Caliente!

Today I got lost, and I loved it. I had my first Spanish lessons yesterday and continued them today. Each day I spent 4 hours with one-on-one tutors. I had a different tutor for each hour. My first hour is spent with Marie Elena. She teaches me grammar, which is difficult since she does not speak a word of english. It would be nice to be able to ask her questions, but we are able to communicate surprisingly well anyway. Marie Elena is slightly older and seems to get a kick out of me. I play games with her and she laughs at me. Next comes 20 year old Alejo, the most serious of my tutors. Alejo teahes me pronunciation. His favorite word is ägain¨. Saying that Alejo is the most serious of my tutors does not mean that he is boring. We have a decent time as well. My last two tutors are my amigas(female friends). Jessica teaches me vocabulary. I was starting to get a little sleepy when Jessica came in yesterday, so I was a litte squirrly. She spoke a decent amount of english and I joked and teased her most of the hour. I asked if the tutors got tired of teaching the same old things to bumbling idiots like me all day every day. She said yes, and seemed to enjoy my joking around. By today, both Jessica and my last tutor, Helen, flirt with me constantly, and I flirt back. Jessica is slightly less shy and has a boyfriend. Helen is a small shy girl that seems to have a big crush on me. She teaches me conversation, which is fortunate since we do nothing but talk and tease. She is quite helpful, though. As we talk, I ask her how to say different things. She tells me and writes it all down for me. Helen´s english is the best of the four and though she is shy, she fires both words and feisty looks back at me when I tease her. I asked her yesterday if she was married since she had what looked like a cheap wedding ring on her left ring finger. She got all fired up and told me that she was not and took the ring off. Later in our session she told me I was bonito(pretty). Today she asked me if I had a girlfriend. I told her I did not. She said, ¨liar.¨ I could go on and on about her flirty comments, but I will not bore you. She is going to take me to get a cell phone on Friday and I think I will take her out for dinner. I think I will make her my personal local tour guide, and I do not think she will mind this one bit.

Back to getting lost. Yesterday Helen said to me, ¨You will need a notebook tomorrow.¨So, today I headed to the mini supermarket that I had been to the first night I was here. I got lost on the way and ended up wandering around without much purpose. There is so much to see here. The streets are crowded with people, bikes, cars, buggies, motorcycles, and vendors. The sidewalks are crazy. They will suddenly go up 2-3 feet and then later go down again. There are sometimes big holes in them, things blocking the way, or people laying on them. In places they are very clean and orderly, even artisticly decorated. In other places they are falling dirty and falling apart. I would say that I end up walking in the street about half the time, which is certainly the norm.

Granada has a ¨touristy¨ area, which does not seem very touristy until you see the areas that are not touristy. Today I wandered into the non-touristy areas. I walked through an extremely crowded and bustling outdoor market and down streets where I got some interesting looks. I ate at a small local cafe. I ordered some kind of pollo(chicken and pronounced poyo). The waitress seemed to want to give me something else. After trying to change her mind for a little bit, I just said, ¨si si.¨ It seems she wanted to give me the ¨combo¨plate, as I was an American. I think she was worried I would not like the chicken. I ate almost everything, though I was not sure what all of it was. There was, however, one thing that I could only stomach half of. I think it was some kind of cheese, but it was very strong tasting and not in a good way.

I was never really lost, as I knew how to find my way back to my house. But, I never knew where I was. It was a fun but sweaty walk. Today was the hottest day yet. It am sure it was over 90 degrees. So far, I am enjoying the heat during the day but do not like it when I sleep. I sleep in the corner of a room that I share with Phillipe from Belgium and Jerome from France-both friendly characters. The bed cover is too small and constantly falls off. I sleep with nothing more than a sheet and my small backpacking pillow. This is not the most comfortable sleeping, but so far I am making due.

The house is a piece of work. I have to go inside through the house and then outside again to get to my room. There is a small courtyard area that is quite nice. I am not exactly sure how many people are living there, though I have met them all. They have never all been there at the same time and I have not counted. I would estimate 10. The house has a supspended ceiling full of holes. The holes are from cats that enjoy roaming around up there and fall through into the house from time to time. I have yet to witness this sensation, but certainly look forward to it. It is a very open-air house. There is a decent amount of bugs and the occasional gecko, but I am not usually bothered by them. We seem to cohabitate with them nicely.

Last night we had a volunteer meeting. Apparently this happens each Tuesday night. We did not really talk about anything of importance, but we had a few drinks. It was enjoyable. Less than half of the volunteers showed up at the meeting, but I met some new faces. These included two Minnesotans. Nick, who is from the St. Paul area and went to college at UND. And, Matt, who went to school at St. Olaf. They asked me if I wanted to go eat with them after the meeting. I was not hungry but said I would come with and have a beer or two. We ended up having a very deep conversation that circled around and coverd a lot of ground. We only had a few beers, though we talked for hours.

