Random thoughts from a week ago

October 7, 2009

A couple of things that are on my mind:

First of all, I have HBO and Cinemax in my room. I have never had either of these channels in my house in the U.S., let alone in my room. So in the past week, I’ve gotten to watch the fifth Harry Potter, The Dark Knight, and right now am watching Persepolis (difficult to do, since having no understanding of French, I'm totally reliant on reading the Spanish subtitles that rapidly flash by). Some are in English with Spanish subtitles, and some are dubbed into Spanish. So I can kind of rationalize my spending time alone in my room to watch movies, in that while they may not be contributing to my Spanish much at this point, at least they’re not actively making it worse. I should be thankful for this, as I probably won’t have a TV in my site, as I learned from visiting Chinandega.

Secondly, I learned and used some dichos that I feel are indicative of what my service will be like:

Cuando llega, llega: When it rains, it pours. Especially in Chinandega, during the rainy season. Ryan and I were on a bus pelón (bald bus, or a bus without a top) to get a tour of the city, when out of nowhere it started pouring, and soaked us to the bone before we could get off the bus and get to Ryan’s house for cover. It also works that way in service, too; for Ryan, yesterday was not just a day of showing me around, but also of his boss coming to observe him teach, and interview everyone he works with. It was also the day he ended up finally doing a favor to another English teacher, and teaching a private class to a class that was supposed to have at least five or six kids in it, but which ended up only having two, on account of the rain starting up right before class was supposed to. It was a long day for both of us.

Take care of yourself before you take care of others: So, finding a place to live is apparently a lot harder than it’s made to seem. It takes a lot of luck to find a good place, sometimes that’s precipitated by lengthy stays with less-than-stellar host families, or downright disastrous occurrences, like being robbed of all your possessions. If you don’t have a good place to live, or can’t eat well, or can’t sleep well, you can’t be an effective volunteer.

Fachenta (adj): 1) anything luxurious, costly, and often foreign; 2) any person who often purchases fachenta things and spends time in such establishments. These things generally feel incredibly out of place in Nicaragua, like the mall in Managua, or Subway in the middle of Chinandega, or the On The Run combination gas station convenience store/fancy coffee shop/fancy fast food restaurant. I feel that, like Ryan, I’m generally going to avoid patronizing these places and buying these things during my service; but…

Pick your battles: sometimes it’s worth buying some fachenta things, like veggie pizza and beer with Monday Night Football (seeing Brett Favre in a Vikings jersey = really weird). Sometimes it’s worth using Spanish in English class to quiet students down or explain the rules of a game. Sometimes it’s worth buying bag water if it only costs a nickel, and street food too if it’s cheap and you’ve already been sick a few times. You’ve got to know what’s worth fighting for, what rules are flexible, and which ones are meant to be broken.

Moclín (n): dirty old man. One of my favorite new words I’ve learned in Nicaragua, and one that is actually a lot more vulgar and disparaging than our English equivalent. Also one that is spray-painted across a poster of Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua’s president) on the way between my town and Jinotepe. I learned this weekend that this is a particularly biting and appropriate insult to the current president, because it came out in the news several years before he was re-elected that he had slept with his step-daughter. I marvel at what things are possible in Latin American politics that are not even conceivable in American politics.