride from the provincial town of Rivas to Las Salinas is about an hour and a half down a dirt road so the bus goes pretty slow. The roof is marked on all side by bars to carry fuel, tires, packages of food, chickens, and whatnot. However, due to the fact that there are no police who actually give a shit, people can ride on them as well, which gives the guys a better way to hiss at the girls walking by. Haha. Taking in the wind, the sun, the beautiful scenery, and the branches I had to dodge every once in a while, I felt so unbelievably great to be here in Nicaragua!
Paz a todos,
Zack
Monday, February 21, 2011
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Las Salinas de Nagualapa de Rivas de Nicaragua
Saludos a todos!
I would like to welcome you all to my wonderful, small, dusty community of Las Salinas de Nagualapa de Rivas de Nicaragua (or just Las Salinas which is a lot easier). There is going to be a lot in this blog post so you may want to separate the reading into two sessions, if you are that interested in following my blog. Since I don't even know where to start I guess I'll just start by saying a random fact. I have taken almost 600 pictures since I have been in Nicaragua, which has only been since January 15th. I have no doubt that I will surpass the 2000 mark while I am here or maybe even the 3000 mark as one of the projects I am doing in the community is partially based on photography and I have a four gigabyte memory card, which holds about 3500 high quality photos. However, due to the fact that I don't have a personal computer, it is somewhat difficult to get the time to upload all of my photos to the computer so I haven't had the chance to put my photos on this blog. I will definitely put the best photos up on this blog and eventually all of them on facebook.
So speaking of the project I am doing in the community, I am more actually doing a number of different projects. They are all being run through the library I am working at. The library I am working at is about a one minute walk from my host family's house and has been undergoing a few different changes recently. First of all, five old school macs were donated to the library by some organization in the states (I have to ask my supervisor what it is and I'll let you know on my next post) and were just installed the week I arrived in the community. Second of all, the first missionary group to ever come to the library since it was built a number of years ago (again, I have to ask my supervisor and I'll let you know on my next post) was here for three weeks and just left on Monday. Basically this means that the kids who come to this library have been seeing lots of gringos and flashy technology all in a short period of time. The gringas from the Evangelical Christian missionary academy in Arkansas were teaching classes to the kids who come to the library even though hardly any of them spoke a word of Spanish. Although this doesn't make any sense to me, the kids seemed to enjoy it because they received one on one attention from these gringas and were able to learn about five words of English during those three weeks, which I am sure they have forgotten already. I just want to rant for a moment and say that development workers who don't speak a word of the local language should not be teaching English. One, because there is a severe limit to the amount that they can teach and two, because it is a serious waste of time as the ones learning English will forget it immediately as they aren't using it in their daily lives. The only time when teaching English is justifiable is when the people teaching it will be teaching it for a while and those who are learning it can use it regularly, which is not very often in rural communities in the developing world.
So on to where I come into play. The first week starting in the community was really slow because of the missionary group that was working in the library and was taking up all of the time there. However, they left on Monday and I have had the library to myself this whole week. It has been my job to bring the kids who come to the library daily up to par with these computers, which you could imagine is difficult especially consdering that none of them have ever even used a computer before. So I have been working on a manual for them which details everything from what a mouse is to what the icons on the computer are. It's been pretty tedious but hopefully I'll be done with it by the end of the week and library will have a permanent manual in their collection showing people how to use a computer. It's funny that computers are where a vast portion of all the technology that is changing the world lies and billions of people don't know how to use them. I guess I'm doing a good thing by teaching a few people how to use them. Anyways, as I said before, that is not my only project in the community. Currently I'm working on starting a project with the youth in the community based on photography and cleaning this dusty town. The first part is going to document the history of the community by interviewing the owners of the salt mines this community is named after. I will also interview the oldest members of the community who have seen all of the massive changes in the community throughout the past century. Afterwards we are going to make a book putting all of the history and pictures together to put on display at the library I'm working at. Meanwhile, I'm working on another project with the youth that basically encompasses cleaning up the community and showing pictures of the community before and after the clean up to encourage people to not throw their trash on the ground, which is what everyone does. Basically, my idea is that I believe that one of the reasons as to why so many people throw trash on the ground is that they don't see the community as having any aesthetic value. However, if I teach them about how beautiful this community actually is through photography, then they'll be less inclined to throw their trash on the ground. The youth in the community certainly think this is an issue, but I do need to search for more people who want to be involved in the project. As this idea is somewhat idealistic, you'll probably see some changes in exactly what I'm doing by the time I do my next post. PS if you have any old digital cameras sitting around at your house, the library and I would love to see them. Send me an email at ZOstiller@clarku.edu if you would like more information.