Tonight, our house is hosting a New Year´s eve party. I wish all of my friends could be with me here, as I am sure it will be a good celebration. I am off to the grocery store now to pick up some beer and cups. I plan on teaching these chumps how to play flip-cup tonight. Happy New Year´s-Feliz Aña Nuevo!

A whole new world.

I left for Nicaragua Monday morning without having gone to bed the night before. I have been kind of a bum lately, and this carried over into my packing and preparing. I had a fairly enjoyable flight to Miami. To my left was a chubby 11 year old boy who informed me that he usually flew first class. He said that this time his dad was in first class, but that he was in coach as there was only one spot left in first class. I suggested shooting spit-balls at him as payback for this great injustice. He told me proudly that he weighed 120 pounds and that he just sits on his dad when he is mad at him. He did not sit on me, so we got along quite well. To my right, was an older man who was taking his wife, children, and grandchildren on a cruise. We had a nice long chat and then I spilled my tomato juice and ice on his crotch. He dealt with it pretty well.

I was probably a minority for the first time on the plane ride from Miami to Managua. I was one of the few people with white skin and one of the few people who spoke english. I now realize that this will be the norm for my whole trip. There is almost no English spoken here outside of the volunteer house, and I will certainly be in the minority wherever I go.

After going through customs, I found Felipe waiting with a sign with my name on it. Felipe is a big Nicaraguan with a big personality. He speaks almost no english, yet we were able to communicate through a series of words, gestures, and laughter. Riding with Felipe is quite an experience. You would think he was driving a woman in the middle of childbirth to the hospital. He passes when cars are coming, he passes on the right, he tail-gates, he honks and honks, and sings jollily the whole while. The ride over was very interesting. It seems like everybody is outside, but almost nobody is doing anything productive. The streets and ditches are full of trash. Children play in the trash and wander in the streets. Skinny animals stumble around, often outside of fences or drug along by someone. People on bikes are all over, and many of the bikes are double, triple, or quadruple occupied. Felipe and I cruised from Managua to Granada in no time, with Felipe saying, ¨Welcome to Nicaragua! You like my country? Beautiful, eh?¨

We arrived in Granada and stopped in the La Esperanza Granada office. I chatted with Paulina for less than a minute and I was taken to the volunteer house. I was happy to find that the other volunteers are friendly, helpful, and that all but one speaks english. I soon headed out to exchange American dollars for Cordobas, which are necessary to get around. It turns out American dollars are often not excepted or you get ripped off when they are. We wandered the city a little, stopped at a grocery store, and walked through the market. It seems I will be able to get a lot of what I will need while here at the grocery store. The market was fun, but very run down, dirty, and smelly. I kind of question buying fruits and vegetables in such a filthy place, but I bought a few bananas anyway. Most things are pretty cheap here. Though, you need to pay for many little things so it can add up.

In the evening we had a house meeting to plan for a New Year´s eve party that we are hosting for all the volunteers. It was mostly a waste of time. There is some worry that a lot of random people will show up. This can be dangerous as things can be stolen or broken and fights could occur. So, the main point of the meeting was that the party was meant to be for volunteers and a very small amount of local friends of volunteers. I think we settled on each volunteer bringing no more than one guest, but this was not too solidly agreed upon. After this, we just chilled out and chatted. There is a decent amount of gossip among the volunteers, but I enjoyed the conversation. I was pretty worn out, though. We all turned in at about 11.

Today, I met with Paulina in the morning. We decided that I would spend this week working on my Spanish and start working with the kids next week. With New Year´s there is not a lot going on this week anyway. I then walked to the lake for the first time. The breeze felt very nice as it is 90 degrees here(they say it will get hotter in a couple months). The lake, like everything here, is very dirty. I am pretty disappointed in this fact. Some of the locals swim in it, but the volunteers avoid it for the most part. Being able to jump in the lake after a long hot day would have been really really nice, but I will have to do without it. The walk down to the lake seems to be where the locals really target the tourists. I was approached a number of times by guys that spoke some english. One wanted me to take a boat tour, another was from the east coast and talked to me quite awhile. He did not ask me directly for money, but told me that he was looking for investors for his fishing operation. Apparently, I could make quite a decent return on my investment. I told him I would like to visit him on the east coast since we were friends but that I did not have much money and did not know if I could afford the trip. I thought this might cause him to lose some interest, and I was right. He very quickly said, ¨I must be going now, goodbye.¨I smiled and left.

There are beggars and swindlers everywhere. This country is full of con-artists. The little kids are the most persistent. They learn that white=free money. They walk up to you, tug at your shirt gently, and softly beg for some money. I am sure this often works with American and European tourists. Paulina teaches us not to give money to these children. The intention may be good, but these children then learn to rely on begging rather than education and work. They then grow up and do not know what to do with themselves.

I will head in for 4 hours of Spànish lessons in about half an hour. It should be interesting as my tutor will only speak choppy english. It sounds like I might travel to Leon with some of the volunteers this weekend and do some hiking. I must be off, though I have much more to say. I will save it for another day.