San Ramon, Coffee farm and Jinotega!

San Ramon! i took a short bus ride from Matagalpa to San Ramon to spend a few days checking out Durham, NC´s sister city. this was actually my first time to stay awhile small town. San Ramon has 5,000 people in the town proper. i walked the whole town in about 10 minutes and encountered no less than 8 churches. this is a picture of a giant bible in the middle of town.



during my stay i made a trip to the community of El Chile about an hour outside of town to visit a group of women who weave bags with beautiful handmade string. this woman was super sweet and talked to me a bit about her life. she lives in a cottage way out in the country where the women come to weave. she spends her days weaving, gardening and writing poetry. :)




i also made a day trip to the farm Finca Esperanza Verde - an eco-coffee farm that through the Durham sister city program is connected with a coffee roaster in NC! it was a fun day of walking trails through the mountainous, shady coffee farm, having an awesome but $9 lunch (ahh! tourist prices!) and then going on a tour to see how organic coffee processing is different from conventional. it was great and i even got to meet the woman from Durham who started it all - she came to Nicaragua looking for a way to help after the Contra war and ended up providing countless services for San Ramon through the sister city project and starting this organic, eco-tourity coffee plantation!


also, at the farm i met Pedro Antonio - a nearby coffee farmer who had some time on his hands and really wanted me to take a picture of his cows. so i said why not and got about an hour and a half tour of his land and got to hear about his typical day. when i asked about his bloody shirt (it took some courage), he pointed to a calf and said, ¨oh, i helped birth her last night¨ ha! so this is a picture of a day old calf and her mom. :)


then it was on to Jinotega - ¨City of Mists.¨ it was a lot like Matagalpa - friendly and mountainy - but smaller. i didn´t have much to do there, as there wasn´t a spanish school or many tourist activities. but i walked around a lot and enjoyed seeing a new town. the journey there was pretty interesting, though - about half an hour outside of town a group of farmers flagged down the bus and helped a man bleeding severely through the bandages on his head onto the bus. he had obviously been hurt while working and needed to get to the city for medical care. what surprised me was the amount of calm people had - the bus still drove it´s same route at the same pace. in fact, the money collector had the bus driver stop at one point because the wounded guy and his friend didn´t seem to have the money to pay for the trip. what?!! but eventually money exchanged hands and the bus puttered on. i´m still not sure how to process all that but thought i´d share...

next it´s on to San Rafael del Norte and then back to Esteli for a few days before my friend Meredith comes to visit!!!

(oh, and the cow is just to end things on a light note)

:)

Matagalpa!

each city just gets better and better as i head north. i just spent about a week in Matagalpa and found it to be beautiful (again, surrounded by mountains) and inspiring and coffee-rific.

i took spanish classes during the mornings at a really progressive spanish school - it was a ¨safe zone¨ for people of any nationality, religion, and sexual orientation. as surprising as it may seem, that was the first i´d heard of anything like that in Nicaragua. my spanish classes as well turned out to be very ¨progressive¨ - we talked a lot about the government and women´s organizations in town and advocacy programs my teacher was a part of. it was so great! plus, my hip teacher has this pretty awesome tattoo that gets me to thinking...

anywho, after spanish classes i took day trips around the city. my first was an ¨easy hike¨ up a hill that overlooked the city. well, it was actually really hard but i made it and took this silly picture. then i hiked 15 minutes down (steep) and realized i forgot my camera up top. arg - so i went back and luckily it was still there. always check the area before departing, jenna. always.

another day i walked to the cemetaries. there were two right across from each other - the catholic one and the ¨foreigner¨ one (where they bury non-catholics, most of whom are from other countries). i took a picture of the awesome catholic one because their graves are so bright and happy. the protestant-foreigner one was lame.

also, i happened upon an awesome organization that makes dairy products and gives the profits (as well as some of the dairy) to kids with disabilities. it was awesome - i walked in to get some yogurt (a digestive mistake as it would later turn out) and then next thing i knew they dressed me up all fancy and fed me many, many samples of different cream cheeses and showed me how they made them. all were made with milk straight from the cow, and i have now discovered that my body is definitely a fan of pasteurization. sad.

