I swear alot less when I don't speak English

Buenas,

Random, but true. Although my spanish swearing is picking up, and come ot think of it I swear enough in french but it does not seem liek swearing because everyone does it, plus its mostly church related stuff anyways.

So, not too much has been happening this past week. I have not been able to access my blog. I can post blogs but I cannot read your messages, so hopefully this gets cleared up soon, if not I apologize for not reading your messages. But feel free to e-mail me.

I have been super busy at work. Putting in some 10 hour days, but its all good. I don’t mind, it’s interesting stuff and I am learning a ton of stuff which is always good. Both hardskills and information in general. I am seeing a lot of the theoretical stuff we IDSers (I don’t mean to exclude others, you may learn similar things also, but I know for a fact IDSers have learnt this stuff) learn in our classes actually in practice, affecting people’s lives. A good example is the oh so trendy ‘dumping’ of agricultural products into the markets of poorer countries. I came across this as I was doing some work, going over some data and crunching some numbers and was like oh man, this is weird, why is there a pattern of such a hugely steep drop in the price of potatoes and onions here at certain times of the year. So after a bit of digging around and contacting people it turns out that Chile and Guatemala dump their onions and potatoes into Nicaragua at these times of the year. For those of you who do not know what dumping is, it is when a country sells their product in another country at a really low price (usually below market value) which pushes the price of the domestically produced product down…in a nutshell. So Ange, tell your Guatemalan farmers to keep their onions and potatoes to themselves because the farmers down here are struggling when you decide to flood the market with cheap onions and potatoes. Stop picking on the poorer country! Yes, I know, I am a huge nerd, but what can you do.

I have officially been broke for a week, and by broke I mean zero money. So how have I managed to survive? Well, what else could I do other than get myself a sugarmama? So that’s what I did. My housemate has been my sugarmama this week. Whenever I need money or something paid for I just ask her. I go out for lunch, she is too busy, so she gives me a few bucks for lunch. Pretty sweet deal. The shitty part is that I have to pay back everything she leant me. What a scrooge. Just kidding, she’s awesome for lending me money, if not I would have not eaten all week, yikes! The reason I am broke, well, I am not actually broke, I have quite enough money in my account from my “living allowance” but I can’t access it. Why you ask? Well, to do any transaction at the bank I need my passport. I am currently applying for my visa so last week the secretary asked for my passport so I gave it to her assuming she was just going to make a photocopy because she had asked for it before and this is what she did. No big deal, I have a copy which is good enough if immigration happens to stop me again. So anyways, Friday I go to ask her for my passport and she left early so no luck. Monday I went to ask and it turns out she sent my passport to Managua to immigration because they need my original for my visa! That would have been nice to know when I gave it to her. But luckily, I can get someone else to change my paycheck on the 1^st of the month (Tuesday) for me as long as they have their passport and then I can just take the cash. Good idea, but unfortunately we did not get our paychecks this week yet because Montreal (head office of Oxfam-Quebec) has not put money into the Project’s account in Nicaragua so there is no money in the account to pay us with hahahaha. Tomorrow they are giving us a small advance on our paycheck, so I can get some money then. Last night we had an office poutine party at the boss’s house. Poutine Nica style with frijoles and chili sauce mmm mmm good.

I am going to do some shopping this weekend and by shopping I mean see what I can get Oxfam to pay for and then go buy it hehe. I need some household stuff. There is only like 5 plates, 2 bowls, a few cups and bits of random cutlery, a pot, a pan in the house. We have had some people over for dinner and we have to tell them to bring their own plates and cutlery and we borrow pots and pans from the neighbours…pathetic. I like to cook so this just isn’t cutting it anymore. The reason I came to the idea of going out and buying stuff/getting Oxfam to pay is because there is a couple form Montreal who just arrived. They are going to Honduras, but stuff in Honduras is brand new and not ready yet so they are staying here for a couple of weeks. So we helped them move in and I brought boxes of stuff over to their place and they have more stuff than I do and they are only here for 2 weeks! Nice household stuff, a t.v., cable, dvd player, microwave…I don’t have a t.v. let alone a microwave in my house. They even have oven mitts! which I desperately need, I have burnt holes through the towels I use to grab the pan handle, cat iron pans get pretty damn hot. Which is good, I don’t want them anyways, but I think since I am here for 10 months I am entitled to as much cutlery and pots and pans as someone here for 2 weeks. I am going to raid the apartment after they leave....shhh, don’t tell anyone.

I have been eating some awesome food. It is pretty much just as cheap to eat out as it is to cook, so almost everyday I go out for lunch with people from the office or sometimes I go to my Nica mother (the lady who I lived with for a month) for lunch. I go there about once a week, maybe twice a week if I go on the weekend. It was funny, the other day my housemate was at a meeting in the office of one of the partners so I could not bum money off of her at lunchtime, and I had no food in my house (because I had no money) but I was really hungry so I went to my Nica mother’s house for lunch. No it was not just to get a free meal! You people are shallow, I enjoy her company, plus the really really corny soap opera on at noon also.

But yes, great food, awesome burritos, soft tacos, you can find pretty much anything wrapped in a tortilla. I still have not gone to Subway, I just don’t feel the need to. The one craving I did get was for pizza so I walked 30 minutes to the pizza place and got a pizza. That was about 10 days ago. My pizza craving is taken care of.

I hope everyone had a fantastic long weekend. I don’t get Canadian holidays off here, I get the National ones, actually not really, so far I have worked through all of them (they have a lot) but the Nicas don’t work. Actually, in a couple of weeks there is a 4 day weekend which we are all taking off so I am going to go away for a few days, not sure where yet, but I will keep you posted. Other than that we have set a date for my housemate’s going away party to be held en mi casa, should be fun, sad to see her go though.

What are your plans for the weekend?

I am going to work either Saturday or Sunday, I hope not both because I have to get my rough draft of micro-credit (specifically for agricultural support) ‘Best Practices’ report in on Wednesday I think and I need to combine it with the year end document on the micro-credit program so I will be working with the guy in charge of the micro-credit stuff to put it all together. I haven’t done anything regarding micro-credit except for this, because I have been really busy with production/commercialization stuff but that is alright because I am really enjoying it and to be honest do not really care too much if I get into the micro-credit stuff. But, I know I will soon enough and I am sure it will be cool too.

I started doing some background research and have some good ideas floating around. But I will leave that for another time, because tonight is Corona night at one of the bars and a couple (dozen?) coronas are definitely calling my name.

Cheers!