The community sits about a mile away from the vast coast line of the Pacific Ocean where numerous surfer joints lie along the beach. It's interesting because the coast line is developing extremely fast while the community still stays in poverty. In fact there is one place called Rancho Santana along the coast about two miles away from my house that is filled with enormous mansions owned by rich expatriates from the Western world. It's about five minutes walking distance from dirt roads with chickens, pigs, and cattle carts. I guess that is Latin America for you. The beach is absolutely gorgeous though. The waves are up to ten feet high and the beaches are mostly spotless with a few surfers here and there. My host brother took me on a hike up to a ledge overlooking the beach and the ocean where we watched the sunset. If only it was a girl I was with...Anyways speaking of sunsets, I have seen the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen in my life here in Las Salinas. Especially looking over the salt mines and watching the sun reflect in their pools of tide water. My host family is wonderful. I have five host siblings. 15, 17, 20, 22, and 28 so there are a bunch that are around my age to keep me company. I have spent a significant amount of time lying on the hammocks at the house feeling the heavy gusts of wind blow through my hair while I read Acts of Faith, a 700 page epic about aid workers in Sudan during Sudanese Civil War that has kept my attention pretty fully since I got to the community. I have read more than 400 pages since I got here. As for the "Viva la Revolucion" and "Viva Daniel" graffiti I have seen everywhere, I finally figured out why there's so much. The government pays people to paint them on building walls even though the government really isn't that popular. Haha.
I love and miss you all,
Zack
I would like to welcome you all to my wonderful, small, dusty community of Las Salinas de Nagualapa de Rivas de Nicaragua (or just Las Salinas which is a lot easier). There is going to be a lot in this blog post so you may want to separate the reading into two sessions, if you are that interested in following my blog. Since I don't even know where to start I guess I'll just start by saying a random fact. I have taken almost 600 pictures since I have been in Nicaragua, which has only been since January 15th. I have no doubt that I will surpass the 2000 mark while I am here or maybe even the 3000 mark as one of the projects I am doing in the community is partially based on photography and I have a four gigabyte memory card, which holds about 3500 high quality photos. However, due to the fact that I don't have a personal computer, it is somewhat difficult to get the time to upload all of my photos to the computer so I haven't had the chance to put my photos on this blog. I will definitely put the best photos up on this blog and eventually all of them on facebook.
So speaking of the project I am doing in the community, I am more actually doing a number of different projects. They are all being run through the library I am working at. The library I am working at is about a one minute walk from my host family's house and has been undergoing a few different changes recently. First of all, five old school macs were donated to the library by some organization in the states (I have to ask my supervisor what it is and I'll let you know on my next post) and were just installed the week I arrived in the community. Second of all, the first missionary group to ever come to the library since it was built a number of years ago (again, I have to ask my supervisor and I'll let you know on my next post) was here for three weeks and just left on Monday. Basically this means that the kids who come to this library have been seeing lots of gringos and flashy technology all in a short period of time. The gringas from the Evangelical Christian missionary academy in Arkansas were teaching classes to the kids who come to the library even though hardly any of them spoke a word of Spanish. Although this doesn't make any sense to me, the kids seemed to enjoy it because they received one on one attention from these gringas and were able to learn about five words of English during those three weeks, which I am sure they have forgotten already. I just want to rant for a moment and say that development workers who don't speak a word of the local language should not be teaching English. One, because there is a severe limit to the amount that they can teach and two, because it is a serious waste of time as the ones learning English will forget it immediately as they aren't using it in their daily lives. The only time when teaching English is justifiable is when the people teaching it will be teaching it for a while and those who are learning it can use it regularly, which is not very often in rural communities in the developing world.
