So vaga

When someone is vaga or vago (for men), it means that they are always out and about, not staying at home. The word actually means “wanderer”. Anyway, my host family teases me about being vaga since I like to travel and volunteers swap stories to see who’s the most “vago” of us all. It’s pretty funny. Well, this past week and a half, I’ve been pretty vaga. I did have a legitimate excuse for most of it though :) First, we had a language workshop planned for Monday-Thursday of last week in our training towns in Masaya (and Carazo for the environment volunteers). Volunteers with lower than the advanced language level went back for grammar classes and to see how we have improved since our last language interview back in the end of November. Well, since we were planning on going back to the Masaya area with a lot of others, we decided to go down a little early and spend some time at the beach in Carazo. A small group of us headed out to La Boquita, Carazo Sunday morning and enjoyed the cool waters. It was so nice!


We left in the afternoon to go to our training towns since we had class the next morning. Kellie and I were staying with different families than who we had for training, since our families didn’t have volunteers this time. What Peace Corps does is when the new group of trainees are on their site visit (checking out their site for their 2 years service for a week), they send the volunteers to stay with the families the trainees have as sort of an exchange. So, we got to go back to living with a family where they cook all your meals and you have to remember to tell them where you’re going and when you’ll be back…oh the memories of training :) Anyway, we made it back and got to meet our families and get settled in before going to bed.

The next few days were like a whirlwind of activities, classes, and grammar grammar grammar! We had class Monday through Thursday, 8am-4pm. However, the days went by really fast because these classes were pretty laid back in the sense that we were more comfortable in our language skills and asked a lot of questions about things we had heard in our sites and how we could use certain phrases. It was really interesting and kinda fun to be back in class :) We also had out favorite teacher so that made it even better.

During the week, we made sure to get out in the evenings to hang out with our friends in the area. We met up in Catarina for smoothies, went to Masaya to purchase some things in the market, and hung out with our Nica friends. I thoroughly enjoyed it all, but like I said, it went by so fast, too fast! By Thursday, we were rushing to pack up our things and say goodbye to head up to Managua for the night. When Kellie and I were saying goodbye to a friend, he happened to be talking to another friend who was also going to Managua, but driving his truck there. So, he offered to give us a ride. Yes!! What a blessing :)

Once we got up to Managua, we checked into the hotel and I ran to the hot shower! Oh my gosh I forgot how amazing a hot shower is. I could have stayed in there for hours. But, I was also pretty hungry so we got ready and headed out to find a place for dinner. It was nice to be with friends and relax after a long week.

The next day a group of us traveled up to La Dalia, Matagalpa where my friend Sam lives. We wanted to check out his new place and he wanted to have a little housewarming party. It takes quite a while to get up there, but we finally made it and got some food in our bellies and then the party started. We had music, someone brought Christmas lights to decorate, and Sam’s sister sent him finger-stache tattoos. I’m not sure if you’ve seen these before, but they’re pretty popular back home, as I've seen many pictures on Facebook.

We also danced and sang karaoke to top off the night. It was a blast!

In the morning we made pancakes and headed down the windy, bumpy road to Matagalpa. We checked into La Buena Onda hostel which is co-owned by a past Peace Corps volunteer. This is the hostal that I stayed at in October with other Peace Corps volunteers when we did our teaching practicum week in Matagalpa. It is a beautiful place and so much fun. We explored Matagalpa and had dinner at the Italian restaurant close by. I had a delicious calzone—Mmmm :) Then, after our food settled, we went out to a discoteca for night of dancing.

We went out to breakfast in the morning in town and then came back to pack up our things. We had some time before we needed to leave so we watched a movie in the hostel and then took a taxi to the bus terminal. I left with Greg, who lives in Santa Lucia, Boaco, and we said goodbye to the others. We took a bus down to San Benito in order to catch a bus heading toward Boaco. Well, the buses are always slow and late on Sundays, so we waited for quite awhile. Then, the bus finally came, but it was extremely full so we couldn’t get on. Other buses passed by but they weren’t going where we needed to go. We finally jumped onto an express bus headed to Juigalpa because these ones pass by the empalme of Boaco so we could get off there and then get a bus into Boaco. This bus was also full, but not many people were standing, just the seats were full, AND it was air-conditioned :)

We got off at the empalme and waited. The Boaco bus passed by again and there was no way we could fit. We met an Irish guy living in Boaco and we were going to share a taxi, but they were really expensive and then most weren’t going back to Boaco or told us that so they could take Nicas instead of gringos… :( Anyway, a bus to Boaco finally passed by and we ran, pushed, and grabbed a seat. Finally! What an ordeal! I got home and was exhausted, so I threw down my backpack and took a shower and then sat on the couch and showed some of my purchases to Jasser.

It was quite a week, but it was so much fun and definitely worth it! I was so glad to see so many friends and spend some quality time with them :) I’m ok with being vaga.