cuando volveras?

Well folks, I'm back in the states, which concludes the posting on this blog once again for a bit.

Until the next continent. ;)

i try to say goodbye and i choke...

This is our last day en Granada.

And this will probably be my last blog from Nicaragua. (if anyone even reads this anymore, lol... I haven´t been very faithful about updating lately...)

I don´t even really think I can sum up my time here well in words...

Teaching Carlos English at night was a random event that I just sort of haphazardly agreed to, and I had no idea that it would mean so much to him. I always thought I was a horrific teacher, but he actually progressed in his English! I didn´t know I had it in me... he was so grateful, and cried at our goodbye party... and said that when his son is older he´s going to tell him about us. I just didn´t expect such a simple thing to bless someone so much. It was touching.

Johanna is a lady we met at the school who gives online spanish classes at night. We randomly helped her with an event at the colegio she teaches at during the day, and after that we started helping her with her english academy that she runs out of her house on the weekends. I´ve never met anyone who works as hard as she does, and she is an amazing teacher. She teaches at the Colegio during the day, and then gives lessons at night, and after that week of teaching she teaches all weekend long. Through working at that school, we´ve gotten to know her pretty well. She is poor and works her a$@ off, but she is one of the most generous people I´ve ever met. I´m going to miss her, and the students at the school, who after classes would take us to their pueblo´s and hang with us all day.

Ramon is a guy who works at the school... doing... well, I´m not really sure what he does other than sit around and look pretty... lol... but we´ve gotten to hang out with him outside of the school a few times, and I´m really going to miss him. To be blunt, he´s flaming gay... and it´s been an eye opener too see the treatment he gets here. It´s sad how much ridicule he gets just walking down the street. He told me last night that we were the first students who ever wanted to hang out with him.

Rizo´s is a waiter at a cafe we went to all of the time and he has chatted with us since our first week here. (his real name is mario... but we call him rizos because thats the spanish word for curls and hes got a head full of ringlets he always has gelled up.) He wanted to throw us a party before we left. I never thought I´d get attached to the waiter at the cafe.

It´s been amazing really getting to know people here, and I´m sad to be leaving all these friends who treat me like family. It´s going to be very hard to get on that bus tomorrow.

BUT... everything comes to an end... I´m excited for this next week of travel though... and though I don´t really want to go home, I´m excited to see everyone. It´s weird to think that I haven´t talked to anyone at home since September! I will have a lot to catch up on when I get back for sure. ( I have not missed my cell phone one bit, and I´m pretty sure when I come back it will remain off most of the time... just a warning. I really do hate that thing...)

We aren´t going to the corn islands like we planned... we waited too long to get a ticket... so instead we are heading first to matagalpa for a few days ( a place with a few coffee and chocolate farms...) and then after that to san juan del sur ( on the pacific coast of nic.) Luckily, we can leave our giant packs with Johanna at her house and come through Granada on our way to Managua on Sunday.

So... that´s the update from me... I might not be on much next week because we are leaving the laptop in Granada, so mom don´t worry if I´m silent. ;)

It's been awhile.

A few updates on life:

The volunteer work here is interesting. This country is so flipping disorganized that the volunteer work is hit or miss. Which is asinine considering the need here.
For the past month Shawna and I have been working at a day care run by nuns, doing nothing more than playing with kids for two hours a day. Not to say that our presence wasn't a help to the three employees who take care of over 60 children everyday, but when you look at all of the problems going on around here, you can't help but think there is a better use of your time.
The work at the day care is now over, because all of the schools are going on their summer break. Tomorrow, Shawna and I start work at a different organization that seems a bit better run. I'll be teaching English from 1-4 in the afternoons. God help me if I am stuck with my own class without a helper, as I suspect is the case. It's one thing to teach one on one with carlos, and another to have a class full of preteens all to myself. lol. God help me.

Shawna and I have also been teaching English on the weekends at a school run by a lady who does online Spanish tutoring at our school. We've both been really enjoying that, and last Sunday, four of the guys we teach asked to take us to their town and show us around next weekend. It should be a random and hysterical event, considering Shawna and I got a joint love letter from two of them ysterday. (we suspect they went behind the backs of the other two to try and secure a place our hearts. haha.)

