Archive for the ‘Erin’ Category
August 4, 2009
¡Buenas Días!
Just right off the bat here, I should warn you that I have had a pretty productive week with the autoclave, so this blog is bound to be pretty boring 
On the 27th, 22 elementary teachers arrived from California on a minibus packed to capacity and with a mountain of luggage on top. It looked like the sled from the Grinch after he steals all the presents and decorations. It was literally as if someone had dropped my elementary school into rural Nicaragua. And after they had settled in, it was even cuter. They were here as part of a Masters in Education class and worked with the students at Sabana Grande Elementary every morning on projects that related science and art. Because of this, they all wore nametags made of construction paper, hung around their necks with yarn, but they left them through lunch and all afternoon, when they had class at the Solar Center. Furthermore, whenever the professor wanted the attention of the group, she would clap out a pattern. The rest would repeat it, and then fall obediently silent. It makes me wonder what strange habits engineers carry into their personal lives. I guess I do carry a calculator in my purse…
On Friday, the teachers directed a “Sun Fair,” in which the kids sang songs and showed off to their parents what they learned all week. Each grade level presented a different project or song related to weather or energy. It was great. They sang “Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden Sun” but it was called “Sol, Sol, Señor Sol Dorado” and “De Colores.” I cheered very loudly for my little sister Alexandra. After the younger kids performed, my older sister Vanessa and Luis Miguel, Donald and Maricela danced to one of the traditional Nicaraguan songs, all dressed up in beautiful silk outfits. Oh, I almost forgot! There was an absolute downpour all day. The irony was not lost on Adelina, who joked that I had better remember to wear my boots and raincoat to the Sun Fair.
Another good thing about having the teachers here for the week was the food. Typically, the volunteers walk a few kilometers to the house of one of the Mujeres Solares for lunch, which is always delicious. However, last week there were just too many of us to fit in one house, so fearless Dona Carmen and Dona Vidalia brought the food to us! It was like Thanksgiving every day at 1. Amazing. One day, Dona Carmen made pepper-crusted chicken in the solar oven that was so good that my mouth is actually watering just thinking about it. And speaking of cooking, I made something in my little solar oven yesterday! An egg, haha. But it was really good!
So you don’t get the impression that all I do is attend school plays and eat delicious food, I’ll say a little about the autoclave. All last week I did tests comparing the heating curves of the giant solar ovens and that of the Frankencooker. Looks like the Frankencooker heats up fast enough that it can take advantage of as little as an hour of sun, whereas the bigger ovens take up to 5 hours to heat up during days with variable sun. This week, I’m going to seal the insulated space to minimize the heat wasted by heating up the whole box as opposed to just the volume inside the parabolic.
So, things are going well down here. I’ve got a week and a half left, and if I didn’t miss all of you so much, I could stay for much longer. It’ll be really difficult to say goodbye to everyone, but also great to see my American family and friends again.
July 23, 2009
Hello All,
We all went on vacation in Southern Nicaragua last weekend! First, Maria and I ate lunch at the Papa John´s in Masaya on Friday to fuel up for some power shopping. The town has two markets, the old artisan market in a colonial fort and a new market close to the bus station. The old market had really nice hand-made pottery and hammocks, along with souveneir Che t-shirts and FSLN coffee mugs. We spent awhile there mostly just looking around until the torrential downpour started. From there, we took a taxi to the new market. It was a really fun experience. The market is the size of two city blocks and is compeletely covered. Inside, it´s like a maze, with hammocks and clothing looping down into the skinny walkway like vines in a rainforest. And it was as dense as a rainforest too! We couldn´t ever see the end of an aisle, and the artisan section abruptly became the dry goods section, with huge canvas bags of rice, beans and coffee set up in the walkway. After we extricated ourselves Indiana Jones style, we took a bus to Granada.
