I've been robbed!

Nothing too exciting. Someone took my flip flops out of the side pocket of my backpack somewhere between Honduras and Nicaragua. They were pretty scuzzy, so I'm not too heart broken.

Monday I bussed from Chinandega to the tiny fishing village of Los Zorros, where I stayed at a place called Rancho Tranquilo. An American woman named Tina owns the place, and I met her in Leon a couple of weeks ago. The whole time I was in Honduras, I just wanted to get back to Nicaragua and for some reason I felt a craving to go to the beach. So... I did! When I got there, Tina showed me my room, commenting that ''the holes in the (dirt) floor aren't from snakes, just crabs.'' I more or less never wanted to leave. I swam, then had lunch with Tina, then went on a walk down the beach, then got lost on my walk and ended up in the wrong fishing village, then made it back in time to read in a hammock. There were 2 girls from Basque staying there, along with one of Tina's friends and her daughter, so we had dinner together. Then Tina's adopted Nica father came over and entertained us with stories of his time spent in Bakersfield, California. Apparently he was quite the ladies' man, to the point that he got an AIDS test every 6 months, just to be safe.

I woke up this morning to the sound of waves crashing and went and played in the water by myself until breakfast. After breakfast, I caught a ride to Leon with the Basque girls, who had rented a truck, and from Leon shuttled to Managua (for the record, Managua is hands down my least favorite city ever), then from Managua bussed back to Granada. So here I am, about to spend my last night in Granada before I go to Managua with 2 other girls tomorrow so we can spend the night there and fly out on Friday.

So that's it. My time in Nicaragua is coming to an end. The only word to describe every piece of clothing I have with me is "rank", so I think it's time to head home. I don't have any deep final thoughts. I'm still too busy processing everything that's happened over the last 2 months. It's definitely been a rocky road at times, but I've been so blessed and so protected through it all.

End blog. Thank goodness.

The only chela in town

Last night after I ate dinner at "The house of hamburgers" with 2 other Americans I met, I sat in the central park by myself for awhile to people watch. It was great and I was more or less left alone because I pretended I didn´t speak English or Spanish. Unfortunately, once night fell I looked around and realized that the only other women in the park were prostitutes. Ah, the joys of the big 3rd world city.

Woke up this morning at 4:30 to catch my 5:30 bus. Was dropped off at another random hotel at 7:30, at which point I got on another bus that brought me to Managua. From Managua, I caught a shuttle to the town of Chinandega, and from there got a taxi to my hotel. Chinandega´s really just a pit stop for me, since tomorrow morning I´m going to try to get to the beach and spend a night there. My hotel is nothing to write home about (although, ironically, I guess I am writing home about it right now...), but the landlady´s really nice and is letting me stay in a room with a private bathroom, even though I´m only paying for a single room.

Probably my favorite part about Chinandega is it means I´m off the "gringo trail" and back in the middle of nowhere. So far I haven´t seen another tourist here (possibly because there´s not much to see) and I´ve been called "chela" or "chelita" about 6 times. Chele/a is a word they use for white people, but when you´re in a sea of gringos, no one differentiates you that way. Nicaraguans are huge on addressing people by their physical characteristics rather than their names. It would be like calling someone "chubby" or "tan" or "blonde" to their face in English, only it´s much less offensive in Spanish. So right now, I own the chela title.

The entire city looks like Spanish Harlem

I did not in fact make it back to Nicaragua today. I guess my luck with bus schedules ran out, because I only made it from Copán to Tegucigalpa (the Honduran capital) today. Granted, that was a good 7 hours on the bus/9 hours of total travel time, but it would have been nice to make it all the way to Nicaragua. This totally throws off my beach plans, too, so now if I want to make it to the coast one more time I´ll have to move really fast and spend a lot more time and money on buses than I want. But maybe I´ll decide it´s worth it. Or maybe not. I realized how much money I´ve spent on transportation just getting up to Copán... Honestly, I probably blew more money on buses in the last 5 days than I did in the previous 2 weeks. Ridiculous. That´s what I get for trying to do too much in too little time, I guess.

So I´m in Tegucigalpa for a grand total of 12 hours now. I was prepared to hate everything about the city and hole up in my hotel all night, but after walking around for a few blocks, it´s not so bad. Really, it looks like the dirtier part of New York. I´m not saying I´ll be jogging through the streets after nightfall or anything, but I think it has an undeservedly bad reputation. Today is Sunday, unfortunately, so most of the restaurants and all the museums are closed. But the people-watching is still good, and it goes both ways. I watch them, they watch me, we watch each other. Story of my life in Central America. I´ve become a tourist attraction. More than once, I´ve noticed people (men and women) snapping pictures of me either with their cameras or their cell phones. Should I start charging a small fee?

It's like reaching for an apple and getting an orange.

Mad shout out to Katie Anderson for perfectly describing my 2 months here: It's like reaching for an apple and getting an orange. It took me a really long time (well, 3 weeks at least) to understand that Nicaragua was not Argentina. But now I've adjusted to the orange, and I like it in a different way.

That said, Honduras just isn't doing it for me, so I'm running back into the safe arms of Nicaragua tomorrow. I decided that I don't have enough time to give Honduras its fair chance. Even though I've spent almost 3 days in the country now, I don't feel like I know Honduras at all because this town is so not real. So I'm glad I got to see some ruins, and now I will go back to Nicaragua and if anyone asks, I've never been to Honduras. Hey, there's no stamp on my passport, so who's going to prove any different?

Last night I went to dinner with the 3 girls who toured the ruins with me. Afterwards, Nele (the Belgian) and I sat in our hostel and talked to Lucho, the travelling artisan from Guatemala, for awhile. Nele and I are making dinner for him and 2 other travellers tonight. Well, Nele's really making dinner. I just cut some tomatoes and ate pieces of cheese when no one was looking. Since I've been travelling I haven't gotten to use my Spanish much, so it was nice having a long conversation in Spanish last night and hopefully tonight will be more of the same.

Today, Nele and I went on a 3 hour horseback ride of the country along with a couple from Spain. For the record, I have hated horses since I was 8. I used to go to extreme lengths to get out of horseback at camp (scooping poop in the barn, waking up at 5:30 in the morning to play polocrosse rather than going to regular horseback activities), but I thought maybe my feelings toward horses would have changed as I've grown. False. They still suck. But I wanted to see more of the countryside, and I'm all hiked out. Actually, this wasn't too bad as far as horseback experiences go. My horse and I reached an understanding that she could do whatever she wanted so long as it didn't involve knocking me into a tree or attacking another horse. We made a good team in that sense.

Tomorrow I will wake up at 5 so I can start waiting at the town soccer field for the bus to come and take me to San Pedro Sula, where I will probably take a bus to Tegucigalpa, then on to northern Nicaragua. My plan is to get to the Pacific coast by Monday evening and spend all day Tuesday enjoying the beach and the locals. I have high hopes that all will go according to plan. Unless Honduran authorities find my drug stash this time...

Honduran customs didn't stamp my passport. What a waste.

So after waking up at 4 a.m. yesterday, waiting at the gas station until 6 for the bus, crossing the border to Honduras, not getting my passport stamped, changing buses in the middle of nowhere, getting stopped by the Honduran police and having all my belongings searched for drugs and weapons, changing buses in Tegucigalpa and finally in San Pedro Sula... I have arrived in Copan Ruinas. There's an accent in that name, but this keyboard won't do accents or parenthesis, for whatever reason. And the guy running the cybercafe is really surly. And probably 15 years old. Awesome. I think I am kind of grouchy right now as well.

This morning I went to the nearby Mayan ruins with 3 other girls I met, one from my hostel and 2 who we ran into while getting coffee. The 4 of us, along with 2 other travelers, split the price of a guide for the ruins, which was totally worth it. I got some cool pictures and had a good time laughing with our guide Mauricio and with my group. These were my first real ruins, other than the ones I sketchily visited while in Argentina, so I just tried to absorb as much as I could.

I am still up in the air as to whether I will stay here tomorrow or head to Tela, on the Caribbean coast. Part of me hates the thought of getting on another bus, even if it is just for 5 hours, whereas part of me has no desire to stay in this town. It's a cute place, but not at all Honduran. The town was built so people could visit the nearby ruins; hence, it feels a little like Disneyworld. Also, I think I have hit my full capacity for new experiences, and I sort of just want to run back to Nicaragua and enjoy that country for the next 5 days. I should give Honduras a chance, though. Thus far I've found the people to be incredibly kind. But really, I miss Nicaragua.

Also, being on the bus gave me some serious time to reflect on my time here, and I came to the stunning conclusion that I really strongly dislike Granada. The Nicaraguan Granada, I mean. I have nothing against the Spanish version. Anyhow, the whole time I was there I couldn't help but feel this separation from the city, almost like the place was drowning and I was standing on the sidelines watching. I thought that was how I felt about Nicaragua in general, but after travelling for a couple of weeks I've realized that, for all its poverty, the country itself is really beautiful and the people are just normal people once you get away from the tourist hubs. The problem with Granada, in my opinion, is that it's almost entirely a city of foreigners. Nearly all the businesses and hotels are owned by foreigners, and even those that are owned by locals cater to tourists because we have the money. This creates a huge gap between the Nicas and the visitors and it leaves the city feeling half dead, in my opinion. I honestly feel so strongly about this that I'm dreading going back there to pick up the stuff I left on Wednesday, and I wish I could just skip it and head straight to the airport in Managua. But that's impossible and irresponsible, so I will just suck it up and spend one final night in a hostel in Granada. And who knows? Maybe distance is just making my heart grow less fond.

Head for the hills!!! Or, for Honduras.

Approximately 30 years ago, Somoza (dictator/leader of the Nicaraguan conservative bastards) stormed and bombed the city of Matagalpa because the Sandinista rebels were situating themselves here. As a result, almost 4500 Matagalpans fled the city and hid out in the nearby hills. Why am I telling you this? Because nowadays, with the help of a map purchased for just a little over a dollar, you too can experience the joys of tramping through the fields of the hills surrounding Matagalpa, following the same path so many people took in 1979. It´s absolutely as good of an idea as it sounds.

