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.