Stuck in limbo

AHHHHHHHHHHH. So the best part of this blog is that once I´ve written something down normally it seems a lot funnier than when it actually happened...which for a ridiculous day like Saturday, will be a blessing. ALLRIGHT, border trip to Costa Rica. Foreigners aren´t allowed to be in Nicaragua for more than three months, so as my three month date is almost here (time flies, sort of) last weekend was the last time I had to cross the border. While I had heard that you have to be in Costa Rica for 72 hours before entering Nicaragua again, I had also heard that it wasn´t really necessary (and have friends that have done the trip in one day, which I planned to do). So I took the bus early to la frontera, the border, which actually wasn´t as far as I thought it would be. Due to how easy it was to get to the border, I figured I was in for an easy breezy trip...also thinking I would be back by noonish which would be awesome. I definitely thought wrong. Once you get off the bus you´re swarmed by all these people who have the papers you need to fill out before crossing. It´s overwhelming but I stuck with one guy who had a badge, he seemed much more official than many of the other guys, seeing as he had clean clothes and shoes on. He helped me through this hole in the fence and helped me to get my exit stamp for Nicaragua. It´s about a kilometer between the Nicaragua immigration office and the Costa Rica office, so he walked with me as far as he could without a passport, which was very nice. This limbo land between the two borders was quite interesting, as it was basically a huge truck stop. I felt like I was at a highway truck stop in the States, there were a million trucks either driving through the border or parked and hanging out there. At this point I was vaguely amused with the whole experience, until my official guide man left me and I was on my own. About halfway between the two stops there´s more immigration guides, that only let you through if you have the appropriate stamps. After I went through this check point and walked in the truck parade another 1/2 K, I got to the Costa Rica side. Unfortunately this was where my LUCK CHANGEDD. I stepped into a line that was long enough that I figured it was for the immigration desk, when another guy stopped me and asked where I was going in Costa Rica and if I needed a taxi there. I told him no, I was just going to enter and exit Costa Rica so I could get my Nicaraguan visa. Here´s where Operation "Scam Alysse" begins. He told me I had to be in Costa Rica for three days, I said no that´s not true, he said yes it was and on and on until I walked away. Proud of myself for escaping a scam I went up to a guy at the immigration desk and asked him about the 72 hour rule. He told me that yes, indeed, I did need to stay in Costa Rica for 72 hours, and that the rules just got stricter. A little dicouraged, I left the desk and sat down trying to figure out how I was going to stay in Costa Rica for three days, when the first guy came up to me again, saying that for $60 he could call a friend he has at the desk and get him to give me a stamp to exit today instead of three days from now. I told him I only had $30 and he said fine, ushering me to the front of the line, and his friend, who gave me the stamp. Now maybe it´s not well known to anyone except Jake (who argued endlessly with me about this) but I really don´t like bargaining, so when I said I only had $30, I wasn´t trying to drop his price, I really had only $30 on me. However, I had my credit card on me so I figured I was good to go (as it costs $7 to get your stamp to enter Nicaragua). So I walked back to the Nicaragua side of the border, and oh man, my card doesn´t work, and some guards told me that the whole 72 hour thing isn´t true, so I´d been had. Significantly worried at this point, I walked back to the Costa Rica side of the limbo/border/truck stop from hell and tried that bank. And to my dismay, my card didn´t work there...and the bank manager informed me that there were no other banks inside the border zone. Nice. At this point I was pretty much a wreck...and was crying too. So I was a crying wreck, that ended up wandering between the two borders trying to figure out what to do. When the guys between the two borders tried to stop me for not having the right stamps to keep going back and forth, I literally just sobbed until they nodded me through. At this point I see the guy that took my $30, and when he asked me why I was crying I said "BECAUSE YOU TOOK ALL MY MONEY AND NOW I´LL NEVER GET BACK TO NICARAGUA"...perhaps a little dramatic but I think it got my point across. Now being the strangest scammer I´ve ever met, he gave me his number and the process to go through to call collect, and told me to call him in a little while if I still handn´t found a bank. So a while later I called him, we met up, and I figured I´d just sob until he agreed to give me back at least enough to cross the border and get home. Well he was in the process of trying to get money from two other Americans/gringos when I found him. By this point I had passed through distraught onto furious and I butted in and told them not to pay anything. They asked me what happened to me, and I told them I was waiting for this guy so I could argue with him to get enough money to get out of this place and go home. I turned around to go and they told me to wait, and put $10 in my hand. This is one of those situations where I wish I could write them a novel of thanks, or nominate them for a Good Samaritan award because I don´t think they have any idea how extremely kind they were...except that I started crying of happiness and gratitude so maybe that gave them an idea. So when I got back to the Nicaraguan immigration desk, I saw my nice official badge guy, and when I told him the story he was FURIOUS, and got a description of the guy at the immigration desk who took the money and lied to me and was telling all his other official badge friends. Another award to hand out here, because he filled out all my immigration papers for me, marched me through the hole in the fence before leaving Nicaragua (which is another $1 fee but he just marched me through telling them that I had no money and therefor wasn´t paying), plopped me on a bus back to Jinotepe and gave me a big hug. Awards all around to everyone that was so kind to me. I ended up meeting somone on the bus who was equally as angry as I was, because he had paid for a work permit to Costa Rica that ended up being false, so was denied at the border when he was trying to get back to work...so we ended up venting to each other for two hours until we were both calm and could talk about something other than how much we hated the border. Now I remember observing/complaining to Jake when he was here that for some reason a lot of people I meet tend to feel the need to take me under their wing and take care of me, which at times makes me feel like people think I don´t have a clue. But at this particular moment, I am very very very grateful that I instill this need in people. 6 more weeks here and I promise I´ll try to stay out of trouble.

