This

These spiders really liked to hang out in my old room.

I put a pen next to this one so you could have an idea of its size.

Also, I'm assuming that is a sack of eggs on its stomach.

Yeah.

This is Normal

Since living in a foreign country for two years, my grasp on reality, already tentative to begin with, has deserted me almost completely.  This may not be a bad thing, at least for me.  Things are more fun this way.  A good example of how I have pretty much lost it, is to look at my approach to traveling.  My first site is pretty isolated, and for a while it took about ten hours to travel from there to the capital, Managua.  If I ever wanted to visit any friends who lived further up north, it was usually an overnight trip.  When the highway was finally paved, though, my travel time went down to about seven and a half hours, and then an even more amazing thing happened - my town got an evening bus.  Before, the last bus from the municipal capital to my town left at 3pm, this new bus left at 6pm, meaning that I could leave Managua at 1pm instead of the 7am direct bus, and still catch a bus back to my own town.  This opened up new a new world of travel opportunities for me, and I started to visit the north more often.  Every time I would travel back from north of Managua, I would try to "beat" Nicaragua.  If the 1pm bus from Managua got me to San Carlos in time to catch my last bus, I won; if the bus came in late, and I missed my last bus, I was stranded in San Carlos, and Nicaragua won.  Most people in their downward spiral to insanity fight with inanimate objects; I apparently fight with entire nations.

And so it passed, that one day, after a meeting in Managua, I traveled north for two and a half hours to spend the night in Matagalpa with my friend, Anna.  I was determined to make it home the next day, but I was also determined to fix a new leather bag that my cousin had bought me from Costa Rica.  Everyone in Nicaragua knows that if you want leather done right, the best place to go is Esteli, about an hour and a half west of Matagalpa.  I announced my plan to travel from Matagalpa to Esteli to Managua to San Carlos to my town pretty casually, but everyone around me looked at me as if I were crazy.

"That's got to be more than twelve hours of traveling," someone said.

"Yeah, but I'm used to it now, plus, it's a chance to beat Nicaragua!" I countered.  It made total sense in my head.

The next morning a little before 6 in the morning, Anna walked with me to catch a taxi to the bus station where I hopped on the next bus to Esteli.  At a little before 8, I arrived and dropped off my bag, then went and chatted with another volunteer friend until the 9:15 bus to Managua.  Two and a half hours later, I bought my ticket to San Carlos, and was on my way.  This bus has the advantage of being very fast, and we managed to make it a little before 6pm, when my last bus would be passing by...but it never did.  For some reason that day, the last bus never left, and I thought that Nicaragua would beat me.  I couldn't stand for it.  After waiting for about thirty minutes, I decided to take a taxi for the hour and a half ride back home.  By myself, it would not have been economically feasible, but luckily there were four other travelers who were willing to split the cost of the taxi, instead of staying the night in San Carlos.  So we piled in, and thirteen and a half hours after I started out that day, I made it to my front door.

When I went into the kitchen, I thought my family was having a party, seeing the huge amount of pork that my host sister had fried up.  My host family usually only eats meat on special occasions since it's a bit of a luxury, so I asked why we were celebrating.

"Well, you see, one of the pigs ran out into the street today, and a truck hit it, so we cooked him," she said.  "It's not like he got sick and died.  He was perfectly healthy before he got hit," she went on to explain, "it would have just been a waste not to eat him."

I agreed, and went to my room to call my brother.  I told him about my day, but when I got to the part about the pig, he stopped me.

"So the pig was hit by a truck?" he asked.

"Yes."

"So you ate something that was killed in the road?"

"Yeeees," I answered, seeing where this was going.

"That is the definition of roadkill, you do realize that you just ate roadkill?"

His disbelief at my actions, of traveling across the country in a day, of eating what was, yes, roadkill, seemed odd to me.  I'd done it all before, this had become my reality, and it didn't upset me one bit.  

So when it came time for me to answer, I said, "Well, I may have eaten roadkill, but it's ok, you know why?"

"Why?"

"Because I just beat Nicaragua.  Toma Nicaragua!!!"

Moving Day

I haven't posed in a long time and I apologize for that.  It seems life has gotten in the way, and my brain hasn't wanted to settle down to put words to internet.  Anyway, an update: I moved.  Not back to the states like most of the forty volunteers who joined Peace Corps at the same time I did, and who ended their two-years of service in March.  No, that is for the sane.  Instead, I, loca that I am, decided to stick around for a third year as a regional volunteer leader, which means that half of my time I will travel around southeastern Nicaragua visiting other volunteers to make sure they have the support they need, and the other half working on a project with the Ministry of Health in the municipal capital.  To do that, I obviously had to move two hours away to the municipal capital, which was not as difficult as I thought it would be, since I had a bunch of people to help me out.

This is my host brother, Hector, posing by the third wave of things to be moved.  The first wave was my large backpack, and a smaller bag.  The second wave was three small bags.  As you can see, the third wave consists of three bags, my pillow, a duffle (on the bench in the back), and my bookcase.  The pig stayed behind with abuela.

Obviously, the bookcase was the most difficult thing to move, since I couldn't even lift it by myself, and needed my buddy Moneda to help load it up.  Everything else I was able to take on the bus with no problem, but it would have been a hassle, emotionally and financially, to transport that thing on a yellow school bus that has seen better days.  Thankfully, our parish priest, Father Cornelius, offered to take it in his truck, since he was heading to town the same day I wanted to move.

Thanks for being awesome, padre.

In the end, I moved two years of stuff in three trips from my old home to what will be my new one. I know it is only a two-hour bus ride away, but it feels like a more monumental move than that.  I'm moving from a town of around six-thousand to a city of about sixteen-thousand, from rural to urban, from friends to strangers.  It took me an entire year to feel comfortable in my last place, when will I feel that here?  I live in hope that it will be soon.  Plus, I think the fact that I have a real flushing toilet instead of a latrine will help with the readjustment.

The view from my old room.  Notice the pig barrier, to keep him from coming into my room and being his typical cochino self.

The view from my new room.  Notice the cats lounging, not giving a literal shake of their tails what you think of them.