In Granada, Maria and I checked into a really really classy hostel called Oasis. It had a pool AND lockers! And in Maria´s guidebook, there´s a section called Fine Dining. We were seriously hungry, so we read through and found a German place outside of town called Charly´s Bar and Restaurant. As it turns out, there really is a Charly from Germany, and he cooks great steak kabobs. Also, the restaurant is in a really sketchy neighborhood and Charly is really nice, so Charly´s best friend drove us back to the hostel when they couldn´t get ahold of a cab.
Saturday, TimandJim, Maria and I walked around touring the three colonial Churches. One thing that is different about the Churches in Nicaragua compared to those in the US is that they all have a Jesus casket. Honestly, there is always a Jesus mannequin inside a glass casket along one of the walls, usually next to the baptismal font. Anyway, the Churches were gorgeous, especially Iglesia Xalteva. It had been ravaged by pirates in 1753 and the outside still looked like it had recently taken a few cannonballs, but inside was painted light green, with all the white marble pillars covered in flawless carvings.
Sunday, all of us went on a zipline canopy tour in a rainforest! It was really cool. There were 14 platforms set up on a coffee plantation on the side of Mombacho Volcano, and we wore harnesses and flew to each platform. The scariest part of the trip was the ride to the tour, through the national park. There were 11 of us in the back of an old Toyota Land Cruiser bouncing up the side of a mountain for an hour. Very exciting.
On Monday, we returned to do some work. But, I have good news… The autoclave design is progressing! Anna brought us some new valves and tubes to make a smaller, more efficient autoclave, and the new insulated parabolic cooker reached 126 celsius on Monday. It was a very big day for another reason too. Three students at the Engineering University of Nicaragua (UNI) are interested in researching the autoclave as their thesis. This would be amazing, since we were so worried about who could carry on the research this fall and winter. Finally, this week I´ll be working on fixing our temperature logger since we couldn´t find a new one in Esteli (another story) and building a second prototype.
July 11, 2009
Lunch
Nicaragua moment: This morning, a chicken laid an egg in my bed. It was raining and I forgot to shut the door to my room, so when I went in for my raincoat I had to chase all seven chickens from under my bed. But I missed one hen: the late big evil one’s girlfriend, who was sitting on my pile of dirty clothes on top of my bed. Don’t worry Mums, it was the dirty clothes pile. I swatted at her with my towel and yelled at her in Spanish (because they honestly don’t listen if I speak English). After pecking at my fingers she got up, revealing what would become my lunch. Delicious.
Thursday and Friday, Maria and I went down to Managua with Anna and Lauren for a meeting with the Jubilee House, who started an organization called Center for Development in Central America. As I understand it, a bunch of nice church people from North Carolina decided to help a whole lot of very needy people at once. They operate in a huge shanty town called Ciudad Sandino, where 170,000 people live with 80% unemployment. I cannot believe that people exist who could even comprehend that level of poverty, much less feel like they could make a difference to the people who live there. If you want more of an idea, the website is www.jhc-cdca.org.
The woman we met with was named Kathleen, and she had been living in Ciudad Sandino for 15 years with her family, developing the clinic. Whenever she spoke to her son, who was acting as partial translator, she reminded me so much of Paula Deen. Anyway, she showed us around the clinic and had great ideas for the autoclave. Even though the Jubilee House clinic already has access to enough autoclaves, she invited us to accompany one of the Ministry of Health doctors to a rural health center in a few weeks. There, she thinks we will be able to ask the nurses questions about current sterilization methods, patient load and the instruments used. It will also give us a chance to get some general first impressions of the autoclave. Although, the autoclave currently looks a little imposing. In fact, last night on the bus back to Sabana Grande, I asked a man if he could please pass me the “ugly apparatus with the pipes,” and he knew just what I meant, haha. Maria and I are working on another prototype, and maybe it’ll look cuter in a smaller version. We can only hope .