Yumm Conchas

3 Odd things that happened in my life this week:
1. A new girl started working at the Aldea this week, she´s 16 and has a 2 year old son (I´m not judging, it´s pretty standard here). In order to quiet one of the kids down she shoved her breast in his face, trying to get him to breast feed off her. Now, I´m not a mother so I don´t know if that´s standard or not, which is why I´m trying to be impartial and putting it under "odd" things instead of "ewww" things.
2. I couldn´t teach one of my english classes on Wednesday because the kids literally laughed at me for the whole thirty minutes when I said it´s okay for a man and a man, or woman and woman to like each other. I mean hysterical, tears rolling down your cheeks laughing, as if I told them it´s okay for a platapus and a 80 year old woman to be in love. They slapped each other saying "she says it´s normal HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH". This I´m putting under "odd/disturbing" because we´re not just talking about a difference of opinion, whether it´s right or wrong, we´re talking about me explaining something that for them, might as well happen on another planet.
3. An old, drunk, shoeless man called me a whore and tried to beat me up this afternoon. This is not under "scary" or "dangerous" because while his punches were quite accurate to do quite a bit of damage to my face, he was three meters away from me and ended up punching "me" so hard he fell down. Not ironically he was outside of a store that sells nothing other than Caballito, the Nicaraguan version of moonshine, that makes Dubra look like Grey Goose.


So maybe it wasn´t the most interesting week but I´ll live. Jake came last week and it was AMAZING to have him here! I feel the need to document a really pathetic hour of my life right here, just for kicks . I was nervous I wouldn´t get to the airport on time, so I ended up getting there a lot earlier than Jake´s flight. The airport in Managua isn´t very big, and all the chairs are right outside of the gate where people line up to go inside the terminal for their flights. So naturally I decided to sit there and people watch for a little while, but eventually I realized that everyone leaving Nicaragua at this hour of the day was, for some reason, American (or Canadian, or British, or non-Nicaraguan), tan or sunburnt and happy, but looking excited to get home. This led me from that simple curious feeling that one has while people watching, to a rather disturbing feeling of panic, in which I wanted to throw myself at them and say "TAKE ME WITH YOU!!!". This feeling really made no sense as my brother was due to arrive in an hour, but I´m fairly certain that I´ve never looked more like a lost puppy in my lifetime. It´s not that I´m unhappy here, things are up and down and I´m really happy here right now...it´s just being at the airport I started thinking about when I would leave (via that airport obviously) and what it would be like to come home and see everyone, and I got really anxious and excited for that. Anyway, that was definitely the most pathetic feeling moment I´ve had while here...and now you know.

