Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Condega (read after #6)
Ok, so I just wanted to talk a little about the community I lived in while in Nicaragua because it impressed me so much. I already talked about what kind of town it was, but also while we were there, we got the chance to visit a LOT of organizations that they ran. We visisted an organization that helped women in all kinds of problems from violence and abuse to helping them raise children. There was a school for deaf and mute children to live and learn sign language. There was an art school. There was a rehabilitation center for adolescents addicted to drugs or alcohol. There were lots of little shops and places that helped each other out. We visited the library and a little museum. And the reason I mention all these places is because the government has nothing to do with them! I mean, think about that difference! In the U.S. we depend on government funding to solve soooo many problems! In N, even the library was just run by donations and a volunteer librarian. I think it´s because the government in N has had a pretty unstable and unreliable history, so the people have no choice but to just take care of their own problems and not depend on government funding. But I was still constantly amazed by the people. So that is just a small glimpse of how amazing the people and their sense of community is in Nicaragua. :)
Numero Seis...
Hola again! Okay so this blog is just going to be about what we did in Nicaragua, and unless you´re feeling adventurous I´d skip the blog entitled "Open at your own risk", for obvious reasons I think. :)
So we left for Nicaragua (which is a awkward word to type so from now on I´ll address it as N) early early on a Monday morning. We rode a big tour bus for nine hours with only one stop and two border checks that weren´t too big of a deal. (It´s amazing how powerful you realize just being a U.S. citizen and having a U.S. passport is.) The first three nights we stayed in a outdoor dormitory style housing (it´s reallyhard to explain so if that´s confusing, ask me to explain better later) in the capitol city Managua. Managua is known world-wide as one of the top...two, I think ugliest capitol cities in the world. And it earned that title. It´s dirty in a typical big-city way, but also it´s just not pretty in other way. But we talked to a politician and got to visit the National Assembly, so that was pretty cool. We also went to a restaurant called Dona Blanca´s (dona = lady or ma´am) owned by...Dona Blanca of course and served traditional Nicaraguan food. I discovered a fruit that is only found in N that they only use as a fruit drink called Pitaya and it was awesome!
Then, on Thursday morning, everyone split into groups of five or six students and went off on their own to different communities literally all over the country. I went with 11 other people because five of them lived in a community farther north than my group, so when we got off the bus they went on for another hour. So we all hopped on an old school bus and rode non-stop for three hours with three people to a seat and some even standing in the aisles. Oh, and it was raining so we couldn´t have the windows open. Yeah. Finally, we got off in my town called Condega. This was by far my favorite part of trip. I spent six nights with a host family in Condega, this "big" town with a small town feel. It was so cute. There were couble-stone streets where real cowboys rode their horses around and everyone walked and said hi, God bless you to everyone else even if they didn´t know them. It was safe for me (even as a blonde woman) to walk around at 1 in the morning, although I never tested this, my host mom just said that I could. And I´ll talk more about the community later but I´m just focusing on what we did for now.
My host mom, Julia Maria Tercero, owned a little store at the front of the house that random cousins were constantly working for her when she wasn´t around. The dad was Marvin, the 12 year old son was Marvin Jr, and the 4 year old girl was Mili. They were incredible and so generous, which was actually a theme in everyone´s Nicaraguan experience. Just to give you an idea of this I´m going to go off on a little tangent. We all brought our host families gifts, and I brought the kids some pens and little cute post-it pads (thanks, mom, by the way) and when I gave them their gifts, the mom said, oh wait! I have something for you! And went to the store and just pulled out a cool necklace that her friend had made and gave it to me. Later, she had a really cool shirt on and I complimented it. The day we left, she brought me one just like and said she had a few that she had bought in El Salvador and this one was for me. THEN, later on the way to a different part of N we were in a taxi and there was a woman selling little animals to hang from your rearview mirror. The taxi driver just knew her from always driving by and she came over to show him the stuff. He was looking at a little deer and I said some comment about it being cute and he just bought it for me! Okay, back to my adventures, but it´s really important to realize that practically all Nicaraguans are just like that! They don´t care what it is, they´ll just give it to you.
