For all the times I thought my job sucked...

Last week my school had a bike riding excursion to the neighborhood where Andres, the guide from my school and a graduate of the boys program it sponsors, grew up. El Pantanal is one of the poorest neighborhoods in Granada. The families make a living collecting scrap metal from the city dump. You can see the dump outside of the neighborhood by following the cloud of smoke from all the rotting going on. The parents and children search through the garbage in the blazing sun in order to get five cents for every pound of metal they collect. I asked Andres if he preferred the metal collecting or leading us around in the afternoons. He´s still thinking it over.

We rode through the neighborhood on bikes that the school has fixed up. I had one that very well could have been the same bike I had in third grade. It was kind of notstalgic until I got tired and forgot about pedalling backwards to stop. I had to do a panic stop by dragging my feet, but at least it woke me up. In the neighborhood, we left our bikes in the house of Andres´ family and hiked up to a nice lookout over the city. On the hike, we stopped to look at a yard where they had a pet pisote on a leash. Since pisotes are one of my favorites (the raccon monkey pig animals I fell in love with in Guatemala), I asked if I could pet it and the woman at home was nice enough to pick him up and bring him over to me. His name is Sylvester and when he was picked up and cradled he stuck out his little tounge. Pretty much the cutest thing ever!

Visiting El Pantanal was another great reminder of how incredibly lucky we are to have all that we do living in the developed world. It´s also humbling to remember that these are the conditions in which the majority of the world lives. Makes me feel really wimpy for having whined about all the times the water goes out in my homestay, not too mention all the times I take for granted the incredible luxuries I have back home.

Gringa Smurf

Last week one of my friends commented that I had something blue on my arm. I wiped it off and didn´t think much of it until I went to take a shower that night and realized both of my elbows and my feet and ankles also had a bluish hue. I couldn´t figure out what I´d gotten into and decided it must just be a strange combo of dirt, sunblock, and bug spray. But, when I woke up the next morning I was even bluer. Since the water was out again, I had to go to school and my volunteer job with my new skin tone. Pretty embarrassing, but all the questions helped me to figure out it was from the dark blue sheets on my bed. Mystery solved.

Ometepe

I'd like to start off by apologizing to anyone who had the misfortune of witnessing my salsa dance/walk home yesterday afternoon! Actually, I chickened out before I left the cafe, but I did sing a few versus of Nothing at All by Air Supply along with the t.v. when I got home. It's so normal here that nobody even batted an eye. Clearly, very tolerant people.

This past weekend I visited Ometepe, a beautiful volcanic island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. I would like to write about the beautiful view of the volcanoes as we approached the island by boat, but unfortunately the waves were a bit too large for my liking and I spent the trip paniking over where I was going to find more plastic bags to accomodate my sea sickness. However, my travel buddy assured me that it was in fact a spectacular view!

Once arriving on solid land, my Austrian friend from school, Claudia, and I took a pickup truck from the port city to a village on the north side of the island. Sitting in the back we got a great view of both volcanic peaks on the island and of the local villages and banana fields. We checked into a hotel and as we were putting our bags down a young boy came to the door to say hi. At first we just said hola and kept unpaking, but when I looked up I realized it was one of the kids from the language school's boys program. It turns out five of the kids and the two directors of the school were on a weekend bike trip around the island. We said hi to everybody and chatted for a while, but didn't expect to really see the group much.

The next morning we got up early to meet our pick up driver for a tour around the island. As we rode in the back of the truck I hung my small towel in the wind in hopes it would dry and couldn´t help but feel like a Sandanista with a flag. The driver said I was only missing a gun and I would have passed for Ortega. We visited three gorgeous beaches, did a canopy zip line tour through a jungle surrounded by two different types of monkies, swam in a natural spring, hiked, and enjoyed some local beer while watching the sun set. This Spanish studying stuff is pretty hard work!

When we got back to the hotel, Alex one of the kids from our school´s group was yelling our names and riding his bike towards us. He said he saw us drive by while the group was eating dinner and wanted us to join him. He said they were right around the corner which turned out to mean about ten blocks away, but we ran along side his bike and pulled up a chair to join the group for a super yummy typical Nica dinner. Unfortunately, one of the kiddos had crashed his bike that morning on a steep downhill section and got stitches in two different parts of his head, chipped a tooth, and was covered in road rash. So, the next day we took him and his sick with the flu little brother (ages 10 and 12) back to Granada with us while the rest of the group continued on their journey. It was a bit tedious hauling the bike with us on the ferry, in the taxis, and on the buses but both kids were real troopers. I can´t imagine how miserable it must have been for those kiddos to travel sick and injured with two gringos with lousy Spanish that they barely knew. But they didn´t complain at all and were really patient with us, so it all turned out well!