Once Jake´s flight came in my lost puppy moment was over and I was so excited to have him there! We went to Leon, I wanted to spend at least a day there introducing him to my family and the places that I work. He came to Leon at a great time, because the first full day he was there, there was this HUGE Holy Week procession going on. Apparently it started at 6 in the morning at one church, and it went around the city for hours, in and out of other churches, until it ended at 11 that night. It was beautiful to see, we saw it in the afternoon and at night when everything was lit up. My favorite part of the day were these sawdust art pieces that people were making on this one road during the day. I have some pictures up of them but they were beautifulll, so vibrant and incredible. It was a big square of sawdust and the people used bright pigments to make different religious drawings...and at the very end of the night the Jesus float in the procession trampled all of them. Crazy. We went to the beach the next day (everyone had been telling me that EVERYONE goes to the beach during Holy Week, but forgot to mention that everyone goes during the last three days, not the first three...therefor it was pretty empty). We swam a little, and Jake had his first taste of THE Nicaraguan Rum, Flor de Caña. He also had his first taste of Conchas (raw oyster/shellfish type things), and therefor that night had his first taste of what I like to call the Nicaraguan Full Body Flush. Due to rather unfortunate timing of this Nicaraguan spa treatment, we ended up just coming to Jinotepe and hanging out for a few days, instead of the "Spring Break" debauchery we had planned. It ended up being a blessing, for me at least, because the last two days we went to a reserve and a ranch that we wouldn´t have ended up seeing. I had heard of the ranch before, because my friend Dean was in a conservation placement there, but had never been and it´s AMAZING. So amazing I´m going to take time at the end of my trip here and stay there for a week, just to soak in all the awesomeness. The guy who owns it, Umberto, is incredible...so warm and friendly. You would never guess that many years ago he came back from going to school in the States, bought a bunch of guns (including AK47´s), and fought for this farm that the Sandinistas had taken from him. Obviously he won the fight, and "kicked some ass" in his words. It´s an amazing story, and even more incredible how much passion him and his family have for the land. Jake and I walked and walked and probably didn´t see even a little piece of the land he has but it was so nice to be out of the city and in nature. So that was his trip...very tranquilo but I was just psyched to be with my brother (awww) and also speaking english was pretty nice.

So tomorrow I´m off to Costa Rica. My visa expires in about...oh 3 days, so I´m just going to jump across the border and jump back (I´ve heard I´m really "Nicaraguan" now because I don´t want to go to Costa Rica, I´ve mentioned this before but there are some hard feelings between the two countries, but mostly it´s just because Costa Rica is EXPENSIVE!). ¡Hasta luego!

PS Just for general knowledge, apparently when I "withdrew" from UCONN for this semester, I withdrew. So they disactivated my email account, so...if I don´t respond don´t take it personally

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!

The Naked Man

The first day I got to Leon, my friend Christine was showing me around, telling me all the places to go and avoid, etc etc. Well she told me a very interesting story about a man who always walks around the city with no clothes on "el hombre sin ropas". Apparently, wherever he was, I should avoid him...because he isn´t the biggest fan of foreigners. However days passed, and weeks, and then over a month, and I still had not seen the naked man, which made me think that perhaps he was just a myth, sort of like the Loch Ness Monster. HOWEVER, I am pleased? disturbed? amused? to inform you that yesterday at 6:20 in the morning, as I was walking to the bus stop to go to work...I saw The Naked Man. Finally! And just so that you don´t think "Oh it could have been any naked man", I assure you, he was the real deal. How do I know? Well the spread eagle manner in which he was sprawled out on his back, as well as my astounding observational skills, informed me that this man wasn´t just naked for a day, or a week, he had been naked for a very long time. An evenly colored dark brown from head to toe, this man was a nude-beachers dream. So as any smart person would do, I crossed to the other side of the street...just in case he awoke from his naked slumbers to give me a naked beat down. Interesting way to start the day off!

Also, a bum (not naked) came into Las Tias yesterday (where I teach english in the afternoon) and for twenty minutes I watched in awe as the Tias (aunties) fussed at him and beat him with a long stick. We were all rather amused, including the bum.

ALSO, two little girls stood and pointed at me for ten minutes today while I was waiting for the camioneta to leave work, whispering "Mira!!! Una gringa!!!!" (Look!!! A gringa/white person/american!!!). I decided if I ever see an alien, I will not point and stare and say "Look, an alien!"...because it´s not very nice.

I suppose that´s all the excitement for now. 6 DAYS UNTIL JAKE COMESSSS!! Adiossssss.

Clearly I had no idea what I was doing...