So on to where I come into play. The first week starting in the community was really slow because of the missionary group that was working in the library and was taking up all of the time there. However, they left on Monday and I have had the library to myself this whole week. It has been my job to bring the kids who come to the library daily up to par with these computers, which you could imagine is difficult especially consdering that none of them have ever even used a computer before. So I have been working on a manual for them which details everything from what a mouse is to what the icons on the computer are. It's been pretty tedious but hopefully I'll be done with it by the end of the week and library will have a permanent manual in their collection showing people how to use a computer. It's funny that computers are where a vast portion of all the technology that is changing the world lies and billions of people don't know how to use them. I guess I'm doing a good thing by teaching a few people how to use them. Anyways, as I said before, that is not my only project in the community. Currently I'm working on starting a project with the youth in the community based on photography and cleaning this dusty town. The first part is going to document the history of the community by interviewing the owners of the salt mines this community is named after. I will also interview the oldest members of the community who have seen all of the massive changes in the community throughout the past century. Afterwards we are going to make a book putting all of the history and pictures together to put on display at the library I'm working at. Meanwhile, I'm working on another project with the youth that basically encompasses cleaning up the community and showing pictures of the community before and after the clean up to encourage people to not throw their trash on the ground, which is what everyone does. Basically, my idea is that I believe that one of the reasons as to why so many people throw trash on the ground is that they don't see the community as having any aesthetic value. However, if I teach them about how beautiful this community actually is through photography, then they'll be less inclined to throw their trash on the ground. The youth in the community certainly think this is an issue, but I do need to search for more people who want to be involved in the project. As this idea is somewhat idealistic, you'll probably see some changes in exactly what I'm doing by the time I do my next post. PS if you have any old digital cameras sitting around at your house, the library and I would love to see them. Send me an email at ZOstiller@clarku.edu if you would like more information.
The community sits about a mile away from the vast coast line of the Pacific Ocean where numerous surfer joints lie along the beach. It's interesting because the coast line is developing extremely fast while the community still stays in poverty. In fact there is one place called Rancho Santana along the coast about two miles away from my house that is filled with enormous mansions owned by rich expatriates from the Western world. It's about five minutes walking distance from dirt roads with chickens, pigs, and cattle carts. I guess that is Latin America for you. The beach is absolutely gorgeous though. The waves are up to ten feet high and the beaches are mostly spotless with a few surfers here and there. My host brother took me on a hike up to a ledge overlooking the beach and the ocean where we watched the sunset. If only it was a girl I was with...Anyways speaking of sunsets, I have seen the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen in my life here in Las Salinas. Especially looking over the salt mines and watching the sun reflect in their pools of tide water. My host family is wonderful. I have five host siblings. 15, 17, 20, 22, and 28 so there are a bunch that are around my age to keep me company. I have spent a significant amount of time lying on the hammocks at the house feeling the heavy gusts of wind blow through my hair while I read Acts of Faith, a 700 page epic about aid workers in Sudan during Sudanese Civil War that has kept my attention pretty fully since I got to the community. I have read more than 400 pages since I got here. As for the "Viva la Revolucion" and "Viva Daniel" graffiti I have seen everywhere, I finally figured out why there's so much. The government pays people to paint them on building walls even though the government really isn't that popular. Haha.
I love and miss you all,
Zack
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Ahora Los Padres Son Ellos
"Ahora Los Padres Son Ellos" translates into English as "Now the Parents are Them" and is the name of a bootleg copy of "Little Fockers" that my program coordinator bought at a bootleg DVD place in Rivas, Nicaragua. It's funny that nearly every American movie that you find a bootleg copy of in Latin America has a name that has little to nothing to do with its title in English. It's like they didn't even make an attempt to translate anything. Imagine if you were looking at movies to rent at a movie store just to watch at home and you found one called "Now the Parents are Them." That doesn´t make any sense and I wouldn´t think twice about not getting it simply because the name sounds so awful. Then again all of the translations are always terrible in American movies that have bootleg copies with Spanish subtitles. For example, I was once watching a bootleg copy of Casino Royale that I bought in Mexico and there was this one scene where somebody was saying "Can you hand me the letter?" and the subtitles said "Can you give me the ladder?" I guess there's some resemblance but still, why would anyone holding a letter be asked to give someone else in his hotel room a ladder? I guess we'll never know. Anyways, you'll be hearing a ton from me about all of the funny things in Nicaragua as there tons. For example, throughout my time here I'm gonna be working on a photography project made up of pictures of people wearing clothes with extremely obscure logos. I would say that for the most part, the people probably have no idea as to what they mean. For instance, I saw a vendor on a pier on Lake Nicaragua wearing a shirt that said Needham High School and had a picture of a rocket right below it with the word rockets across it. I assumed that that was Needham High School's mascot and I was right.