Monday night when I got back to my hotel after dinner, I ran into 1 of the guides from my full moon hike, Josh. He and his friend Rob were also in Matagalpa for a couple of days, and had bought a map of the Sandinista trail to hike for the following day. I, along with 2 other girls from North Carolina, ended up joining them on one of the greatest hikes to date. The scenery was beautiful and it was cool that we were following the trail that so many people used to literally flee for their lives 30 years ago, but the best part was the directions on the map. And I quote, "From the northeast corner of the city park, head straight up the big hill. Turn left at the fork in the road. Turn left at the next fork. At the line of trees, head right. Cross 2 fields. Pay a Nica man named Tito Prado 10 cordobas for the privilege of crossing his property. Climb a barbwire fence. Walk through a field until you get to the next fence. Climb that fence. Follow the trail across the main road and turn right when you see the radio antenna."

We actually didnt get too lost until the very end, at which point we accidentally wandered through a farmer´s mango grove and wound up in his backyard. I think more than anything, we confused a lot of Nicas. What we were doing for "fun" (walking through farms and dirt roads, that is) they do every day out of necessity. 6 hours and a few wrong turns later, though, we made it back to Matagalpa just in time for an early dinner and a nice hot shower.

This morning I woke up around 3:30, and 5:30, and then finally 7:30. People in hotels with paper thin walls should NOT let their infants cry all night. I got breakfast and bought some jewelry (Matagalpa is known for its black ceramics and I bought some kick-a necklaces from the cutest woman I´ve seen yet), then caught a bus to Estelí. After I had my 2nd breakfast (get off my back, I do a lot of walking here), I hunted down one of the girls from my night hike who is staying here with a family. I ended up going to La Casita, an organic farm and bakery outside the city, with her and her host sister. We had phenomenal yogurt, granola and whole grain bread--all things I miss terribly from home! By the time we got back it was already 4 in the afternoon, so I found a bank and then bought a bus ticket to go to Honduras tomorrow. Supposedly, a bus will pick me up at a gas station outside town at 5 a.m. So little can go wrong with that plan.

The bus should take me to the capital city Tegucigalpa, but seeing how I´ve heard nothing good about that place I´m going to do my best to get another bus further north in the country. My ultimate plan is to get to Copán Ruinas, because I figure I shouldn´t leave the area without seeing some Mayan ruins, but that´s not entirely feasible to do in 1 day unless the stars and bus schedules align perfectly. So tomorrow will probably be a sucky travel day, followed by half a travel day on Friday, some ruins on Saturday, perhaps another travel day on Sunday, the Caribbean (!) on Monday and then 2 travel days back to Granada by Wednesday. It´s going to be fast paced and not how I´d prefer to travel, but hopefully it will be worth it in the end. Say prayers for safe bus rides, a lack of pickpockets and good hostel situations.

Houston, we have hot water

I may never leave this place.

I still dont know where I will be 3 days from now. I mean, I will be in Nicaragua or Honduras, thats for sure. I am starting to get lazy about travelling, and since I only have 8 days left before I need to be back in Granada, I am not sure if its even worth it to press up to northern Honduras. Then again, 8 days is a good long while to entertain myself in the northern hills of Nicaragua.

I should decide soon. I am making Thursday my cut off day for leaving this country.

Not much to report today. I went to an organic coffee plantation called Selva Negra and hiked by myself for almost 3 hours. Coffee picking season is November-February here, so there wasnt much going on in the way of that, but I did go on a tour of the farm and at least got to see where the coffee grows, where they wash it, where the workers live, etc etc. It wasnt as cool as I was hoping, but at least I made it to a coffee farm, right? Check off one more goal for this trip.

I like Matagalpa. Its set up in the hills of Nicaragua so its not nearly as hot as the other parts Ive seen. And its much less popular with the backpacker crowd, so I feel like I am getting a little more of the real country. Unfortunately, this also means I have a lot more time alone. I dont really mind, though. The only part I dislike about being alone is dinner time. Eating alone can be awkward sometimes. But I cant complain.

Oh, and for the record, I cant figure out how to work the apostrophe button on this keyboard.

For those of you who have never spent time in hostels...

I am dedicating this post to hostels because I am currently not staying in one. Instead, I am paying a wopping $7.50 per night for my own bedroom and what looks suspiciously like a hot water shower in a hotel. At first I balked at the price since I have been paying between 2 and 6 dollars for shared dorm rooms, until I realized that $7.50 wont even get you a meal in the States.

I think everyone should have to spend some time in hostels. No matter how cool you think you are, you are guaranteed to meet someone (usually European) who quit their job and has been travelling (alone or with a friend) for at least a year through Central and South America. And their pack is usually way smaller than mine. Besides the super intense solo traveller, you are also guaranteed to encounter the following:

1. The group of incredibly attractive Scandinavians. They all hang out together, they are all beautiful and they drink beer like water.
2. The Israelis. Chances are they are on their year long tour of the world after finishing 3 years of military service. So far, all the Israelis I have met have been the funniest, nicest group of people. If you are fortunate enough to share a dorm with an Israeli or 2, try to chat them up.
3. The Canadians. If you hear someone speaking "American" English, its usually best to ask if they are from Canada first. I got this advice from a British guy and so far its working out great, since the Americans dont care if they are mistaken for Canadians whereas the Canadians can get annoyed if you assume they are from the States. Some Canadians are great, some of them suck. I would rank them the same as the travellers from the US in that you get your good ones and your bad ones. I guess you can go ahead and stick the British and the Australians into this category as well, although I have laughed more with the English and the Ozzies than with the Canadians.
4. The single Canadian/American guy. This is the only trip he will ever take. He doesnt speak the local language and he takes about 500 pictures everywhere he goes. He probably works with computers and his friends back home think he is awesome. I first encountered this in Argentina when we met Jeremy during our Easter break trip.
5. The people from other Spanish speaking countries. Half of them are travelling the continent selling jewelry. They have really awesome dreads.
6. The people who dont belong and complain about everything. Like the girls in my dorm last night, who were visibly pissed that other people kept opening and shutting the door. In a 6 person dorm. At 9 p.m. on a Saturday.

And finally, some commonly heard questions/comments in hostels:

• Do you think this _____ (snake, caterpillar, vine) is poisonous? (So far the answers have been no, yes and yes, respectively)
• Have you been robbed yet? (Automatic cool points if you have. I would still rather not answer yes to this question, though)
• Did you hear about the other people who got robbed? (This is a great conversation starter)
• Are the showers nice? (This is a more or less pointless question. Chances are, the showers arent nice. But that doesnt mean you wont be using them all the same)
• Well, my guidebook says... (The guidebook is overquoted, but still so helpful at times)
• The drunkest I have been was in... (And we all know what a good idea it is to get faded in a place where you are obviously a tourist)

I left Leon at 7:30 this morning and spent 3 hours in a chicken bus going down the worst pothole, I mean road, I have ever experienced. It was so bad that at one point my seat actually flew up in the air and came off its track. I still managed to sleep the entire way, though, which impressed a couple of Canadians sitting across the aisle from me. I am currently in Matagalpa, and tomorrow I will try to get myself over to a coffee farm, then probably head to Esteli on Tuesday. After that, I am still up in the air as to whether I should head to Honduras or to the Nicaraguan coast. We shall see...

I hate updating this sometimes

So much has happened and there´s so much to share, but part of me doesn´t even care to update anymore, especially since I´ll be back in the States in less than 2 weeks. But a lot can happen in 2 weeks, so I´ll keep trucking...

Thursday: Met Judith for a drink around 9. How do I keep meeting such nice people? She´s living with a friend who´s making a documentary on the pesticides used by local farmers. Apparently, the chemicals are causing kidney failure in a scary percentile of them (one area has 78 widows out of 400 families), so Judith´s friend Steve is making a documentary on the problem and has started an organization to provide information and counseling to the families. Oh, and he rents a totally sick house here in León. In his words, "I have palm trees. That never gets old."

Friday: Got up at 9 to go volcano boarding. Volcano boarding? Yes. You climb a volcano and then sled down. The volcano is called Cerro Negro and it´s the youngest in Central America. Sounds great. Too bad the rain came and the trip had to be called off. The good part, though, is that I was in a truck with some really cool people (2 Australian girls, a German guy, a Canadian guy and a few Israelis) who I ended up hanging out with during the afternoon. We all went our separate ways after lunch, but at 3:30 we met back in the hostel because we´d heard a rumor that President Ortega was coming to speak in the city center to commemorate the 29th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution. The actual anniversary was today, but I guess they like to start the party early. We got to the center a little before 4, and then we waited. And waited. And waited. We heard rumors that he wasn´t even coming, or that Hugo Chavez was coming, or that he´d be here tomorrow. But finally, amidst overpoweringly loud music, fireworks, sirens and waving flags, we got to hear the president of Nicaragua speak. I was more interested in Che Guevara´s wife and daughter, who were honored guests at the rally, than in what Ortega himself had to say. But to sum up his speech for you... "Down with capitalism. Fight the imperialist pigs. Shun the yankee bastards. Free yourselves from the constraints of foreign NGOs and foreign dollars. Equality! Freedom! Long live the revolution! To victory, now and forever!" You get the picture.

Friday night (which has bled into Saturday with no definite beginning or end): 2nd volcano hike of the day to Volcán Telica. I went with an organization called QuetzalTrekkers, which is run entirely by volunteers and gives all their profits to an organization called Las Tías to help street kids. Apparently the locals are iffy as to how much good Las Tías really does, but I couldn´t pass up the chance to hike an active volcano in the moonlight. We ate a snack at the QT office around 10:30, then hopped in vans which drove us to the park, and by 11 p.m. it was just us, our packs, our flashlights and the countryside. Our group was about 15 large, including a guy from California, 2 Spanish girls, 2 Dutch girls and their dad, a Swiss woman and her 14 year old son, 2 more girls from California, another Dutch guy, me and our 4 guides. One of the guides was entirely preoccupied with flirting with one of the gorgeous Spaniards the entire time, but the other 3 were so cool. My favorite was the German who has been travelling for 19 months now, and can mark how long he´s been travelling by how long his mohawk and his single thin braid are. Oh, and German is absolutely my next language to tackle. I´m sick of not understanding half the people I hear in hostels.