WELL...So if you´ve read my previous post you know the PLAN for the weekend was to go on some excursion organized by a hostel to a nature reserve/island for some real touristy boat trip and ocean swimming and seafood eating. I was planning to go with another girl that teaches English where I teach, and was looking forward to a day trip where I was a real-deal tourist and didn´t have to worry about anything. I woke up Saturday morning, threw on my bathingsuit and packed some sunscreen...heading off to my first "touristy" excursion of the whole trip....

And they had left without me. Granted, I was three minutes late but still...I WAS THREE MINUTES LATE! The woman there said they had all left about twenty minutes before, which means...basically I got ditched. Sadness. So, with a whole weekend of nothing to do in this terrible Leonese heat, I went back home, grabbed my Nicaragua guidebook, opened to a random page and decided to go to Matagalpa. It probably would have been a good idea to read into the place that I was travelling to, however I saw several hiking trails and many hostels so I figured it was a perfect place to go. Trading my bathingsuit for my brown pants, that I seem to wear all the time because you can´t tell if they´re dirty...and my towel for my hiking shoes, I headed off to the bus terminal!

Very excited to be off on an adventure on my own ("who needs guides and other foreigners...I can do it all by myself!" I was muttering the whole way to the bus terminal), I ended up having to wait two hours to a bus to Esteli...which apparently would take me to Matagalpa. I didn´t really know how long it would take or where exactly to get off the bus, but I figured since I only paid for the trip to the change over, the bus driver would throw me off when it came time. Now while I am becoming more and more comfortable with speaking spanish, and can have conversations with the family I´m living with and my students with relavitely no problem, it seems I didn´t understand the bus driver when he said my ticket was "de pied" (aka "standing"...I think that was just a problem with "selective hearing"). But I understood soon enough, when I got thrown out of my seat by a big, burly Nicaraguan man. As I´m crammed in the aisle of a big yellow school bus (from Georgia, ironically) with my backpack lying somewhere in the aisle as well...I started to relax. "I´m off!" I thought. Here are some of my other thoughts on the bus ride..."why is everyone falling asleep?", "the ride can´t be much longer than an hour", "I can´t feel my legs", "where´s my backpack?", "I wonder if I lock my knees and end up fainting, someone will give me a seat?", "thiiiiirrrrrssssstttttyyyy", "I probably should have eaten lunch", "the ride can´t be much longer than two hours", etc etc. So it was a pretty fun bus ride, where I was oogled for being the only gringa on the bus. Somehow it seems that every mode of transportation I take (to work, from work, traveling to various parts of Nicaragua), I´m the only white person/foreigner on the bus/camioneta...and people tend to stare. And this is a strange thing, because there are PLENTY of foreign travelers coming through Leon...I have no idea how they´re getting around but I guarantee it´s a lot more comfortable and less dirty than where I´ve found myself. After two and a half hours of standing on a bus bouncing up, down, left and right due to...potholes, of course...I exited with a wave of other passengers to what seemed to be the middle of nowhere. I asked though, and was assured that this was how I got to Matagalpa, and another bus would be by sometime before nightfall (at this point it´s about 3pm). So we all waited at the intersection of two big roads with nothing in sight but mountains and more mountains...and we waited...and we waited. And an hour later the bus came! Finally we boarded the bus, and I got a seat. What luxury! So finally, we´re off to Matagalpa! I settled in my seat and started making a bracelet when a girl a little younger than me bounced in my seat, asking to learn how to make it. We got to talking, she´s studying "how to take blood" in university. I swear that´s not a misunderstanding, but I¨m pretty sure it´s a little more than just that. She showed me pictures of her daughter, and talked about her husband etc etc. She was shocked/confused/a little appalled that I was traveling alone, and it took us over ten minutes to establish that 1) I live in Leon 2) I don´t know anyone in Matagalpa 3)I´m traveling alone 4) I haven´t made reservations at a hotel yet, before I think she decided I was crazy. And by this time I was thinking I probably was...It would be after 5 by the time I got into town, and I would probably have to leave early so as not to miss the last bus into Leon, what was I doing there again??? So I took out my guidebook and tried to explain that there were lots of hostels that I could stay at, and I would find one when I got there. This was not acceptable. She whipped out her phone and called my first choice, verified that they had rooms, and when we got off the bus an hour later, escorted me by taxi to the hostel. While I´m sure I could have done it alone, I was sort of relieved after all that traveling not to have to try to find a hostel too. (By the way, this hostel was my first choice because of it´s excellent "security" rating...so there´s at least one point for me for safe, smart traveling) I almost freaked out after I realized I hadn´t brought a copy of my passport with me, but after some super dramatic "ohh nooo, what am i going to do, i totally forgot, where will i sleeeeeeeeep?", the guy just gave me a room. And not just any room, MY OWN room, with MY OWN bathroom, with MY OWN shower! Ahhh a dream. And cheap too! For this price in most places you´ll get a bed in a dorm with a shared bathroom, that you probably wouldn´t want to shower in. So this was AWESOME.