After my amazing six day adventure with my adorable family (especially the little girl who was so patient with my Spanish and couldn´t say her "r"s so that was an adventure in itself), I met back up with my group of 11 people and we headed back on bus for four hours to Managua. Then, we got the taxi to the other bus stop where we rode a large van to Granada, a really old city. Old in the cool, antique kind of way. The buildings were incredible and beautiful, but we were only there in a hostel for one night.
Then, we went to Masaya, another fairly large town with some really cool artisan markets. I was walking around with a small group of friends and we decided we were going to get some ice cream. We went to the little vendor and as we´re trying to buy our stuff, there were a few little kids asking us to buy them some. We thought, ok, we can do that. But then we looked past them and saw another ten kids playing at the playground, and then even more on the street beyond that and we realized that news would spread fast and that we´d end up buying ALL the ice cream, so we told them we couldn´t. But then we ate the most guilty-feeling bowl of ice cream I´ve ever had in my life.
Then, we headed back to Managua to that same dorm-type place for our last night in N. The next day, last Friday the 19th, we left really early back to Costa Rica and got home late that afternoon.
I spent the weekend pretty much just relaxing and hanging out with my Costa Rican family. Now we have this week and weekend and next Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday pretty much entirely dedicated to finishing our big opinion essays and group presentations. Then, we have the next Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off for fall break. A lot of groups of people formed to go to the beaches or things like that, but my family is planning to come back later for vacation so I didn´t really care to do any of that. I was going to just spend time with my family, but then I found out about a girl going to volunteer with a turtle conservation group on the west coast, so we formed a group of four of us and we´re going to do that! I´m so excited and the program directors said they´d be willing to fund a lot of our expenses, so it´s a double bonus!
After that break, we break into our concentrations. There are 51 students here from universities all over the U.S. and we´re broken into 3 concentrations: business, cultural studies, and Spanish literature and language. I´m in the lit. and lang. part. So we´ll have four weeks of that (which I´ll explain more about later). Then, each concentration goes to a different country for the last 8 days of the program. Then, we all meet back in Miami for two days. THEN, I´m on my home for Christmas break! It´s so close, but I don´t want to get excited yet and miss this. I´m loving every second here, but also missing you all, so it´s hard to stay focused on the moment.
So that´s all for my basic life schedule, but here´s some things you can pray for!
·That I will be able to stay in the moment no matter how close home gets.
·That everyone will stay healthy and in good spirits.
·That I will have patience with my family here in the next six weeks that we´re together. (They ask me how I´m doing every five minutes and it´s starting to irritate me...) :)
·Also, pray for my friend Emily. She´s a student at Northwestern studying in Uganda right now and it´s way more rough than we have it here. She´s loving it, but pray that it stays that way!
Thanks for reading and sorry these get so lengthy! I´m trying to be concise and tell you everything and it´s practically impossible to do both! I love you!
So we left for Nicaragua (which is a awkward word to type so from now on I´ll address it as N) early early on a Monday morning. We rode a big tour bus for nine hours with only one stop and two border checks that weren´t too big of a deal. (It´s amazing how powerful you realize just being a U.S. citizen and having a U.S. passport is.) The first three nights we stayed in a outdoor dormitory style housing (it´s reallyhard to explain so if that´s confusing, ask me to explain better later) in the capitol city Managua. Managua is known world-wide as one of the top...two, I think ugliest capitol cities in the world. And it earned that title. It´s dirty in a typical big-city way, but also it´s just not pretty in other way. But we talked to a politician and got to visit the National Assembly, so that was pretty cool. We also went to a restaurant called Dona Blanca´s (dona = lady or ma´am) owned by...Dona Blanca of course and served traditional Nicaraguan food. I discovered a fruit that is only found in N that they only use as a fruit drink called Pitaya and it was awesome!
