First half of Tina's trip to Nicalandia!

My best friend Tina is here in Nicaragua visiting me for 10 days, and we’ve had a good trip so far.  It’s great to have a friend that has lived and understands the Peace Corps experience come visit me because she knows the feelings and frustrations and emotions I’m going through towards the end of my service.  Plus she speaks Spanish so I don’t have to do any translating (not that I really minded when other family and friends came to visit, it’s just easier to have conversations with people when everyone understands each other).  I’ll get to our trip in a minute, first let me fill you all in with the last few weeks in site.

A successfully completed charla!

The girls group teen pregnancy charla that I was having such a hard time coordinating is finally done and over with.  I decided to have the last few meetings before the actual charla at a different house where a majority of the girls lived in, since they’re sisters, and all of them showed up and we actually made progress on getting the activity organized.  The day of the charla at the school they all showed up in their Camp GLOW t-shirts that they received at the camp, and put on a pretty decent charla for the 5^th graders.  I had to help them out here and there to keep the flow going and to organize the rambunctious 5^th graders, but overall they did a good job and I was glad for it to be over.  After we finished one of the girls told me as we were walking out that she was looking forward to doing another one!  And I’m thinking in my head, yeah, but you barely even showed up for the rehearsals for this first one, and you think I’m gonna help plan another one?!  But hey, if they are truly motivated and show up to practice another charla, then great, I’ll help them out.  But I think I’ve kinda had my fill recently of these girls and their lack of motivation.

My community watching photos of my vacation in Peru

A few weekends ago I finally got my hands on a projector and decided to do a photo slide show presentation of my vacation home for Christmas and also my trip to Peru, so that my host family and other neighbors could see what other countries look like.  I set up some chairs in our living room and bought a 3 liter bottle of soda to serve for everyone who came, and they all laughed and enjoyed the photos of my trip visiting my family and the places Tina and I saw in Peru.  Then the next night (to take advantage of having the projector still) I played some episodes of Planet Earth in Spanish and invited some neighbors to come over and watch with popcorn.  Not many people showed up, but those that did seemed to enjoy the movie.

Atop the cross overlooking Jinotega city

So this last Wednesday Tina flew in to Managua and we headed to Jinotega for the night to stay with my friend Paul and have dinner with all the volunteers that live in the city.  The next morning we hiked up to the cross that overlooks the whole city, and man, my calves are still sore 6 days later!  It’s basically a hike straight up the side of this mountain on cement stairs that the city recently built in the past year for hikers to make it up more safely.  I was huffing and puffing the whole way up.  But the view at the top was nice and we got some cool photos.  Then Tina and I headed to La Bastilla Ecolodge, which is on the way up to my site, and stayed two nights there.  It’s a really beautiful place on the top of this overlook into a reserve and protected area, so there’s tons of tall, fully grown trees and lots of birdlife.  We took a short hike and saw various birds, including a violet sabrewing hummingbird, a golden-olive woodpecker, lots of yellow-backed orioles, and many other things.  We heard a keel-billed toucan and various groups of howler monkeys in the distance but they never got close enough. 

On our hike at La Bastilla

Pretty view of the Datanli reserve at La Bastilla

Enjoying Gloria's chicken soup at my house in Wale

After La Bastilla we headed to my site and Tina got to meet my host family and some other families in my community and finally see where I’ve been living these past 2 ½ years.  We saw lots more birds and took as many photos as possible.  I was hoping she’d get to see the national bird during our trip, the guardabarranco, or turquoise-browed motmot, and we saw 3 in my site!  I also requested that Gloria make us my favorite meal, chicken soup with dumplings, so we had a delicious meal as well.  We only spent two nights in Wale, since there’s always so much more to see when you’re on vacation, so after my site we headed down to Managua to meet up at the office of Paso Pacifico.  They’re an organization that works mostly in the south part of Nicaragua working on animal conservation, reforestation, and environmental education projects.  I contacted the director, who is based in Ventura, and she said we could spend a day doing some enrichment with a small group of spider monkeys they take of at a sanctuary in Sapoa, a town near the border of Costa Rica.  So I’ve been collecting toilet paper rolls and cereal boxes and plastic bottles and various other enrichment items from my house to take with us to make toys for the monkeys.  We’re headed there today, and possibly tomorrow

A turquiose-browed motmot we saw in my site

we’ll be visiting a sea turtle egg nursery that’s run by a local women’s group on one of the beaches down south.  We’re kinda playing it by ear on this second half of the trip, since I didn’t have great communication with the organization ahead of time.  But so far everyone’s been really nice in the office and I’m looking forward to working with and seeing some animals!

Keep posted for the next blog to hear how the remainder of our trip went!

~Sarah~