mmm - my favorite part of Matagalpa was El Castillo de Cacao. A CASTLE OF CHOCOLATE! some crazy Dutch guys re-started chocolate production here (a good idea since there are so many cacao trees!) and decided to build a castle to do it in. it was a really simple place, actually, and these ladies are grinding the cacao old school style by hand. at the end of my private tour i received many samples of the chocolate and more local coffee. IT. WAS. INCREDIBLE.

my last trip was to a nearby coffee farm called Selva Negra. it was one of the original coffee plantations and production areas in Nicaragua, founded by some Germans back in the day. now it´s pretty much a bavarian feeling resort with hiking paths and cottages and some coffee plants. i just walked around a bit and enjoyed the fresh air. i´m saving my real coffee learnin´ for next week!



oh, and this adorable girl is your prize for reading to the end.

farm life

(first, see previous post for info on Esteli)

YEA!!! this is my trip to my spanish teacher´s farm! during class one day she casually mentioned that she lives on a farm an hour´s walk from town and i said, ¨whoa - you should have tourists come stay and see farm life!¨ and she responded with, ¨ok, when do you want to come?¨ and it was as easy as that!

this pic is of Juana, with her husband Juan, and daughter Belinda Larissa. this was at the end of the trip and we were running to catch a ride in the back of a pickup so we wouldn´t have to walk all the way to town.


when we arrived after what was a really exhausting but beautiful walk (which Juana did with 2 year old Belinda Larissa on her shoulders) we had a HUGE little house on the prarie size lunch of leftovers: saucy vegetables and chicken with rice and tortillas plus a giant cup of soda. it felt so good to eat really hearty food after being sick and trying to eat healthy for the past few months. mmmm...






after lunch, Juana and I helped out around the farm. that means i followed her and took pictures. this is her bringing the cows in for their evening meal of ground up sugar cane. we got lucky they had all remembered to come down on time, otherwise we would have been scouring the large hill of their farm looking for them (and i´m not sure how effective i would be at rounding them up, anyways - they terrify me!)



next it was time to cut firewood. with a machete.












then was time to start dinner! we made ¨aguajada¨ - which is a type of ¨easy cheese.¨ basically, they add ¨pills¨ to their fresh cows milk, let it sit and coagulate, add salt, and then hand squeeze the curds into cheese patties. it was messy and fun and DELICIOUS! we ate the cheese with tortillas, beans and eggs for dinner and then again for breakfast on a fresh tortilla (so amazing - read on).






so, in betwen chores and dinner and talking we did steps of making tortillas for the next day. here is more or less the process:
-peel dried corn from the cob
-rinse well and boil for one hour
-rinse again and soak corn overnight
-kneed the corn (pic to the left) to get rid of debris
-rinse and drain again
-(at 5:45am) take it 10 minutes down the road to a grinder where it is ground with water to make corny, watery paste
-THEN run home and spend 40 minutes hand-patting the paste into 15-20 tortillas that will last you one day.
-repeat. ahh! so much work, but i have never had a more delicious tortilla in. my. life.


MILKING! so from what i can tell it´s primarily a dairy farm that also grows some beans and they have the obligatory chickens and roosters (who crow at ANY hour, it turns out). i got up at 4am with Juan to watch him milk cows. it was awesome - he tied the calf to the mom´s leg to make her think it was it asking for milk and then milked it. so tricky! once he was done he loaded up his BIKE with canisters of milk and biked the 25 minute journey down a stoney road to drop the milk at a corner store to be sold that day. BUT not before i reserved a cupful to drink warmed up with a peice of bread. AHHHH - SO GOOD ALSO!!!

this is me reading to Belinda Larissa. my mom brought some books in spanish for the organization i worked at in Granada. she suggested i bring one up north in case i meet any kids that need a book. BAM! i certainly did. Belinda Larissa is now familiar with The Little Engine that Could and i think will be a better person for it, as i was. :)



mmm- farm life (minus hard farm work) was just what i needed. my next stop is Matagalpa - supposedly still cool and mountainy but with COFFEE!!! :)

