my journey contines

It’s my other housemates birthday today… so Happy Birthday Marshall!!

so in Nicaragua they do not only celebrate love on Valentine’s Day, they also celebrate friendship. what a wonderful concept, because we all have friends (although we might not all have a special someone *sniff sniff* hahaha) anywhooo with red balloons in the coffee shops and cut-out hearts on the windows of the stores, today is recognized for all types of relationships - platonic and romantic.

asides from the repeated statement that nicaraguan men have hearts so big that they have room enough to love 3 women each… and that the ratio is somewhere like 3:1 for women to men… there are some beautiful people here and i’ve made some wonderful friends. took me a little while to adjust to some of the cultural differences, and i’m probably STILL adjusting. some friends i’ve made just recently, having met in Matagalpa last weekend… or at work today. jajaja… it’s nice to meet new people

another friend i’ve made while being here is Kiki, my housemate. and today just happens to also be her birthday!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY Kiki. She told me that she has red hair because she was born on Valentine’s Day, and the good news is that if you don’t have a Valentine you can love her for Valentine’s Day

and since my other housemates birthday is tomorrow, we had a little party at our house to celebrate both of them. i will upload pics tomorrow

happy valentine’s day

thanks for reading
shannon

Here are some photos from my time in Matagalpa this weekend. Am I getting good or what? ahahaha… I love taking pictures.

friday finally came Wendy picked us up (Kiki and me) around 1:30 and we headed on our way - destination: matagalpa. after a delayed stop in PriceSmart (similar to Costco) we were off… one more stop at On The Run for lunch and we were off again…

about 45 mins. into the drive Wendy noticed that the engine light had gone on… now Wendy has had problems with said car on and off, although it’s been a blessing to us all! however, we weren’t sure. usually she just uses it driving around Managua… anyways, next thing she noticed the temperature gauge was in the red…. and smoke was coming out of the hood. thankfully there was another car stopped at the side of the road with a young girl (maybe 23) and two young boys and their grandmother, changing their tire. they had the orange triangles we are required to use when stopped on the road here… so we stopped behind them. after checking it out for a min, they walked over and the girl quickly took charge pouring water into where coolant should be. it quickly became apparent that we apparently had none in the car… as the water was spouting out and the car was having serious issues. the girl then flagged down a 4×4 and a bunch of guys jumped out. she asked them if they had rope and promptly tied a 8ft. piece of rope doubled between the two cars. she then proceeded to pull our car - TOW the car, down the high way. see said video.

after stopping once to re-attach the rope, we stopped in a little town (i’ll have to check for the name with Kiki). we were being watched with somewhat strange reactions as three “chellas” jumped out of this car being towed and gathered around it. one guy came over and said he was a mechanic, and after calling somebody in the office to check it out, we found it was okay to leave the car with this mechanic and continue on our way to Matagalpa. how you ask? on a bus. yes, a bus. one of the experiences that until this day i had not experienced. today was the day.

Bus photo - Copyright 2008. Kiki Tegelberg (click to see more photography)
This bus is unusually uncrowded, but gives you an idea…. It is not the bus we took up north.

This is a photo I snapped while driving back from Chinandega… it gives a better idea of just how crowded these buses are. Craziness…

And this is Wendy gracefully posing for a photo in the bus on our way to Matagalpa. Notice all of the passengers also either staring at me or posing for the photo. haha…

very nice and asked about where I was from, what I was doing, etc. She was on the bus with her three children heading back to where they live in Matagalpa… she told me about a non-profit organization she had started that reached out to care for those in need: orphans, street kids, young mothers, etc. and we talked about a friend she had in Canada, etc. later she asked if we would like to get off at their stop, in about 10 mins., andAbout 15 mins. into the ride, the lady in front of me (I was standing the whole time) started talking. She was catch a ride to Matagalpa with their friend. SURE! Sure enough 10 mins later we jumped off the bus which barely stops at the stops (sometimes people jump off when it’s still kinda rolling) and walked to the truck. we got into the back of the pick up truck, after assuring the woman that it was okay and would further enrich our adventure! haha… it was so dark you could see all the stars. it was beautiful!!!

Kiki shares a little about it here…

Part II — A little hard/impossible to see but the rest of the audio haha.

in matagalpa we went for dinner at a local cafe and then heard some local talent play in another restaurant. it was really fun!!

but what an adventure. and really not anything i would do back in Toronto… haha

thanks for reading,
Shannon

on Wednesday night I went to another local church, Impacto, actually close to were I work… it is a Spanish speaking church. the pastor is from the states and I was told I’d find his accent a little easier to understand. I did! I understood most of what he said and I could follow the serman (which was cool).

This is during the part of the morning where we were handing out gifts.

