Nine things about my life, written, but not posted, Tuesday night

1. I am completely exhausted.  I should go to bed soon, maybe I will.  I am fighting change-in-weather-sickness, yes that is the official name.   Then there is the level of tiredness that comes with exhaustion but is more mental.  Like “I’m sick and tired of…”  Right now those three little dots can be applied to a lot of things.
   
2. I just made muffins because I had two mealy apples that I couldn’t just throw away because apples are expensive.   The muffins are good.
   
3. It has been raining a lot lately and actually cool out most of the time.  Except in the mornings and early afternoons when it is mostly humid.  Yesterday I was tricked into wearing jeans by the massive rain on Sunday.  I finally caught on at 1 when I was walking home from school and all my clothes were sticking to my body.
   
4. This is my last week with domestic arts, they are completing their two final projects.  For one project we broke the class up into three groups and then they had to prepare us a meal outside of class.  It was a great assignment; we got three well-prepared meals.  Thursday is their other final project.  They are throwing a semi-formal banquet for selected classmates and teachers. The food should be good there too but a lot more work overall and I have to dress up.
   
5. I’ve decided to move.  I don’t know when but I do know where.  Three friends just moved into a house with an unused maid’s quarters.  It is a nice size but doesn’t have a closet, I guess maids never change out of their baby blue and white checkered dresses and white aprons.  I still need to work out a solution for that dilemma.
   
6. Living in a maid’s quarters does not necessarily make me the maid.
   
7. I designed a stamp so that we can mark all of our library books as ours.  I ordered it today and get to pick it up tomorrow.  So stay tuned for next week’s update with a picture of that.
   
8. Today I also went to the market and bought 29 plastic boxes to organize our storage cabinets with.  Then, a summer volunteer group came and did the organizing for me.  
9. This same group is coming in all month to do activities with the kids and help the program get established overall.  Right now we are open for two hours, three days a week and it has been (except for today) quite the popular hang out.  Hopefully with this new group we’ll be able to get more structured activities.    
   

Animals, rain and liquid assets

Animals: 

            There are these little beetle/grasshopper things here that sound like helicopters.  I never remember what they are called but for the most part we have a fine relationship.  Last Thursday in the library a kid was sitting down on the mats and pulled some out of his pocket, alive, to show me.  He was really excited but I can’t really encourage that, right.  He then left them in a little hole in the dirt outside of the door.

On Friday morning I was waiting in the library for furniture to get delivered and I had opened the property’s main gate so the delivery truck could pull in.  Finally the truck showed up (I won’t get into how long that took) and as I was directing the men where to put the things, five cows that were grazing on the street decided that the grass was looking greener on the other side.  And but the other side I mean the inside.  So then I found myself chasing cows back out of the gate.  All in the duty of me as a librarian I guess.

Rain:

            On Saturday night the long awaited rain came.  It was paired with no electricity, but there was a lot of lightening so it wasn’t that dark.  Monday morning around 2am the rain came back, I was immensely happy that I didn’t have any thing to do early so I could just lie in my bed listening to the sky pour out all it had been storing for the last five months.  When it is actually raining it is cooler, but the rest of the day is still miserably hot, but things will probably be green soon and green is pretty. 

Liquid Assets:

            On Tuesday I didn’t have time to walk to the library so I decided to take one of these three-wheeled taxi things.  I have a little change purse in my backpack and I know they are cheep so I figured I’d be fine.  I got one right away and told him where I needed to go then counted my change and asked him how much it would be.  He said it would be 30 Cords, since I only had 7 Cords I thanked him and asked him politely to let me off where we were, I could walk the rest of the way.  He was very nice I drove me the whole way.  I was trying to think of what else I could offer him to make up at least part of the difference but although I had my laptop, ipod, digital camera, cell phone, and lunch there wasn’t really anything I could give.  I considered the lunch but I get a little testy if I don’t have food.  I think this story signifies it is time for me to go to the bank.

oh, how i've missed you

So it’s been a little stretch since my last update.  You can deduce that I have a lot to say but right now I am really just thinking about how the power is out.  Since my return in February the power has been on very faithfully (just out a few hours here or there) but I was just informed that today is the start of rationing again.  So we’re on the blackout from 5pm to 10pm, or so it seems.  I’m writing this at 7:45 so I’m right about in the middle.  Normally on Wednesday nights I have Bible study but that was cancelled because of the darkness, all of my roommates had a meeting to go to.  So this power outage is hitting me hard.  On the other hand, this is part of the adventure of being down here.  What is the point of living in the third world if there aren’t any inconveniences.

