Los Chiles y Haciendo tortillas

My volunteer visit to the department of Rio San Juan and to the cities of San Marcos and Los Chiles was a success. It all began Thursday night. I was all packed and prepared to leave Thursday night as Friday morning I was leaving my town for some training in a nearby town and directly after that I, along with two other aspirantes, would be riding in the Peace Corps vehicles, new Toyota Land Cruisers with A/C, to Managua. We arrived in Managua about 6 in the evening and went directly to the Peace Corps headquarters. We grabbed a few books and copies of Newsweek and checked into our Peace Corps paid for hotel rooms. The rooms were nice but modest. We did a little shopping in Managua, mainly supplies for the trip the next day, and went to dinner. We had a great dinner, drinks, coffee and desert for around 8 or 9 dollars. I can´t remember exactly. We went back to the hotel as we had to get up around 5 30 to catch the bus leaving at 7. We made it to the bus stop and boarded an old American blue bird school bus, made in Ft. Valley Georgia, for the 12 hour bus ride. The first 3 hours were smooth. Paved roads and not to hot or dusty. Then, the pavement ended and the roads were not just unpaved but with holes, rocks and were just generally in bad shape. We stopped right before we hit the dirt roads so we could eat and the guys on the bus tightened all the lug nuts on the wheels. We stopped several times along the way but only one bathroom break. When we stopped about 4-5 people would board selling different things from soft drinks to fried chicken. I didn´t know what was going on for the first few seconds as these people boarded and began to shout what they were selling. They usually did it in a sing song kind of way...for example, the lady selling fried chicken would shout...pollo frito pollo frito polloooo friiiiiiiiiitooooooo, and so on. Usually there were people already standing in the ailse so they had to squeze past these people to sell their things. It was interesting. The bus would leave and they would ride down the road a way selling and then get off. I think they did this all day and would just ride the buses up and down the highway. I did buy some things from them on the way back that were very good. Okay, so we arrived in San Carlos about 5 30 in the evening. We didn´t feel like going on to Los Chiles so we stayed in San Carlos for the night. San Carlos is beautiful. It sits at the intersection of Lake Nicaragua and the San Juan River. We were able to watch the sun dip down behind some mountains in Costa Rica. It was very tranquil. My volunteer and I caught the 8 o clock bus out of San Carlos to Los Chiles. I spent the next few days with him and left early Weds. morning. The pictures above are of the MINSA house were he lives with the doctors that work in the health dept., one is of the town of Los Chiles and the men are making sidewalks and curbs, and the other one is of my making a tortilla in the Casa Materna...much to the amusement of about 6 pregnant women. The woman before me made it look so easy but my tortilla turned out pretty poorly. I learned a lot from my visit and feel energized to really work hard in these last few weeks of training. I tried to catch the 4 am bus out of Los Chiles but there was a truck stuck on one of the bridges so I couldn´t leave until 6 am. Getting up at 3 20 to find out the bus will not be arriving is really a bummer. I made it back to my house around 7 o clock weds. night. I took a shower and went straight to bed. Today was a whole other day. I gave my second charla, first solo charla, in the health center and will be giving a long charla in the school Monday. We have training in a diff. town tomorrow and a different town again on Sat. We also have a youth group meeting Sat. I guess I´ll prepare my charla all day Sunday. I´ll let you know how that goes. I´m really nervous becasue my Spanish is improving but not so great.
Miss you all and Feliz dia de la Amistad y Amor.