Oh the joy of Vaccines

We’ve finally received all the necessary vaccines to be able to live in Nicaragua as a PCV! Every Wednesday and Friday have been known as the “days of the shots”! So if, God forbid, a dog bites me – I won’t get rabies, sigh of relief!! I’ve also gotten the vaccines for Hepatitis A, B, Tetanus and Typhoid. Oh foreign diseases – how interesting they are, not that you can’t get the same in the U.S.; they’re just more evident here! So, still no signs of sickness for this trainee yet (knock on wood)! I’ve definitely been praying to hold strong throughout my service, but almost everyone in my group has gotten sick (probably a good handful who haven’t). There’s been a grand variety from E-Coli, an ameba, allergic reactions, to a dog bite, and the infamous travelers diarrhea. Also, unfortunately two weeks ago, a fellow trainee from Minnesota broke her foot carrying a bag of sawdust and had to go back home to the U.S.! It was really sad, everyone in our group is becoming really great friends and it’s sad to lose anyone!

Last week was a lot of fun in Spanish training class. We had a cultural exchange with our Spanish facilitators, ours showed us how to cook Arroz con Leche (a very popular cream and rice dessert) and we showed them how to cook chocolate pancakes! They were soooo delicious and a good change from the everyday typical Nica. food of gallo pinto (rice and beans, which is very tasty, but I get it twice a day!).

Yesterday was amazing! Five of us went hiking in the mountains near our training towns to encounter the “cuevas del duende” or Elf Caves, which has been an ongoing legend here! It was a crazy adventure…we started out at 7 a.m. and didn’t end up actually finding the caves until about 12:30 p.m. Yeah, it took us the grand amount of 5.5 hours to finally find the caves. No, we weren’t lost, we just didn’t know exactly where in the mountains it was! We asked everyone who passed us “are the elf caves up here?” and the response every time was “yeah, they are right up there no further!” They neglected to tell us that we had to take a sharp left through a oxen pasture, trample through multiple streams, and hop over ridiculous barbwire fences! However, the almost six hour hike was absolutely worth it! When we finally did make it to the caves it was an amazing sight! You could see for miles from the top and what was even more incredible was there was another cave within that cave. Of course, we had to crawl through a 3 ft opening to get to it, and there was a bat inside waiting for us, which was a little insane! Don’t worry the bat didn’t attack us, just swooped down a couple times! Over all it was an incredible hike and yes I am ridiculously sore today!