 There is another energy crisis going on here too, with gasoline/diesel.  This week public transportation (that used by the masses) went on strike demanding the government help subsidize their fuel costs.  Because of the multi-step conversion rate I often over look the fact that fuel is expensive, what does 23 cords a liter really mean? Well cords to dollar is 19 so that takes us to $1.20 a liter and then liter to gallon is 3.79 so that brings us up to 4.59 a gallon.  When I used to get paid I made $95 a month, if fuel was my only cost for the month I would only be able to buy 20 gallons worth.  So yes, the busses and taxis are legitimately distressed. 

But enough on things I don’t understand.  Out of the past five weekends I have been traveling four of them.  This is fun but draining, and leaves me feeling a little disconnected.  I am a homebody, or at least wish I were. 

This past weekend I went to a women’s retreat for the English speaking church here in Managua (ICF).  It went from Friday morning to Sunday afternoon and was a great time of fellowship, and learning, and lying by the pool, and playing speed scrabble, and getting beat up by the waves.  Now I have a nice tan and am better equipped to be a “strong woman of God.” 

One side story, in our folders for the week there was a list of all the names of the women and something quirky or embarrassing about them.  My fact was that I don’t own a comb or brush (no surprise there).  My friend Morgan was also there and she has dread-locks so this lady walked up to her and asked if she was Joy and offered her a comb from the gift table.  Morgan clarified that no that wasn’t her fact, and then pointed me out as the scrub, once she was redirected she gifted me the comb.  Someone else gave me conditioner (another thing I don’t use).

The weekend before that I went with my co-workers Lori and Amanda (and Amanda’s seven-month-old, Samantha) to San Juan del Sur to check out the library system they have.  Our meetings with the founder, Jane, were extremely informative and encouraging.  We were able to see how she has things running and ask a lot of questions about processes she has previously tested.  Also we bought a “library in a box” from her that had lots of stuff like books and registration cards so that I no longer feel as if I’m starting from scratch.  Another good thing on the trip is that we were able to stay at the good hotel both nights, and we got a 20% discount.  The actual beaches in San Juan are not very clean but the hotel is up on a hotel with gorgeous pools overlooking the bay there.  And you know what they say about how things look “from a distance.” 

Now I think my traveling schedule has calmed down and that is exciting and also it is exciting to see progress in my work here.  Today the library was officially opened.  We’re not having our grand opening yet and still have quite a bit of preparation before kids can actually check out books but today was a start.  We wanted kids to get used to the idea of having a educational place to hang out so today I put out books to read at one table, puzzles at another, and coloring books at a third.  It is fun to finally have my job require interaction with others (even though they are dirty kids) and I am looking forward to the library developing more.

The coloring table

Lori reading to some smaller kids

Seeing the kids in action really just reaffirmed to me the need this country has for libraries or places to supplement their educational journey. Wow that came out cheesy.  After a little bit of time a two of the boys that were inside we starting to get bored with the books so I decided to get out a puzzle for them to do.  They were both around ten years old so I brought out a really simple maybe thirty-piece puzzle.  They were completely lost as to what to do.  They didn’t know how to separate out the edges or corners, or to match colors, or even the whole in/out concept.   After about twenty minuets together we got the border put together, I told them to come back tomorrow and we can fill in the middle.  Then there were other boys about six and eight that I gave a wooden board puzzle to, the kind where the design of the puzzle is painted onto the base, even that was taking them a substantial amount of time.  In how many other areas are they lacking from what we consider basic skills?  For now I am going to be open Tuesday-Thursday from 2:30 to 4:30 and we’ll see how to expand later        

And other news...

-One of my friends is moving back to the states tomorrow so today we went to coffee and on a picnic. 

-It has been grossly hot this week so just the six-minute walk to the picnic location left me literally dripping with sweat, or glistening.

-My roommates are thinking of moving, my rent is extremely cheap right now and I can only commit to living with them until December so I don’t really have a say in the matter.  There is a chance that in June I’ll be homeless, but not really because the library is pretty big and has    wi-fi and I semi-own my own bed. 

-I took the plunge and bought a ticket to come to California in July from the 8^th to 24^th.  I am already looking forward to it. 

-It’s 9:14 and the power is back on, why was I complaining.