So we hiked from 11 p.m. to about 4 a.m. First we were on a dirt road, then we started crossing fences and walking through corn fields, then we suddenly plunged into the pitch black forest for the last 2 hours or so. This was, of course, when my flashlight decided to burn out. The guide near me was way too busy with his Spanish lady, so I ended up falling down a lot. But then, so did everyone else. We took a couple of breaks, my favorite of which was under a huge mango tree. We saw it again in daylight but I think it was almost cooler at night, the way the branches spread out and made everything so shadowy. We finally made it to the crater rim and stumbled our way over tons of volcanic rock until we got to the edge. The guides told us to lay on our stomachs and peer over the edge down into the volcano. No lava, but I did get a face full of sulfur smoke. The wind and the rain finally became too much for us, so we went down into a valley where it was slightly less cold and huddled on the ground like the pansies we were until superfly Germanguy started a fire, at which point we Americans introduced the Europeans to the joys of roasting marshmallows. Yes, we roasted marshamallows at 6 in the morning on the side of a volcano. We tried to explain how awesome it is to set your mallow completely on fire, but the perfectionist Dutch girls had to show us up and perfectly brown theirs, leading me to point out that "Maybe Europeans really are better at everything?" The other Dutch guy saved us from our American embarrassment by bringing up that one country that has set the standard for perfecting what others have started. And I quote, "At least no one here is Japanese. Then we´d all look bad." 10 times funnier when you haven´t slept in 24 hours and the speaker is foreign.

After breakfast (coffee, bread and peanut butter!) most of us headed back up to the crater rim to see if we could see anything more. The clouds had started to clear away and we suddenly had an amazing view of our volcano, other volcanoes, farms and hills on all sides. I took so many pictures and I´m sure they all suck next to the real thing. At some point, we started a game called "throw rocks at other rocks and try to make those rocks fall into the volcano." Everyone, from the 50 year old Dutch man to the 14 year old Swiss boy, participated. The competition got pretty fierce.

We hiked back down and got to our lunch spot in a nearby town, passing through an area with bubbling mud springs (think Old Faithful toned down and way dirtier). Finally, at 2 p.m. today, we got back to León. My original plan was to press on north to Matagalpa today, but I decided nothing sounded worse than sitting on an old school bus for 4 hours, so I checked into the same hostel as before and will go to Matagalpa early tomorrow morning. I´d gotten to know a few other travellers in the hostel and they are all here for one more night as well, so it was nice to have a sort of homecoming.

Mom and Dad: It´s probably a little late in the game for this, but do I have travel insurance?

It´s raining lizards

Today I heard the song "Piano Man" translated into Spanish. Not the point of this post, though...

Wednesday night: Joseph, Caroline and I went to a place we´d heard had good burgers (the last "burger" I got consisted of shredded chicken and mayonnaise on a hamburger bun, so I was skeptical). The food was great, but right as I took a bite out of my burger I felt something heavy fall onto my hand. It felt like a french fry had somehow flicked up, but when I looked down there was a lizard halfway on my hand and halfway on my burger. I screamed (out of shock, not fear) and Caroline and Joseph both thought the lizard was climbing out of my food. There are little black lizards everywhere, and I´d heard about them falling off ceilings before but had never personally experienced this wonder. I was laughing so hard I couldn´t breathe, much less speak English or Spanish, so it took a good 5 minutes to restore order. I had to assure our waiter about 6 times that it was fine, that I didn´t want a replacement burger, that everything was ok, etc etc.

Afterwards, we went to a restaurant/bar called Olla Quemada (burned pot) to hear a local band play. The place was entirely packed and maybe 10 people in there were Nica, while the rest were fellow gringo travellers just looking for a good beer and some nice music. We got there early enough to get a table, but it turned into standing or perching room only. The people watching was spectacular. Caroline and Joseph had to get up early-ish this morning to catch a bus back to Managua for their noon flight, so we left around 10 and said goodbye for real this time.

Thursday (today): After my breakfast of yogurt, cereal and coffee (which feels like a luxury after 6 weeks of beans and tortillas for breakfast), I started talking to an English girl and a Swiss girl in my room. They were heading to the beach today, which I was planning on doing, too, so we rode out to the beach about 45 minutes from León together. It was so gorgeous. The sand was dark but the water was fairly blue and clear, plus we literally had the entire place to ourselves (minus the pelicans and sand crabs). I also realized that this was the 3rd time I´ve seen the Pacific in the last year (San Diego, Chile and now here), but the first time I´ve really swum in it. We played in the water for maybe an hour, then hung out on the beach for an hour, then got back in the water for awhile. After lunch we caught the bus back to León right before it started raining. Speaking of lunch, I´ve been increasingly glad on this trip that I don´t have any food allergies or generally picky eating habits. Maybe I have low standards for food, but at least I never go hungry. One of the girls was vegetarian and couldn´t find anything on the menu that looked good, so she just didn´t eat for the entire day. I, on the other hand, dominated my plate of fish, rice, cabbage and tortilla.

Oh, side story: the bus we caught from the beach left from a market on the other end of town in a more indigenous community. Right by the gate into the market was a woman selling live crabs, mollusks and eggs. Chicken eggs? Nay. Turtle eggs. So much for wildlife protection laws, I guess.

I am supposed to meet up with Judith, the Austrian girl, for a drink at 8, so I need to go find some dinner before that. Tomorrow´s a double volcano hike (more on that after I make it through alive), then hopefully Saturday I will head to Matagalpa. Travelling by myself is so interesting. Sometimes I think it might be nice to have a buddy for moral support, but it´s really freeing to realize that there is no one telling me where to go or what to do. I am in complete control of my time and my agenda. It´s a little scary if I think about it too much.

I do not deserve any of this

In a good way, I mean. I am far too blessed. Here´s the rundown on the last 24 hours of my life...

After I made that last post, I decided to wander around and try to find somewhere where I could eat dinner alone without looking too awkward. As I was walking down the street, I heard someone calling my name--Caroline and Joseph just happened to be eating dinner right across the street from my hostel! So I ended up eating with them, then went back to my hostel and watched the 12th inning of the All Star game (who won, anyhow?) until I decided I was too wiped from my day of travel to take anymore. Slept a good 10 hours, and then came...

Wednesday (today): Woke up at 8 and went to the supermarket to buy myself yogurt, cereal and bananas. I figured it would be much cheaper to eat breakfast that way than going out every day (and less alone since I can eat in the hostel.) I ended up talking to a 50 year old hippie who was selling jewelry in my hostel for about half an hour. He was born in a favela (read: ghetto) in Brazil but moved to Bolivia when he was 7, after which point he travelled all over, even spending some time in Austin. He told me he loved hippie hollow, back before "they" ruined it. He also told me I was welcome to come by his workshop any time to check out his jewelry and, since I "look like a person who enjoys a good toke", to light up with him. I probably won´t take him up on that offer. I told him I´ve never smoked weed a day in my life, at which point he told me "well, you´ve got the look down!" I´m not sure what that means but it doesn´t really bother me. Maybe it means I look relaxed? It´s also funny to me that he´s not the first person down here who´s suggested that maybe I enjoy "alternative" forms of recreation.

Anyhow, after I left the hostel I ended up walking around the city with a British woman named Sarah. We went to the cathedral (biggest in central america, I think) and to an art museum. The art museum was AMAZING. It had so much more than I´d expected. There was of course the usual 400 year old Catholic paintings of sad looking people surrounded by fat angels, but there was also tons of indigenous art, surreal paintings and 3 original Picassos! And, it only cost us 60 cents to get in. Afterwards, Sarah and I went for lunch at a café with amazing coffee. She went back to the hostel since she wasn´t feeling well, and I checked out another museum.

I feel so uneducated, but until I got down here I´d never heard of Ruben Dario. He´s apparently renowned as one of the best Hispanic poets ever, and after visiting the house where he lived and reading some of his stuff, I can see why. His work and his life remind me a lot of Pablo Neruda (or maybe it´s just that good poetry comes out of a life of travel, women and rebellion). They didn´t have any books of his poetry at the museum, so afterwards I went to a nearby bookstore to look around. No luck there, but I did start a conversation with a girl from Austria named Judith who´s visiting her friend here for a month. We ended up having coffee together and talking for almost an hour, and we might try to meet up tomorrow.

I´m meeting Caroline and Joseph for dinner tonight (they are leaving tomorrow), so it will be nice not to have to worry about eating alone. I´m realizing more and more, though, that every time I think I will be "lonely", I´m not. I´m sure it will happen in time, but so far I´ve been amazingly blessed with friendships, even if they are random and short lived. I like León a lot, it´s a beautiful city with a lot of history, and I´m looking forward to getting to see more of the area (volcanoes and beaches) over the next couple of days. Since I´m travelling, my Spanish isn´t getting as much of a workout now, but my legs and my brain are working overtime so I think it´s a fair trade off.

Enjoy your lives and your friendships back home, I am definitely getting ready to see people and hear about other summers!

Excuse the itinerary

Those of you looking for a social commentary won´t find it here. What follows is almost strictly an itinerary of the last 3 days of my life...

Saturday: Woke up around 7:30 to eat breakfast, check my email and finish packing. Said goodbye to my host family, which was so strange. It was a warm goodbye, but detached all the same. I guess it has to be. Went and met Caroline and her brother Joseph at their hostel. I wasn´t sure how travelling with them would be, but Joseph has one of the happiest laughs I´ve ever heard and it worked out really well. We bussed from Granada to Rivas along with a dozen other foreigners and a guy playing a guitar and urging us to break free from the constraints of "Catholicism and coca cola". He also ranted for a good 10 minutes about how before the Spaniards came, all the indigenous tribes lived in peace and how we need to expel the foreigners who come here looking to use the locals for their own entertainment. He also said we should create a world without borders or passports. I held my tongue. We got to Rivas and from there taxied to San Jorge. The driver pulled a fast one and overcharged us by 20 córdobas, which was more irritating than anything else. Oh, well. Got on the ferry and sat down below with the few life jackets, the anchor and the highly necessary beer cooler. Got to Moyogalpa, on Isla de Ometepe, and ended up splitting the cost of a van with 4 British girls and 2 British guys to our hostel about an hour away.