We are staying at the school one week longer than originally planned... and for that week we will be living at the school, which I'm pretty excited about. Our family has been great, but I'm about done living in someone else's house... and it will be nice to be at the school for a week. We really love the people there, and the lady that lives at the school is one of our fav's, so we're pretty glad to spend our last week in Granada with them there.

It's been interesting here since the elections. A week after we had our presidential elections, Nicaragua held all of their municipal elections. Practically the entire nation was closed for the four days surrounding the election in an attempt to keep things a little safer. Even with that, there has been plenty of fighting after the fact in all of the cities where the elections were a bit dirty. ( I'm pretty sure Granada is the only place that didn't see any riots...) It's calmed down some, but the papers are still full of election news and riot photos. Not gonna lie, I've enjoyed it. (Obviously, I wish it weren't this way...) but it's been interesting to see how things work here, and understand just a little bit more why this country can't make any progress. They fight each other too much to get anything done. (that's not the only problem... clearly... but it plays a huge part...)

We've had a Christmas tree up in the house for the past three weeks which is just weird... it's ingrained in my mind that first you hav thanksgiving and fall scenario's, and THEN you can have Christmas. But then again, it doesn't even feel like Christmas when it's 100 degrees out. lol.
For this reason, I loaded a bunch of Christmas music on my ipod before I left for when December hit... but, unfortunately , my ipod has been stolen. I'm sure whoever took it couldn't possibly buy one themselves, so hopefully it blesses them.
And they better freaking enjoy my Christmas music.

Anyways... that's the short update for now.

Prayer Please

So, a quick update on my linguistic skills here...

I can't believe how much I've learned in just 2 short months... it's pretty amazing. I comprehend tons, and can pretty much communicate whatever... slowly.

But my goal was fluency. Maybe that was an unrealistic goal for just three months, I don't know, but I'm concerned about the level I'm at and returning home. I know I'll lose it.

We found out that we actually paid the school for an extra week of classes, so we are going to take that 11th week, and I would really appreciate prayer that in these last three or four weeks my spanish would really start improving. I'm not to a point where I could get a job translating at all right now, and I need these next weeks to really count. I would appreciate prayer! (if you have the time, you could pray that I never get served the tongue again as well... lol...)

With taking that extra week of class, we lose a week of travel, which is a bummer, but my main purpose for coming here was to learn spainsh, not travel.
So we will only have one week, and we've pretty much decided to head over to the corn islands for that week and relax on the caribbean, which I'm pretty excited about. :)

anyways, yeah... prayer please!

"Shawna, what does this meat look like to you?"

Yesterday Shawna and I sit down to lunch, and start to eat.
The meal looks like a typical stewed meat of some kind with a side of beans and rice. Just a normal lunch.
I go to slice off a piece of the "meat" and to my surprise, the side of my fork slides right through like butter... I didn't think much of this other than they must have been stewing this beef since last night. I put it in my mouth... it tastes good, and I think, wow... they really know how to stew meat here so that when it's done it has a totally different texture!
I keep eating, and the further in I get, the softer it is. Still, I am blissfully not thinking about what I'm consuming. I encountered a chunk of "fat" which I just ate, because to be honest, I'm dropping weight like nobody's business here, and I thought the fat might be good for me.

Finally, I get down to my last three or so bites of "meat", and I really give the thing a good look. And that's when I saw them, the taste-buds. And suddenly everything that was weird about the meat now made sense, IT WAS COW TONGUE!
That one random piece of "fat" was the what connected the tongue to the mouth! I had consumed the taste-bud lined skin of the tongue! That's why the middle was so soft... that's why there were no straiations! It wasn't just stewed for a long time...

After all of those realizations crashed down on me in the spanse of 30 seconds... I still tried to finish my food. After all, I had eaten in up till then with no problem... it actually tasted really good, and I had been fine before I spotted the taste-buds. I put the fork up to my mouth and my body pulled an access denied scenario. There was no way that bite was going down. I could feel my gag reflex going.

And I have learned my lesson... when I'm eating something new that tastes good... don't look at it closely.

Una mezcla de pensamientos.

