Home, summer's end

At last, I am home, enjoying my rest, enjoying my daily warm shower, and the ability to let my infections heal properly. My kitties are soft and healthy, and school is nearly beginning. Strange to be starting. Again. Interested to see who my fellow classmates will be.

En Granada

I am in the oldest settled town of the mainland Americas! Granada dates back to 1524 and the conquistador Hernandez de Cordoba. Whoo hoo! Somehow, though it fails to elicit such grandeur...I just can't feel the oldness of it like I could in old places in Europe. Maybe because things just get rebuilt here?
My Spanish is finally feeling comfortable. I have been just sitting in the park, people watching most of the day with the occasional walk to another park, and I have had long conversations with 5 people! (a shoe-shine boy of 14, an old man proud to be Granadisto, a guard on the waterfront (the only freshwater lake to have sharks. Yes! It used to be connected to the ocean, but when the land filled in, the sharks were stuck.), and two hammock-sellers.) They're MUCH easier to understand than the Campesinos out in Siuna and beyond, and they tell me while I need practice, my pronunciation is good, I can speak well, understand well, and they're excited that I spend the time to talk to people one-on-one. Instead of being bothered by the hammock people, for instance, I engaged them in a conversation, which ended in joking and a mini english lesson (they asked how to say, "Would you like a hammock? No thank you, I already have one."). That seems like a much more reasonable interaction.

Volcân Masaya

Got out of the quadruple enforced US Embassy home today successfully, caught a bus to Volcan Masaya national park and promptly had to...wait...for 2 hours before they opened the gate. But, 2 germans and myself were the first people up at the crater (caught a ride with the park guides doing morning rounds. Good because it{s a long, hot walk otherwise). Wow. Imagine screeching green parrots in droves that live inside the crater on the rock walls, occasional silence during which you can hear the earth breathing. Strange clangs eminate from the center of the crater along with sufurous fog, and deep bellows of air sounding like an enormous smoking giant, puffing away. The indigenous people of ancient times used to throw human and animal sacrifices here to appease the angry gods, the conquistadors called it the very Gates of Hell, and supersticiously erected an enormous cross at the apex of the perimeter of the crater to exorcise the demons floating out. Nowadays, the park rangers just tell people to back into their parking spaces so that she blows, the getaway is quick. Generally, incandescent lava can be seen at the base of the crater, but the fume/fog was so thick today that I couldn't see any. Wow. I just felt so impressed to be there, to look out over the Nicaraguan plains and see smaller billows of smoke from other tiny pores (vents) in the earth's skin. This Earth we live on, she's alive!

¿Seguridad o carcel?

Well, I know I am safe at Hansell's house where we effectively live in jail, complete with guards 6pm-6am, thanks to the government and your hard earned tax dollars. I woke up late yesterday (after being jostled awake at 4am and again at 6am to an earthquake I somehow, in my sleepyfog, thought was Hansell making her bed and doing very roughly on the other side of the wall...so roughly that it was causing my whole room to shake) and left the house to go exploring on my own for a few days before meeting up with Hansell and Etienne this weekend. After carefully making sure I had all I needed for 5 days in my knapsack, I closed the house door behind me (*click*...locked out), closed the iron gate door to the house behind me (*clang*), closed the other iron gate door (*clang*), walked to the driveway gate and found that I was locked in. No going out. Perused the perimeter: 10-20ft tall walls topped by electric razor wire. That's a no-go. And, well, I just had to content myself to sit outside all day and wait for Hansell and her roommate to come home. Luckily, the pool was within the area that I was locked into, and I had my swimsuit in my pack. Several laps, chapters read, and a sunburn later, I heard the keys in the front gate lock jingling and sprinted to catch Jose before he disappeared behind many doors into the impenetrable house/jail. Just another day in Nicaragua, waiting. How apropos.

En Managua

I arrived in Managua yesterday to a holiday, Dia de Santo Domingo, and Hansell (a woman my age I met at Miranda's wedding who used to work at Bridges to Community, and now works at the US Embassy) took me along with her friends Ericka (a Nicaraguan guard at the Embassy), Etienne (a med student from Quebec), and Jaime (a Nicaraguan body guard to the US Ambassador) to the parade of horses. Over a thousand pure-bred horses with crazy complicated dance-like stepping are the supposed attraction, and while that was pretty neat, I think the real attraction was simply the excuse for thousands of Managuans to go out, be seen (if rich), sell trinkets or vend food (if not rich), and GET DRUNK (everyone). I had an amazing time people watching! Lemme tell you though, the combination of the heat, the sun, the crowd and the cerveza made me more than a little loopy. Whoooo! But, wonderfully, Hansell has been provided with a pool at her posh US Embassy house, so we lazed in the water when we returned. AND.... (I can't believe it still...) we ordered pizza, took warm showers, FLUSHED our toilets, went to bed in AIR CONDITIONED rooms. Very very posh. I am so amazed that all these things EXIST in Nicaragua.
In fact, yesterday I was just psyched about it. But today, I have ventured to a mall to use the internet, and I am rather perturbed by the fact that nearly everything that is available in the States is available in Nicaragua, but only if you have the money. The lifestyles and incomes of the people in Nicaragua are too vastly extreme to be fair. While it is funny to see the food court filled with business men and women in dapper suits rather than teenagers and rednecks, it's sad to me that the prices are expensive american prices, and that no one else could even dream of even walking into a place like this mall. Sad. I am getting ready to spend the next little while in places decidedly more touristy, and I wonder how this seed of insight will mature before I leave.