JAKE COMES SUNDAYYYYY! I can´t even explain what a gift it will be to have him here. To share this experience with him. I´m sure anyone who´s studied abroad or been somewhere so different from your home can relate, but I feel like I am existing in two worlds that are so different that no one from one can possible grasp the other. It´s kind of an alienating feeling sometimes, which is why I´m excited to mix the worlds a little.

Here I spend so much time explaining "there" (aka the States) to people...which I´m happy to do, it just makes it feel like I´m that much further away. My brother just wrote an article about how globalization is making the world so much smaller, which in some cases is very true. I feel it when I see a 1989 UGA alumni t-shirt on an old Nicaraguan man selling watch parts on the side of the street, or see "Dunkaroos" in the supermarket. As an extremely fortunate person, the world IS my oyster, it IS small...because I have the freedom and resources to travel and experience. I could work for a year and then spend another year or two backpacking around the world, if I desired. I´ve lived with my family abroad for five years, which is probably a huge reason why I grew up thinking that if the impulse struck, I could find work and raise my own family in another country with no problem. HOWEVER, the world is not so small or accessible for everyone in the world. For Nicaraguans, the application for even ATTEMPTING to get a visa to come to America is $150, which a country with an unemployment rate of 25%, and thousand of people who support their families by selling water or fruit all day for merely cents, is not an easy thing to afford. And mind you I said "attempting", because the application does not even guarantee a good chance of getting the visa, it merely puts you in a lottery with thousands of other applicants, where you MAY get a visa. I know a ton of people who have spent the money to apply for such a visa, and very few of them actually know of someone who has received one. My abuela has a son living in Miami, and the last time she saw him was 16 years ago, and told me that she probably won´t be able to see them again. It´s such a hard thing to fathom, that another country is SO unaccessible to anyone, even a mother who wants to go visit her children/grandchildren.

Despite previous complaining about getting pooped on and screeched at by the babies I work with at the Aldea, the fact of the matter is they are all so precious. It´s easy to get so lost in playing with them for hours, feeding them and changing endless diapers, that I forget what life may be like for them growing up. I imagine them dressed up in cute outfits, or at their first birthday party with a cake, or swinging in a park...and then reality hits and I realize that this is not a life that is available to them. I was on the bus today with one of the teachers I work with, and she pointed out the house of a set of cuteeee twin boys that come every day, and pee and splash in the same spot in front of the door every day. It was a hut with three walls and a tin roof, and they were playing next to the stove outside, in the dirt and trash. Most of the kids come every morning dirty and in the same clothes we put them in the evening before. Most of their parents are unemployed or with low paying, domestic jobs. I wonder at what age will they be put to work, selling fruit or cleaning. And I´m not judging, it´s a fact of life here that kids have to work to help support the family. A girl that just started working with us JUST turned fifteen, and is working between 5 and 10 hours a day, and going to school and night. I walk to work every morning and pass a few houses made out of rusted metal sheets, and a few others made out of cardboard boxes nailed together, and I think for these people, "there" must really feel so far away.

Even with all of this, sometimes I wonder what I´m doing here. There is so much poverty, and people struggling everywhere, but at the same time, I live in the middle of a city, meaning I get to see both sides-the rich and the poor. My family is by no means poor; they have a woman that comes and washes their clothes, and another that comes to iron, and once every couple of weeks a woman comes to do their nails and hair. I find myself wincing sometimes at the way they treat these other women. There´s a woman that comes every night and drops off bread for the family to eat the next day, and my "madre" will order her around to a point that makes me uncomfortable. "Get me that bread", "go buy me some washing liquid"...etc etc. And yet I´m confused, because while they´re not poor, they´re definitely not rich. In a weak (possibly dumb) moment, I lent my madre $200 dollars, to buy things for the clothes store, because people weren´t buying. And yet in a month, she still hasn´t been able to pay me back more than $20 dollars, which I just received as of yesterday. They have relatives ("wealthy" due to the fact that they own a car), that help them out by bringing dry beans and rice every once in a while. So I find myself really confused. Because there are also wealthy people here, with cars and nice clothes and jewlry and beautiful homes. When I see these people I ask myself how much I´m really helping. I definitely believe in the good of volunteer services and programs, but I also believe that a country has to help itself in order to truly prosper. And when I see such a separation between people who have and people who don´t, and how much they´re helping or not helping each other, I wonder what right I have to step in and think I should make a difference.

Here´s where I go on about me me me. I get so frustrated when I see such a difference in economic status, also because of the fact that every day something is demanded of me. People are always demanding that I give them something, whether it´s my students that I teach ("give me, give me"-which may just be typical of teenagers) or random strangers on the bus. I once spent a whole twenty minutes in the camioneta telling the guy who collects money from the passengers "no". The conversation went something like this:
Dude: Why don´t you give me your watch?
Me: I´m sorry, I need it to tell time and wake up in the morning.
Dude: But it is such a really nice watch.
Me: Yeah, I´m really sorry. Do you want some of my peanuts?
Dude: Yeah, can I have the whole bag?
Me: I guess.
Dude: Why don´t you give me your necklace then?
Me: Well it was a gift from my grandmother, it means a lot to me.
Dude: Yeah but you´re American, I don´t have a watch so why don´t you give me something.
Me: I´m sorry.
Random old lady: Is this guy bothering you?
Me: No, no.
Random old lady: Well why don´t you give him your watch then or that pretty necklace?

These conversations happen all the time. And while I consider myself a pretty generous person, I get so angry when people treat me like I´m not a human being, but more an image of prosperity. I REALIZE that I am very fortunate to have been born into the family and opportunities that I was born into, but I ALSO have worked from the time I was able up until I left for this country. I´m not saying that puts me on equal status with someone that has to work to put food in their mouths, it´s just a difficult stereotype to break. And yet I never see the richer Nicaraguans being hassled or asked for money, which I don´t understand, and makes me feel even more out of place here. I realize this post is a little confusing, half about how poor the country is, and half about how frustrated I am because I have more money that a lot of people...I´m just trying to put to words some strange feelings I´ve had about this experience (as much as I love it and as happy as I am to be here). It´s an interesting experience as well because I am the only gringa that I know, if that makes sense. It´s a little different from a volunteer abroad experience, in that I´m not going through it with anyone else that really relates (therefor, Alysse complains in her blog). I have eight more weeks here, and I´m still going to work hard and I´m happy to have that time left here...but at the same time I´ll be happy to be back. I´ll be happy to have a job that pays (not for the money but more for the feeling that I´m working for something, earning something...volunteering is amazing, but it will be nice to get rid of the feeling that "oh I´m so rich you don´t even have to PAY me for this"). It´ll be nice to blend in a little more, there are many more blondes in America. I¨m also really excited to go back to school, as strange as that sounds. I´m psyched to be working towards something, a career, that will give me so many more skills to help than I have right now.

Okay enough serious, Jake will be here Sunday and I´m going to be a real tourist for a week and I´m STOKED. Hope everything is well way far away...Love everyone!