Reality Check
I am desperately afraid that my posting is going to be erased by a computer shutdown, and I have quite a long story today, so I’m saving this to Word and then pasting it in. You’ll understand why in a few moments. However, before going into any of that, thanks for all of the encouragement regarding this whole blogging thing! It’s nice to know that so may of you are enjoying reading it. Just think – it’s almost exactly like having your very-own-in-house-spasmadic-jess any time you actually want one!
Okay, so here’s the story, which I suppose begins officially on Thursday, but I’ll go back a little ways. I don’t recall if I’ve mentioned the power outages in Nicaragua. They go back and forth, so we’ll lose power randomly for five minutes, and then it will come back on. Sometimes it will be gone for about an hour, maybe even more, but it was more of an inconvenience as opposed to debilitating. Well, at the very end of my first period class on Thursday, the power went out, and I just KNEW that the power would be out for a chunk of time. (What’s funny is that a few days ago I was going to write about how the power hadn’t gone out in days and I was so happy about it.) Well, we finish what we can of notes, and the power is out until sometime during third period, so it was out about an hour and a half. However, my students started talking about what appeared in the paper the day before, and it’s been confirmed by many others since then.
La Prensa, the newspaper, reported that there were going to be some changes regarding the power. The electric company wanted to raise the price of the power. However, the supreme court didn’t allow it, and since Nicaragua is not exactly a free market, they can do that sort of thing. Well, the power company is certainly not happy now, so they decided that they were going to cut power at certain times to certain neighborhoods. From what I understand, there are a ton of people in Nicaragua who steal power, and obviously this is a problem for the power company. However, the price you pay for power is not necessarily based upon consumption. Someone from the power company may come in and see how many things you have lugged in on a regular basis and determine your rate accordingly. So, it’s not exactly the way we would think of paying for power.
La Prensa published a list of neighborhoods that were going to be losing power for anywhere between two and eight hours a day. Nejapa, our neighborhood, was at the top of the list. About 60% of the power consumed in our neighborhood is stolen power.
And now the rumors begin. People are saying that there should be a schedule published tomorrow (Monday), but others are saying that’s not going to happen. Some are saying that it’s only going to be a few days a week, and others are saying it’s up to eight hours each day. And quite literally, this may go one for months.
We don’t quite know what’s going on, but on Friday we had a teacher workday to put in progress report grades. We started devotions and out meeting at 8:00, and got out about 9:30. Unfortunately, the power went our at about 9:20 and didn’t come back on until about 2:30, so we didn’t really get out stuff done. So we didn’t have power that we knew of for about five hours on Friday.
Now, the clencher for all of this is that there is something, a triviality, a minor inconvenience, that happens to be tied to the power. That would be our water. If the power is out, you can almost be assured that the water will be gone fifteen minutes later. The apartment complex has a reserve tank, but it doesn’t help too much. A bunch of people went to the beach on Friday afternoon because we couldn’t do our work, and they came back all beachy and sandy and sticky with no water to take a shower. It was quite humorous, and a little disturbing, to see people strolling down to the pool with their shampoo, soap, and razor. (I don’t think anyone actually shaved there, but the intention existed.)
However, yesterday was even a darker foreshadowing of potential things to come. A bunch of people went to Leon yesterday to see the town. Leon is hot, hot, hot. On the way we ate quesillos, which were really good. They consist of a corn tortilla with a flat, circular piece of cheese on top that looks like another tortilla. On top of that there is crema (sour cream) and onions, and you’re supposed to eat it in a bag so that people can laugh at first-timers making complete messes, but they gave them to us on plates. They were really good. Leon was not the most amazing town, but it was pretty neat just to walk around, and it has probably one f the best art galleries in central America. (As in it had three Picasso’s. I wasn’t expecting that at all.) I’m so used to seeing art in controlled environments and people monitering you to make sure nothing is touched. It’s weird to have an art museum of such caliber with one fan blowing in each room and not humidity control or anything. So that was neat.
However, at the end of a very hot day, we came back to the van and discovered that some of our stuff had been stolen. Fortunately it wasn’t too huge of a deal, but it was really frustrating. I saw everyone else leaving backpacks in the van, so I didn’t even think about it. I even stuffed it under a seat well to hide it, just in case. Originally, we weren’t going to have a backpack, but everyone had umbrellas, so we thought we should bring our rainjackets, and then we just grabbed Jason’s backpack. They broke in through one of the windows and took two backpacks, but left three others and a purse. So the backpack, both our rainjackets, one of the two purses I brought down (along with a thing of chapstick, some lipgloss I really like, and powder which is really helpful here considering the amount that you sweat – stuff that’s not important but annoying to lose), Jason’s wallet, and his MP3 player were all stolen. There was no money in the wallet, and we’ve cancelled all of the cards that were in it, but it was just one more thing to “deal” at the moment. Jason’s license is also gone, which we’re going to have to figure out how to replace, and we have my MP3 player, but it still sucks to lose his.
And after all of that, we came back home to no power and no water. And falling asleep in this country without a fan is not that much fun, especially after a hot sweaty day after which you did not get to bathe.
So it’s been a challenging few days, but God is faithful, and we have a pretty good amount of piece considering all that’s going on. The power is going to be especially a struggle. On Saturday is was gone for an hour or two in the early morning, fro about 9:30 to 11:30 in the morning, and then from about 6 to midnight. The school is on the same power grid as our apartments, and right now it’s looking like they are going to be cutting power a significant amount of time each day, which puts us in a really difficult position. So keep us in your prayers, because we’re going to need a lot of patience in the next period of time. We’re learning that the first thing to do when the power goes out is to run to the shower, because you don’t always know when the next one will be available… lol.