Esteli!

yes!!!! i feel like i have finally found Nicaragua! and Esteli is it. well, for me. from traveling i have learned to not really take anyone´s opinion of a place, since people and circumstances make so much difference. so here i´ve been in Esteli for the past week, taking spanish classes and making day trips to get a feel for the place. to me it feels friendly, busy and at the same time relaxing, nestled in between mountains (and therefore COLD!!!). plaid and cowboy hats are not uncommon and they sell custom made leather cowboy boots on most corners.

lauren and jonathan met me up here and we took a journey (part on foot, taxi, bus and the back of a truck) to a waterfall (pic above). it was gorgeous, though the water was a bit too icey for us. the nicaraguan family there was loving it, though, and shared their watermelon with us after their swim. yes!

i also took a side trip to check out an organization of women who came together to clean up their neighborhood, as it was being used as a trash dump. they began with recycling and then a friendly italian came and showed them how to make paper from composted fruits and veg, and ever since they have been making and selling beautiful paper and cards (pic of one of the volunteers above). it was really inspiring to hear all that they have done and how creative they have been to find ways to help. i might have to look into this paper making stuff when i get back!

also, i was fortunate enough to catch a yoga class downtown taught by an older gentleman who learned yoga from a traveling yogi in the 70´s - it. was. crazy. he had been doing the same routine of patting his body and crawling around on the floor for 30 years and continues to teach it 3 times a day to a devoted group of 4-5 students. needless to say it was a different kind of yoga than i am used to, but lovely to see his passion for it and to see how universal yoga really is.

my FAVORITE part of Esteli, however, was my recent trip to my spanish teacher´s farm to spend the night with her family and see her life. seperate post on that coming up....

helllllo! wow- thanks for still checking this.

so, the news is that i left Granada! i´m still recovering somewhat from my illnesses (seriously - don´t get parasites) so the past few weeks i´d been taking it slow, and when my mom came out to visit (which was awesome!) she helped me realize i may need a change of scenery and climate to get better. so, after throwing myself a few goodbye parties (one of which included giving my host mom a ¨portrait¨ i had done of her family. the picture is above - i never realized how tall i am!), i headed north with the help of high school and college friends Lauren and Jonathan. they have turned out to be excellent traveling companions - helping me mount my GIGANTIC traveling backpack and teaching me the art of hostel cooking.

Leon was our first stop. i´d heard it´s just like Granada, but bigger and more dirty. though it is bigger, i thought it was gorgeous, more real, and definitely more inspiring. it felt like a bustling central american city that had better things to do than cater to tourists (which i was sick of!) but also with the decadence of amazing churches around every corner. we spent our time mosey-ing (which is all you can really do in the crazy heat there) around, sitting in churches, and visiting museums of the revolution and war heroes (as we head north, those get more abundant). a special treat was a trip to the museum of ¨traditions and legends¨ - which was located in a creepy building where Somoza used to torture people and is now filled with old stuffed carcases of animals to graphically relay legends of nicaragua. we couldn´t understand much, since it was all in spanish (ahhh - don´t be dissapointed in me - it was really strange vocabulary!), but we did enjoy the mosaic wall outside (see pic above).

our hostel experience was quite eventful as well. we were fortunate (?) enough to be at our hostel during a huge reggae performance in the lobby, which of course filtered out into the dormitories, including ours. i was awoken at about 1am to the sounds of vomiting and spitting, coming from the bunk above me (!). AHHHH! i flipped on the light, saw puke on the floor (and on my sprawled out luggage!) and cautiously looked on the bunk above me to see a passed out person who wasn´t even staying in our room. ugh. so, it was super gross and lauren and jonathan stayed up and cleaned my things for me (really, they are EXCELLENT traveling companions). so hopefully that was the one hostel story of the trip...

i just arrived in Esteli yesterday and so far am loving it. i think the cooler weather will do wonders for my health, as medieval as that sounds. :)

more soon!

