It’s none of your beeswax; plus, popsicle stick sculptures and noodle art

¿Qué Paso?:

Vaga Briks (in English, I’m a wanderer): I have not written in a while, sorry, but I have been rather occupied with grading exams, running around town on my bike searching for people, falling off bridges, planning competitions, avoiding bolos (drunks) and evangelicals, and teaching English. I am super tiered nowadays, with lots and lots to do all the time (and I am not complaining…things to do are AWESOME!). That is my accuse as to why I haven’t been keeping up with my blog…but here I sit finally with a little free time, and I thought I would catch everyone up with what’s been happening…

Rainy Season: The rainy season has started, and all my clothes are damp and things are starting to mold on me.

Ups and downs: I am still enjoying my time here although there are always ups and downs. For example, I was ripped off on a bus (and didn’t say anything because it wouldn’t have solved anything) but I was happily surprised when someone in my town stuck up for me and managed to get my money back.

Politically correct: Lately, it has been difficult to deal with the built up political tensions between people, why can’t we all just get along? For me, it has been a lesson in diplomacy: how to get people who so ardently dislike one another to come to an agreement or dare I say compromise.

Party time: My town festival is in full swing this weekend. The streets are lined with people eating cotton candy, candied apples and enjoying themselves. I was people watching yesterday and eating a rather delightful dinner, when a waft of exhaust entered my nostrils. My stomach turned a little, from the unpleasant scent, and I looked around to see where it had originated from, and that’s when I saw a motorcycle trying to make its way down to crowded and packed street. “Why?” I thought. It’s not like this is the only street in town. The only explanation was that he was “showing off” his motorcycle and meanwhile he almost ran over half the people in town.

A mule, a gordo and a priest: This sounds like a joke, but in all honesty it actually happened, and I witnessed it all. Although, I didn’t take any pictures to prove it. Last weekend, was our town’s horse festival. People ride around the town on big horses. This year, the priest decided to get in on the action, and mounted a horse, but no one taught him how to control the animal. The priest was recklessly riding around town, nearly running everyone down. Next, a “gordo” (fat man) rode a stocky mule. The poor animal was grunting under the heavy load, but the fat man didn’t seem to notice and kept taking sips from his brown paper bagged bottle of booze.

It's a rug...the kids created this project and wrote up a business plan including how to market and finance the product

Last weekend I found myself boarding a bus on a search for the most beautiful river in Nicaragua. Conveniently, the river was only a short ride from my town, plus a quick ox ride and finally finishing up with a brisk walk. By the time I arrived at the river I was more impressed by the many methods of transportation it took to reach the river than the river itself. This bus ride, was the usual chaotic ride, almost comparable to Toads Wild Ride at Disney World (note, I said almost). The Ox chart is where things got a bit more fun! First of all, these two poor oxen were carrying a load of wood (for cooking), and my nica friend asked if we could hop on the back of the cart too. The 3 of us were sitting among piles of wood being pulled by two oxen. We were going at a snail’s pace. So slow in fact that if there was a grandmother with a walker on the side of the road she would have quickly passed and left us in her “walker dust”. My friend was jumping on and off the chart to take pictures (having plenty of time to snap a picturesque shot and easily catch up). I was trying to shield my eyes from the overwhelming sun, and remain patient. Even though walking would have been a more productive use of time, my friends refused to walk the 1 kilometro. That is correct; we were not going very far, just 1k. As the oxen drudged on, so did we. Then we hit a rut in the road (bound to happen) and pieces of firewood went flying off. The already slow ride became even slower. Kids helped to collect the wood and redistributed it onto the cart. Next, we hit a giant mud pit. The cart’s wheels became embedded in the mud. The ox had to pull extra hard through the pit. Finally, we reached our destination (mas o menos). The riverbed was dried up and the water was a muddy color. Right now, the river is not a very pretty site, but in a few months and with some more rain it will be a site to behold (and I will only behold the site again as long as I don’t have to ride on the back of an ox chart). They are slow animals, and I am just fine walking!