Anyways, I guess I'm on to Nicaragua. So far I've just finished my fourth day of orientation, which has been a little slow sometimes. Besides the program coordinator and program director, there's only one other intern who just so happens to be 54, which is equally as old as my mom. The two of us have been listening to a number of different lectures about the history of Nicaragua, the economy of Nicaragua, lifestyles in Nicaragua, and most of all, about sustainable development, which is the type of work I will be doing here. I'm happy that although some of this orientation has been slow, I have definitely learned a lot by doing a number of different practical activities. For example, we were given two dollars, which is the amount that many families live on daily here in Nicaragua, and had to go out and buy what we could following the hypothetical situation we were given. I thought to myself, this can´t be that hard as after all, with two dollars you can actually buy a ton here. So I went out and bought what I could with my two dollars. I even bargained with someone so that I could get a bottle of water for less than the price she had listed so I could fit it into my budget. After I was done buying everyhing I went back to our orientation site and waited a little while for the other intern to get back. However, when he got back I saw that he had bought about four times as much as I had and still had some change. (He's also a little older, which definitely helps) It made me think a lot more about what one needs to buy in order to maintain a living and the best way to do it. Although the lectures about sustainability are somewhat familiar to me, they're still helpful in giving me a good idea about the best ways to brainstorm about different project ideas and implement them as well. I'm so excited to get to the community the day after tomorrow and start working with the organization.
Today we left Tola, which is the town I've been living in since I got to Nicaragua and went to Rivas, the capital city of the province of Rivas (obviously). Tola is a quiet little town with absolutely gorgeous buildings of all different colors. There are tons of people just hanging out in front of their houses and on the street. For the most part, life is so slow paced here that you can pretty much talk to anyone on the street for hours on end. This is awesome but definitely takes some getting used to, especially coming from the United States where there is always something to do at almost every hour of the day. Anyways, Rivas definitely seemed a lot busier simply because it's a much bigger city. We walked around the city and went into a bunch of different places such as the museum of anthropology and the old catholic church. The old catholic church in Rivas definitely has to be the craziest church I have ever been to in my life. Right above the choir of the church, there is an elaborate mural that shows a boat with "Protestantismo" painted across the side sinking. I have never seen a church that is so blatant in its hatred of another religion. After that we took a taxi down to a beach on the shore of Lake Nicaragua. Lake Nicaragua or Lago Cocibolca as they call it here is by far the biggest lake I can remember sticking my feet in (as I did once stick my feet in Lake Michigan, but was way too young to remember it.) There is absolutely no way you can see the other side of the lake. There is an island that is fairly close to the shore I was standing on with two volcanoes, one extinct and one active. Apparently you can climb to the top of the active one, which is what we will be doing for our midterm retreat later on in the program. I am unbelievably excited for that as I can only imagine what the view is gonna be like.
I'll keep all of you guys posted and add some pictures when I get the chance later. Overall I am having an awesome time here and am so happy I decided to do this even though I'll have to graduate a semester late. I am satisfied though that I managed to get some credit for this program if I use it for an independent study at Clark. Still, it won't be enough to graduate on time because I'm not taking any classes. I probably wouldn´t have graduated on time anyways though and this is certainly gonna be a rewarding experience. Anyways, enough of my rambling and you guys will hear from me again in the near future.
Paz a todos,
Zack (Isac como me llaman aqui)
Anyways, I guess I'm on to Nicaragua. So far I've just finished my fourth day of orientation, which has been a little slow sometimes. Besides the program coordinator and program director, there's only one other intern who just so happens to be 54, which is equally as old as my mom. The two of us have been listening to a number of different lectures about the history of Nicaragua, the economy of Nicaragua, lifestyles in Nicaragua, and most of all, about sustainable development, which is the type of work I will be doing here. I'm happy that although some of this orientation has been slow, I have definitely learned a lot by doing a number of different practical activities. For example, we were given two dollars, which is the amount that many families live on daily here in Nicaragua, and had to go out and buy what we could following the hypothetical situation we were given. I thought to myself, this can´t be that hard as after all, with two dollars you can actually buy a ton here. So I went out and bought what I could with my two dollars. I even bargained with someone so that I could get a bottle of water for less than the price she had listed so I could fit it into my budget. After I was done buying everyhing I went back to our orientation site and waited a little while for the other intern to get back. However, when he got back I saw that he had bought about four times as much as I had and still had some change. (He's also a little older, which definitely helps) It made me think a lot more about what one needs to buy in order to maintain a living and the best way to do it. Although the lectures about sustainability are somewhat familiar to me, they're still helpful in giving me a good idea about the best ways to brainstorm about different project ideas and implement them as well. I'm so excited to get to the community the day after tomorrow and start working with the organization.
