It´s early Monday morning and today is a good day, because today is MOVING DAY!
The last couple of days have been full of work. Updating all of the emergency procedures from last year as well as the contact list. We have also begun to plan supervisor briefing, which will be a 2 day training the supervisors receive upon arrival which country specifics they didn´t receive during the larger sup training.
Today I´ve woken up early so I can walk to mile or so down to the lake while it´s still cool out. Should be nice!
At 1, we move into our NEW HOUSE, and it will be wonderful to stop living out of suitcases and get started arranging everything in the house. We´re going to split up the errands this afternoon after we get settled. One of us to go buy things for the house that we need (sheets, plates, etc), one of us to go buy office supplies and make some copies for sup briefing, and one of us to buy groceries for the week. We´re going to have to start cooking for ourselves, considering our limited budget and how EXPENSIVE it is to eat in Granada.
This morning holds visits to a prospective new doctor and finalizing sup briefing. The supervisors will be here next Saturday!
LOVE.
lunes, 26 de mayo de 2008
sábado, 24 de mayo de 2008
Beginnings
Wowzers! I can´t believe the summer is already here. I´m a college graduate with a plan. Not so bad, eh? As most of you already know, I´m headed to law school at Texas in the fall, but in the meantime I´m livin´ the dream as Associate Project Director for AMIGOS de las Américas progams in Granada, Nicaragua. I have been here for 3 days--since May 22--and I´ll be here working for AMIGOS until August 13. On August 13, I sign off of AMIGOS and head to Managua to recoger my beautiful mother at the airpot. From August 13 to August 18, Jane and Amelia are gonna take Nicaragua by storm. We´re gonna eat all the seafood, kayak in all the lakes, climb all the mountains, and romance all the Nicaraguan boys. August 18 it´s back to Houston for pass-through (meetings with the International Office of AMIGOS to close out the summer) and then to Austin on the 19th to get my act together for law school orientation and the start of classes the following week. So that´s the timeline. It´s gonna be over in no time. But in the meantime, I´m just livin´ the dream, d00dz, livin´ the dream...
First things first: Nicaragua is HOT and HUMID.
Now that that´s out of the way, I´ll give a quick rundown of things so far. As many of you know, I arrived in Nica getting over a gnarly case of strep throat. I am Jane´s daughter, however, so I never let a little sickness get me down. I arrived in Managua at about noon (PS--we´re in mountain time zone here) with the Senior Project Supervisor Meredith Nechitilo. Meredith is a veteran project supervisor whose job it is to act as a sort of liaison (oh goodness, no English spell check!) between the project supervisors (who will arrive in 10 days) and the Senior Staff (myself and Cheka Valerian, the Director).
Meredith and I were summarily ripped off by an airport taxi driver (throat too sore to haggle!) and headed to a gorgeous hotel in Managua where we waited for Cheka to arrive--her flight wasn´t due to arrive until that evening. I made a mini excursion alone to find the Fed-Ex to ship some Austin Chapter docs that I found in my bag, but other than that I spent the day sleeping off the rest of the strep before Cheka arrived that evening.
On Friday, we woke up early and had a nice breakfast at the hotel before meeting with some new contacts at Pro Familia, a Nicaraguan non profit that runs clinics in several departments (like states) all over the country. What´s especially pertinent to our project is that each of these clinics has a youth group that completes an extensive training on AIDS prevention and sexual health and then goes on to evangelize condom use to other teens. Pretty amazing for such a heavily Catholic country. This is exciting for our project because our contacts at MINSA, the Ministry of Health, have mentioned sexual health as an educational topic for which there is a lot of need. Obviously our volunteers aren´t prepared for this topic, but if we could get some participation from the youth who are already involved in these groups in Granada and Rivas, that would be a really cool way to get to word out about sexual health without directly implicated AMIGOS (we have IO to answer to, after all) while simultaneously continuing to empower those Nicaraguan youth leaders!
After meeting with a really nice lady at Pro Familia and discussing the possibility of Pro Familia youth group partcipation at our big Youth Encuentro in July, we headed to Granada in a ride that MINSA sent for us. Finally in our HQ city!