Finally sitting down to actually read about the town in my guidebook (after realizing hiking was probably/sadly out of the picture) I realized it´s REALLY known for its coffee. The guidebook described the town as caffeine crazed, which was pretty accurate. For a relatively small city, only two real main roads, everyne was bustling and there were about a million stores (every single one of them second hand clothes stores...). Also, it´s built on these CRAAAAZY hills...some of the hills beyond the city looked too vertical for cars to even drive on, I swear they were almost straight up and down.

By this time I´m starved so I ripped the four pages of the city out of my guidebook (smartest thing I´ve ever done, I don´t carry a purse anymore so as not to get robbed, so to have a mini guidebook in my pocket was awesome), and went on a search for food. First treasure I found was BUNUELOS! Ahhhhhh...delicious fried little nuggets of yucca and cheese, drizzled with a syrup that´s delicious. Absolutely horrible for you, but definitely my favorite food in Nicaragua, that I haven´t seen any of in Leon. I went and looked at a few restaurants in the guidebook but finally found this little italian place hiding in a small side street. It really was amazing. I got the most amazing salad, with more vegetables than I´ve seen in the last month....carrots, and olives and lettuce and tomatoes and canned green beans (???), and some great pasta. Delicious, delicious, delicious...best meal I´ve had in forever. It seems silly to go to a city in Nicaragua and eat Italian food but at the same time, I´ve been here for two months, I´ve eated my share of gallo pinto and tacos and tortillas and pollo...it was a nice change. Probably the highlight of the evening was when I went back to the room and realized that not only did the shower have water pressure (!!) but the water was HOT (!!!!!!!). I could rave for hours about how amazing a hot shower was, but that would probably be more boring than this post needs to be. However, it was INCREDIBLE! After washing myself with bowlfulls of water from a big garbage can, ahhhhhhhh HEAVEN.

So I left in the early afternoon, made it back by the same route (with a tempting offer from an old Nicaraguan cowboy to marry him and help him run a farm) but at least this time I snagged a seat on both buses. It´s probably the most uneventful weekend anyone could imagine...I mean I traveled for hours somewhere to eat dinner, shower and sleep...BUTTT it was nice to get out of Leon for awhile and I learned some things...such as to research where you´re going beforehand and bring identification (idiot). However, after sharing this thrilling story, I think this will be the end of my solo, unplanned trips across Nicaragua.

TGIF!

AHHHHH I´ve never been so happy for a Friday to come! Thank goooooooodness. It´s been a crazy long week. And hot. Everyone warned me that come March everything gets MUCH hotter (I didn´t think it was possible to be honest), and they weren´t lying. I´m dripping sweat when I´m walking to work at 6:20 in the morning, that´s how hot it is. I also got a sunburn while sitting in the shade today. And to look forward to, April is the hottest month-which should be pleasant! Teaching went really well this week, I think the heat made the kids a little more distracted than usual but they´re still a THOUSAND times better with the one on one classes...and I´m still really pleased. I´m making friends with the other volunteer there...we´re going on a trip tomorrow to a nature reserve, with boats and swimming-so I´m stoked. She had the idea of making bracelets with the kids, as an incentive to go to class...and selling them through the organization that donates all their profits to the kids, so hopefully that gets off the ground. This also means that I no longer need to BUY presents for people, I can just MAKE them! They´re really fun to make though (it takes me back to my "friendship bracelet" making days), and now that I have read all of my books about 4 or 5 times each, it´s nice to have something else to do in the evening. I think the long week came from Tuesday and Thursday, when I work all day with the babies, at the Aldea. Monday, Wednesday and Friday I work a few hours in the morning and a few hours in the afternoon (before and after teaching), but Tuesday and Thursday it´s ten hours of diaper changing, bottle feeding fun. It is fun normally, but this week there were less teachers than normal, WAY more kids than normal...and all the kids with weird bonds to the teachers too. For example, there´s one girl that goes from ear pounding wailing to stunned silence when a certain one of the teachers finally picks her up. There´s three kids that are pretty content most of the time, as long as I´m only paying attention to them. As soon as I leave the room or stand up, OIY. Babies really can cry quite loud. I´m not sure I´m even doing the insanity justice so I´m just going to leave it at that.
So it was a hot/dirty/hard/long week but I seem to recall myself saying that that was exactly what I wanted out of this experience, therefore I´m happy. Jake comes in a week which also is going to be great. I´m ready to load him up with all that is Nicaragua. Adios!