Also, Maria and I got to stay at Dona Claudia’s house with TimandJim. This was especially exciting because Dona Claudia also owns a bakery, so we had the best pastries of all time for breakfast on Friday. And, Dona Claudia’s mother is an amazing cook, so Maria and I were really spoiled. It seems like the parts of the weekend that didn’t involve the autoclave were spent eating. Ice cream, chocolate cake, pastries, pizza (twice!) and rosquillas. It was amazing.
Yesterday, we met with Susan Kinne and the researchers from UNI who are also working on the autoclave research. It was a great help to be able to ask questions like “Where can I find copper tubing in Managua?” and, “What kind of shiny material do you recommend for the solar oven?” We also exchanged emails, so we will be able to communicate the results of our testing as well as set up researchers for when Maria and I return to the US.
Finally, Susan and some of the coordinators from UNI are coming up to the Solar Center on Monday, so Maria and I get to show off the insulated parabolic Franken-Cooker. We have decided to try using the inside of chip bags as our first reflective material for the parabolic, so I have all the women in Adelina’s house eating Nicaraguan Doritos, called Ranchitas. They have decided to help me out by eating however many bags I buy, for research purposes, of course.
I think that’s all for today. I’ll make sure to post the results of our first temperature tests with the parabolic. Wish us luck!
July 6, 2009
Hey All!
As planned, Maria, TimandJim, Dan, Darell, David, David, Cody and I spent last Saturday and Sunday in Leon, which is a colonial city near the Pacific Coast. The five hour bus ride from Sabana Grande was actually one of my favorite parts of our trip, because the route took us through the hills north of Esteli, the mountains surrounding Esteli, the plains near the coast and the volcanoes encircling Leon. Leon’s bus station was massive and overwhelming compared to our clean, neatly-organized bus station/municipal market in Ocotal. There were about fifty stalls packed into a very small sheltered market, with the vendors shouting and josteling us. It was one of those environments that I’m sure would be exciting for a certain type of adventurous personality, but just made me feel frantic. It was an adventure just navigating the parking lot that was full of minibuses, taxis and busses all trying to attract passengers or extricate themselves from the mess. It was quite a shock! Clearly, I have become accustomed to the slow, polite, quiet interactions of life in Sabana Grande. It must have been especially confusing for the two new volunteers, David and Darell, since they just arrived on Wednesday from the US, and we were already taking them on our crazy, spontaneous trip across the country.
On Saturday, we went to the beach. It was a crazy 1 hour bus ride on a dirt road. Since it´s technically the winter season, all of the summer homes were closed, but there were 5 or 6 really cool beachfront hostels open, full of Peace Corps volunteers. We swam in the ocean, but it was pretty dangerous since the rip current is really strong all along the coast, so we stayed close. Maria, TimandJim and I also walked along the beach, picking up seashells. And the Playa Roca bar sold cheeseburgers! Yummmm. After the beach, we went to dinner at a cool hostel across the street from where we stayed. Dinner was amazing, but I had a huge headache from the crazy day and the 17 liters of water that still remains behind my eardrum. I went back to our comfy hostel and slept really really well.
As I mentioned before, I found it exhausting to navigate the city itself, but since it is a touristy city, there are great hostels. We stayed at BigFoot Hostel, which had a café attached. From there, we bought omlettes, bagels and pancakes! They also had fresh wheat bread, which was amazing since I literally dreamed about MelODee bread the night before. Sunday morning, we walked around the central park and peeked into two absolutely breathtaking cathedrals built in the 1700s. I’ll be sure to upload pictures as soon as I can. This trip, I also learned that there is no reason to haul a computer, hiking shoes and enough clothing for a week when I’m just going away for 24 hours. Anyway, we made it back to Sabana Grande around 6, and we met Anna and Lauren, who are in town for the week.
This week, I’ll be finishing up the Franken-Cooker, which I hope will heat up faster than a typical solar cooker so it can be used for the autoclave. Also, on Thursday Maria and I will be going into Managua with Lauren and Anna for a meeting about a possible place to pilot test our design. So this week is going to be very exciting for the project, and I’ll make sure to update again this weekend when we return.