Then, on Thursday morning, everyone split into groups of five or six students and went off on their own to different communities literally all over the country. I went with 11 other people because five of them lived in a community farther north than my group, so when we got off the bus they went on for another hour. So we all hopped on an old school bus and rode non-stop for three hours with three people to a seat and some even standing in the aisles. Oh, and it was raining so we couldn´t have the windows open. Yeah. Finally, we got off in my town called Condega. This was by far my favorite part of trip. I spent six nights with a host family in Condega, this "big" town with a small town feel. It was so cute. There were couble-stone streets where real cowboys rode their horses around and everyone walked and said hi, God bless you to everyone else even if they didn´t know them. It was safe for me (even as a blonde woman) to walk around at 1 in the morning, although I never tested this, my host mom just said that I could. And I´ll talk more about the community later but I´m just focusing on what we did for now.
My host mom, Julia Maria Tercero, owned a little store at the front of the house that random cousins were constantly working for her when she wasn´t around. The dad was Marvin, the 12 year old son was Marvin Jr, and the 4 year old girl was Mili. They were incredible and so generous, which was actually a theme in everyone´s Nicaraguan experience. Just to give you an idea of this I´m going to go off on a little tangent. We all brought our host families gifts, and I brought the kids some pens and little cute post-it pads (thanks, mom, by the way) and when I gave them their gifts, the mom said, oh wait! I have something for you! And went to the store and just pulled out a cool necklace that her friend had made and gave it to me. Later, she had a really cool shirt on and I complimented it. The day we left, she brought me one just like and said she had a few that she had bought in El Salvador and this one was for me. THEN, later on the way to a different part of N we were in a taxi and there was a woman selling little animals to hang from your rearview mirror. The taxi driver just knew her from always driving by and she came over to show him the stuff. He was looking at a little deer and I said some comment about it being cute and he just bought it for me! Okay, back to my adventures, but it´s really important to realize that practically all Nicaraguans are just like that! They don´t care what it is, they´ll just give it to you.
After my amazing six day adventure with my adorable family (especially the little girl who was so patient with my Spanish and couldn´t say her "r"s so that was an adventure in itself), I met back up with my group of 11 people and we headed back on bus for four hours to Managua. Then, we got the taxi to the other bus stop where we rode a large van to Granada, a really old city. Old in the cool, antique kind of way. The buildings were incredible and beautiful, but we were only there in a hostel for one night.
Then, we went to Masaya, another fairly large town with some really cool artisan markets. I was walking around with a small group of friends and we decided we were going to get some ice cream. We went to the little vendor and as we´re trying to buy our stuff, there were a few little kids asking us to buy them some. We thought, ok, we can do that. But then we looked past them and saw another ten kids playing at the playground, and then even more on the street beyond that and we realized that news would spread fast and that we´d end up buying ALL the ice cream, so we told them we couldn´t. But then we ate the most guilty-feeling bowl of ice cream I´ve ever had in my life.
Then, we headed back to Managua to that same dorm-type place for our last night in N. The next day, last Friday the 19th, we left really early back to Costa Rica and got home late that afternoon.
I spent the weekend pretty much just relaxing and hanging out with my Costa Rican family. Now we have this week and weekend and next Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday pretty much entirely dedicated to finishing our big opinion essays and group presentations. Then, we have the next Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off for fall break. A lot of groups of people formed to go to the beaches or things like that, but my family is planning to come back later for vacation so I didn´t really care to do any of that. I was going to just spend time with my family, but then I found out about a girl going to volunteer with a turtle conservation group on the west coast, so we formed a group of four of us and we´re going to do that! I´m so excited and the program directors said they´d be willing to fund a lot of our expenses, so it´s a double bonus!
After that break, we break into our concentrations. There are 51 students here from universities all over the U.S. and we´re broken into 3 concentrations: business, cultural studies, and Spanish literature and language. I´m in the lit. and lang. part. So we´ll have four weeks of that (which I´ll explain more about later). Then, each concentration goes to a different country for the last 8 days of the program. Then, we all meet back in Miami for two days. THEN, I´m on my home for Christmas break! It´s so close, but I don´t want to get excited yet and miss this. I´m loving every second here, but also missing you all, so it´s hard to stay focused on the moment.
So that´s all for my basic life schedule, but here´s some things you can pray for!
·That I will be able to stay in the moment no matter how close home gets.
·That everyone will stay healthy and in good spirits.
