I am back!

To all my loyal followers my deepest apologies for such the long lapse since my last blog post. Time just got away from me. I will try to be more regular from now on.

Since my last post many things have happened as you can imagine. I mentioned at the end of my last post that La Dalia’s Fiestas Patronales or Patron Saint festival were coming up in August well it was actually the 23^rd anniversary of the founding of the town. I thought it was pretty crazy to be older than a town; however I learned that people have been living in La Dalia for about 50 years.  It became an independent town 23 years ago, before then it was considered like a suburb of a town of another town close to Matagalpa. It was pretty interesting learning a little about my community here. 

As for the party the town put on a good show. It reminded me a lot of the country fair back home. There were carnival rides, concerts, vendors selling cotton candy and candied apples, and a lot drinking! It was just like I was back at the Douglas County fair. The one thing different about the fair here and there was the safety standards on rides. I had the pleasure to experience a Nicaraguan Ferris wheel earlier in the year and while I didn’t kiss ground when I got off I was very very happy to be back on solid ground. So when the carnival came to La Dalia despite my students’ begging for me to get on I wasn’t about to go through that harrowing experience again. The ferris wheel in La Dalia like mostly everything else here looked pretty rickety as if it had been donated from somewhere in the 80’s. One during the carnival I am sitting in the cyber across the street where the Ferris wheel is set up and then all of a sudden there is a loud bang. Everyone looked across the street to see that the one and only chain that connected the motor to the ferris wheel had snapped, leaving the people stranded!  With no way to slow down the wheel one of the operator used his bodyweight to counteract the rotation by hanging on to outside of the chairs. Slowly but surely they were able to get everyone off by physically pulling the wheel. Needless to say this event only entrenched my beliefs more to never get on one of these death traps again. All in all the town’s anniversary was pretty fun the only the bad that happened during that week was some drunk guy kicked me really hard in the leg when he tried to take my beer and I pushed him away.

The Corn Festival Court all of their outfit are made entirely out corn husks and kernels. 

Miss La Dalia leading the horse parade through town

September was another important month in Nicaragua because of their Independence Day on the 15^th and the celebration of the victory in the Battle of San Jacinto on 14th. It is just pure coincidence that these two dates are together since the battle and the granting of their independence are several years apart. It was interesting to see how independence day was celebrated in La Dalia in comparison to Niquinohomo. Independence Day was the first Nicaraguan holiday that was able to witness upon my arrival in the country just two weeks before. What I didn’t know was how much time the schools in town practice every day before the big day. I am pretty sure that the schools started band practice 6 weeks in advance. Every day the same drum routine. The funny thing about Nicaragua is that class gets cancelled for a variety of reasons that one wouldn’t even think of in a US school. I have just learned to laugh about and say “Oh Nicaragua you never cease to amaze me!” Band practice is one of those reasons. The school day during the month or so before Independence Day is cut back an hour for both the morning and afternoon shifts taking an already short school day and making it even shorter so that the students will have two hours to practice their drumming dancing and marching. I tried to suggest a different time so that we wouldn’t miss so much class, but to no avail. The thought of dedicating time after school to practice is just ridiculous to a Nicaraguan. 


Oh well if you can’t beat them join them. Since I had extra time I spent a lot of time watching the students practice. Although even when I wanted to take a break from the drumming I couldn’t because I live just a block away from an elementary school that practiced in the afternoon. Let me tell you after 6 weeks of drumming I knew that beat by heart and I was even in the band!!

On the big day all the students got dressed up and marched through town on both days. It was incredible hot that day so I felt really sorry for all the girls who had to march up and down the hill throughout town. They certainly had more endurance than I did! I tried to keep the mood up by dancing with them in the street, which all the students got a kick out of seeing the big gringo make a fool out of himself in front of everybody. I also passed out water to the students as well. It was very fun the march through town ended at the new market where there was a marching band competition with all the schools from the surrounding area.  


I wanted to pick some pictures but there are too many to choose from so check out this link from my facebook. http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10100145855027266.2472794.11521764&type=1&l=c6b60c1ebb


Another big event that happens in September here is the corn harvest festival. Very similar to local festivals back home like the cranberry festival everybody is out selling freshly made corn products everything from corn bread to corn tamales to sweet corn tortillas. Everything was so delicious I had no idea how much good stuff could be made from corn! Every town has its own corn festival were they elect a corn king and queen It was pretty fun to watch because their outfits were made entirely out of corn husks. 

September was also a very important month for me as it marked one full year that I have been living in Nicaragua. It’s incredible to think that it has been a whole year since I said goodbye to my family at the airport and headed off on this adventure. At my one year mark I was feeling pretty good I had had ups and downs with class, counterparts and projects but that is to be expected and except for some bronchitis and a few bouts with bacterial infections I had been pretty healthy. I was really excited to go and see my friends when I made my one year medical appointment. It was really fun I went down a couple days earlier and saw my friends hung out with them in Masaya. The actual day of my appointment I felt like crap, like I was in the midst of a flu. The Peace Corps doctors took my vitals and had me get a blood test which is standard protocol here. When the test results came back they showed that my white blood cell and platelet levels were below normal. This meant only one thing…the dreaded Dengue Fever. I had made it a year through my time here until my luck ran out. Having Dengue was as miserable as everybody says it was. In my case my legs hurt so much it was difficult to walk and I had a sharp pain behind my eyes that made it very painful to move my eyes from side to side.  Absolutely miserable I hope I never have it again.

The biggest thing that happened this month was that I asked by my Peace Corps boss if I could give a presentation on effective ways to teach speaking in the Nicaraguan classroom. It was a fun experience to go and meet the new group of TEFLers. My presentation when well although it was weird being look up to as a veteran volunteer when it seems like I just got here sometimes.  Not much else really happened in October just a lot of gearing up for the Presidential election that will take place on November 6^th. I am pretty excited to be here and be able to witness a Latin American election first hand. So far it has been very interesting to watch the events unfold and read the newspaper stories. However as a Peace Corps volunteer I am to remain completely apolitical so I won’t get discuss it on my blog. If you would like hear about some of the crazy stories here feel free to contact me privately and I would be happy to share with you. So far the only real local action that has happened in La Dalia is a road block that the Liberals set up outside of town because the Sandnista government was supposedly not giving them their identification card so that they could vote.  This made travel to Matagalpa much more difficult since it is the only road out of town to the south.   However since I had no reason to go in Matagalpa nor did Peace Corps want me travelling the road block didn’t really affect me.

Today is the Day of the dead here in Nicaragua so there is no school in observance. Although in the week before the election class is not really in session because the government is going to be using the school as a voting center. So I have been spending a lot of time at home puttsing around my house working on fixing and cleaning up things. I was one three volunteers chosen to help out at a US Embassy English camp in December. I will be teach fourth and fifth year university students about the importance of protecting the environment. I am really excited to have this opportunity to work with other Nicaraguan English teachers and volunteers outside La Dalia.

Only a few more days until the election may the best man win!