Take Care,
Erin
June 29, 2009
Hello All,
Ugh. Maria and I almost got to go to Granada. Then I ate a moldy tortilla and got stuck with an intestinal infection. Ugh. On the upside, I´m feeling completely better now, and having been a guest of the hospital in Ocotal for 2 days and 2 nights, I also feel really safe here. The nurses were really efficient, the same doctor came around every 5 hours, and everything was wrapped in reassuringly sterile packaging. Although, it was a little disconcerting that the first question they asked was, ¨If we have to operate, would you like the surgery done here?¨ That didn´t go too far toward making me comfortable! But, Adelina and David stayed with me for both days, which I couldn´t have ever expected. They made me feel so much better. And poor Maria stayed back to hang out with me all weekend, which makes me feel like the wet blanket, but I really appreciated her company too.
That´s all for today, since I obviously haven´t done anything too exciting the last few days… I´ll be busy working at the Center on my frankenstein solar cooker for the autoclave, but I´ll make sure to update after this weekend. We might go somewhere fun, and might have a good time at a volcano, but I don´t want to jinx anything again! Talk to you all later
June 24, 2009
Hello Friends and Family!
Just a quick update this time…
At the Center, the newly-minted cooperative (yay!) Las Mujeres Solares are getting ready for a big visit from a UN Development Program representative tomorrow morning. Because of this, the Solar Center is much better landscaped now than in the picture, but at least you can have a general idea of where we are working. It´s a really beautiful building, and I´ve been having a lot of fun talking to the women about their families and what its like to be in Las Mujeres Solares. They are all very sweet and don´t mind my pretty grotesque US accent. Also, the autoclave testing is going better, as there has been much more sun lately. However, we are looking into ways to make it more efficient, so it can be used when there is less sustained sunlight.
Also, last Sunday I attended Mass in the local Church in Sabana Grande. I wore my Easter skirt and a clean shirt (clean=fancy when I do my own laundry). The Church was pretty big, actually about the same size as the main Solar Center building, with about 15 rows of wooden benches flanking a wide center aisle. The walls are made of plaster-covered adobe and the roof is a mix of fiberglass and tin. When we arrived, a woman was in front reciting the rosary, with the congregation repeating after her. For next week, I´ve copied down the Our Father and Hail Mary in Spanish so I don´t feel so strange speaking English. Also, before Mass began, the same woman read from a prayer that I have never heard in which she says a phrase that describes Mary, like ¨Reina de los angeles¨and the congregation says ¨Ëscuchanos¨¨. It was really beautiful, because she used the most beautiful words. The Mass itself had the same format as I´m used to, but again the language was a lot more colorful and intense. Oh, and there were lectors for the first two readings, then a man who´s title translates to ¨Word-Giver¨read the Gospel and gave a really nice homily. Later I asked Mayra if he was a priest, but she said that he was training at a seminary to become one. Since there aren´t enough priests to come out to small rural community churches, he is in charge of reading and speaking within a region. Really, that was the only difference. And I knew the words to Glory, Glory, Hallelujah, so I could sing! It was a great experience for me to have something that I knew would be familiar, even in the midst of a completely foreign environment.