Singing and Dancing

Last night I went to a going away party for a friend from my school. When I got to the house, the entire family was in the middle of the living room dancing. Even the auntie who had on a polyester suit and orthopedic shoes that any nun would be proud of was shaking her ass off. We danced to all types of music (traditional Nica marimba music to rap and everything in between) and everybody was singing dancing and having so much fun. Even the teens in the street out front playing soccer would break into some moves while waiting for cars to pass. In my house the dad is always singing and dancing while he sweeps the floors in the morning and the 20 something year old son loves to sit in front of his DVD of air supply videos and sing his heart out. And, just before I walked into this internet cafe, a teenage kid was walking home from school this afternoon practicing his recorder (like the one we all got in fourth grade) while his friends were singing along. It doesn´t matter if the music or dance is good or bad. It´s just a natural expression of joy - like laughing or smiling. I think I´m going to walk home now and practice my salsa moves on the way!

Carita Feliz and I Love My Gecko Friends

I just finished my second day of volunteer work at El Centro Carita Feliz. I am helping an art teacher with a class of about fifteen kids. It has been really fun so far, and it feels really good to be teaching again. It´s funny how a break from something can help you find the joy in it again. Trying to teach in a foreign lanaguage has been a great reminder of what little influence talk has on instruction. Examples and simply stated instructions really does work wonders. It´s especially cool that there´s a student in the class who is deaf and mute and I have the easiest time instructing him because I don´t have to worry about recalling specific vocabulary and using the correct verb tenses. The center sells the students´ canvas paintings for $30 per piece and the student gets half and the center the other half. It's definitely student art - nothing mind blowing, but I plan to buy one. If anybody is interested, I could take some photos of the work and email them to you.

I also wanted to write a quick note about the awesome geckos that are all over my bedroom. They´re a really pretty off-white almost clear color and every day I get to see at least one chase down a mosquito on the wall and eat it. I caught an ant the other night and tried to feed it to one of the geckos, but the gecko was too skittish to notice I had food for it. I even found a rather large gecko in my purse when I was leaving the house after lunch today. I´ll have to check my bags before I leave so I don´t subject any to a probably deadly trip to Colorado. Oh yeah, they also make this cute chirping noise all night that helps to distract from screaming children, loud tv shows, and family debates.

Super Tuesday

I had a really nice Tuesday. After class and running home for lunch, I went back to the school for my second trip to Laguna Apoyo. I didn´t think it was possible, but it was even more perfect swimming there the second time. I totally had one of those happy place moments. I stopped for a second after jumping in the water to look around me and remember everything. I was floating in the middle of a crater lake filled with clear cool water under a bright sun with views of lush green volcanoes all around me. Ahhh.

After we returned from the lagoon, I went home to change and headed out to a local hostel to meet some other students for a free screening of The Road to Guantanamo. It was a fantastic film, but even better was the discussion afterwards. It´s quite a treat to discuss a meaty topic over some beers with an Austrian, a Dutch, and a Nicaraguan friend. I´m pretty sure we solved all of the world´s problems after the second round!

My homestay is quite interesting. The two year old continues to be cute for the hour a day he's in a good mood, but the other 23 when he's screaming his head off is getting a bit old. So are the mosquitoes that swarm me at night through the large hole in the roof above my bed. But the bright side is that the ice cold shower feels quite good on sweaty itchy mosquito bites.

Okay, enough spoiled westerner whining. I feel like I'm getting a much more real homestay experience than I had in Guatemala. There I was in an impeccable and quiet house with a retired couple, but here I'm really a renter in a busy household going about their daily life. And, my situation actually got better today because I got to switch to a different room because the other student moved out. This room has a mosquito net, a complete roof, and a place to put away my clothes which is nice. Although I will miss the stray cat that sometimes was looking at me from the roof in the mornings as I woke up.

The student that moved out was this hilarious hyper young kid from Chicago. He didn't speak Spanish, but always gave it a go with really entertaining Spanglish. I called him my little brother and told him how I proud I was when he made the decision to move into a youth hostel to get away from all his bad influence friends in the neighborhood. The family had asked me several times to translate for him that the guys he was hanging out with were bad news, but he kept saying they just had bad reputations but were good guys. It never occurred to him that people who were deported from the U.S. for gang involvement and drugs might not be hanging out with him just to keep their English sharp. Well, he finally wised up and I get the good room out of it!!!!