More nicaragua

I´m in a list-y mood so...

-Jake comes in two weeks from tomorrow!!! Whohoo! I´m super excited and have already started planning his every second/meal/thought. The overall mindset I have planned for him is "sweeeeet, this is awesome".
-Work is still going well. Teaching is GREAT. I´ll be thanking myself for the next two months for switching my teaching style. I used to hate planning classes, because I found myself thinking "Well this will probably only take them about four minutes to do until they get bored" and "I wonder how many kids will leave the class when I try to teach THIS". Now I love planning classes. Because I can do it for each kid, it´s awesome, I can make everything tailored exactly to what they know and are learning. I also really love getting to talk to the kids one on one, it´s nice to feel like I am actually developing relationships with them. The other job is going great as well. I´m just finding out that it´s a much bigger organization than I thought. I looked them up online, after finding out they´re entirely funded on donations, and they have these SOS places all over the world! It´s amazing. I´m going to put the site here for people to check it out if they want. I feel pretty lucky that I just stumbled upon such a great place. I´ve worked with preschool age kids before but kids this young. It´s crazy how in a span of a few months they develop SO much. It´s also funny how temperment is so apparent already in kids. Rudi is the kid who smiles ALL the time and likes to play in his puddles of pee. Genesis is only one of two that can walk in the bunch and she´s content to entertain herself. Recently she started calling me "momma" though which is sort of funny, and she just likes to sit in my lap and observe the other kids, and cries whenever I leave the room. Edgar cries and cries and cries and when he´s laughing he sounds like he´s crying and then he cries some more. He only stops crying if you´re rocking him while standing up, so we all sort of trade who takes care of him on what days to alleviate the rage. Franklin is a little devil and likes to bite and look down my shirt, but he´s a cutie too. Sarahy cries until she throws up, which is sort of disturbing. Anyway you get the point, the psychologist in me wants to study these kids as they grow up and figure out what they´re going to be like as teenagers/adults. I had mentioned before that they have a program where they offer classes for the families of the kids. The most recent one is being offered for mothers between 16 and 22 years old, which floored me when I read that. I keep hearing more and more about the teen pregnancy here and it´s really sad. It´s hard because it´s such a Catholic country that talk about sex is taboo, but something tells me that it´s still going on here...
-This past weekend I met some guys in Granada that were from Canada. They were heading to Leon so we ended up getting together here this past week. I´ve spent the past few weeks working and avoiding getting to know the foreigners that are travelling here, I guess I feel like I want to immerse myself as much as possible, in order to learn as much spanish as I can. But the two times I hung out with the guys I met SO many people, it was great. They´re staying at a hostel that pretty much only foreigners stay at and it was great to go there. People were from all over...south africa, australia, germany, ireland, israel, canada, the states...and everyone was so friendly and interested to talk. Last night was all talk about politics and how different they are in different countries. It was really interesting to hear and sort of made me feel like I´ve been missing out by being antisocial. That being said, I guess it´s all travelers so most people are only here for a few days, but it was nice nonetheless to have conversations in which I didn´t have to limit my side of the conversation by what verbs I remember.
-On a gross note, I went to the grocery store (yes the same one in which I bought the two week old yoghurt) to buy a pack of peanuts and raisins. In line to the grocery store I was a little dismayed to find that there were ants crawling on the outside of the packet. I´m not too picky though, I figured I´d just brush them off. HOWEVER, when I went to brush them off I realized...they´re inside of the packet. How the ants managed to find their way into a sealed package is still a little baffling to me, but I think I´ve officially decided that two strikes against a supermarket is about enough.

Hope everyone back home is doing well and staying warm!