We had lunch with the driver sent by MINSA, checked into our hostel, and headed out on the town to explore and begin the daunting task of looking for a staff house. Granada is a beautiful city. Close to mountains, close to a lake, with beautifully restored colonial buildings and fine accomodations--aka gringo tourist paradise. I don´t just mean the usual hippie backpackers from around the world. I mean upper middle class American families hellbent on an exotic location.
Read: RENT IS NOT CHEAP!
With a staff of 9 and the possibility of sick volunteers staying in the house intermittently, our house needs to be furnished, have three bedrooms, and cost under $500 a month. Ha. Ha. Ha.
So, we did what anyone would. Roamed the residential streets of Granada looking for For Rent signs, calling random phone numbers, and asking anyone possible if they knew of any houses for rent. We knew it wasn´t possible to rent through an agency--too expensive!--we had to find a local Nicaraguan family who was renting without a middleman.
And so the search began. We expected to spend the better part of the coming week until the arrival of the supervisors next Saturday looking for a house. We looked high, we looked low. We looked at several houses. Too expensive, too little, too creepy, not furnished...
And then a miracle happened. We went searching for a house with a For Rent sign that we had seen on the ride iinto town, not knowing exactly where it had been. I stopped to ask some nice old ladies chilling in the shade if they knew where this mysterious house was. They gave us directions and, as usual, I was convinced that they had just made them up to be able to give us an answer.
But, my, how right they were! We followed the directions to a precious tangerine colored house on a tranquilo residential street and called the number on the sign. A pleasant Nicaraguan man answered and told us to hang out a sec, that he´d be right there. He drove up in his little blue car with his nice pregnant wife and showed us our dream house. Three bedrooms, fully furnished, ceiling fans, two floors, washing machine, 5 minute walk to the central square, AIR CONDITIONING (in one room at least), full kitchen, $500/month for a three month commitment. OH. MY. GOD.
We were like kids in a candy store. Total newbs. We are practically jumping up and down, demanding to know where we should sign. Houses of this calibur in Granada go for $1000+ a month. OH. MY. GOD.
So this morning we went to go sign the contract and pay 2 months rent as a deposit. I was secretly convinced that it was all a scam. I mean, if things seem too good to be true, they usually aren´t true. But nice Victor drove us to his nice lawyer´s office where his lawyer drew us up a contract and notarized our payment of 2 months rent. Victor showed us around the house again and how to lock up, etc. Well, I´ll be damned.
We move in Monday.
The rest of today was dedicated to figuring out the budget, which is my primary job here. I am the matron of the moneyzzzzz and I have a complicated Excel spreadsheet and massive amounts of cash in my bag to show for it. Cheka and I sat down for a couple of hours today to figure out how much we had spent so far and fill out our projected budget for the rest of the summer. The entire project budget is a little more than 36,000 American dollars, and we had to make week by week projections of how much we would spend in different categories, everything from volunteer transportation to project staff food to office supplies. It was INCREDIBLY complicated and convoluted, but the good news is that it will NEVER be this complicated again and I have it allllll under control now. Perf.
So that brings me to now. More on the city and pictures of the house later. All is well as of Day 3. I love YOU.
ACR
First things first: Nicaragua is HOT and HUMID.
Now that that´s out of the way, I´ll give a quick rundown of things so far. As many of you know, I arrived in Nica getting over a gnarly case of strep throat. I am Jane´s daughter, however, so I never let a little sickness get me down. I arrived in Managua at about noon (PS--we´re in mountain time zone here) with the Senior Project Supervisor Meredith Nechitilo. Meredith is a veteran project supervisor whose job it is to act as a sort of liaison (oh goodness, no English spell check!) between the project supervisors (who will arrive in 10 days) and the Senior Staff (myself and Cheka Valerian, the Director).
Meredith and I were summarily ripped off by an airport taxi driver (throat too sore to haggle!) and headed to a gorgeous hotel in Managua where we waited for Cheka to arrive--her flight wasn´t due to arrive until that evening. I made a mini excursion alone to find the Fed-Ex to ship some Austin Chapter docs that I found in my bag, but other than that I spent the day sleeping off the rest of the strep before Cheka arrived that evening.