Today was election day... it cost me $10 to mail my ballot (bah!) but it was awesome to be able to vote. Nicaraguans are pretty into politics, it's always one of the first topics brought up when you first meet someone (a polar opposite aspect of the culture from the u.s.), so we've actually talked about the election way more than i thought we would in Nicaragua. (next weekend are the the muicipal elections for the whole country. I'm really excited to be here for them. Apparently everything closes on Friday and Saturday so that the people are rested to vote on Sunday, and on Monday everything is closed in an attempt to stop some of the violence that almost always results from an election. Nicaraguans are pretty quick to lose temper... especially about politics. And that's not just my observation... I've been told that by MANY Nicaraguans. haha. Carlos tells me that he thinks that's the reason that Costa Rica is so much more wealthy, because every time there's an election, the parties that lost don't pick fights and try and overthrow the government. It's interesting to think that an aspect of their culture is helping to keep them so impoverished. Anyways, mom and dad, if you're reading this... don't worry, there's not much fighting in Granada so I'll be safe.)

I got my first compliment on my Spanish from a local today. Not gonna lie, when she told me I had good spanish I looked behind me to see who she was talking to. haha. To my surprise it was actually me! We had a nice chat after that about the election (what else? lol) and I left the cafe feeling pretty good. Then I started thinking about how second nature spanish is actually becoming to me. I don't have to think as hard anymore. I find myself sating things without even thinking about, and then afterwards I'm like WHOA! I just said that? haha. It's a good feeling.

Shawna and I went to Ometepe this weekend with a couple of classmates which was AMAZING! Ometepe is an Island in lake cocibolca made up of two volcanoes, with a couple little towns and about a dozen villages. It was dirt cheap and one of the most beautiful places I'll ever go, I'm sure. (It's the 8th wonder of the world.)

Highlights:
-climbing volcan concepcion. (also a WAY harder hike than i expected... though I'm not sure why I thought climbing a volcano would be easy... we went up to the cloudline and then back.)
- Ridig back to town from the hike in a Political parade for the Sandinista's, and getting the nickname 'gringa sandinista.'
-Biking around the island and stopping in the little villages along the way. (want to know a really bad idea? Bike in full Nicaraguan sun for 7 hours without sunscreen. I have a killer burn on the tops of my hands but not on my fingers from gripping the handle bars. lol. it's pretty hott.)

Overall, a great weekend... and I feel really good about that Spanish compliment. :)

Today I watched three separate funeral processions march through the streets of Granada, and this is not a big city. I know that the majority of these deaths are probably from complications of a cold, or stomach problem, or something equally as innocent for a country that has more than 6 doctors for every 10,000 people. (when the son of my teacher, Maria-Lydia, had a simple stomach problem, I went with her to the clinic. She had to wait half an hour simply to make an appointment to see the Doctor, who she wouldn't be able to see for a few more days after that. After that, if she needed medicine, she would have to get that elsewhere. All that for a stomach ache. What if it were more serious? If he had needed more attention that he could get at the clinic, he would have had to wait even longer to go to an overcrowded hospital to receive horrible medical attention. Most women in this country refuse to have their children in the hospitals because they receive virtually no care there, and it's common to receive abuse from the nurses because they are so overworked.)

Lately during class Maria-Lydia has been having us talk about the political, social, and economic problems we have in the U.S.
After we discuss that, she will tell us how those same situations are here, and always think, wow, what the heck are Americans griping about? In particular, I recall reaming on the health care and educational system, and the lack of programs for poor and homeless people.
And then I felt like the most ungrateful person when she laid out for me those same systems in Nicaragua.
I also feel like an idiot when I talk about the current problems with the economy, since we have played a huge part in keeping Nicaragua this poor. The U.S. has not been kind to this country. Prior to coming here, I did not know that the U.S. appointed Samosa, the dictator whose family ruled and destroyed this country for more than 50 years. We have exploited this country in more ways than I can count.
It's been really interesting to see the other side of the coin with Nicaragua. It's amazing how much dealings the U.S. government has had with this country, and how much the average U.S. citizen doesn't know about it. There's much more to this place than the Revolution in the 80's.