Back home!

Last games with the niños

I’m writing this on an Amtrak train, not a Nica bus.

I miss those Nica buses. I really do think that Pimp My Ride could learn a lot from what those choferes rig for their vehicles: the mandatory bullhorn to announce your arrival, the neon-colored electrical tape wrapped around every handle and railing to give it a little flair, the endless array of images mounted on the walls…soccer player cutouts…pictures of Disney characters…and above all else, Virgin Mary’s.

Seeing a few of my bus drivers for the last time

But, Amtrak has got its perks too, and frankly it feels really great to throw my bag on, sit on a big poofy blue chair, lean back, and know that I can nap all the smooth way up to campus.

So, yes, I’m back in the States, finally getting around to this blog posting after an incredible final week in Nicaragua and a day-and-a-half turnaround at home.

This week all started with the Despedida: August 8^th had been the looming deadline for our vols all summer, the daunting little square on their calendars marking the day when they knew they would have to leave their communities and with that, say good-bye to their second family and their second home. So most of them they cried. A lot, just in the same way I bawled my little 16-year-old eyes out as I left my host community in Mexico, and my host brothers refused to walk me to the bus stop for fear of being seen crying in public as well. But then we made all the vols come together (and bring a few people from their host families) for a going-away party in the city so that they could cry some more. I didn’t think I was going to join in...until I saw one of the host fathers of my vols, a big strong invincible old Nicaraguan man with a spark in his eye and a marshmallow in his heart, starting to tear up. Then I did, too.

We then whisked the vols off to Granada for a day and a half of “Debriefing,” their time to see Nicaragua from the tourist’s angle, communalize the AMIGOS experience, and decompress at a halfway point for reverse culture shock.

Then came the stupidest day I’ve ever attempted: we woke up at 2 o’clock in the morning to take the volunteers the two-hour bus ride from Granada to the airport in Managua. After figuring out a few flight changes and seeing them off, we left Managua at 7:00 to head back to Matagalpa (another 2 hours). With an hour or two for me to pack my bags, turn in paperwork, and drink a whole lot of coffee, I turned around and headed back out the door for my Close-Out Survey. That same day, I took the two-hour bus to my first community, held a large community meeting to evaluate the project this summer, had a going-away party, and said bye to everybody. Then I walked forty-five minutes to the next community to do the exact same thing all over again, finally crawling in to bed with nothing left in me. I was lucky to have been a gymnast, and even luckier to feel extremely attached to those two communities and fueled by their hospitality…or else I wouldn’t have had the energy for this day.

Staff leaving the hostal in Granada at 2 a.m.

I repeated that going-away process two more times, then came home to Staff House for the last time. I really loved my two days of Close-Out: true, I came back sad and tired from far too many good-byes (good-bye to my vols at the airport to begin missing them immediately despite the sense of relief that I’d finished my job and finished it well, and good-bye to four communities back-to-back-to-back-to-back). But I also came back very content, very proud of how everything went this summer, and thoroughly refreshed after two days of community members piling on their love, their sadness the vols were gone, their joy the vols were there...while I was just a little too tired to feel anything but beautifully raw emotion inspired by all that love.

Everybody wanted to carry my bag for me the last times I walked between communities...

Then, it was really just one final push to finish up paperwork before bursting out of Matagalpa into the paradise of Laguna de Apoyo for a two-night Staff vacation. Floating in the lagoon, reveling in how little worries or responsibilities any of us had any more, reveling also in how the AMIGOS Standards of Conduct no longer applied now that we had finished the official project…it was a very tranquilo, very relaxing, very fun way for the group to say good-bye in a much less stressful situation.

And then it was over. It was wonderful to have Caitlin—the other Supervisor from Arlington—with me all the way back to National Airport, by my side to voice the memories that we suddenly missed about vols and communities and Staff, and to rest our heads on comfortable shoulders. The “reverse culture shock” just isn’t that intense the third time you do AMIGOS, I suppose, but I still noticed some things acutely: running the figures in my head about how much that George Washington poster on the wall in the airport cost and thinking about whether or not we really needed to spend that money, jumping startled as the paper towels dispensed themselves for me, laughing as I remembered again just how many Starbucks there really are here.

My parents have thoroughly spoiled me in these few hours that I’ve had home. Now the goal is to keep my momentum going as I chug up to New Haven for a week leading 7 Freshman to a local sustainable farm for them to learn about sustainable agriculture, but mostly for them to pump some of their nervous anxieties out of their systems and get a group of real friends before they jump into the exciting chaos of Orientation. I just hope I don’t feel as though I’m cheating on my group of vols…

This won’t be my last posting; I’ll be sure to send you all at least one follow-up. Trying to explain what I can about a week of AMIGOS in a posting each week has been a fun challenge this summer, and I do think I’ll miss writing these. It’s been interesting what does and doesn’t make it into this blog, what I feel I can articulate well and what I can’t, what seems appropriate to permanently emblazon on the Internet’s iconic face...and what doesn’t.

