A Big Ol' Pig's Head

Have you seen the map of San Ramón?
My dad drew it over the past few months and it's pretty helpful.
The Brigade certainly made good use of a few copies during their *Welcome to San Ramón* scavenger hunt (-style game; it was really only sort-of like a scavenger hunt).
Maybe one of us will upload it soon.
Anyway, if you have seen it, you know that our casa huésped is situated nearby to a meat store. In truth, it's more of a make-shift kiosk, with occasional strips of meat hanging from it's ceiling. Only once or twice a week is it open, and when it is there is likely to a big ol' head of some sort of live stock balanced on an outer corner of the yellow box/kiosk.
This week, on Wednesday, the animal that stared us down as we walked to meet up with the brigade happened to be a pig. Lucky for you (bad... group of) folks back home we got some pictures.


On a related note, the meat here has been quite different from what we have in the States. The beef has ranged from pretty chewy to Super-Bounce Ball chewy. Ciara's dad, who probably knows, says it's because cows here are fed grass and not corn. I´ll ask the cow's head the next time I see it.

Brigade One: a week of adventure

Hello folks! Sorry we have been absent for such a long time. This past week the Brigade from Vermont came, and so we were really busy just accompanying them and helping with whatever needed help. So, an update is in order.

Before the brigade came we had a very special Ash Wednesday lunch. Apparently, it is traditional. It consisted of Sopa de Queso, and Buñuelos. Now, Sopa de Queso (Cheese Soup), had buñuelos in it, but they were less crispy on the outside. The buñuelos consist of potato, yucca, cuajada, and some other things we forget. They are generally agreeable. The soup part of the soup, was less agreeable. To me it tasted like Cilantro water, with a touch of tomato. As some of you may know, I don't love cilantro, but Dylan managed to eat all of his soup (I tried, I really did). The other buñuelos which were crispy and soaked in the vibrant pink sweet stuff, were more tasty, and I managed to consume all of those... Here are some pictures to give you an idea of the meal.


As a short funny story, we bought these corn pops that were like candied (all caramelled brown on the outside). They were fairly tasty (ok, really tasty) but as a weird side affect made our tongues super pink. Just look at Dylan's tongue.


On to the brigade. They were super fun to have around here, and we got to do a lot of fun stuff with them. There were the adults who had good stories to share and experience to lead our way, and the youth. The youth mostly consisted of mid-teen young women. Luckily, they were of a more mature lot than some mid-teens I can think of. There were also a couple of youngsters, the youngest at 8, who let their uncritical eyes be a refreshing view for us. I like to think they all enjoyed their time with us, and having come away with a fun bracelet made from colorful cotton, and an equally cool hair wrap I know I did. I also like to think I am a pretty cool woman, and a good influence to boot. Well, let's give it a few years before I make my assessments...
One of our trips with the Brigade was to Pueblo Viejo, which is a rural community about an hour away from San Ramón. There we played games and did crafts with some eager young children, and later (after a delicious lunch) learned how to make cuajada, saw a sloth, and went swimming in the river. To top it all off, we had our first monkey spotting on the way back. They're less creepy when they are in the trees away from me.
Another of our trips was to El Chile, another rural community where we played with young children. Dylan and I led a craft with some shy preschoolers. We cut out felt shapes and stuck them onto a larger piece of felt. It was fun, and cute. They made things like houses, forks, stools, chickens, a chicken house, cows, a sun, a moon, and clouds, all in traditional preschooler fashion. We then ate our packed lunches at the El Chile weaving coop. After lunch we enjoyed a demonstration of all the processes it takes to make one of their products. Then everyone got to buy things, and it was crazy. They have some very beautiful stuff, so it is hard not to buy everything yourself. I also gave a custom project to Aly, the Costa Rican who is sort of interning with the weavers. We shall see how it turns out, I am excited!

Now for some more pictures!

This photo is of the cuajada process. You put this pill/chemical in the milk to make it turn and it began to become glutinous like you see here.


The sloth! Or Oso Perezoso in Spanish (lazy bear). In was in a bamboo stand right outside where we ate lunch in Pueblo Viejo.


Part of the weaving demo. One of the first processes of the cycle is to separate the cotton string. They buy it from the Masaya market, but it comes with three threads together, and they just want one, so they must unravel the three from each other.


A video of our monkey spotting. You can hear some of them hollering, along with the truck engine, and some Spanish being spoken.


A sped up video of some of our ride. Dylan, Mercedes, and I rode in a camión, which is like a big truck with bars on the sides in the back. It was breezy, a little dusty, and also provided a wonderful view of everything.


p.s. If any of you Brigade members are now following us here on the blog-o-sphere we would love to hear from you! Represent!