On Friday, we woke up early and had a nice breakfast at the hotel before meeting with some new contacts at Pro Familia, a Nicaraguan non profit that runs clinics in several departments (like states) all over the country. What´s especially pertinent to our project is that each of these clinics has a youth group that completes an extensive training on AIDS prevention and sexual health and then goes on to evangelize condom use to other teens. Pretty amazing for such a heavily Catholic country. This is exciting for our project because our contacts at MINSA, the Ministry of Health, have mentioned sexual health as an educational topic for which there is a lot of need. Obviously our volunteers aren´t prepared for this topic, but if we could get some participation from the youth who are already involved in these groups in Granada and Rivas, that would be a really cool way to get to word out about sexual health without directly implicated AMIGOS (we have IO to answer to, after all) while simultaneously continuing to empower those Nicaraguan youth leaders!
After meeting with a really nice lady at Pro Familia and discussing the possibility of Pro Familia youth group partcipation at our big Youth Encuentro in July, we headed to Granada in a ride that MINSA sent for us. Finally in our HQ city!
We had lunch with the driver sent by MINSA, checked into our hostel, and headed out on the town to explore and begin the daunting task of looking for a staff house. Granada is a beautiful city. Close to mountains, close to a lake, with beautifully restored colonial buildings and fine accomodations--aka gringo tourist paradise. I don´t just mean the usual hippie backpackers from around the world. I mean upper middle class American families hellbent on an exotic location.
Read: RENT IS NOT CHEAP!
With a staff of 9 and the possibility of sick volunteers staying in the house intermittently, our house needs to be furnished, have three bedrooms, and cost under $500 a month. Ha. Ha. Ha.
So, we did what anyone would. Roamed the residential streets of Granada looking for For Rent signs, calling random phone numbers, and asking anyone possible if they knew of any houses for rent. We knew it wasn´t possible to rent through an agency--too expensive!--we had to find a local Nicaraguan family who was renting without a middleman.
And so the search began. We expected to spend the better part of the coming week until the arrival of the supervisors next Saturday looking for a house. We looked high, we looked low. We looked at several houses. Too expensive, too little, too creepy, not furnished...
And then a miracle happened. We went searching for a house with a For Rent sign that we had seen on the ride iinto town, not knowing exactly where it had been. I stopped to ask some nice old ladies chilling in the shade if they knew where this mysterious house was. They gave us directions and, as usual, I was convinced that they had just made them up to be able to give us an answer.
But, my, how right they were! We followed the directions to a precious tangerine colored house on a tranquilo residential street and called the number on the sign. A pleasant Nicaraguan man answered and told us to hang out a sec, that he´d be right there. He drove up in his little blue car with his nice pregnant wife and showed us our dream house. Three bedrooms, fully furnished, ceiling fans, two floors, washing machine, 5 minute walk to the central square, AIR CONDITIONING (in one room at least), full kitchen, $500/month for a three month commitment. OH. MY. GOD.
We were like kids in a candy store. Total newbs. We are practically jumping up and down, demanding to know where we should sign. Houses of this calibur in Granada go for $1000+ a month. OH. MY. GOD.
So this morning we went to go sign the contract and pay 2 months rent as a deposit. I was secretly convinced that it was all a scam. I mean, if things seem too good to be true, they usually aren´t true. But nice Victor drove us to his nice lawyer´s office where his lawyer drew us up a contract and notarized our payment of 2 months rent. Victor showed us around the house again and how to lock up, etc. Well, I´ll be damned.
We move in Monday.
The rest of today was dedicated to figuring out the budget, which is my primary job here. I am the matron of the moneyzzzzz and I have a complicated Excel spreadsheet and massive amounts of cash in my bag to show for it. Cheka and I sat down for a couple of hours today to figure out how much we had spent so far and fill out our projected budget for the rest of the summer. The entire project budget is a little more than 36,000 American dollars, and we had to make week by week projections of how much we would spend in different categories, everything from volunteer transportation to project staff food to office supplies. It was INCREDIBLY complicated and convoluted, but the good news is that it will NEVER be this complicated again and I have it allllll under control now. Perf.
So that brings me to now. More on the city and pictures of the house later. All is well as of Day 3. I love YOU.
ACR
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