·That I will have patience with my family here in the next six weeks that we´re together. (They ask me how I´m doing every five minutes and it´s starting to irritate me...) :)
·Also, pray for my friend Emily. She´s a student at Northwestern studying in Uganda right now and it´s way more rough than we have it here. She´s loving it, but pray that it stays that way!
Thanks for reading and sorry these get so lengthy! I´m trying to be concise and tell you everything and it´s practically impossible to do both! I love you!
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Quick Update
Hey! I don't have much time to give you all a full account of Nicaragua, but I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm back safe and healthy in Costa Rica again. Also! I found out that you CAN send packages if you so choose as long as they're smaller than 4 pounds. Just fyi and a little hint to the fam. :) Anyway, it was awesome and I loved my host family tons! I fully intend to go back someday! I'll give you better info later! I love you all!
Friday, October 5, 2007
#5 with a little clarification for #4
Ok, so first things first: the guy at the bus stop was not a creepy guy trying to pick us up. I've been told that I worded it horribly, so I'm sorry. But here's the deal. We (being us three girls) were waiting at the bus stop with like ten women, five other students, and this one other guy. He only asked us what we were doing in Costa Rica because obviously, we're foreigners, and then he asked us if we knew when the last bus had been there. That was it, the first time. Then, we saw him and initiated the conversation. And by conversation, I should actually say it was like two sentences about how he was born in California but didn't really know any English and we asked if he wanted to practice and he was like sure, but then we didn't say anything else. Anyway, I'm sorry it came across different, but really, that guy is the least dangerous thing. I'm not going to lie, we're in a big city. It'd be like living in Chicago or New York, maybe not that big, but that's the idea. So we're being really careful and the people at LASP are making us aware of all the ways we can be as safe as possible. Moving on...
We did go to the soccer game, I didn't go to the protest march, but it was completely safe. I just wanted to sleep in. :) The soccer games, honestly, are probably the most dangerous things we could do. We went to a cup game between the two huge rivals of San Jose: Saprissa and la Liga. This is how intense they are: they have their own gangs. Not even kidding, I'm talking gangs like, hard core gangs from New York or something. They have songs, drums, colors of course, everything. It's fine as long as you don't wear any of the teams' colors and get out of the stadium before both sides have a chance to egg each other on enough to start the fighting. And actually, our game was really mellow in comparison because it ended in a tie, so no one was really pumped up. The coolest part was at the beginning when both teams came out on the field right before the game. I tried to post a few videos but the internet's bad right now, so I'll try later.
Then, we've had a pretty normal week. We discovered a kind of Goodwill here, with a different name, of course, but I was pretty excited. This is our last week of classes at ILE which is good and bad. I'm excited to not have to come out here and to have less classes, but at the same time, this was my best source of internet access and I LOVE the people in my class! After this week, we'll have two weeks all together in Nicaragua, then two weeks of more basic seminar classes at LASP, but then we all split into our concentrations for the last six weeks. At least we'll all be in San Jose except for one girl from our class who's in the Culture concentration. They're moving into different families all over Costa Rica. But the rest of us will maybe be able to get together for movies or something.
Tonight, the 10 men of our group are going deep sea fishing and didn't invite us (darn). So the 41 women are having our revenge by throwing a big party tonight. We're ordering pizza, watching movies, playing games, talking, making some crafts I guess, I don't know. A bunch of stuff. I think some girls are bringing stuff to bake cookies, too. Either way, I'm pumped. Then, as far as the rest of the weekend goes, I have no plans so far. I'll get to meet my older host sister's fiancee sometime this weekend. He's coming for the vote on TLC Sunday. I'll be packing for Nicaragua and doing some reading for that, too. Which brings me to Nicaragua!