Karaoke on the streets!

So yesterday was the Día de Amor y Amistad, and to celebrate such a day, the town held a Karaoke night. One street was entirely closed off, and they set up this big projection screen along with lots of big speakers. The result, a loud but popular celebration of song.

Beth somehow convinced Dylan and me to perform, and so we sang Dancing Queen by Abba. For some reason it was under the category of “Cancións de Amor.” We competed against Beth and Mercedes' duet, our host mother Doña Aracely, and some other local performers. They determined the winner via applause-o-meter. Doña Aracely won, and it was unclear the rest of the placements, but Dylan and I got a 3 liter bottle of Coca-Cola with a plush heart (looks like a car window decoration, with a suction cup and everything). Beth and Mercedes got this glass dish filled with Hersey's Kisses (Carmel and Almond filled).
Now, for some fun-filled videos and photos.

Before the Karaoke began, this local band of youths played multiple Rancheros. They were equipped with 5-6 recorders, 3 guitars, a bass, a keyboard, electronic drums, and an accordion. The recorders were shrill, but an overall commendable performance.

This is Doña Aracely's performance, a love-song dedicated to her husband, Don Agustin.

A photo of Beth and Mercedes' performance. They sang a Cuban love-song, that I guess has double meanings of a criticism of the government. Ezra was really trying to sabotage their performance, including pulling on his mother's microphone cord. This photo captures his evil doings (/eyes).


We finally tricked Ezra to come to us (by telling him we couldn't hear him and he had to come closer, when Dylan grabbed him for the last 30 seconds of the song). Don't be fooled by the smile, he was actually trying very hard to escape.


One of the disks for Karaoke had this ridiculous title menu of a dancing hippo who would slap his bum, and perform other interesting dance moves.


Something surprising for me, was the number of boys and men who performed. My experience in the US, is that once boys hit puberty, they just do not sing songs, especially loves songs, and especially not in front of an audience. Well, that is very untrue here.

Here is a photo of two young teenage boys who sang a love song together.


A video of two young men singing a love song, that they had memorized, therefore the screen was a montage of weird cartoons and random showings of the lyrics.

My final picture in this set is of this middle aged man singing a Ranchero during transition time (between the blocks).


Our host sister (more like niece, but whatever) Lissania was the youngest performer, and she sang alone (the girls closest to her age sang in a group of three, so it was a commendable accomplishment for Lissania). She is quite the little performer, she even has her dance moves down. She won first place in the Youth category.

As a surprise, our host sister Jullissa sang a duet with a young man who was helping to run the show. They sung “Prohibited Love” in Spanish. Take a look at the movie!

Finally, for your mocking pleasure, dancing queen, as filmed by Jullissa

I'm having technical difficulties posting the videos right now, I will get back to this and hopefully have them all up for you all to view! Thanks for reading.

Ingles en Español

So we have begun our English classes. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we teach a group of 25 6th graders beginner English from 9-10, and from 10-11 we teach two students who are more advanced. Their names are Jefry and Yanega. Yanega is 25, and Jefry is like 13 or something. Yanega knows more, but she is helpful with Jefry helping him to understand things and encouraging him to write in his notebook.

The biggest challenge of teaching English here, is that we hardly know enough Spanish to teach beginners English. Key phrases we are learning: practice with a partner (sometimes still a lost concept to our students), answer the question (when we prompt them with a question like ¨What is your name?¨ A common response is either them repeating the same phrase after us, or ¨My name is...¨ and they don´t tell us their name, just say the phrase). All issues that are very minor. It is overall fun and the students listen well and eagerly jot things into their notebooks. We might have some classes in the afternoon, but that is still developing.

Tomorrow is our first swim class, we are currently looking up and studying words like, hold your breath, straight like a board, paddle, kick, and float. We are both just eager to swim ourselves.

And I will leave you with some insider Spanish
¿Que honda? means ¨What´s the groove?¨
Tuany means ¨Cool¨
Va pues means ¨Go then¨ or just ¨Good-bye¨ more generally
And here we generally say Adio, sans ¨s¨, so ¡ADIO!

Settling In

This coming week our schedule will be full! We will be helping teach English lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the library, basically all day. On Saturdays our swimming lessons begin, so far we have 9 pupils! Our other days will be filled with projects we might decide to pursue, like English lessons in San Ramón.

