Seeta

Well, Steve and I have arrived safely in Mexico-- yay! We´re finally on the last leg of the journey....Just one more week to go. I really wanted to post some pìcs of the cool things weve seen and done, but it appears that my camera cable got lost/left behind at some point, so no more pics until I get home..... ): Here´s a brief re-cap of what we´ve been up to. After sucessfully taking Ticabus from Nicaragua through Honduras, we managed to get across the El Salvadorian border (phew!) and spent the night in a dingy little hostel in San Salvador before the final leg of or journey to Guatemala the next day. The hospedaje we stayed out was heavily locked and gated, with a sliding metal door with three locks, topped with barbed wire, and ... read more

On Monday, August 1st my frined Steve arrived in Managua from Toronto, thus marking the beginning of 29 days of spontaneous adventure travel from Nicaragua up to Mexico. We fly home from Mexico City on August 29th, but until then we have 29 days to play it by ear and go where the wind takes us! This is a whole new level of sponetnaity for me: and so far I am loving it! Before I left I bought a "Footprint" travel guide to Nicaragua, which has since become our best friend. Basically we just pick a random place that sounds interesting, then ask around until we find a bus/cab or whatever to take us there. The nice thing about the system is that one can never be late (unlike my normal life, in which I am ... read more

Something that has been an ongoing preoccupation/interest to me is the FOOD here. Or, more precisely, the UNPROCESSED food-stuffs. I mean, we never get to see what our food looks like before it arrives pre-packaged on our grocery store shelves: pre-cooked beans, corn, and peas are to us available in tins, ready-to-eat; vanilla comes in liquid-form in a pretty little bottle, ready to be used in various baking recipies; our coffee is already roasted and ground; our rice shucked and bagged-- even "instant" if we so desire. But what did these products look like BEFORE all of the processing, I have often wondered? Does anyone even KNOW how pineapples and papyas grow (hanging from trees? on a vine on the ground, like a pumpkin?); or what black pepper looks like before it is conveniently ground and ... read more

I have had some interesting expereinces at the various Churches of Nueva Guinea. Nueva Guinea was founded by a Baptist pastor in the 1970´s, so it has highly Evangelical roots-- apparently one of the only cities in the country that is predominantly Evangelical, as opposed to Catholic. Although I have noted the predominance of the Evangelical church in the Nicaraguan culture here in general; as opposed to the highly Catholicized society of Mexico, where the Catholic Church reigns supreme. I shall begin by describing my trips to the Evangelical Churches... I have attended two different Evangelical churches: the Baptist church, and "La Profecía" (apparently a version of Baptist). La profecía can best be described as "HIGHLY Evangelical". The first service I attended was complete with a teenage boy jumping around and screaming nonsense,crashing into ppl and ... read more

I have just reterned from a week long vactaion in Managua (as Juliana´s sister was visiting from the US, so she took the week off to spend time with her-- and I came along). I feel bad about the time away from the job, and spent the first 5 days feeling guilty and restless (I have realised that "relaxation" is something very trying for me, and I get very stressed-out when my time is not constantly occupied!). Juliana was kind enough to take me around the city on one of the days (a welcome escape from the house, and endless hours of Spanish soaps "novelas" that I only partially understand), and I managed to find any excuse to go to "El Oriental". This time I even braved taking PICTURES! Yes, caution was thrown to the wind ... read more