Entonces...

I spent all day yesterday walking around with Christine. She knows the city really well and I´m SO happy that she was able to spend the weekend with me here. I had breakfast with the family (gallo pinto-which is the typical beans and rice but it was delicious, along with this really soft cheese that tastes sort of like mozzarella-yum!) so that was nice. Then we walked around a little and got lunch at the market. The market is crazy, especially around lunch time...there are people everywhere. I got this delicious arroz con pollo, which was just rice with hunks of chicken and huge raisins and carrots etc etc. So I´m psyched that the market here is clean and delicious, I hadn´t eaten at the market in Jinotepe because I was a little nervous. It´s cool because if you get your lunch to go, they wrap it in a banana leaf and put it in a little baggie--so the trash cans around the market are filled with banana leaves. We ended up bumping into two of her friends, artisians as well, so ate with them. After lunch they walked us to this museum that is BEAUTIFUL. They have everything, modern art, classical stuff...it´s really neat. It was free and very tranquil with fountains everywhere and we just wandered around for an hour or more.
Christine´s friends set up their stuff right outside of the central cathedral every day (everyone is getting jewlrey back home as souvenirs...all three of her friends make beautiful bracelets and necklaces), so we ended up hanging out there for a while. There´s this little boy who hangs around the cathedral, he has one of those signs "I´m very poor, my name is Charlie etc etc" but I think mostly he just likes hanging out with the boys because he got really embarassed when we tried to read the sign. He´s super sweet though and we thumb wrestled for about half an hour while he tried to figure out who my "novio" (boyfriend) was, I told him "Ervin?" "Noooo" "San Jose?" "Noooo" "El hombre con moto?" "Nooo" "Mi?" "Si! Por supuesto!" (You of course!) to which he turned into the 10 year old boy he is and giggled for about 20 minutes. Anyways so it´s really interesting hanging out with these guys, all these tourists come up to them and buy stuff, it´s funny to be on the other side.
I went to go find Quetzaltrekkers after that, and they told me I was in luck...they have meetings every Sunday to figure out who´s hiking what, who´s promoting where and who´s working in the office during the days. I ended up going to the meeting and everyone seems really nice! There was supposed to be a hike for the new volunteers (there are two others...I think they´re doing "internships" but I don´t really know what the difference is) tomorrow at the volcano Talica, but I just went to check it out and it was cancelled (which is good because I still haven´t figured out my schedule for las tias, also I´m not exactly "in shape" to climb a volcano by tomorrow...at least I don´t think. Honestly I was checking out everyone´s legs at the meeting, to see if they were super ripped, but they all had pretty normal legs so I was a little comforted). ANYWAY, everyone seemed great...I already signed up for an office shift Saturday. I still haven´t figured out exactly how much time I´ll have to devote to them...I want Las Tias to be my number one priority and I also want to have a little flexibility on the weekends to travel if I want to. We´ll see, I really want to do the Quetzaltrekkers but I´m not going to let it get stressful. We had a long dinner at this hostel and had huuuuge chicken quesadillas with cilantro sour cream...YUM! Then we met her friends at another hostel that has a bar, and listened to mariachi music and talked. I was EXHAUSTED though!
This morning we walked to Las Tias...it was their first day so the kids were having an "orientation" thing where they learned the rules. It´s interesting because there are two places for Las Tias, one is where all the younger kids go (and it´s really nice, I guess everyone wants to donate to the younger ones) and the other one, where I´m working, is a little more run down, it´s sort of a shame. So Christine and I just grabbed a packet of papers she had left for me, games and worksheets she had done, and went over them back at the house. She left after lunch, which was a bummer...she´s been a GREAT friend this weekend...but it´s good for me to be on my own. No more hablando ingles. My family LOVES her (she was there for two months so obviously they´re close) so as selfish as it is to say, I guess it´s good that she´s gone so I can start to make relationships with them. (I forgot to put before that we also live with their grandmother and grandfather, the grandmother is REALLY sweet, the grandfather is sick and is sort of going off the deep end, Christine told me to watch out for wet spots because he pees wherever).
So like I said before, I live in a clothing store, well in the back of the clothing store. I already bought a shirt haha, it´s so light and breezy and perfect for Lyon because it´s so HOT. It is UNREAL here...sooooooo hot. I feel like I´m walking around in slow motion I´m so lethargic. The good thing is that there are people everywhere selling these bags of water (all liquids are sold in bags, I think so the vendors can take the bottles and give them in for some money) for 1 cordoba, which is about 5 cents. So I buy those every hour or so haha. Tomorrow is my real first day at Las Tias, I think I´m sort of just going to "wing it" because I have no idea what level everyone is at. We´ll see though.

Okay so I´m off to Quetzaltrekkers to help fix tent poles or something like that. Chao!

PS It´s the beginning of mango season now, the ones that are in season are these little green ones but on the street they sell big bags of them. They´re really good, but don´t taste anything like mangos. I bought some today and asked him to put this liquid on it (I thought it was vinegar, which they put on a lot of fruits I´ve had from the street...strangely it´s really good) but it was actually this spicy sauce. Therefor I think the strangest thing I´ve eaten here is officially mangos with hot sauce.