Okay, so here’s the story, which I suppose begins officially on Thursday, but I’ll go back a little ways. I don’t recall if I’ve mentioned the power outages in Nicaragua. They go back and forth, so we’ll lose power randomly for five minutes, and then it will come back on. Sometimes it will be gone for about an hour, maybe even more, but it was more of an inconvenience as opposed to debilitating. Well, at the very end of my first period class on Thursday, the power went out, and I just KNEW that the power would be out for a chunk of time. (What’s funny is that a few days ago I was going to write about how the power hadn’t gone out in days and I was so happy about it.) Well, we finish what we can of notes, and the power is out until sometime during third period, so it was out about an hour and a half. However, my students started talking about what appeared in the paper the day before, and it’s been confirmed by many others since then.
La Prensa, the newspaper, reported that there were going to be some changes regarding the power. The electric company wanted to raise the price of the power. However, the supreme court didn’t allow it, and since Nicaragua is not exactly a free market, they can do that sort of thing. Well, the power company is certainly not happy now, so they decided that they were going to cut power at certain times to certain neighborhoods. From what I understand, there are a ton of people in Nicaragua who steal power, and obviously this is a problem for the power company. However, the price you pay for power is not necessarily based upon consumption. Someone from the power company may come in and see how many things you have lugged in on a regular basis and determine your rate accordingly. So, it’s not exactly the way we would think of paying for power.
La Prensa published a list of neighborhoods that were going to be losing power for anywhere between two and eight hours a day. Nejapa, our neighborhood, was at the top of the list. About 60% of the power consumed in our neighborhood is stolen power.
And now the rumors begin. People are saying that there should be a schedule published tomorrow (Monday), but others are saying that’s not going to happen. Some are saying that it’s only going to be a few days a week, and others are saying it’s up to eight hours each day. And quite literally, this may go one for months.
We don’t quite know what’s going on, but on Friday we had a teacher workday to put in progress report grades. We started devotions and out meeting at 8:00, and got out about 9:30. Unfortunately, the power went our at about 9:20 and didn’t come back on until about 2:30, so we didn’t really get out stuff done. So we didn’t have power that we knew of for about five hours on Friday.
Now, the clencher for all of this is that there is something, a triviality, a minor inconvenience, that happens to be tied to the power. That would be our water. If the power is out, you can almost be assured that the water will be gone fifteen minutes later. The apartment complex has a reserve tank, but it doesn’t help too much. A bunch of people went to the beach on Friday afternoon because we couldn’t do our work, and they came back all beachy and sandy and sticky with no water to take a shower. It was quite humorous, and a little disturbing, to see people strolling down to the pool with their shampoo, soap, and razor. (I don’t think anyone actually shaved there, but the intention existed.)
However, yesterday was even a darker foreshadowing of potential things to come. A bunch of people went to Leon yesterday to see the town. Leon is hot, hot, hot. On the way we ate quesillos, which were really good. They consist of a corn tortilla with a flat, circular piece of cheese on top that looks like another tortilla. On top of that there is crema (sour cream) and onions, and you’re supposed to eat it in a bag so that people can laugh at first-timers making complete messes, but they gave them to us on plates. They were really good. Leon was not the most amazing town, but it was pretty neat just to walk around, and it has probably one f the best art galleries in central America. (As in it had three Picasso’s. I wasn’t expecting that at all.) I’m so used to seeing art in controlled environments and people monitering you to make sure nothing is touched. It’s weird to have an art museum of such caliber with one fan blowing in each room and not humidity control or anything. So that was neat.
However, at the end of a very hot day, we came back to the van and discovered that some of our stuff had been stolen. Fortunately it wasn’t too huge of a deal, but it was really frustrating. I saw everyone else leaving backpacks in the van, so I didn’t even think about it. I even stuffed it under a seat well to hide it, just in case. Originally, we weren’t going to have a backpack, but everyone had umbrellas, so we thought we should bring our rainjackets, and then we just grabbed Jason’s backpack. They broke in through one of the windows and took two backpacks, but left three others and a purse. So the backpack, both our rainjackets, one of the two purses I brought down (along with a thing of chapstick, some lipgloss I really like, and powder which is really helpful here considering the amount that you sweat – stuff that’s not important but annoying to lose), Jason’s wallet, and his MP3 player were all stolen. There was no money in the wallet, and we’ve cancelled all of the cards that were in it, but it was just one more thing to “deal” at the moment. Jason’s license is also gone, which we’re going to have to figure out how to replace, and we have my MP3 player, but it still sucks to lose his.
And after all of that, we came back home to no power and no water. And falling asleep in this country without a fan is not that much fun, especially after a hot sweaty day after which you did not get to bathe.
So it’s been a challenging few days, but God is faithful, and we have a pretty good amount of piece considering all that’s going on. The power is going to be especially a struggle. On Saturday is was gone for an hour or two in the early morning, fro about 9:30 to 11:30 in the morning, and then from about 6 to midnight. The school is on the same power grid as our apartments, and right now it’s looking like they are going to be cutting power a significant amount of time each day, which puts us in a really difficult position. So keep us in your prayers, because we’re going to need a lot of patience in the next period of time. We’re learning that the first thing to do when the power goes out is to run to the shower, because you don’t always know when the next one will be available… lol.
posted by Jess Edgerton at
2:40 pm
1 Comments:
i wasn't sure if jason was there nor not. now i know. and we here think we have it bad with the power stuff going out once in a blue moon! like anything else, i guess you just adapt!
what ages are the kids that you are teaching? do they speak english well? i was thinking there might be something we could do with a blog combining your classes or some of your kids with mine. think about it.
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