Well, it has once again been far too long since I updated the blog, but here I am finally sitting down to do it. I’ll give a little run down of what’s happened since I wrote last: I had dengue fever; Alex (my cousin) and his girlfriend Caitlin came to Nicaragua, my wallet was stolen while I was with them; my wallet was RETURNED while I was with them; I wrote articles for, edited, and formatted the Peace Corps quarterly annual newsletter called Va Pue (meaning something like “Get going already!”); and went to a beautiful and serene resort in the mountains for my group’s In Service Training.

So, dengue fever. It is horrible, terrible, and a very, very bad illness. It started with a very high fever, which quickly turned into nausea (so much so that just the smell of food would make me gag), diarrhea, and feeling so bad all over that I could hardly get out of bed without exhausting myself. Finally, just as I was starting to feel better, came the skin rash that itches like you wouldn’t believe. Thankfully, this whole process only lasted for about a week and I was back to feeling basically normal. It took a little longer to get up the desire to eat again, but now I’m happy to say that I’m all better and looking forward to not experiencing that again!

I was so excited to get to spend some time with Alex and his girlfriend Caitlin, and just to have some interaction with family/Americans who aren’t in Peace Corps. I also had never been to Granada, where they were staying and where I met them. When I arrived at their hostel, we went for lunch at a wonderful breakfast place and then decided to go for a carriage ride/tour through Granada. For those of you who don’t know, Granada is the oldest colonial city in Central America, so it has a ton of old buildings, churches, forts, and lots more for the interested explorer. Somewhere along the route of the carriage ride, however, my wallet either fell out of my pocket or I was pick-pocketed. We immediately ended the tour and I headed back to the hostel to begin my endless phone calls to tell Peace Corps and to cancel my credit cards. About 2 hours later, however, I received a call from the guard at the PC office to tell me that someone had reported my wallet found and was ready to turn it in! I was so floored because I NEVER would have expected anyone to turn in a wallet. If anything is lost here, the Nicaraguan people don’t even bother looking because it’s already been taken by someone else. So in other words, I was really surprised and grateful. My boss drove in from Managua to pick it up from the good Samaritan, took me out to dinner and then gave me $25 of her own money so I could get back to my site! All in all, it was an eventful trip to Granada. Many, many thanks to Aunt Pam for funding my way – there is a thank you on it’s way in the mail!

Editing, formatting, and posting all of the articles of Va Pue took waaaay longer than we thought it would. We ended up having to stay in Managua for 3 nights to get it all done, each of the 5 members of the editing team putting in over 40 hours of work on it. It was SO gratifying to see that we finished and it has now been posted on the Peace Corps Nicaragua website. Sadly, I can’t share the link because it’s a private website only accessible by volunteers, but if you are really interested in reading it (which you should be), I can email you a copy. It’s kind of a big file, which is why I won’t just email it to everyone, so be prepared for that. It’s really interesting, though, and really gives an insight to PC life. Let me know if you want a copy!

Finally, I just got back from my group’s In Service Training which was held in the mountains of Matagalpa. It is a beautiful, serene resort called Selva Negra, which is settled in the middle of a cloud forest (if you aren’t sure what that is, click the link). It was an amazing 70 degrees there during the day, and got down to about 50 degrees at night. I was freezing at night and slept in my sweatshirt with 2 comforters to keep warm, but the daytime was heaven-like and beautiful. Everything was green and the air was fresh and clean, a huge contrast to Chinandega right now with hot hot hot and dry dry dry. Every breath taken is full of dust and smoke, so imagine my joy at being able to smell the clean air and enjoy my cool surroundings. Sadly, because of time constraints, we didn’t get to explore the property very much, but I will be back sometime during my service to check it out more. Our training didn’t take very long since we were only there a little over 24 hours, but it was nice to see everyone from our training group and to get updates and such on job responsibilities. Sometimes it can be hard to do a job when there is no accountability from your boss or anyone else, so it was nice to get more of an idea of what they are looking for. We really enjoyed ourselves all together and I’m looking forward to a chance to get together with everyone again!

Well, I think that’s all for now. I’m headed back to my site (and my kitty) for the night, I have a meeting with all of the Chinandega volunteers tomorrow, and then I’ll be going to Leon Sunday to meet with a fellow volunteer (Christine) and her parents, who are in town. It will be great to meet them, and I’m excited to spend some time exploring Leon more. Next week is the Project Design and Management workshop, which is back here in Managua. More to come on that later!