Adios Nica!

Hola Costa Rica! So in the wee wee hours of yesterday morning, just after Valentine´s Day, Justina and I headed for the Tica Bus station and began our trek down to San Jose, while the other three intrepid tripsters of equipo aguila made their way down to San Juan del Sur for some surfing.

The ride was smooth, minus a two-hour slow down at the border, but we arrived in San Jose around six in the evening and promptly got ahold of Susie Jimenez (Nayla´s mom), who along with her husband Alfonzo, came a picked us up at the bus station and have been incredibly wonderful and gracious hosts. Justina is especially thrilled at having a bed with quilts after numerous nights of sleeping on Ben´s dirty laundry. Today consisted primarily of going from bank to bank to get colones and failing to get Justina´s Venesuelan Bolivars exchanged (she is unfortunately stuck with them because the airport in Caracas refused to change them for dollars!). Other than that we mostly walked around a pedestrian mall and rode the bus from and to the Jimenez´s.

Other news: I received an e-mail from Peace Corps stating that my placement review has concluded and they have mailed my assignment, which I am to accept or decline within ten days of receiving. It has not reached Goshen yet, but I will let you know what´s happening when it gets there.

Nicaragua finished up with a quick trip to Matagalpa, a couple hours northeast of Managua, where we visited a couple of cooperatives, hitched a ride in the back of a pickup, enjoyed a festival with extremely cannon-like fireworks, and checked out a coffee coop. I also was able to get another pair of glasses, with surprising ease. Stan went with me to Munkel at the Metro Centro in Managua and, since fortunately I had my prescription with me, I was able to pick out a pair of marcos (frames) on Saturday and then pick up the glasses on Tuesday. They fit nice, they look good, and were fairly reasonable at 3,100 cordobas ($170).

Many thanks to Ben and his cool housemates for letting us invade their space for so long. Yall should do a Witness for Peace delegation sometime. It was pretty amazing to see how various communities respond to the challenges presented by neo-libralism, the IMF, and internal divisions. I think someone wrote earlier that it´s hard to some up everything Ben showed us, but I certainly feel a renewed sense to push harder in the US for a better foreign policy, especially when it comes economic ideologies. Fittingly, our stay in Nica ended with us having to walk part of the way back into Managua as the public buses had been on strike for a week and had blocked part of the Pan American highway. This is coinciding with a two-month long strike in the public hospitals by the doctors and nurses, who are striking for higher salaries, which the government has denied becaues the IMF demands that the government not raise health care expenditures in order to receive new loans.

Next stop for Juicy and myself, soon to be joined by the remaining tripsters is Bahia Drake. Tomorrow should be another interesting adventure, assuming we can get tickets.