Isla de Ometepe is actually being considered for one of the 7 natural wonders of the world. It´s formed out of 2 volcanoes and supposedly fulfilled an ancient indian prophecy of finding 2 joined mountains in the middle of the lake. It´s also crazy beautiful. However, I realized this weekend that I don´t like the idea of being on an island. Too much can go wrong, especially when half the island is an active volcano.

We all slept in a dorm room at our hostel, Finca Magdalena, which is an old coffee plantation. Our beds were more or less tall plastic cots. Caroline actually ripped through hers on the 2nd night, which may help to explain the phenomenal grudge all the F.M. staff seemed to hold against us. Caroline, Joseph and I walked around the grounds and looked at some petroglyphs (indigenous stone art) until it started pouring rain. We then went back and ordered dinner from the hostel, at which point we realized that the F.M. kitchen is in fact a black hole where food orders go in and are never seen again. Fortunately, we had a good time talking until our food arrived. The British kids were completely hilarious, especially the guys, which was good because we all spent the entire weekend together.

Sunday: I slept like a rock all night. Everyone else said they woke up around 10 times. We were supposed to meet our guides for the volcano hike around 7:30, but we didn´t end up leaving until about 8 (that´s known as the latin hour around here). We hiked Maderas, which is the smaller of the 2 volcanoes. Small is a relative word. It was supposed to be a 7-8 hour hike, but unfortunately 2 of the girls hurt themselves pretty badly and it took us almost 10 hours of walking, which was broken up by frequent water, snack and (for our guides) lollypop and smoke breaks. The first 5 uphill hours redefined the term "muddy scramble", the last 5 were more or less a series of coordinated falls down the mountain. There was a crater lake at the top where we stopped for lunch, which was so beautiful. It rained on us on the way down and we were all definitely ready to be done, but I would said it was worth it in the end. The area was so lush and green, broken by red flowers and spider webs. We heard loads of howler monkeys (which the English guys insisted were cows, just to piss me off) and passed above the cloud line. When we got back we all hit the cold showers, then ordered coffee, tea, beer and dinner. The coffee kept me up until about 2 a.m., unfortunately, but a few of us stayed up talking until around 11. Caroline and Joseph went to bed early and left me alone for almost 2 hours to fend off British attacks on my "lazy" American English. We laughed a whole lot and I´m so thankful for that.

Monday: The others went back to Moyogalpa to catch the ferry and go their separate ways, but I decided I wasn´t done with old Ometepe quite yet. So, I had the van driver drop me on the beach between the 2 volcanoes in a town called Playa Santo Domingo. I hated saying goodbye to the others, but going to the ferry would only have been delaying the inevitable since we would all be splitting on the other side anyhow. I checked into a hostel called Hospedaje Buena Vista, which was right on the beach. I´d like to point out that even though the island is in the middle of a lake, it´s such a huge lake that it really does look like the ocean from shore. I ended up getting a 2nd breakfast at Buena Vista, then walked to a swimming hole with an English girl named Lucy. We swam and read for a few hours until the rain came, then went back to the hostel where I spent the rest of the day reading and writing in a hammock. I was sharing a room with 2 German guys, so I ate dinner with them and then Lucy, the Germans and I talked for awhile before going to bed. One of the Germans, Janni, downed 3 liters of beer without breaking a sweat. When I expressed my concern for his health, they both just laughed and said "We´re German!" It was their turn to be horrified later when I confessed to owning a gun, though.

Woke up this morning around 7 (I just can´t sleep in here) and caught a bus with the Germans back to the ferry. After the ferry I caught a bus to Managua, then a shuttle to León, where I currently am. It´s been a long day of travel, so I´m glad to be here. I found a hostel called Hostel Bigfoot that seems pretty cool (and it´s only $6 per night!) and tomorrow I´m planning on walking around the city and booking a few volcano hikes for myself.

Thanks for all your interest, emails and prayers. I´m tired right now but I´m doing good. Travelling alone is definitely a new experience and I´m still on the fence as to whether or not I like it, but I´m so thankful for all the opportunities I´ve been given and for everything I´ve seen already. Now I am going to find dinner and then hopefully find someone to laugh with at Bigfoot.

Sensory Overload

This was going to be a long, well thought out post. I´ve been on this computer for way too long, though, so instead it´s going to be a long rambling post that I make just for the sake of getting some memories out...

Wednesday: When someone dies in Nicaragua, the family, friends and awkward foreign girl sit around in plastic chairs on the sidewalk outside the deceased´s house. Some people stay all night, drinking soda and coffee and eating cake. Most of us just stayed until 10 or 11. The cousins also thought it was hilarious that I was sitting there "funeraling" with them. In my defense, I thought it was normal "hang out on the sidewalk and talk" time, not "remember our departed friend" time. The 2 are easy to confuse.
I also had an incredibly frustrating conversation with one of the cousins on why I have friends who aren´t Nicaraguan (ie dutch and from the US) here. I was going to rant about that, but I don´t have time now. I managed to bite my tongue during our conversation because I didn´t want to offend the family by telling off one of their sons in perhaps more than 1 language, but I did go home and spend half an hour writing out my frustration and my counterpoints in my journal.

Thursday: Took my laundry to the laundromat in the morning. This turned out to be one of my best decisions yet. I honestly had forgotten what truly clean clothes smell and feel like. Then went to school, where we had a piñata with the kids. Went home for lunch, went back to school and taught my 2 afternoon students. Picked up my laundry, dropped off everything I´m not travelling with at my friend Trista´s house, got home just in time for Angela Cristina´s birthday party. 3 hours later, I emerged from a house that contained cake, ice cream, a giant Dora the Explorer piñata and 15 groggy preschoolers to go talk to my friend Caroline about our upcoming weekend of travel. Ended up going out dancing with Caroline´s neighbor Nami, who just got here Tuesday. We went with a couple of other Americans who are here studying and Nami´s host dad, who is 36. We had a really great time and it was nice getting to laugh a lot in English and Spanish.

Friday: Last day of teaching. The kids were so badly behaved today that I cut class 45 minutes short and used the extra time to go say goodbye to the employees and kids over at the daycare. Went home for lunch, and now here I am. Today I have to buy a daypack for hiking, pack all my stuff, drop by 2 friends houses, change some money and go say goodbye to the other US girls at 8:30. They are going out to a disco by the lake but a big part of me wants to spend my last night in Granada absorbing the city, rather than other people´s sweat.

Caroline, her brother and I are leaving for Isla de Ometepe at 10 in the morning. I´m not sure what my internet schedule will be like after that, but I will update as often as possible until I get home on August 1 (3 weeks from today). Prayers for protection would be greatly appreciated. Keep sending emails about your lives at home, I love reading them even if it takes me a couple of days to respond.

Goodbye Granada, hello chicken buses!

Stress... what´s that?

Oh, but yes, I am in fact stressed by the amount of crap I have to do in the next 48 hours. Just so you can share in my distress...

1. Laundry. Easy, right? Wrong. We are currently experiencing a no water situation, and I have got to get my clothes washed by tonight or tomorrow at the latest if they are to dry in time for me to pack. And that´s assuming it doesn´t rain...
2. Pack. Easy, right? See laundry situation.
3. Plan for 2 more days worth of English class. Which, by the way, I am loving. Thank goodness.
4. Say goodbye to friends and host family. Goodbyes are awkward.
5. Plan my travels for the next 3 weeks. Or at least, for this coming weekend. It´s looking like the new volunteer Caroline will be travelling with me to Isla de Ometepe this weekend, after which we will probably go our separate ways. It will be nice to have a travel buddy to start out with, but this means we actually have to plan something so everything doesn´t fall through.

Oh, and I need to get home soon to watch the funeral procession go past my house. 2 (important) locals have died within the past week, which means the neighbors come out in droves to go to the funeral and watch the processions. There are also trucks with speakers mounted on them driving through the streets at literally all hours, announcing who has died and the time and place of their funeral. I hope I receive the same recognition when I pass. If anyone wants to loudly announce my death through their PA system at 4 a.m., I wouldn´t be opposed.

I am excited to start travelling, but I almost don´t want to leave at this point. I´ve really started enjoying my work, and my host family, and the city in general. It´s going to be bittersweet to leave for sure. Apparently on Sunday when I was wandering the city with my "cousin" some other "cousins" came over to see if I wanted to join their dance party in the other house. Even small invitations like that mean so much to me, and recently I have been noticing how blessed I´ve been with kind people here. Like I have said before, Granada is small enough that there don´t really seem to be any secrets or strangers after awhile. I see people I know everywhere and I recognize a lot of locals around town. My extended host family, fellow volunteers and Nica employees, kids from the school and daycare, as well as "schizo painter guy", "crazy eye mango lady", "drag queens", "guy with 1 leg", "guy who owns the pool hall", "old man who always says hi", "the guard at the rich people´s house", "that guy who delivers tortillas" and probably a half dozen others have formed my experiences here much more than anything I have done.

Enough reminiscing. I have a funeral procession to get to and clothing to wash.

"It´s like a giant game of red rover"

Last night, all I wanted to do was curl up at my house after dinner, listen to the rain and enjoy a quiet evening. Fortunately, Isabel Cristina convinced me to go out with the other US girls, which led to...

A series of highly ridiculous events. We started the night at this wine place right on the central park. The other girls apparently really miss "good" cheese, and this is the only place in town they´ve found that will serve a cheese plate. I´m ambivalent about the whole cheese situation. While we were enjoying our wine and brie, we noticed a marching band headed out way. That´s totally not unusual here since there are high school marching bands practicing at all hours of the day and night in all parts of the city. What we quickly realized was unusual about this band was that they were accompanied by dancers and all the musicians were covered in glitter. They ended up stopping at a stage about 2 blocks from us, so we walked over afterwards to see what was going on. It turns out this is just the beginning of a month long rev-up for the big carnival in August. Each city in Nicaragua celebrates their saint with huge parties. August 1-10 the party starts in Managua then moves this way, arriving in Granada on August 15, at which point the parades, bull running, drinking and dancing go strong for a few days and nights. But, of course, the high school bands have to start practicing now, and Miss Granada has to be crowned early.

