Billiards Tournament!

Yesterday, I organized a billiards tournament in my site. Not just any old billiards tournament, but one with an HIV/AIDS theme. There were four rounds of the tournament, and in between each round, my friends and I gave lectures on HIV/AIDS, methods of transmission, methods of prevention and correct way to use a condom. The health center staff was also there to give the HIV test to all the participants and audience. Here are some pictures from my camera.

Here's Lenka warming up with the boys.

Here's me waiting restlessly for people to arrive.

 And we start.

To demonstrate how HIV attacks the body, we did a human demonstration. The guy standing in the middle of the circle is the "human body." The guys linking their arms in a circle are the immune system protecting the body. The guy with his arms raised is the flu trying to attack the body. Then someone pretends to be HIV and comes in to attack the immune system. We show that without the immune system, simple illnesses easily reach the body.

Lenka explains how HIV is transmitted, and how it is not transmitted. Thanks for coming to help me out pal. 

 Here's Robyn, showing everyone what a condom is.

 

And she puts it on the dildo. This was the standard condom demonstration. Next, Robyn proceeded to debunk several myths about condoms...

 If a man ever claims that his penis is too big to fit in a condom, tell him that if an arm can fit, so can his dick.

And if putting on a condom the standard way just isn't sexy enough for you, Robyn can give you lessons on how to do it better. 

She put that on with her mouth.

There's our champeon. He won a free coupon to eat at a fancy restaurant with a date. At the end of the event, all the participants took a quiz on HIV/AIDS and entered their names in a raffle. The guy who scored a perfect 10 on the quiz also got a coupon, and that same guy won the raffle so he got two coupons in one day.

So this event turned out so well. Robyn and Lenka are awesome for coming down to my site to help me organize the event. The health center staff was also really supportive and almost everyone there at the event did an HIV test. The people in my site are also really chill and polite. The men didn't get drunk and act inappropriately, and they were all really motivated and into the activity. The restaurants in town are also really generous for donating so many coupons and a delicious CAKE, which we cut up and ate.All in all, this was one of the best billiards tournaments ever.

My site: La Concordia, Jinotega, Nicaragua

Hi all,
I finally got a working camera, so I will finally post some pictures up of my site. My site is in the mountainous region of Nicaragua, in a department called Jinotega. The town is called La Concordia, which means harmony. The climate in this region is cooler than most parts of Nicaragua. During the coldest months (November - February) the temperature range is 50-70 *F, and during the warmest months (April - May) the temperature ranges is 60s - 80s *F. La Concordia is surrounded by mountains, which all turn green after the rainy season. It's a beautiful part of the country. I have visited tourist resorts and miradors in Nicaragua that people pay $100 to stay in each night and really did not consider them any more beautiful than my site. Here's some pictures of La Concordia to prove it.

And here's my room

Here's the washboard that we use to wash clothes

Nicaraguans love music. Many homes in Nicaragua have giant speakers that people use to blast music on the weekends.

We recently had our one-year-in country celebration. Each of us wrote a line for a poem that we composed to describe our experience

So that's all for now. I'll post up more pictures later.