Almost 3 months now

So, not too much happened this week/weekend so instead of rambling on about nothing that would be of interest to most people (e.g. my daily life) I’m going to talk about different stuff.

So, it’s almost the 3 month mark, it has been 2 and a half months and you IDSers know what that means…the culture shock curve muahahaha. For those of you reading who have not done a ridiculously excessive amount of repetitive Intercultural training and such there is a culture shock curve that goes like this. It is a U-shape, when you arrive you are at the top left and all happy because you have just arrived and everything is new and exciting. This is called the honeymoon phase because apart from everything being new you are also probably having copius amounts of liberal, guilt free sex with foreign people…just kidding, well you might be who knows, but they don’t mention that in the intercultural training sessions. Anyways, after the first month or so when you start to settle in you start to move down the curve as you start to miss home, people, etc etc. until at the 3 month mark you are at the bottom of the ‘U’ and are at the stage where you want to go home, stuff isn’t fun and exciting anymore, you could be depressed, you retreat into yourself and old Canadian ways in isolation etc etc and then after dealing with that for a while you start getting happy again and by the time you have to leave you don’t want to go home because you love it so much. Long-story short, I am 2 weeks away from 3 months and I am not heading down the U curve at all. In fact I am in a better spot now than when I arrived. Probably several reasons for this, I am busy so time is passing quickly and I enjoy my work, my Spanish is really good and improving all the time so communication is not a problem, and I have some good friends, both local and Quebeckers from work ( I hang out with the Nicas more). So yeah, that’s good news.

Now, this is not to say that I don’t miss all of you! Because I do…..alot! Honestly, I just don’t miss Toronto though, at all. Maybe that’s because I was not that big of a fan of it to begin with and I really needed a change of scenery. Although I was starting to come around to it. So people are asking me if I could go back for a weekend would I. Honestly, the answer is no, I want to see you and miss you, but ideally I would want you to come here so we could hang out here, Instead of me going back to Toronto for the weekend.

Now I am sure some of you are wondering that there has to be some material and non-material things I miss other than people (friends and family) so I made a list of some of the things that I miss for your reading pleasure.

- rock concerts (although a girl did invite me to go to a thrash metal concert in Managua and I was supposed to go, even though thrash metal really isn’t my thing I decided how many people get to say they went to a thrash metal concert in Nicaragua? but it ended up being in the middle of the week so I had to work and could not go)

- my kick ass sound system (music is on 24/7 for me and the laptop speakers are just not the same)

- late night/early morning accessibility of pizza, falafel and shwarma

- the luxury of walking at night

- carpet (random I know, who would of thought)

- being able to put my garbage out the night before and not wake up at 6am to put it out so the dogs don’t tear it apart (I actually have forgotten the last 3 weeks in a row so there is a nice collection of garbage bags in my garage, don’t worry it does not smell and no one ever goes in there anyways but that’s what happen when your garbage gets picked up at 6am on saturdays)

- punctuality (ok I won’t even be that stingy, just showing up would be good, or calling if you are not going to come)

- the feeling of not always being and feeling like a foreigner and having everyone you pass know you are a foreigner and look at you like you are a foreigner

- Coffee shops and having a coffee maker at home…I think I have to buy one

- cold, crisp mornings where you wake up throw on a sweater and curl up in a blanket with a cup of coffee

- constant supply of my $3 wine

- the ability to drink tap water (all you bottled water drinkers, yes including you mom, tisk tisk…..you can say convenience all you want…Nalgene bottle, fill it up with tap water if the bottle is just that convenient. Obviously from time to time it’s fine and I have bought bottled water too…when out and I need a drink and a tap is not available. But people who drink bottled water in their homes? Come on, let’s not get silly here. Did you know the quality of tap water in Canada is actually better regulated and has more stringent guidelines than bottled water…we don’t drink our toilet water, we piss in our drinking water)

That’s what I got off the top of my head.
You know what is really awesome about being here too, you know all those people you see from time to time, like people from highschool or something and you don’t like them and really don’t ever want to talk to them but for some reason you always see these people from time to time at parties or in the hall at school and they act like you are buds and have the fake ‘hi’ and shit like that. Yeah, well don’t have to deal with that here which is awesome. Haha damn, I’m mean. Oh well, I don’t like some people and I’m glad I don’t have to see them, what can I say.
Here’s a question for you…generally, are you a people lover or a people hater? Think carefully now…people can be pretty awful…I would like to say that not all of the problems in the world are caused by people, but I would be lying now wouldn’t I. I’m not saying I’m a people lover or a people hater, just saying think carefully.