We clearly didn´t fit in there since we were significantly older and more foreign than most of the crowd, but that didn´t stop us from somehow becoming part of the human barricade. The Nicas told us to interlock fingers and to not, under any circumstances, allow anyone from the crowd to break through and disturb the performers (hence the "giant game of red rover" comment). We all held hands and eventually the 5 of us got separated as more and more people pushed through. Imagine the pushiest crowd you´ve ever experienced, and then double the noise and the force. Eventually the Nicas decided we weren´t worthy of their barricade and we were literally carried away from the frontlines by the crowd. We ended up standing around and watching the band and dancers perform for awhile, then escaped to a nearby restaurant until the parade had moved on. We ended the night at a bar called Mi Tierra, where we were (pleasantly) the only foreigners and by far the worst dancers in the place.

Needless to say, we laughed a lot last night.

Today we were without both power and water for the morning. What do you do when there´s no power or water? Generally, you sit around your house and complain about how hot it is. You then go to your cousin´s house and complain about how bored and hot you are. Afterwards, you might go for a walk around town and buy some ice cream to console your sweating body. When you pass a house and notice their tv is on, you go home in hopes that the power has returned to your block as well. But don´t count on it.

She ate what?

Chicharrón. I ate chicharrón. For those of you who have never been to Nicaragua, chicharrón is fried pork rinds. With a little hair still attached for flavor. I´ll start from the beginning...

Remember my friend Fatima from the convent who invited me to her house? Well, I didn´t see her on Friday so I wasn´t sure if I was still invited or not. But after thinking it over, because I always think things over, I decided it would be better for me to go and stand on the side of the road where she told me to stand and have her not show up than for her to wait for me and me not show up. Does that make sense? This morning I left my house at around 8 to catch a bus from Granada to Nandaime. I then asked the driver to let me off at Empalme el Guanacaste which, incidentally, is the entrance to the volcano I climbed with Lesbia last month. So it turns out Fatima lives on the road leading up to the volcano. I remember passing all those houses and wondering what they were like inside... I waited at the gate for about half an hour, during which time all the taxi drivers who were waiting to take passengers up to the volcano entrance kept asking me things like "So, who exactly are you going to visit? You don´t know her last name? Or her phone number? Or her father´s name? Or where she lives? Hmm..." Eventually Fatima did in fact meet me and took me to her house where I met her mother, some neighbors, Fatima´s 3 sisters, 2 of her 4 brothers, her grandfather, her uncle and a few other people I couldn´t quite place.

I´m not a farming expert, but I could tell that subsistence farming in Nicaragua is far different from any kind of farming I´ve ever seen in the States. Necessity replaces aesthetics for sure. Fatima and her family all sleep in one building. I say building, not house, because house would paint a picture in your mind that´s not at all accurate. The kitchen is a separate building and they cook over 2 fires, one indoor and one outdoor. It´s on this fire that her mom fried up the pork rinds, some bits of pork and plantains. Actually, it all tasted really good. Fatima also chopped up a head of cabbage with a machete and threw in some tomatoes, some salt and some lime juice to go on top of the chicharrón. I "helped" chop cabbage but it´s harder than it looks to slice with a machete. They also grow rice and beans on the farm not to sell but for them to eat, and have a few goats and a herd of cows. It was a nice morning overall. Fatima, her sisters and I were the only ones who ate but it was a lot of fun sitting on the porch of their kitchen, drinking Pepsi and talking about things like what music we like (they asked me to translate the Black Eyed Peas into Spanish) and how hard it is to learn other languages.

After lunch, the girls took me to the bus stop and said goodbye. I ended up going to Masaya instead of Granada so I could visit the market one more time before I leave next week. The bus stopped in a completely different part than I´d seen before but I made it just fine. This day has been one endless example of the way things seem to work here: nothing goes the way you plan and everything´s confused, but in the end you get where you need to be. Unless you don´t, and then you´re in a new place. Last night at dinner my friend Trista said she doesn´t like South America because she feels like it might implode at any minute. I think that´s why I love it. It may and in fact often does implode in multiple senses, but at least that keeps things interesting.

There are no secrets in Granada

Truly, there aren´t. Case in point: the day I was sick, Angela Cristina apparently walked around telling anyone who would listen that "Catarina está enferma y le van a poner una inyección en las nalgas. " Which, unfortunately, translates to "Catharine is sick and they´re going to give her a shot in her butt." We´re not sure where she got the shot part from, but the fact remains that anyone who didn´t already know about my illness sure does now.

Caroline (new volunteer) and I changed our worksite today. We´re now teaching English in yet another "dangerous during the night" neighborhood. It´s still not exactly what I wanted, but I only have a week left. And anything that keeps me away from the screams of 60 preschoolers is fine by me. The kids we´re teaching are pretty ridiculous. We taught them for about an hour, played duck duck goose for half an hour, and then we all picked mamón, a local fruit, and ate it for the rest of the class. Today they ranged in age from 7 to 12, but apparently next week in the afternoon I´m going to get some older girls. I´m unprepared for this, so bring on the adventure. It will for sure keep me busy next week, which is good because Marjan is gone and I miss her terribly.

One of the girls I´ve been tutoring at the convent is going home tomorrow, and she invited me to visit her and her family on Saturday. I´m not sure if I´m going yet, but hopefully I will. And even if I don´t, the invitation itself means more to me than she probably knows. Hospitality and conversation mean so much here. I love it.

Sweet freedom

Here´s what happened at the daycare Monday: the new volunteer (Caroline) and I were getting ready to leave when Elsa and Claudia dropped the bomb that oh, by the way, the kids will be on vacation for the next week. So we don´t have to go to work, but if we do we´ll be helping them clean and organize until the kids come back next Tuesday. I think in metaphorical terms, we could call that the "final straw". I made an appointment to talk to Henry, the director of the Spanish school here, about the whole situation. When we met last night, I tried very hard to explain that we weren´t angry with the situation, just slightly unsatisfied and maybe a little frustrated. I say "tried very hard" because I think he still felt really bad about the whole thing, although he was very helpful. Weirdly, we ended up speaking in English, but since I´d been planning all day what I wanted to say in Spanish the conversation came out way more broken and awkward than I intended or expected. Anyhow, it turns out there was a huge lack of communication with the nuns, especially since the head Mother moved to Honduras 4 weeks ago without alerting the Spanish school. So, starting tomorrow, Caroline and I will be going to a different neighborhood to hopefully do English lessons/just hang out with a few teenage girls. Unfortunately, a lot of these girls will be gone on vacation as well, but I have high hopes all the same.

Part of me can´t help feeling really bratty and selfish about wanting to change all this. The daycare clearly does need help since they usually have 2 employees wrangling up to 65 kids. At the same time, though, I know that my strengths lie in working with older kids and definitely not with the younger ones. I´ve also been feeling progressively sadder and more repressed and today I realized that I feel freer than I´ve felt in weeks. Maybe I should have spoken up sooner, but the time never seemed quite right. It´s unfortunate that the situation is just now changing when I only have 7 work days left, but it´s better late than never.

In an unrelated story, there are 3 teenage boys who really like dressing in full drag and wandering the streets of Granada. I´ve seen them a couple of times now and I love watching them interact with the other locals, who have no problem letting the "ladies" know exactly what they think of their lifestyle. More power to them.

A public apology, a lake and a complaint

Dear neighborhood,

Sorry I yakked on the sidewalk. Twice. Thanks for all standing around watching me from your front porches. Thanks for not judging me after I stood up and managed to squeak out "Good evening, everyone..." Sorry for disturbing the peace. Thanks also to whoever washed the bushes down with a bucket of water before I had time to do it myself. It won´t happen again.

So, yes, Friday night between the hours of 8 p.m. and 3:30 a.m., I managed to puke 8 times. It was pretty gross. But fortunately, Saturday was...

Beach Day!!! (Points to anyone who caught that Office reference. Or the reference to the "beach day" Cotrupi, Heidi and I enjoyed back in May over in 6 Mile.) Anyhow, there´s this really beautiful lake about an hour from Granada called Laguna de Apoyo. The laguna itself is set into a crater (which is, incidentally, the lowest point in Central America) and surrounded by beautiful forest. There are problems with too much construction going on but they´ve still managed to preserve a lot of the area. I went with 5 other girls to spend all day Saturday, Saturday night and Sunday at a hostel called The Monkey Hut. We swam for about 3 hours in the beautiful water, and then when it started raining I crawled into a hammock and read/slept (mostly slept) for the next 24 hours. Sometimes I changed hammocks or crawled into our dorm to grab a pack of soda crackers, which were all my stomach could handle at that point. The stars came out that night and the other girls hung out on the dock for awhile with a couple of Nicaraguans they met. Walking was kind of rough for me, though, so I stayed in my hammock and had a completely peaceful time. Essentially, it was the perfect place to spend my post-vomit day. Sunday morning was sunnier so we swam then, too, and hung out and read and had a really tranquil day until the bus came by around 11. I definitely needed a quiet weekend away from the city and all its noise and dirt, and Laguna de Apoyo was so perfect.

Next weekend will be my last weekend in Granada before I head off on my great exploration of the Nicaraguan/Honduran countryside.

Now for the complaint: my volunteer position just hasn´t been what I expected or wanted. I was told I´d be working with teenage girls and I ended up in the daycare. This is hard for several reasons, not the least of which being that I just don´t really like kids that small. Beyond my personal irritation, though, it´s incredibly hard emotionally because I´m starting to get invested in a lot of these kids, and the chances that they´ll be stuck in the poverty cycle are pretty high. Which is hard to take, especially when I´m leaving in a month to go back to my life of comfort. Also, I feel like rather than changing the situation, I´m just here to change diapers and pick them up when they cry and then 6 weeks later I peace out and nothing is different. I know they need this kind of help, but somehow I want to do more. I want to do something more permanent. I´m not very eloquent right now. A few other girls I´ve met are involved in projects with women´s rights or health organizations. It´s hard not to get a little bitter that I´m not doing something similar. I´m learning a lot about stuffing my pride into a corner.

