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.

:)

On Being a Macha/Chela Muchacha/Chavala

As a language nerd, I have had a pretty limitless amount of things to observe and think about over the past few months.  I watched my own progress with Spanish with a weird amount of consciousness, tracking the plateaus and leaps with interest.  I often find myself  in excited conversations with people over silly turns of phrase within Spanish or English.  Over the past month, I've gotten to make a new kind of comparison - Spanish with Spanish.

I've mentioned briefly before that there isn't a whole lot of love lost between Nicaraguans and Costa Ricans.  I experienced this in a new way, though, once I started making friends in Granada and  began hearing over and over that I spoke like a Tica (Costa Rican.)  My friends would mimic what I had said, laying on a thick Tico accent the way people might put on a Boston one, laughing the whole time.   I pronounced my "s" to much.  I  was mushmouthed the way Ticos were.  I used the formal form far too often.   And God help me if I attempted to use every Tico's  favorite, pura vida.  Unacceptable.  So, I started to try and adapt. A couple examples of things I picked up:

cool as in chill
Nicaragua: tuani
Costa Rica: tuaniS

cool as in awesome
Nicaragua: diacachimba, salvaje, bestial
Costa Rica: chiva, pura vida, tuanis

cool as in a cool person, or as in "he's good people"
Nicaragua: buena onda
Costa Rica: pura vida, buena gente

something that reminded me of New Orleans, used for checking  to make sure someone is paying attention while you're talking in Nicaragua: oiste? (i.e. you heard me?)

getting someone's attention 
Nicaragua: a quick whistle (ooooOOOO)
Costa Rica: either a nonsense syllable or, if walking up to a home and announcing your presence, an oopeh

girls
Nicaragua: chavalas, chicas
Costa Rica: guilas, muchachas

people with light skin / hair / eyes (usually foreigners, but not always)
Nicaragua: chela, chele
Costa Rica: macha

Yo No Sé Mañana

  Last post I talked a little bit about songs that constantly float around in the air around here.  Aventura is big, but if you wanna talk really really big, you need to know about Luis Enrique.  He is a native son of Nicaragua who has made it to the world stage as  the prince of salsa.  This song is popular here in a way that I imagine Lady Gaga is in the States at the moment (who also by the way  enjoys a heavy rotation down here in Central America, where her name is hilariously close to the word for, well, poop), or this Justin Bieber person that I've just started hearing about.  In any case, the opening chords of this song will always take me back exactly to the barfront in Via Via, sharing  Flor de Caña rum with friends and singing along.  I will really miss Leon.


Yo No Sé Mañana

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

Viva León... ¡Jodido!

Greetings from León, Nicaragua!  The college town of Nicaragua, León is known for being filled with radical, party seeking university students, for it`s role in the revolution, and for its heat.  (official spiel here) I came to León after having finishing my commitment to the hostel and spending one last weekend enjoying Granada.

A friend of mine who I originally met in the Oasis arrived in León several days before me, and I traveled with two mutual friends of ours to meet up with her.  I have to say, there is just nothing as good as getting to travel with locals when I am trying to arrive in a totally new place.  The crush of taxi drivers ready with lies (oh, there aren´t any more buses today.....), the auctioneer paced flow of information from the bus men, everything is just a little less overwhelming when you´re with people who know when to listen and when to roll their eyes.

So far, León has been an absolute blast.  While I thoroughly enjoyed Granada and its people, I am excited to be here among new friends exploring new territories.

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.