We leave on Monday morning. We'll drive for 8 to 10 hours depending on...stuff, I guess. Then, we have a few days all together in...I think Managua, Nicaragua. Then, we all get sent to our own host families on our own all over the country for six days to just live with them. I'll be in a fairly modern home in a city; they posted the list last night. Then, the group meets back up for a few more days in Granada, Nicaragua. I might have those two cities switched, but you get the idea. I'm excited though to be able to just live with the family. In San Jose, we live with our host family, but we're also really busy with homework and trips, I feel like I don't get to just be with them very often. I did invite my sister/roommate and one of her friends that I've gotten to know a little to our woman party tonight, but they can only come for a couple hours. Anyway, I'm pumped to experience a different part of Central America. They're telling us that it's very different from Costa Rica. Of course, there are a lot of similarities as far as the landscape and look of things go, but the people and their way of life is supposedly very different. I don't want to bore you all with the academic stuff that we've been learning, but the histories of these two countries plays a big part in their differences. It's so interesting to make connections from all the different areas we're studying. (Dad you'll be happy to read that they do actually teach us things, too.) :)
I guess that's all for now. The LASP people tell us we'll have one chance to use internet or phones in Nicaragua, but I don't know what the means exactly, so I might not update until we get back, Friday, October 19th.
We did go to the soccer game, I didn't go to the protest march, but it was completely safe. I just wanted to sleep in. :) The soccer games, honestly, are probably the most dangerous things we could do. We went to a cup game between the two huge rivals of San Jose: Saprissa and la Liga. This is how intense they are: they have their own gangs. Not even kidding, I'm talking gangs like, hard core gangs from New York or something. They have songs, drums, colors of course, everything. It's fine as long as you don't wear any of the teams' colors and get out of the stadium before both sides have a chance to egg each other on enough to start the fighting. And actually, our game was really mellow in comparison because it ended in a tie, so no one was really pumped up. The coolest part was at the beginning when both teams came out on the field right before the game. I tried to post a few videos but the internet's bad right now, so I'll try later.
Then, we've had a pretty normal week. We discovered a kind of Goodwill here, with a different name, of course, but I was pretty excited. This is our last week of classes at ILE which is good and bad. I'm excited to not have to come out here and to have less classes, but at the same time, this was my best source of internet access and I LOVE the people in my class! After this week, we'll have two weeks all together in Nicaragua, then two weeks of more basic seminar classes at LASP, but then we all split into our concentrations for the last six weeks. At least we'll all be in San Jose except for one girl from our class who's in the Culture concentration. They're moving into different families all over Costa Rica. But the rest of us will maybe be able to get together for movies or something.
Tonight, the 10 men of our group are going deep sea fishing and didn't invite us (darn). So the 41 women are having our revenge by throwing a big party tonight. We're ordering pizza, watching movies, playing games, talking, making some crafts I guess, I don't know. A bunch of stuff. I think some girls are bringing stuff to bake cookies, too. Either way, I'm pumped. Then, as far as the rest of the weekend goes, I have no plans so far. I'll get to meet my older host sister's fiancee sometime this weekend. He's coming for the vote on TLC Sunday. I'll be packing for Nicaragua and doing some reading for that, too. Which brings me to Nicaragua!
We leave on Monday morning. We'll drive for 8 to 10 hours depending on...stuff, I guess. Then, we have a few days all together in...I think Managua, Nicaragua. Then, we all get sent to our own host families on our own all over the country for six days to just live with them. I'll be in a fairly modern home in a city; they posted the list last night. Then, the group meets back up for a few more days in Granada, Nicaragua. I might have those two cities switched, but you get the idea. I'm excited though to be able to just live with the family. In San Jose, we live with our host family, but we're also really busy with homework and trips, I feel like I don't get to just be with them very often. I did invite my sister/roommate and one of her friends that I've gotten to know a little to our woman party tonight, but they can only come for a couple hours. Anyway, I'm pumped to experience a different part of Central America. They're telling us that it's very different from Costa Rica. Of course, there are a lot of similarities as far as the landscape and look of things go, but the people and their way of life is supposedly very different. I don't want to bore you all with the academic stuff that we've been learning, but the histories of these two countries plays a big part in their differences. It's so interesting to make connections from all the different areas we're studying. (Dad you'll be happy to read that they do actually teach us things, too.) :)
I guess that's all for now. The LASP people tell us we'll have one chance to use internet or phones in Nicaragua, but I don't know what the means exactly, so I might not update until we get back, Friday, October 19th.
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