Today when I asked one of the high schoolers I tutor in the afternoons if she wanted to get married, she laughed and said, "No, I´ve seen the problems of the world." She said she´s seen what bad marriages look like, and it was hard to find a man who was honest and who wouldn´t hurt you. Keep in mind, she´s 15. And she´s seen the problems of the world. She´s also teaching me how to play the guitar.

Illness is Inconvenient

2 points to me for the alliteration in that title.

My body decided that now would be the perfect time to shut down. It started with an itchy throat on Monday, moving on to congestion and itchiness on Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday were a lot of sniffles and sneezing. Today was all of the above + my stomach feels like it´s eating itself. The obvious question is: was it something I ate? The unfortunate answer is: it could be any number of somethings I ate. Discretion isn´t really my forté when it comes to food. My host family swears I´m sick because I like to walk around the house barefoot, which means my feet get cold and thus I come down with allergies and a stomach virus. It´s more likely that I´m having a combined reaction to something in the air, germs I picked up from the kids and food I bought off the street. But I will not let myself miss out on going to the lake for the weekend, so I´m willing my aching body to forget about how gross it feels.

We´ve been without water for almost 2 days now, which means I havent had the chance to shower recently. I don´t really care, though. It´s been raining pretty steadily, so I haven´t gotten as sweaty as usual. Plus no one else has showered, either, so I just pretend it´s them and not me who smells like dirty socks.

I´ve been thinking a lot recently about working at the daycare, and why I hate it so much sometimes, and why I´m growing to love it. But I don´t really feel like writing about all that right now, so I´ll save it for next week. Cliffhanger!

Life of crime

If anyone ever wanted to pickpocket me here in Granada, the perfect time to do it would be when I´m walking down the street eating my bag of mango. I keep telling myself I will try something new like one of the bread treats they sell on the side of the road, but every time I´m walking through the central market and I see that one lady with the crazy eye and the basket of perfectly ripened mango, I can´t help myself. And then it´s just me and the mango for 10 beautiful minutes. I honestly dont think I´d notice if someone took my entire bag off my arm and walked away with it, so long as they didnt steal my fruit.

Also, there is a guy here in Granada who has tried to sell me drugs 3 times now. Except, he never remembers that we have already spoken. We have literally had the same conversation 3 times in 2 weeks (always with me inventing new fun details about my life). It´s starting to feel a little like Groundhog Day. Stay off crack.

Finally, I wish people here would stop commenting on my "beautiful blue eyes." They´re effing green. For the love.

Pardon my rudeness

People here consistently tell me I look angry, depressed, sad or worried. Sorry, guys, that´s just my default face.

Weekend Update

Highlights of the weekend include:

1. Attending what had to be the most happening high school dance ever at a discoteca by the lake. We weren´t the oldest people in the room, but we were definitely in the older crowd. Add to that the fact that we were the only foreigners there, and you have yourself the recipe for one amazingly sketchy night. However, security at the disco was surprisingly good. Yet another difference between Nicaragua and Argentina.
2. Having my first cup of brewed, not instant, coffee in 3 weeks. Make that 2 cups, since one girl didn´t want hers at breakfast Saturday morning. I´ll for sure have to go back to the Garden Cafe, as much for the coffee as for the books, hammocks and amazing granola and yogurt.
3. Kayaking on Lake Nicaragua (aka Cocibolca, don´t kill me if I spelled that wrong) this morning. Other than dancing Friday night, that was the first time I´ve sweated because of the work I´m doing and not because it´s just so hot. I love endorphins, I love kayaking and I love lakes.
4. Meeting 2 new girls who are here working through mid August. One of them goes to UT and was in Córdoba for a month last summer, so we got to reminisce a little about the place we both miss so much.
5. Sitting outside with my "cousins" until past midnight on Friday, getting to hear about things like their jobs, where they want to travel, and the earthquake that happened here a few years back. Apparently, after the tremors hit a lot of Granadinos gathered to sleep in an outside park near my house out of fear their houses might collapse in the night.

Nicaragua has a fair number of volcanoes, and our kayak guide this morning told us that 5 of them are connected, including the (dormant) Mombacho towering over Granada. Which means that, if things go wrong enough, 5 volcanoes could erupt almost simultaneously in Nicaragua. It probably won´t happen, but it´s nice to think about while I lie in bed at night. The volcano in Masaya, about an hour from Granada, has been sputtering recently. Let´s keep our fingers crossed.

Thank goodness I¨m not a poli sci major

I really don´t understand the political situation here. Maybe because I´m trying to categorize everything by "liberal" or "conservative", when in reality it´s much more complex than that. No matter how many conversations I have with Nicaraguans, or how many times I read the "political history" section of my guidebook, or how much time I spend on wikipedia, I just can´t keep it all straight. My brain doesn´t usually fail me like this. This is irritating.

Last night I had the strangest dream...

Well, really it was more like a week ago. I had this incredibly long dream that consisted entirely of me sitting in an air conditioned house. I would spend about 5 minutes just sitting in each room while the owners said things like "And see, even our bathroom is air conditioned! This room has a sofa AND air conditioning!" The heat here has been what some consider "oppressive", particularly on days when it doesn´t rain.

I´m also in love with the bags of fresh mango they sell on the streets here for US $.25.

Happiness is spelled "choco banano"

There´s this house near mine that sells ice cream on their front porch, and they have this sign that says they sell "choco bananos". Finally today I went and asked for one and oh my goodness, that´s probably the happiest I´ve been in awhile. It´s just a banana on a stick that´s dipped in chocolate and then frozen, but when it´s 90 degrees outside I don´t think there´s much that could be more delightful. I ended up sitting on their porch talking to the woman who owns the place for awhile and I for sure plan on going back, as much for the conversation as for the delicious choco bananos and raspados (snow cones). We talked a little about politics and she´s a die hard conservative. My family, on the other hand, is so sandinista (and therefore liberal) that our house is actually painted in sandinista colors, so I think it´s best that I don´t tell her who I´m living with. I´d hate for her to do something like torch our house or take away my choco banano.

Also, Mrs. Choco Banano gave me a huge compliment by telling me I spoke and understood Spanish "bastante bien" (well enough) and could express myself well. In Argentina, people almost always gushed over how well we spoke even when we spoke like retarded babies. Here, though, there´s more reservation, so receiving a compliment on my language skills means a lot more.

Today I also started my Spanish lessons with a new professor. Her name is Carla, she´ll be 20 on August 4 and she gave birth to a son named Joshua Samuel 12 days ago. Essentially, we´re so close in age but our lives could not be more different. We had a really interesting discussion about childbirth here, and let´s just say US women would die. Some minor differences include: the hospital doesn´t provide food, the family brings it. Natural birth is the norm. The baby is usually dressed and handed to the mother immediately, and then doesn´t leave her side. The mother is in the hospital for maybe a full day and then goes home. Et cetera. We also talked about violence against women, about machismo, about families in the USA vs families in Nicaragua and about Carla´s 36 year old sister who has a daughter, who´s 20, who also has a child. Carla asked me why it´s the norm for kids in the states to leave the house when they hit 18. I responded with some crap about how we value independence and responsibility to the extreme, but if you think about who has more responsibility: a 19 year old at a private university, or a 19 year old with 1-2 children, a job and a potentially abusive or absent husband? There has to be some happy medium.

I´ve finally figured out that more or less the only place I can be alone is at an old fort on the edge of town, so I think I´ll go sit there and read for awhile.

Just an ordinary day

Like I said, there´s a volcano that looks directly over my house called Mombacho. I really wanted to hike it, so yesterday Lesbia and I took a bus to the park and, through a long series of walks, rides and waits, ended up hiking around the peak for awhile. I´ll be real, it was a lot like hiking on a mountain with a few puffs of steam floating around, but I think I´d like to hike another volcano that´s about 3 hours from my house. That will have to wait, though.

Probably the most interesting part of my day was spending 4 or so hours talking to Lesbia. She told me about how she had to quit studying architecture when Marie Esther was born, how they worry about money constantly, how she wants to travel (but doesn´t have money), how they need their own house (but don´t have money), etc etc. She talked, too, about how she wanted to go to the States but couldn´t (finances, family, etc). The more I talk to people here, the more I get the sense that, to them, the US is a slice of paradise where they´ll have all the money they need, their own house, schools for the kids and food to eat always. And I guess in that sense, the US is more or less a utopia, especially for those who are willing to take any job that comes their way. There´s air conditioning, and you can buy anything you want in the supermarket, and education is at least decent and you can drink the tap water. Part of me always wants to tell these people that the States isn´t perfect, though, that we still have our share of depression and loneliness and suicide and rape and eating disorders and theft and cheating and confusion. But I guess in Maslow´s hierarchy of needs, most of that just isn´t that important.

Lesbia also asked me if I´d ever considered joining a convent, because apparently 20 is way past my marriage expiration date. I told her I wasn´t Catholic, which was a huge shocker (an estimated 90% of the population here is Catholic) and so wasn´t a likely candidate for life as a nun.

Speaking of the nuns, my volunteer work is going pretty well. The more time I spend with the little kids in the daycare, the more I realize that I absolutely do not want such young children to be the focus of my future career. Not that I in any way would degrade people who work with children for a living, but it´s not where I want my life to go. Today I started going in the afternoon to help the older girls with their English lessons. I´d really like to get to know them as people, not as the stereotyped Nica orphan girl, so hopefully our afternoon hours will be good. Some of them are almost my age, too, but because of whatever nasty situation they´ve been taken out of they´re a few years behind in school.

As far as adapting to life in Nicaragua goes, I´m progressing rapidly. I washed my clothes this weekend with a tub of water and a washboard, I´ve begun craving beans, rice and fried plantains and I´m mildly addicted to a telenovela called En Los Tacones de Eva about a man who faked his own death and now lives life dressed as a woman to avoid jail time for a crime he didn´t commit. Hilarity, danger and romance ensue.

Where´s the water?

Sometimes we don´t have water in the house for a few hours. When I asked Isabel about it, her response was "well sometimes they let us know when we´ll lose it, and sometimes they don´t." Um... but why is it gone?

Also, the mystery of Isabel´s father has been solved. Apparently he lives at the family farm about an hour from Granada and comes home occasionally on weekends. So, he really does "live here, but not really."