We will also be helping with a group from Vermont that will be coming soon. We call it the “Brigada de Vermont,” or Vermont Brigade. It is group of about 15 that are of mixed ages. There is a middle aged women coming with her two children (ages 8 and 10), a couple 15 year olds, a 52 year old couple, and some more of the like. It looks like it will be exciting. I am even helping develop a workshop with Mercedes for the Brigade, and future student groups. I really wanted to do a workshop on community organizing and Nicaraguan-US Relations because I know how little American school children are taught about Nicaraguan history, even though the US has played a big (negative) part in it. Also, often, as Americans (and generally white people with money) we think that our job is to travel to other countries to “to help develop a community,” or to “help appreciate how easy I have it in the US,” or just generally take a position of authority in a place that we have no reason to have more authority than people who live and know their lives, way more than we could ever begin to understand. For example, here in San Ramón, this community is developed, and it is really nice, second of all, what could a group of foreign Americans do in a week to change a community in ways that we dream of?, third of all, the overwhelming mind set that seems to be present that it is our duty to come here and be heroes and rescue this community because not everyone has toilets or tiled floors. I talked with Mercedes, and she has all of the same frustrations and she is really excited to have me on the same page. I also really want to change the perspective of coming here to teach and change this community to, how can this community teach them and motivate them to become active in their own community. My classmates from the DR program will hopefully be pumping their fists in my general direction, and I encourage those of you who have checked out our trip to visit our blog from our trip ( cultureandsociety312.blogspot.com ). If any of our readers have any ideas of dynamic activities that would engage both the young and old, I look forward to hearing from you in comments or emails.

A la finca!

So last Sunday our family here took us on a small outing to see their little farm. It was about a 30-45 minute walk, which was some good exercise for us. Doña Aracely, Jullissa, and Rosa took us. We brought a lunch to each once we were up there. It was a very beautiful walk, and the farm is very beautiful itself. There are so many fruits that grow here! Not much is in season now, but we did pick some grapefruits. We saw the passion fruit plants, which remind me of grape vines, and they will soon climb all over the trellis and fruit for 6 months. We saw avocado plants, squash, papaya, orange and lemon trees, and a neat Ceiba tree. Our host brother Erick lives on the farm in a small house that is full of artifacts of its artist inhabitant. The walls are painted with murals, there is an entire table devoted to jewelry making, a hammock hangs inside, and the whole thing is run off of solar energy. When we got there, there were like a million cheles. Apparently, Erick is pretty well hooked up with them. His girlfriend, Emma, is from Vermont and super nice, and funny. She and some of her friends hiked through the mountains the day before, from Matagalpa to San Ramón. They apparently left at 10 am and arrived her at 6 pm. Emma works for a company that gives out loans to local businesses, and her friends work for a variety of organizations from Witness for Peace to Esperanza Verde (an eco-tourism company).
Here are some photos of our outing!

An outside view of Erick's house


The spiky trunk of the Ceiba


A lone Maracuya (passion fruit) left over from the last harvest


The beautiful view from the farm/Erick's house

On The Local Cuisine

Mere weeks before the beginning of this trip I encountered a life-changer. Avatar, or, as Arnold Schwarzenegger says, Abatah, tells the story of a white dude who meets up with an alien culture, and then surpasses the members of that culture in doing their own things! Great. The only problem; it's a fictional white dude. Fictional. Well, no longer! My trip goal became to become the white King of Nicaragua. They may not be so different as the Na'vi, but Nicaragua is at least pretty different from America in some ways. Plus it will be no small accomplishment, as they haven't had a king for.. well, a while. The Na'vi already had a system with a chief in place.
Anyway, the first area in which I will conquer will be the culinary arts. Will it be easy? No, but it will be less painful than the inevitable intensive tanning sessions. I figure that the first step to mastery could just be to observe some things about the food. So, here goes:
The food is pretty good, heavy on the rice and beans. Sometimes too heavy; for instance, one breakfast was a huge plate of beans and some cornflakes. But things are often much more to our tastes; the next breakfast was a huge fruit salad and some delicious cinnamon oatmeal. The fruit here is delicious and much more varied than in the States. There are bunches (pun intended) of different kinds of bananas- we usually eat bananos, I think. Delicious and huge papaya, all kinds of citrus- we haven't had any mango yet, but maybe they will be more in season soon, or maybe they just don't eat much mango in this part of Nicaragua. There're also all kinds of delicious fruit juice, including my favorite, passion fruit. Yesterday we even had corn juice. It's... well, it's not my favorite juice.
Beans are usually served with cuajada cheese, which is intensely salty. It appears to be the only cheese they eat here, and it is growing on me, but it still has some growing to do before I would eat it by itself. At least once a day, but often twice, we will have a plate of beans and rice and cuajada cheese and tortilla. Sometimes, however, our host mom, who is a great cook, will throw us for a loop. Dinner today was french fries and fried tortilla with cuajada, and yesterday we had spaghetti.
All in 3D.