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Peace Corps Volunteer Experiences: August 31, 2010 to November 24, 2012


Thursday, July 7, 2011

"si es amor abrazame con ganas, si no lo es tal vez sera mañana"

I semi-recently posted about being bored, correct? And that nothing new and exciting was happening to me anymore? Well, I spoke too soon. Two weekends ago, I went to Niquinohomo on a Sunday morning. I was gonna stay the night, and leave the next morning for Managua. The bus from Niquinohomo passes right in front of the place I was supposed to go to, so I thought I might as well leave from there. Anyway, I am approaching my stop in Niqui, so I do the usual, stow away my ipod, get up, tell the cobrador (The person that collects the money on the bus and also shouts out to people telling them where the bus is going and also tells the bus drive when a passenger wants to get off) that I want to get off at 'tapiceria' and some time in between when I got up, was talking to the cobrador, and waiting for the stop, someone opened my backpack and took out my wallet and my ipod. Partly my fault, because I had both of those things, along with my phone, in the same very accessible pocket of my backpack, which I had on my back, not in my arms, forgetting everything the Peace Corps security officer has told us because I am getting too comfortable and too trusting, and bad things ONLY happen in Managua, right? Anyway, Neha of course, doesn't notice until about half an hour later and deep into an animated conversation with her host mom that that particular pocket of her backpack is open, and realizes that two critical things are missing. Freak out a bit, run back onto the street to see if maybe I dropped it, knowing that that was not the case but doing it anyway, and trudging back to my Niqui host family's house, call the bank to block my account, and send sad text messages to Luis. At this point I have no money, so I borrow 100 cords from my host mom (From now on I will refer to my Niquinohomo (training) host mom as Julissa) to survive for the next two days. Then I make Luis come with me to make a police report, which I need to ask Peace Corps for a reimbursement on the cash I happened to be carrying at the time, which was about 400 cords. Oh yeah, I also had a flash drive in my wallet. The second one I had bought here. And last weekend I just bought my third. =/. The rest of the day goes by normally, but feeling stupid. So I needed some official Niquinohomo Police stamp on the police report, but they didn't have it at the time (of course) and I didn't get it until Tuesday, when they decided they needed to interview Luis too. I had to make a bunch of annoying trips to Managua to get a new ID and to get my passport so I could get a new credit card and then to return the passport (because Peace Corps keeps our passports so that we can't run away). And I guess I have survived surprisingly well without my beloved ipod, but I'm gonna have to find some other ways to entertain myself on buses.
I have ANOTHER story about this past weekend, but I'll write about it later.
In regards to work, tomorrow begins the semester break, which is a week and a half. Not much of a break though, because 4 days of it is in-service training with my counterpart (the 12th till the 15th), and then I'm helping out at a girls' camp another volunteer is doing in San Marcos (another municipality of Carazo) and she wants me to do the HIV/AIDS part, so I gotta study up on that and come up with a fun way of talking about it. That is on the 18th and 19th, and school starts back up on 20th. I'm looking forward to it all though, mix things up a bit. And awaiting the motivational push that in-service training is going to give me.
I should really sleep now. Got a lot of work to do tomorrow.
Peace.

2 comments:

  1. I'm sorry that you got robbed. I hate when it happens, because then I'm just angry at everyone all the time, and I blame the culture, when I'm actually more angry at myself. Anyway, I hope you find an enjoyable way to pass your bus rides.

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  2. Haha, yes, definitely angry at myself. My cell phone has radio, so I listen to that sometimes. Otherwise staring out the window seems to be okay. Or sleeping. While hugging my backpack on my lap.

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