Today we left Tola, which is the town I've been living in since I got to Nicaragua and went to Rivas, the capital city of the province of Rivas (obviously). Tola is a quiet little town with absolutely gorgeous buildings of all different colors. There are tons of people just hanging out in front of their houses and on the street. For the most part, life is so slow paced here that you can pretty much talk to anyone on the street for hours on end. This is awesome but definitely takes some getting used to, especially coming from the United States where there is always something to do at almost every hour of the day. Anyways, Rivas definitely seemed a lot busier simply because it's a much bigger city. We walked around the city and went into a bunch of different places such as the museum of anthropology and the old catholic church. The old catholic church in Rivas definitely has to be the craziest church I have ever been to in my life. Right above the choir of the church, there is an elaborate mural that shows a boat with "Protestantismo" painted across the side sinking. I have never seen a church that is so blatant in its hatred of another religion. After that we took a taxi down to a beach on the shore of Lake Nicaragua. Lake Nicaragua or Lago Cocibolca as they call it here is by far the biggest lake I can remember sticking my feet in (as I did once stick my feet in Lake Michigan, but was way too young to remember it.) There is absolutely no way you can see the other side of the lake. There is an island that is fairly close to the shore I was standing on with two volcanoes, one extinct and one active. Apparently you can climb to the top of the active one, which is what we will be doing for our midterm retreat later on in the program. I am unbelievably excited for that as I can only imagine what the view is gonna be like.
I'll keep all of you guys posted and add some pictures when I get the chance later. Overall I am having an awesome time here and am so happy I decided to do this even though I'll have to graduate a semester late. I am satisfied though that I managed to get some credit for this program if I use it for an independent study at Clark. Still, it won't be enough to graduate on time because I'm not taking any classes. I probably wouldn´t have graduated on time anyways though and this is certainly gonna be a rewarding experience. Anyways, enough of my rambling and you guys will hear from me again in the near future.
Paz a todos,
Zack (Isac como me llaman aqui)
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Day 1 of I have no idea how many days
Saludos a todos que están leyendo este blog! (Hello to all who are reading this blog)
First I would like to begin by describing exactly why I am here in this beautiful country of Nicaragua. Unfortunately, Clark is extremely limited with its study abroad programs. There are only three options of places to go where you can speak Spanish and only one of these study abroad places can also apply to my major of International Development and Social Change. This place happens to be the Dominican Republic, where I was for 11 weeks over the past summer and did not have the greatest time while I was there. So I decided that I wouldn't do a Clark study abroad program. I may be being picky and/or ungrateful but regardless, I decided to create a study abroad program independently. This program is through a non-profit called the Foundation for Sustainable Development and entails an internship that I will be doing with a local organization called La Biblioteca Tres Ernestos in a small community here in Nicaragua. Although I am not sure exactly what I'll be doing yet, I know that it involves implementing projects based on youth and community development. These projects may include teaching classes, organizing community events, writing grants, etc. I will find out exactly what I'm doing during my orientation, which starts tomorrow. While I was expecting for my faculty adviser at Clark to be frustrated with my choice of doing a non-traditional and non-Clark program abroad, she actually said that she thought I'd probably learn more than on any of Clark's study abroad programs. No offense to anyone who is reading this and is doing a Clark study abroad program. I'm sure you're having an amazing time wherever you are and aren't having to go through the bureaucratic nightmares I'm going through in order to get simply one internship credit. Anyways, enough of my rambling and on to Nicaragua.