---

Later in the day, I came home to rest, but had been invited to go with their group to Granada in the evening to celebrate all of the January birthdays. I believe that this was the youth group that went, but they were up to ages above mine, so I’m not positive. I invited my two friends Gaby and Massiel who also joined us. (I met them through my boss)

Me & Massiel

Me, Gaby, Massiel

Me & Gaby

Group Pic - Impacto Youth Group

Street Picture

… are apparently not so easy to get onto paper. journalling should be easy right? just take the journal and start writing. however, i haven’t found it to be that way this time around. i have beautiful pens and a beautiful blank journal. but my mind isn’t blank. maybe i need journalling prompts or something lol.

anyways i’ve been talking to many of my friends from school, randomly here and there. most of them are back home now - and although their homes are all over the place and not really close to mine, i miss them and it feels a little strange to still be in nicaragua while they are home. a few of them are going back to “the field”. Mindy is still in Afghanistan, Melissa has just made a 4 year commitment in Mongolia, and Rebecca is going back to Israel. Nash and Nisreen are still working there and Joe and Mary will be going back to Pakistan. in other new news, Rosa and Eugene are getting married in August and planning the wedding. also, Chantelle and Sam just got engaged about a week ago and will also be planning to get married in August. Janell is back and working in her church, as is Faith (but they are in different states)… so much new news. i on the other hand, do not have any such new news - just that things are continuing here

i’m going to try to attach some of the pictures I’ve taken over the last month or so and in the field — it wasn’t allowing me to post them yesterday.

thanks for reading. i miss you friends and family.
shannon

ok so i’ve heard that gangs hang shoes over wires to identify their territory… this is the barrio right behind my house, the next street over. i’m pretty sure that some of the kids just got carried away and started doing it… or maybe there’s another reason? i didn’t find out but thought it was worth a pic - so snagged this from my friend Noel who took the pic.

This was when I was up near La Paz Centro… I went to visit some of the producers and these were the men that were buying the sesame… Yup those white bags are full of organic sesame.

This is Claudia, the gender-specialist, leading the discussion following up after the focus group discussions.

This is a husband and wife, producer and his wife, that participate in the project and participated in the focus group. I’m currently working to get the interview transcribed and then translated…

Just and artsy pic I took… it was across the street from where we met.

For those of you that like to follow along and that enjoy pictures: good news. I’ve updated my flickr (the site with all my photos)

So just login at http://flickr.com with any yahoo username and password (most of you set this up before when you asked for access to the photos…) If you can’t access it, send me a quick e-mail and I will send you an invite. This is just to try to limit access to friends and family - rather than all who stumble across them. haha…

Soo… the address is
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sbrisco

Thanks for reading
Shannon

today we woke up early and Marshall, Noel and I went to a hotel to pick up the car that we rented for the day. we headed first to Masaya, but after all the confusing one way streets decided to continue to Mombacho. (volcano) there was no transportation going up when we got there, and we would’ve had to wait for a while. so the men working offered to take us up in their truck. there are moments where the trail is almost vertical - what a ride!!

when we got to the top unfortunately there were too many clouds to see anything. hence, we named it officially the end of the world. (see below)

Then after hanging out for a bit, we left and headed to Granada. Don’t quote me, but I heard it was one of the oldest cities in Central America? They have beautiful colonial buildings and it’s just a great place to visit. we got some dinner, were joined by one of the most lively little girls I’ve ever met (it was quite entertaining) and then headed back for the night.

Noel has to leave at 3:30am tonight because he has a long bus ride back to Honduras. (Noel — thanks for coming to visit!!)

It was a good day, although we didn’t get to do everything we’d hoped. It was fun though!

Thanks for reading,
Shannon

P.S. I ate muslitos de pollo - which as you can see on the menu below is “chicken things” lol… just thought it was funny so captured a pic to share.

wasn’t feeling so good today so i slept in for a while and didn’t go to work. maybe still getting over being sick from when i was home in addition to the tiredness from travelling.

noel and i walked around a bit, went and got his ticket all figured out to go back to honduras, and Brenda drove us to the airport to pick up my suitcase which arrived (YAY!!!). liptons chicken noodle soup, crystal light flavour, and kraft dinner. i’m set now. haha…

we were going to go to Mercado Oriental, but with all the advice of everybody to not go alone, without a local, we had to opt out. instead, we came back and walked around to see the neighbourhood. also, we went for fritanga (typical Nicaraguan food) — delicious.

tomorrow we’re planning on going to Laguna de Apollo, Mombacho (volcano), and Granada (the oldest city in Central America?)…

thanks for reading
Shannon

p.s. this a pic of noel as we were driving around Managua.

i had a wonderful time with my family today - boy, am i ever glad i got to come home. originally i thought that i’d be unable to come home for Christmas. and although i’m sure i’ll have those coming up in the future, i was glad it wasn’t this one.

grandma and grandpa came over and we took our time (lots of time) to just relax, have breakfast, open some gifts, took a break to put the turkey and start the dinner, opened a few more gifts, had dinner, visited, etc. i love my family so much and i’ve missed them incredibly while i’ve been gone.

here are just a few pics to share…