Hostel Oasis, and One Million Trastes

Just after Libby left, I made my way north for the third time since October.  Up and into Nicaragua, to explore a new scene.  When I last spent time in Nicaragua, I was accompanying Kelci and her friend Simone on a visa run.  We spent three days in Granada, and I developed quite a crush on the city.  I noticed as we left our hostel that a small sign by one of the benches advertised a work exchange program  - one month´s commitment of a few hours of work each day in return for a free bed and breakfast.  Sounded good to me.  A few emails later, I was set to arrive in Granada just two days after Libby headed out.

Something most of you probably don´t know about my trip so far: it has been, to a bizarre extent, filled with washing dishes.  At the Chinchillas, it was the first thing I found that I could clearly see needed doing and that I knew exactly how to do.  Later, my fast and thorough dish skills developed into a way to get myself and Luz out the door and into the dirt as fast as possible.  When you cook three meals a day from scratch for a family of six + one, dishes pile up like eggs in a hen house, and there´s a pretty stark definition of who does dishes in the Chinchilla household (got a Y chromosome? Walk away.)   At the farm in Guanacaste, I was sharing volunteer space with a professional chef.  He cooked, clearly, and I cleaned and tried to learn as much as possible. As it turns out, this theme has followed me all the way to Nicaragua.  My job at the hostel: breakfast!  I take and deliver orders, run them to the front to be added to the bill, and pick up after guests who don´t feel the need to bring their dishes to me. [attn guests: this is not the Ritz.] And? I wash dishes.  :)

Honestly, I can´t complain.  I work with some very sweet ladies who have patience with my particular brand of gringa-tica Spanish, who cook me special breakfasts, and who do nothing more that give each other seriously? looks when I remind them that I won´t be eating pork rinds for breakfast because I don´t eat meat.  A few hours in the morning, and the rest of the day is given over to whatever strikes my fancy.