Socialistic thoughts

Yesterday, after a particularly rough morning, I sat in the park and fumed over everything I hate about this world. And maybe I´m overgeneralizing, but right now it all seems to come back to money.

I hate money. First of all, it only has value because we say it does. If I work 40 hours a week and get my paycheck and deposit at the bank, chances are I´ll never even touch most of that money. It just floats out there in some mystical economic sense that I can´t ever grasp, and I write a check for rent and swipe my credit card for groceries and somewhere out there some binary numbers change and suddenly there´s less in my account. Even the money I do touch is just paper with a number on it. And then the next month comes and the same thing happens and in the long run, who really cares? Also, who decided that I have to pay for the right to live in my house, or to eat? Who gets to say that healthcare is a privilege, not a right, and that you should have to "afford" vaccinations or stitches? Why is it ok for the elite to accumulate 7 digit figures in their bank accounts while the poor scrounge for enough coins to buy rice?

Im not for a second going to pretend like this is one of the great evils that has cropped up in the last 50 years. I wasn´t around in 1950, but I´ll go out on a limb and say that even if "family values", whatever the hell that means, were stronger then, people still spent a good portion of their time worrying about finances. In world geography last semester we learned about ancient African civilizations that would trade off goats and chickens and their sources of livelihood for gold, and all I could think was "why?" Why would you rather have useless metal than food?

And then there comes the problem of how to deal with money if you do have it. When a 6 year old approaches me on the street and tells me he hasn´t eaten all day, maybe he´s telling the truth and maybe he just wants cash so he can go buy glue to huff. But how do you know the difference? At what point do you start holding back? When is hunger no longer an excuse for begging? Is it better to withhold a dollar so he´ll "learn a lesson" or are we supposed to give without thinking? And I know people always tell you to use discretion in giving money to people on the streets, and maybe that´s all well and good in the US where you know if that bum by your car is drunk or not, but it´s not really applicable in the majority of 3rd world countries.

I don´t know the solution. Honestly, I don´t think there is one. Communism has never worked, even in the most socialistic of countries there have always been the wealthy elite. Capitalism often screws the poor, the bartering system couldn´t even withstand the lure of gold in ancient Africa. And Christ himself promised that the poor would always be with us. I do know that money is almost always poorly handled and unevenly distributed, and that people who are far smarter than me have failed to fix the problem. It´s like you´re damned if you do and damned if you don´t.

Anyhow, after I sat on a bench by myself for over an hour and pondered the upsides to living in a commune or a cave, I went home and played with Marie Ester and Cristina, ate dinner with my host family and visited Marjan. And so help me, none of that cost a cent.

Nuns and chicken parts

Reasons why joining a convent looks more appealing every day:

1. No one cares if you can´t dance.
2. Children behave when you´re around.
3. You get to wear the same thing every day.
4. You don´t have to answer the increasingly irritating, "So... why are you single?"
5. Men don´t whistle at you when you walk down the street with all your best friends.

In other news, Blinky enjoys a bowl of boiled chicken every morning. Correction, Blinky enjoys a bowl of boiled chicken heads and feet every morning. Blinky is officially never allowed to lick me.

Friendship and school buses

First of all, I get the feeling that a fair number of people are worried about me being lonely here. Just to put your fears at rest, let me explain what I´m learning. Every day, I´m forced to redefine "friendship". At home, my friends are the 10 or so people I see regularly and make an effort to hang out with. And at home, I´m pretty stingy with who I apply the term "friend" to, because it´s a heavy word to me. Here, though, I have to let that go. Because right now, my friends include Marjan (my dutch friend), Derica (my 16 year old "cousin" who´s so fun to talk to), my host family (none of whom are within 8 years of my age), Elsa and Claudia (the daycare employees) and random children I meet on the street. The thing is, though, every time I get so lonely I can´t stand it, I end up hanging out with Marjan and laughing a lot, or talking to Derica for an hour, or laughing at the ridiculous things the 4 year old Marie Esther says. So every day I wake up and wonder how I´m going to make it through being so alone, and every day I lie down exhausted from being with so many people.

Speaking of Marie Esther, here are some fantastic things that have come out of her mouth:
"You can´t be named Catharine, I´m Catharine!" (for the record, Catarina is one of the characters on Patito Feo)
"Do you want me to go with you to the bathroom? I always accompany my friends to the bathroom." (This one was actually directed at Cristina. Who, by the way, has lost all fear of me and screams CATHY-LEEN, which is the closest she can get to my real name, when I come home. Lesbia also uses me as leverage at meals times now, as in "If you don´t stop throwing your rice on the ground Catharine won´t want to eat with you anymore.")
"Catharine, your hair makes a circle around your head. Why is that?" (It´s because the humidity is probably at 80% and I sweat from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Lay off.)
"Look, my doll´s cheeks are red like Catharine´s!" (Well... yeah.)

Marjan and I just got back from Masaya, which is a town about 30 minutes from Granada. It´s known as the crafts central of the country. In the states, if you want to go somewhere, you drive your car. In Argentina, you buy a bus ticket at the station. In Nicaragua, you stand on a street corner until an old American school bus comes barrelling by. When the man hanging out the door screams MASAAAYYAAA, or wherever you´re headed, you run after the bus and take a flying leap through the back door, praying to God you don´t land on any of the sweet old ladies who are taken their baskets full of fruit, blankets, etc to the market.

I liked Masaya a lot. I´d heard it was touristy, but I think that means touristy with the Nicas, because I only saw about 5 other foreigners during the 6 hours we were there. I bought a hammock for 13 dollars, and although that´s probably more than I should have paid, I didn´t see the point in haggling over the price for much lower than that. We also walked around and saw one of the neighborhoods where they make a lot of the hammocks. At one point we were wandering around iglesia San Jeronimo, which used to house the patron saint of Masaya until it was destroyed by an earthquake in 2000. We got in good with the cleaning people, who let us see the inside of the church, and when we came out 2 men had appointed themselves as our guides and spent about half an hour with us explaining the history of the church, its restoration and the festivals surrounding the culture in Masaya. They then took us to see the statue of San Jeronimo, which, if I´m translating correctly, was about the only statue not destroyed in the earthquake (sign from God?). After our guides released us, we made our way back to the market and hunted down a return bus for Granada. I was nervous about travelling here, since it´s a little less organized that I´m used to, but today was so smooth in that chaotic south american way that I feel way better about being by myself in July. Although, if anyone wants to come hang out with Nicaragua and Honduras with me, I wouldn´t say no.

Other than that, things are good here. My Spanish is decent but not awesome. For some reason I´ve decided to forget the difference between imperfect and preterite, as well as the difference between very basic words like "to go" and "to come". But hopefully each day is an improvement, and at least I know I can´t get any worse while I´m here. There is a group of high schoolers from Austin at the daycare this week, and I end up translating for them a lot, which is actually fun in a twisted "my Spanish is better than your Spanish" kind of way. Maybe I´d like to lead service trips when I get out of college for awhile...?

Finally, yesterday was Isabel Cristina´s 55th birthday. She had about 8 of her friends over, and when I returned home after class I heard what sounded like a chorus of dying cats coming from my house. It turns out that 55 year old Nica women really enjoy karaoke. And I really enjoyed watching them.

I can´t escape Patito Feo

Remember the horrible Argentinian show Patito Feo I mentioned last time? Turns out it´s not just Marie Esther (confirmed name) and Christina (eeeeh? maybe?) who are obsessed, it´s EVERYONE between the ages of 3 months and oh, I don´t know, death. We listened to the Patito Feo soundtrack on repeat at the school today, there are televised dance competitions for Nica girls (and boys) to see who´s the best Patito Feo impersonator, and I wish I were joking, but I started singing one of the songs to myself in my dream. It´s unavoidable.

The school I´m volunteering at is run by nuns whose order (correct term?) is based out of Calcutta. I finally got to talk with one of them for awhile today, and she told me that 4 of them are from India, one is from Kenya and one is from Peru. They all speak English since it´s the language of the community, as well as Spanish and their native language. So far I´ve been helping with the daycare for the local kids. The parents don´t pay anything to send their kids (which is why there are up to 65 children on any given day) but the nuns insist that the parents be working, and they check up on them to make sure they´re fulfilling their end of the deal. The sister told me they follow Mother Theresa´s vow to serve "the poorest of the poor" without compensation, so the daycare (and orphanage) are run off donations and contributions from other orders with more money. She also told me that of all the countries she´s served in (India, Mexico, Panama and now Nicaragua) these are some of the poorest conditions she´s ever seen. Which, honestly, makes me feel better about being here. I´m so proactive that I was starting to hate the fact that I hadn´t chosen to do volunteer work with a group so I could help build something or fix something. But most of these kids need so much love and I´m guessing that the food they get at daycare is by far the most substantial meal of the day. So, if I have anything to offer, it´s just another pair of hands.

I also asked the sister if I could maybe start working with the older girls a couple days a week, too, especially if they need help with their English homework. So we´ll see what comes of that .

Today they had a party for the kids. Marjan and I had to get to the orphanage at 7, which meant waking up at 6 to meet at 6 30 and walk for half an hour to the school. We helped Elsa and Claudia (daycare employees) put up balloons and string up a piñata, then went to mass with all the kids. After mass we played musical chairs and the kids got cake and ice cream. They were all really excited for the piñata (one kid actually threw up out of sheer joy), except for this one really awesome kid named Wilbur who screamed and ran in the opposite direction. Apparently he has what´s literally a paralyzing fear of piñatas, and he refused to come outside until they had knocked it down. In Wilbur´s defense, this thing did have one of the creepiest clown faces I´ve ever seen.

Final thought on Nicaragua for the day: when someone wants your attention, they make this "ch" sound with their teeth over and over again. It was insulting until I figured out it´s totally normal here.

Bien freaking venidos a Nicaragua!

In Catharine, that means "Oh em gee, welcome to Nicaragua!"