On that note what are some things I don’t miss:
- fast paced, everyone go go go all the time lifestyle of Toronto

- materialistic consumer culture of Toronto

- studying

- those wanna be thug gangsta types who think they are from the hood even though they live in suburbia…at least the gangster types here are real gangsters and will actually shoot you and are actually from the hood (plus they don’t dress like idiots from rap videos)

- not being able to afford to go out or have a beer b/c it costs $5 for a beer or $10+ for a meal at a restaurant

So some stuff did happen this week. I am officially living solo which is nothing short of awesome. There is a new girl coming from Canada on Monday and she is going to live with a family for 2 weeks, I told Oxfam that I though a month was too long with the family and after that she will move out into a house and it was possible that she would move in with me. I have the option of saying no (b/c my status is higher than hers haha, I am a cooperant she is a ‘trainee’, I get paid more too haha, how stupid is that?). Of course I would not say no even though I like living alone b/c that would be a jackass thing to do and Oxfam would have to ditch out more money for her house. However, Oxfam said that they have another house that they want to keep so they need someone to move in there and they want her to move in there so most likely she will not move in with me and I can continue my parade of nudity in my house. Nothing worse than getting up in the middle of the night to go to the washroom (or getting up in the morning for breakfast) and having to put some boxers on. So Monday I am going to Managua to get her at the airport and she will sleep at my house Monday night and then move into the family Tuesday. I still go to the family’s house a lot, a couple times of week I pop in and say hi and get fed. Plus one of my best friends here is the son of the lady who owns the house.

Friday night was fun. We had a guy come in for 3 weeks to set up an intranet for Oxfam-Quebec in Nicaragua and it was his going away bbq thing at my bosses house (which is an amazing house). Had some delicious bbqed food some cold cervezas and then the boss was in a generous mood and started bringing out the good stuff. Liquor from Colombia (his wife is Colombian….and gorgeous) I forget what its called but its made from anise so it has a black licorice taste, kind of like zambuca but without the burn, and he also brought out the good tequila, $280 bottle in Canada, $30 here, which is like velvet going down your throat. It was good to kick back with people from work because I don’t really hang out with them too much outside of work. So by close to midnight everyone was in a good mood and wanted to go out so we went but I only lasted like 30 minutes because I met some people I was supposed to do something with that night but couldn’t b/c I went to this going away party thing so we went back to my house. I woke up really early on Saturday for some reason and it was really sunny and awesome so I went out for a walk did some errands went to the market bought some vegetables and made a kickass soup.

Saturday and Sunday were relaxing days. Didn’t do anything really. Just relaxed did some work on the research proposal started reading “one hundred years of solitude”. I don’t know what the hype is about this book, it’s supposed to be a classic but I am half way through it and to be honest it is a little bit of a struggle, so I hope it gets better. This week I am getting someone to come and fumigate my house, to many bugs for my liking, all of a sudden there are mosquitoes galore and I woke up with bug bites so yeah, getting on that. Also I am getting a guy to come to my house and drill holes in the wall in my back courtyard thing and install some hooks so I can hang up a hammock. I have been hammockless far too long now.

Anyways, that’s all for now I think. I will let you know what my research and stuff is going to be about and will do like someone else said in their blog they would do, make a post just dedicated to that so if you are not interested in reading it you can just skip it. But first I must figure out for myself what exactly it is I will be researching and writing about. So….off I go to try and work at that.

Peace.