I arrived this morning after a red-eye from San Francisco to Houston and then on to Managua, Nicaragua. If I had no idea that I was landing specifically in Nicaragua, I would still be able to tell that I was somewhere in Latin America simply from the way it looks. There are many vibrant colors, vast quantities of motorcycles, and excessively gaudy buildings that just so happen to be right next to shacks with clotheslines. When I got out of the airport and stepped into the insanely humid air, the program coordinator Ramiro was there to meet me with a cab driver. Although I had been worried for a moment about having lost a little bit of my Spanish ability over break, I was able to immediately start speaking to Ramiro when I first saw him. It's funny, I guess that anybody's foreign language ability can usually come back to them when they go to a country where that foreign language is spoken. We went to a busy restaurant in Managua where I had some rice and beans and afterward, Ramiro brought me on a tour of the tourist sights in Managua. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I had been on a red-eye on the way to Managua, I had not had very much sleep and had some trouble listening to the history behind all of the sights. Anyways, I saw the National Palace, the National Theater House, the Cathedral of Managua that is falling apart, the Memorial to the fathers of the Sandinista Revolution, and the extremely polluted Lago de Managua. After that we got on an overcrowded bus to head down the Interamericana (a highway that starts in Alaska and goes all the way to the eastern end of Panama where it becomes a dirt road near the Colombian border) towards Tola, where I'm having my orientation. In both Managua and along the Interamericana, I continuously saw billboards with pictures of Nicaragua's president Daniel Ortega and a message below his picture saying "Viva la Revoluci
First I would like to begin by describing exactly why I am here in this beautiful country of Nicaragua. Unfortunately, Clark is extremely limited with its study abroad programs. There are only three options of places to go where you can speak Spanish and only one of these study abroad places can also apply to my major of International Development and Social Change. This place happens to be the Dominican Republic, where I was for 11 weeks over the past summer and did not have the greatest time while I was there. So I decided that I wouldn't do a Clark study abroad program. I may be being picky and/or ungrateful but regardless, I decided to create a study abroad program independently. This program is through a non-profit called the Foundation for Sustainable Development and entails an internship that I will be doing with a local organization called La Biblioteca Tres Ernestos in a small community here in Nicaragua. Although I am not sure exactly what I'll be doing yet, I know that it involves implementing projects based on youth and community development. These projects may include teaching classes, organizing community events, writing grants, etc. I will find out exactly what I'm doing during my orientation, which starts tomorrow. While I was expecting for my faculty adviser at Clark to be frustrated with my choice of doing a non-traditional and non-Clark program abroad, she actually said that she thought I'd probably learn more than on any of Clark's study abroad programs. No offense to anyone who is reading this and is doing a Clark study abroad program. I'm sure you're having an amazing time wherever you are and aren't having to go through the bureaucratic nightmares I'm going through in order to get simply one internship credit. Anyways, enough of my rambling and on to Nicaragua.
I arrived this morning after a red-eye from San Francisco to Houston and then on to Managua, Nicaragua. If I had no idea that I was landing specifically in Nicaragua, I would still be able to tell that I was somewhere in Latin America simply from the way it looks. There are many vibrant colors, vast quantities of motorcycles, and excessively gaudy buildings that just so happen to be right next to shacks with clotheslines. When I got out of the airport and stepped into the insanely humid air, the program coordinator Ramiro was there to meet me with a cab driver. Although I had been worried for a moment about having lost a little bit of my Spanish ability over break, I was able to immediately start speaking to Ramiro when I first saw him. It's funny, I guess that anybody's foreign language ability can usually come back to them when they go to a country where that foreign language is spoken. We went to a busy restaurant in Managua where I had some rice and beans and afterward, Ramiro brought me on a tour of the tourist sights in Managua. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I had been on a red-eye on the way to Managua, I had not had very much sleep and had some trouble listening to the history behind all of the sights. Anyways, I saw the National Palace, the National Theater House, the Cathedral of Managua that is falling apart, the Memorial to the fathers of the Sandinista Revolution, and the extremely polluted Lago de Managua. After that we got on an overcrowded bus to head down the Interamericana (a highway that starts in Alaska and goes all the way to the eastern end of Panama where it becomes a dirt road near the Colombian border) towards Tola, where I'm having my orientation. In both Managua and along the Interamericana, I continuously saw billboards with pictures of Nicaragua's president Daniel Ortega and a message below his picture saying "Viva la Revoluci
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