Glimpses

Okay, posts have been seriously lacking in pictures lately, and I know that's what you guys really want in the end.  So, here's a look into the places and people I've been blessed by recently:

Fountain in Granada just at the mouth of my favorite walk - the broad mango tree lined path to the lakeside.

Lots of the churches in Granada were sparkling clean
and recently painted. I liked this one which showed its age a little bit more.

This lovely breakfast joint became a running joke between my friends and me here.  While making plans one day, someone suggested we meet at kahtaywafflayy. I thought  - huh? After several minutes of describing the place to me, my friends then had to sit through a fit of giggles as I realized what they were talking about. 

A marching band performs on the main square in Granada -

instead of a flag corps, they have these guys out front playing and dancing.

Pithaya! Or dragon fruit.  For all its crazy appearance, it's actually got a pretty mild taste to it.

 A taste of the political climate in Leon.

Rawr.

A few of the amazing folks I've had the pleasure of spending time with here. From left to right: Aurora, a friend I met while working at the Oasis and then followed to Leon,
Mainor, a veterinarian and class clown, me,
and Alex, a systems engineer student who will graduate this year and a fellow student of Spanish - he's from Nicaragua, but grew up on the Caribbean coast and so spoke only Creole English and Miskito until just a few years ago.

:)

In which I lose my mind to the music

Confession: I am newly and wholly in love with latin dancing.  Having spent an entire 6 months in Costa Rica smilling and saying no every time I had the opportunity to dance explaining that I just was too embarrased to get out there, I finally gathered my courage in a tiny bar on the edge of Lake Nicaragua and danced bachata for the first time.  I was bad at it. My date was patient and let me step on his feet, trip over my flip flops, stop cold in the middle of a step, and generally behave as if my feet hips and knees had never been introduced. And then, I wasn´t so bad. And then, a few days later I was washing dishes in the hostel, and the way that the sponge slid quickly around the edge of the soapy dish reminded me of a quick turn I had learned. And I found that as I walked through each pool of music spilling onto the city streets, that I wanted to move.

At first, bachata was really the only flavor of music that I found myself comfortable with.  It has a sultry, slower beat and less fancy footwork and turns than other styles, so it´s a great place to start.  One of the things that always most intimidated me about latin dancing was the subtlety of it all - there always seemed to be a beat within the beat that everyone could hear but me.  With bachata, however, I was able to keep pace with the steps while slowly relaxing into the "extras." 

When it comes to bachata, a group called Aventura is the absolutely uncontested king of the style.  It amazes me the monopoly that they have over the dance scene.  Their music has become as much a  background to my time here much like the homemade fireworks that churches set off by the dozen every day.  So, I wanted to leave you guys with a few of my favorite songs.  Expect more news about dancing in the next few posts!

Disclaimer - general music video / latin music oversexiness applies here. Feel free to ignore the video and just listen.  [Grandmother, I warned you! :)]


un beso

lagrimas

And finally, one of the only songs I hear regularly that´s not Aventura: tu primera vez

Am I a Country Mouse or a City Mouse?

One of the reasons I wanted to come to Granada, among many, was to explore living in a city again after having spent so much time in the countryside.  I knew that I had fallen deeply in love with the farming life, that I tended to wax poetic on things that other people found either bemusing or outright silly. (Look at this head of lettuce, I mean, what could possibly be better than this??) But I also knew that my heart at home lay in New Orleans, and that there were times in La Ribera that I yearned for certain things only a city can bring.  So, knowing that San Jose wasn´t for me, I came back to Granada, whose crumbling decadence and worked metal gates reminded me of the Big Easy.

It´s been quite an adjustment living in a city again, I have to say.  I´ve traded muddy paths for trashy sidewalks, whatever was placed on the table for a whole city of dinner options, a steady homebody life for the ever-changing scene of the hostel.  Family for peers.  Safety and ennui for leers and a million new dance steps to learn. Knowing everyone for knowing almost no one.  I´m glad I came.  I can´t tell you that I´ve had some sort of revelation about where I want to spend my time in the future, but I have begun to rediscover city life in a way that I was unsure about a few months ago.

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.