Summary of the first few days...

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Well, so much seems like it has happened since last I wrote. The next day we went early in the morning to register at the ´minisry for foreigners and immigration´ at 7am. But apparently it no longer opens at 7: it now opens at 8am, and they didn´t bother to inform anyone. (my first introduction to the Nicaraguan sense of time!) So we formed a long, grubling que outstide. Juliana was beside herself! (she reminds me of one of those strong, carribian ladies, whose not afraid to speak her mind to any poor soul who happens to be in the vicinity). She was ranting about how "they can´t treat ppl like this!", and how "it´s a public service and a basic RIGHT, and how DARE they keep us locked outside in the sun like animals"! I pittied the poor man gaurding the gate, who got an ear full when they finally let us in! But after
all that, it turns out I didn´t need a visa anyway. (the airport automatically stamps your passport for 90 days).

So we then went to try an cash some of my travellers cheques. But because they are Visa and not AMEX, it took us 3 difefrent bank branches, several hours of line ups, and lots of waiting, PLUS
a 5% "service charge" for all of the excellent "service" that we had recieved! Learn from my mistake: NEVER travel with Visa travellers cheques! Heck, I´was almost regretting getting the stupid cheques at all: but I´m sure I´ll be glad of the security when Steve and I are travelling thru the region in August.

In the evening I made freinds with Juliana´s niece, who is 22. We went to visit her brother, who lives in a house full of guys nearby (they allattend the same highschool). Then we all went out dancing! Juliana was surprised that I wanted to go on just my 2nd day here, but
I figgure that it may be my only oppertunity (at least, my only oppertunity to go to a nightclub where they don´t play "Ranchero": mexican big-band music, complete with accordians!) -- plus it was great bonding with my new friends. They´re from the Atlantic Coast, so they actually speak Creole-English. I understood about 75% of what they said, which is about as much Spanish as I understand. (So that´s either a testament to my Spanish, or to how hard it is to understand their English, but likely both!) Anyway, her brother gaurded the 2 of us like a bodygaurd the entire night. (Although the club was very safe, and less roudy than Toronto clubs.) It was fun.

The next day Juliana and I took the 7 hour bus trip from Managua to Nueva Ginea: I spent the entire trip gazing out of the window at the bueatiful scenery. I took several video clips. and there are pictures of the bus terminal (and a sign of a little girl who is ¨disaperecida"-- such a loaded word...). For those who don´t know, ´diaperecida´means ´dissapeared´. It´s a loaded word because it was the word used to refer to the thousanbds of ppl (students, professors, professionals, human rights lawyers, priests, etc) who went "missing" during the years of dictatorship under Pinochet, in Chile. Since then, it has come to be a commonly used term around the world. It remains in its original spanish form: an unfortunate testament to the violence and repression than rocked all of Latin America during the 1980´s -- often sponsored by the USA, I might add. Who, in the case of Nicaragua, sponsored the ´Contras´ to wage war against the Left wing Sandinista governemnt. As u can imagine, there´s no love lost here for Americans. (although, interestingly, they don´t like it when I refer to them as¨"Americans", "We´re all Americans", I was told. "North, Central, and South-- we´re all American. Not just them". It´s intersting, cuz I tried to explain that Canadians would NEVER refer to themselves as "American". But here they consider themselves Americans. Maybe its a means of demonstrating the equality of ppl around the world, and that just bc the USA THINKS it is somehow better than every other country, (trying to lock everyone out, as we can see in those massive demonstartinos in Washington today) in fact we´re all united by a single land-mass. After all, that´s the logic the USA convinently uses to establish its right to interfere in the polictics here. But apparently the reverse can never be true...

Anyhoo, enuff of my ranting. Mum, if you had hoped this trip would make me less ´radical´, I think you´re going to be disappointed! If anything, its making me more aware (already) of the need for worldwide solidarity. But not to wage a revolution (of some of my eager Canadian University counterparts desire!). Listening to the effects of the ´people´s revolution´ down here (squashed by the USA, throwing the country into 10 years of bloody civil war from which it is only now recovering), I can see so clearly how wrong it would be to wage a revolutionary war, no matter how noble the cause. War is to be avoided AT ALL COSTS... I don´t know that i´d go so far as to say it´s NEVER right, but i´m coming close to that conclusion. What the world needs is more LOVE, not more war. And evil (war) can never breed good (peace): I think that´s just one of Satan´s lies.

Anyway, after the long bus trip we arrived at Juliana´s house in Nueva Ginea at about 7pm. I began to unpack right away, as I wanted to make it feel as much like home as possible. Some bugs kept landing
on me, which kinda freaked me out, but Jamilah had warned me bout that, so I figgured that I´d get used to it. But then Juliana came in to talk to me, and suddenly she gasped and pointed to my door: there was a MASSIVE infestation of giant, flying ants swarming all over
the top of the door! (that´s what had been landing on me the whole time!) When she began to spray them, suddenly the air was alive with giant ants: like a black swarm had invaded my bedroom. I couldn´t believe that I was expected to sleep in there: but what could I say?! I felt like crying. But i couldn´t let on how freaked out I was. So i braved the swarm, and tried to help her put up my mosquito net (and I had just been thinking that I wouldn´t need it: I have yet to see any mosquitos. Famous last words, eh?). The ants have mostly all died
now, leaving a crunchy carpet of little black bodies in their wake. So at this point the net is more for my own peace of mind than anything else. But it certainly does make me feel better. Especially with the little geckos that sometimes come inside and make a squeaking noise, and the GIANT coackroaches that come inside at dusk. They remind me of that scene in men in Black, with the giant alien cockroach...! (which actually came on TV later that night, and made me smile secretly to myself)

Anyway: yesterday we took a day trip to the countryside (el campo)with all the URACCAn staff. 2 other teachers came and picked us up with motorcycles (my first bike ride!) and took us to the bus, where evryobne was waiting. Once in the country, I made freinds with
the little kids, and we played and swam in the river. There are pics of them and the tadpoles that we caught together. I got sunburned: but I´m glad I´m getting a tan, to look more like them. I was so surprised that everyone keeps referring to me as ¨white´, and Juliana´s sister
(Gladys´) husband, Angel (who is what we in Canada would call a ´light-skinned black guy´) told me he thought I didn´t talk to him when I first arrived because i "didn´t like black ppl"! (when in fact it was just that I was exhaused). It just goes to show the extent to which race is a social construction. because here, the racial lines are TOTALLY difefrent. Everyone is just a shade of brown, and so
distinctions are made accordingly. (it surprises me that they seem to make no allowance for the effects of SUNTAN, which would literally chage what ´race´one is percieved as. For example, in my case, once I lose my winter whiteness and get a tan, they will probably no longer refer to me as White.)

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