Ok, quick story time. There´s this chicken. More specifically, there´s this rooster. It is enormous, loud, black and gray, has mean little eyes, and I´m pretty sure it sharpens it´s beak in preparation to eat me. It also pecks at the other chickens and likes to chase after me when I go to the latrine, so that I have to run and shut the door really quickly, much to the family´s amusment. Anyways, so just after dawn I wake up to chicken squawking and feather ruffling, so I think it´s just the big evil one being mean to the others. Later at breakfast, I ask Adelina, ¨What was going on with the chickens this morning?¨ She says, ”I killed one of them for us to eat for dinner.¨ At first, I was kind of horrified because I just kept picturing one of the nice chickens with only a stump above its body, but then she said, ”Don´t worry, it was the mean one that scared you¨ and hugged me. She thought Í’d be really distraught about the chicken, so she just laughed when I smiled really big and said ¨Öh good, thank you! I´m so glad!¨
Also, a quick slightly inappropriate story: Last time I was in Ocotal, I had forgotten to wear sunscreen on my chest and arms. When I got home, Lupe (the 89-year-old) says to me, ¨Erin, you have burned your tetas.¨
On that note, we´re all heading to Granada for the weekend, so I´ll write about those adventures on Monday or Tuesday. Thank you all for the comments! I save them and load them on my computer so I can read them again in Sabana Grande when I´m missing all of you.
Besos y Abrazos,
Erin
June 21, 2009
Hey everybody! Happy Father’s Day! It’s been a whole week, and things are going very well down here. I’m getting much more comfortable with my new Nicaraguan family, and I´ve had the chance to go on a few adventures since the last blog.
When Maria and I got back from Ocotal Friday night, Tim-and-Jim from UD had just gotten in from Managua, where they volunteer with Suni Solar. They’re here for the weekend to hang out with us fellow gringos, so of course we played UNO! It got pretty violent, but we’re all still friends haha.
Now it’s time for the Somoto Canyon Story. Yesterday morning, Maria, Maria, Dan, Nathan, Tim-and-Jim, and I took a bus to Somoto, a city about the size of Ocotal to the west of Sabana Grande. Nathan and Dan had been to the canyon a few weeks ago, before the rainy season had started and had a lot of fun swimming and hiking. Oh, halfway through the bus ride, we stopped at what turns out to be a police checkpoint. For this part of the story, I’d like to direct you to Nathan’s blog. Good stuff. So, we safely got to the Somoto bus station without being deported, and Dan hired a “taxi” – a pickup truck with a kind of frame installed in the back bed for us to hang on to. The ride to the canyon was gorgeous! It was all white knuckles through the countryside, but the view was really beautiful. I’m not sure why I wasn’t expecting mountains given the whole canyon thing, but they were breathtaking, covered in lush trees except where steep cliffs exposed the bedrock.
To get to the canyon itself, we hiked down a mountainside, noticing that the only other travelers all seemed to have things like water shoes water-tight containers. Not a good sign already, so when we got to the first river crossing and found out that we’d be crossing a raging river up to our waists, we weren’t too surprised. Apparently the rainy season had done its job. I was pretty scared, so I grabbed the hand of some random guy that was crossing with his friends who all thought I was hilarious holding my snacks above my head. Dan and Nathan just kept saying ¨This looked so much different before. The boats are just around the corner.¨
From there, we got semi-lost and I fell in cow poop while asking a farmer for directions. Figures. We finally make to a boat. Our guide was named Noel, and he had been taking people upstream into the canyon for five years, since he was 15. He was extremely patient with our steadily-improving Spanish. We disembarked and walked over a bridge that Noel warned us only supported one person at a time. EEEK. After that, we climbed rocks and jumped off cliffs and swam through remolinos (whirlpools). The cliffs were 200m high, and Noel told us that Hurricane Mitch completely filled it to the top with a wall of water. It was amazing to see the variety of plants and trees on the canyon walls, too. There were cacti as tall as trees! The two Marias took plenty of pictures.
Oh, almost forgot! We went a club called Sky Dancing last night and all learned how to do the bachata and merengue. I had a really good time, and it was great to dance to a few familiar songs.
Finally, there are a lot of animals in this country that I did not previously have phobias of, but now I do. For instance, last night there were 7 toads in my front yard, and they are not shy. The family was making fun of me until one of them jumped on Alexandra´s foot and she ran into my room and shut the door. Annnd, I killed a scorpion yesterday. With the really big stick that also doubles as my bedroom lock. It was really quite terrifying, but now Adelina thinks I am so brave.