Yesterday started at the unholy hour of 5 30 a.m. Fortunately, Catherine Cotrupi was kind enough to drive me to the Atlanta airport, and my roommate Tara was on some meds that left her incapable of sleeping, so it wasn´t a lonely morning by any means. (P.S. Tara, I hope you´ve slept and haven´t been watching Crossroads on repeat.) Anyhow, my flight was by far the least eventful flight I´ve had in a long time. No delays, no baggage problems, no unruly passengers. I was way too revved up on caffeine and adrenaline to sleep, so I spent most of my time staring out the window. We flew directly over Cuba, which the captain was kind enough to point out to us. I will make it to that country, travel restrictions be damned. I also made about 6 trips to the bathroom since I remembered that toilet paper is scarce in other countries. Thanks to Delta Airlines for their generous contribution to my tp stash. Apparently Nicaraguan customs is where time goes to die because I was in that line forever, but other than that everything was as perfect as it could have been.

I was told that a woman named Veronica was going to pick me up at the airport. After scanning all the women holding signs, I realized that the only people holding anything close to my name were 2 men holding a sign with "Catharina Bolc" written on it. I guess there was some miscommunication along the line. Anyhow, my newfound friends Omar (or maybe Oscar, I´m not so sure) and Alberto (who I keep calling Arturo... for future reference, it´s a bad idea to repeatedly forget your only friend´s name) drove me the hour or so from Managua to Granada. Alberto took me to meet my new family (more on them later) and then showed me around the city a little.

The city is nothing, I repeat NOTHING, like my sweet Córdoba. It´s much less European and much more central American. There´s bachata and reggaeton playing on full blast at all times. One of my neighbors runs a radio station out of their house, which I think is super fly. The streets are choked with horses, dilapidated cars and brand new SUVs in the streets, along with pedestrians, bicyclists and women selling fruit. It smells like Argentina, only more so. I guess it smells like El Salvador, too, only hotter. Hardly any of the streets have names so I have to constantly orient myself by the position of the mountains and which cyber cafe I´m near. Hopefully I won´t get lost but Alberto told me if I do I should just ask someone where the central park is and find my way home from there. I don´t love it yet, but I like it a whole lot. Probably the only thing I´m not so fond of is the fact that Granada has a huge tourist population. I play a fun game called "spot the foreigner". I usually win. I´m also the only participant.

Like I said, it´s practically nothing like Argentina, but little things make me so homesick for Córdoba. Sometimes I´ll get a whiff of something or I´ll hear a song from there and it takes me back to last year... The man who lives in my house has his cell phone ringer set to the same thing I had in Argentina and I even miss that stupid phone. And yes, my Argentinian accent is still going strong and confuses most people. If I ever start to miss it too much, the little girls in my house are OBSESSED with this truly awful show called Patito Feo that´s produced in Buenos Aires. Think High School Musical meets Dancing with the Stars, only Bs As style so it´s twice as flamboyant and the dancers wear half as much clothing. I miss Argentines as whole, too. Not that the Nicas aren´t friendly, but Argentines have a little something special.

Ok, my family:

• Isabel Cristina is my main hostess. I´m really not sure how old she is, I would have to say late 50´s to early 60´s.
• Isabel´s mother. I don´t know her name yet. She talks really loud and slowly, but I´m not sure if it´s because she thinks I´m dumb or if that´s how she normally talks. We watched the news together yesterday. Apparently her husband lives in the house too, "but not really", whatever that means.
• William is Isabel´s son. He´s really nice, he works with computer programming and talks to me at meals. He´s married to Lesbia (don´t you EVEN laugh, I´m like 95% sure that´s her Christian name) and they have 2 daughters, whose names are some combination of Maria, Elena and Cristina. The oldest (Maria Elena?) just turned 4 and she thinks we´re best friends already. The younger one will be 2 on July 10 and is crazy shy, but she likes to stare at my light eyes.
• Reyna is Isabel´s other daughter. She´s probably 35 or so and she works at the hospital with internal medicine. She´s not around much because of work but I like her a lot. Reyna also has 2 dogs (Pelucho and Blinky) who live at the house. They´re all right, but Catharine and Blinky are going to have a talk in a language we both understand if Blinky doesn´t stop biting Catharine´s feet during siesta. Isabel also has 3 parrots. 2 live right outside my window and decided 5 a.m. would be a good time to start singing. The other lives at the back of the house and all it can say is "Mamá!!!" in this really terrible screaming voice and "amoooooorrrrrr".

The house is fantastic. I have my own room, complete with a fan, a mosquito net, a television and a bathroom. It honestly looks like someone got tired while they were walking down the street one day, so they put up a lean-to with 2 sticks and a tin roof, and then forgot to move out. You can see where the house has been added on to over and over again, and they eventually just kept going to the next street. It´s completely open, too--yesterday when it rained the furniture in the living room got wet. The back of my house connects to other houses where some family and neighbors live, so there are always people coming through. There´s the expected awkwardness that comes from moving in with 7 or so strangers, but I can´t complain. Some guy who doesn´t even live in my house yesterday welcomed me and told me "this is your house now!" I think I´ll start going to my friends´ houses and encouraging their guests to make themselves at home.

I started my volunteer work today. I thought I´d be working with older girls but they all go to school in the mornings, so I hung out with about 35 kids between the ages of 1 and 5 today. They´re cute but I think I´ll ask if I can alternate and come in the afternoons sometimes to work with the older girls, just for variety. There´s a girl from Holland named Martan who´s volunteering with me for the next month. Her English is a little rocky and she just started learning Spanish, so our conversations are limited, but it´s nice to have a friend. She told me she doesn´t like t.v. and when someone tells her to do something she wants to do the exact opposite, so we have a lot in common so far. The school that I´m volunteering through is also giving me Spanish lessons every afternoon. I took a grammar placement test today and more or less dominated it, so I think my "lessons" will be more conversation. It´s one on one, too, which is different from anything I´ve had in the past.

Well, I guess that´s it for my first look at Nicaragua. It´s been a weird 24 hours. I´ve wavered between doubting my decision to come here, being deliriously happy, and just being delirious from lack of sleep. I´d like to make real friends at some point. I need someone to laugh with. But I´m not too lonely yet and I´m so glad I´m here. Hopefully my Spanish (which is coming back to me quicker than I thought) will improve even faster.

Oh, by the way, when I walk out my front door the first thing I see is a volcano. Which I´m going to climb asap.

Estoy lista ya!

That means, I'm ready already! Seriously, I'm ready to go. I leave in 10 days and I'm not entirely finished with everything, but it's getting closer. So far I've:

1. Bought a killer backpack so I don't have to take a suitcase.
2. Bought a travel guide to Central America. I like to read it and pretend that I have time to go everywhere.
3. Cut my hair. Like, all of it. It's a little too Hillary Rodham Clinton meets suburban soccer mom, but I like that I don't even have to pull it back because it's so short. And I'm going to save so much money on shampoo and conditioner. I'll probably start a college fund for my future children or put a down payment on a new home with all that cash. Plus, I get to wear some sweet pigtails when I go running.
4. Got malaria pills. They gave me doxycycline at Redfern. I looked it up on wikipedia and apprently doxycycline is also used to treat chlamidia and syphilis. Hello, freedom!
5. Ordered 5 books off amazon.com. I feel like I might have some extra time to read while I'm there.

I have 6 days left of my public speaking class (which, by the way, is more terrifying to me than flying to a 3rd world country for 2 months) and one of my roommates said she'll take me to the Atlanta airport on June 1. I guess what I'm saying is, I've done almost everything I personally can to get ready, now it's just a waiting game.

On a more serious note, here's a list of things that could go wrong this summer.

• My bag gets lost on the flight. (Whatever.)
• I'm incredibly lonely all summer. (That one's pretty likely.)
• I get horribly sick while I'm down there or I break something. (I'm not prone to awful accidents, so I'm counting on my luck holding here.)
• My Spanish sucks. (I'm good at smiling and nodding.)
• Communist rebel forces have an uprising and take me as their prisoner. I pull a classic Patty Hearst move, identify with my captors and appear on communist propaganda all over the world. (I'm not sure if this belongs on my list of things that could go wrong, it sounds pretty awesome to me.)
  

If you're inclined to prayer, I'd appreciate it. If not, please send me kind words.

I have to go write an informative speech on why Austin, Tx is a kickin' place to visit and live. Thanks for reading, hopefully next time you hear from me I'll be in Granada!

my big fat disclaimer

Disclaimer: I secretly think blogs are stupid. Or at least, I think the idea of me having a blog is stupid, for the following reasons:

1. I hate the word "blog". It's dumb. Every time someone refers to themselves as a "blogger", I die a little inside.
2. I think it's mildly ridiculous to devote web space to talking about myself. I don't think I'm that interesting.
3. I already keep a private journal, why go public?

All that aside, I do want the people I care about to know what I'm up to this summer. More than that, I want to know what yall are up to. So, hopefully this blog (gross...) will fulfill both of those goals.

I've been realizing that I haven't actually told that many people what I'm doing this summer, so to catch everyone up: I'm going to be living in Granada, Nicaragua from June 1 -- July 14ish, where I'll be volunteering at a girls' orphanage called Misioneras de la Caridad. It's a home for girls who have been orphaned, abandoned, or taken out of bad home situations. I'm not entirely sure what I'll do on a daily basis, but my activities may include any or all of the following:

• English lessons (I'm not really qualified to teach but whatever)
• Health/hygiene classes for the older girls (I'm a health science major, that should be cool)
• Activities/games with the younger girls (I'm super immature. No problem.)
• "Other" activities, like cooking or dancing (I suck at both. I hope the nuns who run the place don't expect great things from me.)

I really don't know many details beyond that. I'll be living with a family in Granada until July 14, after which I've left myself about 2 weeks to travel before I come home on August 1. I think it will be nice to be back in the Hispanic world. I'd like to completely submerge myself in life there, so I requested not to be placed at a volunteer site where I would be surrounded by other English-speakers, and hopefully the company that placed me (ELI Abroad) will hold up their end of the bargain.

Until June comes, I'm just hanging around Clemson. Nearly all my friends are gone, which leaves me with a lot of time on my hands. I'm taking public speaking at the local junior college, and I'll fill the rest of my days with waitressing, riding my friend Holly's loaner bike around the streets of Central/Clemson, running, making smoothies, stocking up on necessities for my trip (things like a backpack, and a travel guide, and immodium), reading, etc... Basically, preparing my mind and body for the next great adventure.

Test 1, 2

I haven't blogged since I was in high school.