Maybe I’ll talk about lessons learned from this experience. About my new understanding of AMIGOS and appreciation for it. About understanding what it’s like to live with the same people you work with. About feeling more comfortable moving between the drastically different worlds I exist in. About new thoughts on liberal guilt. About all the different ways there are to learn outside the classroom. About what I did well, and what I didn't. About being impatient to not start my next AMIGOS project immediately. About being extremely excited to be a Sophomore at Yale with a feeling that it’s exactly what I want to be doing.

Or maybe I’ll just shut up about all this earnest crap and say that I’m really happy and proud to have helped make AMIGOS possible for four communities and nine volunteers, enjoy the scenery that is passing by outside the train window (and passing much faster now than it ever did on a bus in rural Nicaragua), and get ready to make sure Yale’s class of 2015 doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Back home.

Cuídense,

Only one week left!

More gorgeous scenery on route

Coming down to the end, we’re even busier than usual here at Staff House, although this whole process is getting even more exciting and fulfilling than usual as well…so even though I’d love to talk more about how proud I am of how each of my vols has grown, how frustrated I’ve gotten at gender relations here, how much I’m looking forward to dancing and stuffing my face with tamales during my last visits to communities and how much I’m not looking forward to saying good-bye to four communities in two days…but I feel as though I’ve only got time for a burst of photos, a quick update, and a list of things I’m going to miss.

The amazing mural my girls are painting. We're pretty excited.

A little recuerdo from the girls on my shirt

I just saw my volunteers in community for the last time. Projects are wrapping up, educational summer camps with kids are turning into giant good-bye parties, volunteers are getting reflective and sad to leave and anxious to go home and—you might never have thought it would happen for some of them but gosh darn it, it’s true—downright grateful to their dear Project Supervisor. I’m so incredibly proud to see how far they’ve come…and to be allowed to claim however much credit for it as I want because I’m their P-Sup and there are no witnesses to tell you otherwise :P

Their teary-eyed good-bye comes tomorrow, and mine is a few days later. Some of the things I’ll be missing:

• This one incredibly warm family whose house I can never manage to walk by without eating a meal, who brag about the 145 grandchildren and 60 great-grandchildren of their still-living abuela. I’m not sure how much I believe them on that one
• Being asked to explain how it’s possible that the Chinese-American volunteer in one of my communities 1) lives in the United States and not in China and 2) no, does not know Jackie Chan personally
• Spontaneous dance parties at Staff House
• The gap-toothed grin of this one guy super-ripped guy who I have seen in literally every one of my four communities who I have also literally never seen not smiling
• Buñuelos. Like funnel cake: fried donut-hole-sized balls of dough but really fried not just donut-fried, soaked in syrup. Also tamales, fried plantains, and mango

Beautiful fresh corn, all you need to make tamales

• Spanish. And people understanding me when I speak in non-stop Spanglish
• Watching the rain move in from miles away across bright green rolling hills until the downpours finally swoops in, cooling everything off as giant rain droplets pound down on tin roofs like little mallets on steel drums
• The incredibly friendly and helpful bus driver…who also can’t stop proposing to my vols and asking me to give him one in exchange for his fiancé
• “Que le vaya bien,” “Adios,” “Va pue’ ”
• This one dog on the way from Q to C that always, always, always barks like mad and chases after me. Always, that is, unless it’s after 2 p.m. in which case the sun makes him lazy and he just slowly lifts his head to look at me before deciding not to bother
• The feeling of satisfaction after surviving that dog and crossing the river and finishing my 2 ½-hour walk to C alive…and that feeling of changing into a fresh shirt afterwards
• And the one thing I will not miss: rron-rrones. These are big loud harmless-but-annoying beetles that come out at night. They sound like flies with loudspeakers lodged in their mouths, buzzing around for only about three seconds at a time before they inevitably run straight into a wall and crash to the ground, usually landing on your head on the cot. Then they squirm on their backs, unable to turn over or get up, for about five minutes before the cats finally eat them. Then fifty of their closest friends come to keep you up all night. Rron-rrones are spawned from the deepest pits of Hell, to where they will soon return as soon as they stupidly die because of their own damn fault

Hiding from the rron-rrones on this cool folding cot that one host family has

In some ways, the summer already seems to be over: I saw my vols in community for the last time, I finished my evaluations of them and read their evaluations of me, and I feel so proud with how they’ve grown and how I’ve done…most of what really matters about this summer has ended, and most of it has gone really well.

Now I’m looking forward to this exciting set of back-to-back-to-back good-byes. First we celebrate in Granda with the vols before sending them back home. Then I return to communities one last time for more celebration and more good-byes. And then I have two days with my Project Staff to wrap up everything and relax before we all head home too.

Painting the school. Yum.

Well, they painted this guy, too...

...and got it all over my fancy red AMIGOS polo...there's nothing quite like bathing in paint thinner.

So, hopefully I'll get some time to blog about all those other things next week.

Until then,