Will write again next week. Thanks for the comments!
June 16, 2009
Hello Everyone!
Maria and I made it to Sabana Grande! Our plane landed safely despite a really harrowing thunderstorm near Managua. We stayed in Managua for the night at a small hotel. Well, it was seven rooms surrounding a small, open courtyard, and I think the front two rooms served as a restaurant during the week. Anyway, I couldn´t sleep at all because my stomach does not approve of adventuring. After breakfast, Don Luis drove us to the bus stop, and on the way I got to see some of Managua. Don Luis asked me what about Managua was different from Toledo, but I couldn´t even find a point of reference to compare the two. Managua itself is huge, but only the tourist resorts and the presidential palace stand more than a story. The buildings are made of wood usually, with corrugated steel roofs. There are people everywhere, and I felt more like I was in a very poor, very big neighborhood than a city. Luis spoke slowly enough that I could easily understand him, and we talked for about an hour before our bus arrived.
The bus ride was smooth, and took us up the Pan-American Highway to Sabana Grande. There, Maria and I met David and Dan and walked to our new houses. To me, the roads seem more like walking paths through the hills, and there are always cows and chickens using them as well. I live in Adelina´s house, which sits on property that has more kinds of trees than i have ever seen in one place. The grandmother, Lupe, and her sister have been trying to teach me the names of all of them, but I guess I am a slow learner of ecology because they all sound similar to me. And Lori lived with Adelina´s family for two summers, so I get to see a familiar face in the family´s photo albums Lori, they absolutely love you and say congratulations. The family is all women, with the two grandmothers, Adelina and her three daughters. They seem pretty shy around me, but we are getting more comfortable every day.
As for the Solar Center, it´s so much more than I expected! Yesterday, the Mujeres Solares had a very important meeting, so I got to introduce myself in front of 25 women, something that I´m not comfortable doing in English, much less Spanish. But, it was very interesting to speak to the women, since during breaks in the autoclave tests, we will be working on whatever project they decide to pursue. So, while I´m feeling a little lonely, I know that there will be plenty to keep me busy!
I´ll continue to update this blog more as I figure out exactly when we will be traveling to Ocotal, the city with internet cafes. Thank you all for the support, and I appreciate emails with news, photos or even just gossip.
Hasta,
Erin
April 29, 2009
Hi everyone! Finally giving this blog thing a try, so we’ll see how it goes…
Well, I’ll go ahead and introduce myself. My name’s Erin, and I am a sophomore studying mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering and Spanish. When I’m not at UD, I live in Toledo, Ohio with my mom, dad and little sister Claire, who’s going to OSU next year (yay, monkey!). I have only been outside the US twice, to Canada, but I’ll be in Nicaragua over the summer working on the solar autoclave with Dan, Maria and Nathan. I have been so overwhelmed with exams, final projects and term papers, but now I finally have time to think about this summer, and I am extremely excited.
Me (on the left), Monkey, Dad at the Demolition Derby
Sarah, Leah and Me skiing at Alpine Valley, MI
I’m a little concerned about missing my family, my friends, and my boyfriend just because eight weeks is a long time to be away, but I can’t wait to go exploring, meet everyone in the entire country, and see some freshwater sharks. Don’t worry, I’ll take pictures. The State Department sent my shiny new passport, I’ve got a plane ticket, and I bought a raincoat. Totally ready, right? Also, we haven’t been told who our “families” will be in Sabana Grande, but I really hope I’ll get some little brothers and sisters.
I’ve also been thinking about what I could do for a little project I could do down there while we work on the solar autoclave. I took a class on Latin American history in the 20th century, and my research paper was on the health situation in Nicaragua, and my concentration is biomedical engineering. Basically, I’m trying to think of a project that would do something to improve community health using engineering (besides the solar autoclave, haha…), and ideally involves hanging out with little kids. Let me know if any of you out there have an idea…
Ciao,
Erin