hi guys! i'm feeling almost 100% better. YES!!! the parasite is gone, and now i'm on lots of vitamins and liquids. hurrah! also, to help with the healing process i went to the beaches San Juan del Sur and Playa Maderas and took it easy for a few days. it was beautiful and actually turned into somewhat of a silent retreat when my friends i was traveling with and i chose different hostels to stay at and were kept apart by a high tide from about 3pm to 11am the next day. ha! but it was a good chance to recoup and think.

i returned from my trip to a very somber neighborhood - two neighbors had passed away over the weekend from different illnesses. one of them was a young mother, leaving behind two little children. when people die here all their friends and family gather in and around their house and sit all night with the body until the funeral the next day. when the carriage came to take the mother to the cemetery a band began to play a very melancholy tune and refreshments of a small cup of soda and a piece of sweet bread where handed out. then the crowd followed the carriage by foot the two miles or so to the cemetery. i was very touched by the event and couldn't help but think that if these neighbors could have afforded the $15 doctor visit i had just bought myself things might have been different.

yesterday afternoon i was able to accompany a new friend of mine who is working in a poor neighborhood outside of Granada to see the projects she's working on and meet a family that lives out there. the neighborhood is about 10 minutes from the heart of town by car, but it feels like hours away. the people live in shacks that share a large piece of metal for a roof and the families make a living by collecting plastics and selling them to be recycled. 2 pounds of plastics (roughly a large potato sack full) is worth about $0.07. the family we met showed us around their "house" and the rusted metal bins they hold their water in (as water only flows there 2 days a week). my friend was traveling in Granada last summer, saw these people's situation and decided to go home, raise money, and come back and start several projects (and she's only 25!). we visited the neighborhood's school and heard her plans for planting trees (so the kids wouldn't play in the direct sun all day with no water to rehydrate them) and build better bathrooms. while it was definitely another sobering experience to see just how many people live like this, i came away feeling really inspired by my friend. the picture above of the little girl is from this neighborhood - right at the base of the volcano Mombacho. 

needless to say i have a lot to think about this week. thank you guys for your thoughts and prayers while i was sick. i'm starting school again with 3rd graders tomorrow and am really excited about it. i'm more comfortable speaking to the kids and teachers now and have gotten to know a lot of the neighbors around the school well over the past 4 months. it's definitely starting to feel like home. 

~hasta pronto~

hiiiiiiii! i'm still here! i have just taken some breaks for christmas, visitors (Lauren and Jonathan came!!!) and most recently parasites. AHHH! but i'm on the mend and ready to talk, so here we go:

a few weeks ago i met a cool volunteer named Cat, who is really outgoing and friendly with the kids we work with. she quickly became friends with one of the high schoolers we teach english to and got invited to walk with her and her family to the Laguna de Apoyo - a pristine lake in the crater of a volcano. Cat invited me to come along, too, so we bought stuff for a picnic and made the 2 hour hike with our student and about 7 of her siblings/cousins. it was incredibly beautiful. my job, however, was lifeguard, since the kids don't really know how to swim and the parents were terrified to even let them come. i was actually given a rope by the grandmother and told to tie up the little boy pictured above and hold the rope so he wouldn't drown. we decided against that, but i still had my work cut out for me. :) 

also, this week we finished up our summer school program of preparing kids for high school. i think it was pretty successful in that at least now they have the practical advice they'd never heard before of "do your homework, be organized, study ahead for exams, etc". it's tough to send them off, because we know their parents don't know how to encourage them or help them out. but i guess we've done all we can. it was rewarding, too, to get to know these kids over the course of 7 weeks and to break through their teenage attitudes to get to know them at least a little bit. the two guys pictured above are good examples of the incredible coolness we had to deal with each day. :) 

i have this next week off of volunteering with the kids, so i'm going to be putting together some english curriculum for the organization (hmm...a course in ESL would have been useful before coming!). also i'm going to be resting, eating fruit and drinking gatorade. i've been assured that my hair will, in fact, stop falling out and the gray-ish tone will leave my skin very soon. HURRAH!!!! :)

hasta pronto.