la chinita

Unfortunately, I didn’t find any good postcards while I was abroad, and am now at a loss for what to send to friends who are far away. I had the idea of making postcards out of some of my photos, and am now working on finding an online service to help me out. Considering two sites right now.. hazelmail and catprint. If anyone knows of other good options, I’m open to input for the next few days.

On a somewhat-related note, I finally figured out how to enable comments on this thing! haha.

Today we took another trip to Depilto, a nearby town with a famous restaurant called McDouglas (I think) and lots of coffee and sugar cane farms surrounding it.

We took public transportation buses from the Shell gas station, which I still had trouble finding. (In my defence, the streets here have no names, no signs, and all look the same!) It was super crowded, with every seat filled and people standing, squished in anywhere possible, and people riding on top of the bus! And I think it was just an old (somewhat converted) yellow school bus. That´s a whole lot of people. (Then again, it was also mad cheap — less than $0.50!)

When we got to our stop, we saw the “factory” where they do the wet process of making coffee. They shell the fruit, separate the shells from the beans, and ferment the beans for 12 hours to clean them better (not sure why fermentation cleans them though). Then, we made the long (40min to 1 hr) uphill climb to the center of a coffee making and growing cooperative, which Claudia and our guide and their family were a part of. They gave us the grand tour, equiping us with waist-baskets and showing us the entire process of coffee-making. We picked the (strangely juicy &  sweet) berries and brought them back to the farm. Our whole group only picked enough for one bucket (a “pila”, i think), which if we were workers would have earned us only 18 cordobas, or less than 1 USD! We then used a very simple hand-cranked chopper to remove and separate the shells. The next step was drying the beans in the sun for several hours,a fter which we used a large mortar and pestle made of wood to again shell the beans. These shells were very light, so you could pour the resulting mixture and separate the shells by blowing through the stream of beans (very cool, in my opinion! :)). The next step would have been toasting the beans, which we didn´t do, but this is what makes coffee beans black.

We sampled some of the coffee (yum!) and received our packages of coffee that we had preordered. They said that this was the first time they sold the finished coffee beans directly to customers (clientes en español), and they hoped to be able to do so more, so that they can receive (and pay their workers) a fair price for their work. And a 1 lb. bag was still less than $5 USD. It was amazing to see how much man-power and work goes into making just one bag of coffee, and the extent tow hich I have no idea where my food comes from. They said that the profits from the coffee (and the $8 we paid for the tours and stuff) would go towards a fund they were starting to help pay for a student to study agriculture. It felt good to know that I was supporting a great family and amazing, honest people that worked so hard every single day. I think this experience will make me at least consider where things — clothes and food, mostly — come from in the future.

After all the excitement at the farm, we walked (again, for a really long time!) backinto town to eat at the famous restaurant. At least we got to go downhill this time! The restaurant was pretty much in the middle of nowhere on the carreterra (highway). But, the place was absolutely gorgious! It reminded me of the hot springs I visited in Costa Rica with APO last year. It was beautiful, with lots of plants and trees and nature, with wooden pavillion gazebo like dining areas on the side of the hill. At the bottom was a beautiful waterfall, where we took a bunch of awesome photos. The food was also yummy.. and my dinner was only $5.50 USD! I think I love this place… just a little bit! :)

I realized last night that I hadn’t really written anything on this blog-type thing. tumblr makes it so easy to post individual photos that that’s mostly what I did!

As you can see from my schedule, every day has been really busy here! It is as complete an immersive cultural experience as I have ever had, and possibly as much as I can handle. Each student in my group of 15 from Cornell is living on their own, with a Nicaraguan host family. Since we only have three weeks here, we are working on a project with local students and teachers, and taking classes in Spanish language, conversation, and Nicaraguan history and politics in the afternoon. I think that this combination really speeds up the assimilation / increased understanding between our very different cultures.

We’ve watched several films now about US intervention in Latin America, all the bad things our country has done, and lots of background on the situation in Latin America, and living with a host family really drives home the point. The most surprising is that I never knew about any of this stuff before I came on this trip. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund.. all of it is new to me, even though these organizations are largely funded by the US. But enough on that for now.

I think the biggest cultural difference I’ve seen here is the focus on family, especially on the biggest holiday of the year, New Years (Eve). New years eve here is all about traditions — but not the watching a silver ball drop on t.v. while getting trashed kind. Most people spend the evening eating food with their (extended, if possible) families. They make scarecrows filled with the bad things of the previous year, and burn it at midnight. Also, fireworks are freely available here (for better or worse, I’m not sure), so people go into the streets at midnight to set/watch fireworks. After, everyone hugs&kisses each other, and wishes each other a “feliz ano nuevo”.

After family reunions the previous night, the young people of Ocotal all seemed to go to the discoteca (aka. the dance club) on the night of January 1st. The discoteca I went to, “Sky Dance”, was completely packed. Greg and I danced to some Merengue early in the night, and switched to reggaeton later (which Greg didn’t like that much :P). Then, much to our surprise, there were 3 male strippers/exotic dancers who cleared the dance floor and did their thing. Three women from the crowd had a sort of dance off with them — it was really kind of strange. For a culture that at first seems very conservative (no one really wears shorts out of the house, and I never see people wearing miniskirts), and is supposedly known for romance and drama (telenovelas!!), they have things that are pretty opposite, like male strippers in the popular dance club. On the TV dating show my little 11-year-old host niece/sister was watching (called 12 corozones), they had a short interjection of 3 girls pole-dancing, and one of the male contestants doing a strip tease.

But overall, I’m really enjoying my experience here. Everyone is extremely nice, and people welcome you into their homes and bid you come back anytime you want anything. As one of the other students on my trip said, “They might be poor, but they are rich in culture”.

For another perspective on our trip, see Greg’s site! :)

Today is the day of the three kings in Ocotal, Nicaragua, and there was a parade through town! by which I mean, a truck drove through town tossing candy out onto the streets, and a HUGE crowd of kids followed it around picking up random trinkets. I picked up a random nail file they were tossing around.

Video coming soon!

6:15am - Wake up, eat breakfast of papaya and bananas.

7am-12pm - go to work! on water treatment plant at local technical school.

12pm-2pm - lunch with la familia and shopping, maybe some time to go to a cyber cafe.

2pm-3pm - Nicaragua history & politics class

3pm-4pm - Spanish language class

4:pm-4:45pm - Conversation Class

4:45pm-5:30pm - DANCE CLASS (mi favorita :D)

6pm-7pm - Group Reflection meeting.

7pm - Dinner with la familia.

9pm - Go out with other students!