A few weeks ago, a student decided to throw a chair across the room into the wall. The student was apparently angry that I had kicked him out of class. I didn’t realize he was so quick to anger, because the intonation in my voice was nothing but normal and calm. I gave him several warnings ahead of time and then resorted to asking him to leave. However, he did not like this option, thus the chair being thrown. Well, it turns out having a student throw a chair in a rage of anger has its advantages. The students are now working harder than ever to get their work done!

Who needs a bike seat? Someone stole the bolts right off of my bike. One minute, the bolts were all in their place and the next minute my bike seat was doing a 360-degree swivel and my handle bars were all out of whack. I think it’s also worth saying that this was at a different school than the “chair throwing” school. I approached my school’s principal about the incident, mainly to see if anyone happened to get a glance at the perpetrator. Then the next thing I know, all my kids were apologizing to me. The principal decided to call a school assembly to announce to everyone that the gringa’s bike had been tampered with, and the result was that all my kids decided to apologize non-stop.

There is never a dull moment on a bus in Nicaragua, and this past week I found myself on a bus with 2 very drunken men (along with about 40 other people who were just trying to get home). Of course, the men were super obnoxious, but no one wanted to kick them off the bus. Therefore, for 2 hours we had to put up with their rambling, shouting and overall craziness. I was super glad when I was able to get off.

Another business group of mine, they are making decorations for fiestas

I suppose I should clarify 1 thing first, I teach 4^th year students who range in age of 14-18. The class I teach is simple to explain: A business course that promotes creativity. All year long, we work on increasing students’ business knowledge and then they apply their new knowledge to an actual working business that they are developing/creating for the class. In the month of September, we have the first of 3 competitions. As a motivating factor, the kids know that their business plans and products will be entered into this competition. I just had the first competition at the local level. I had about 43 groups of students competing all year long for 5 slots. Before, the actual day of my competition I was able to eliminate quite a few groups aka kids with popsicle stick art and ode to macaroni art. From those kids I narrowed it down even more to the top 12 groups. These groups then competed for the 5 spaces to go onto the Regional Competition. It was a tough decision, but the groups that worked the hardest (in my opinion) did come out as the clear winners. I am happy to report that all of my students did their work, which means they wrote a complete business plan. However, the day after the competition was tough, because the kids’ motivation was way down. I spent most of my class doing team building activities. Now I am busy planning the Regional and National Competition, which will take place in October and November respectively.

In an effort to help prepare a group of students for our local competition, I decided to take a bike ride with them to help look for bees wax (they were utilizing the wax in their product). They are making candles from bees wax, but of course, we had to hunt down the person who sells the wax. No one knew exactly where this person lived, but they knew he lived pretty far down this long road. In Nicaragua, there used to be a train that crossed across the country. Although the train and track are long gone, the signs of train tracks can still be seen across the countryside. In fact, this explains why there are many small seemingly random towns spread across the countryside. At one point in time, these towns ran along the train line. Anyway, my journey to find the bees wax man took me along the former train track lines. We were a group of 5, peddling along on our bikes. Now because there are no longer tracks, but the rivers remain, we were presented with a bit of a conundrum when crossing water. There are unsteady rickety wooden planks in the spots of the former train tracks. Below the rickety wooden planks, lay muddy, mucky cow patty littered coffee colored puddles of “water.” Now since we had our bikes with us, we were forced to make the crossings extra carefully, with the bikes resting on our shoulders. I really should work on my balancing skills, because in hindsight it would have paid off to have tightrope walking skills. We finally found the “bee” man but just our luck, he wasn’t home. I hopped back on to my bike, and as a group, we started biking 1 hour back into town. On the way out to the bee house, we had to cross 4 “bridges” and so on our return trip we would also be faced with 4 bridge crossings. I crossed the first without any troubles. Then we came upon the second, and I crossed again rather quickly. I was getting a bit cocky with my bridge crossing skills, and instead of taking my time, I was practically running across each bridge. Then I hit bridge number 3, I made it halfway across, lost my balance, and before I fell, I decided to hop off into the mucky water. I landed straight, my bike still resting on my right should, mud up past my knees. I hopped out of the mud rather easily, but my ego was greatly deflated and I road 1 hour back to town a muddy mess. Then I had to take a bus ride for 45 minutes in all my muddy glory. I got home around 6pm to find I had no running water, and I have learned another lesson about hubris and showing off.