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Published: August 1st 2008
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Buenas todos mundos. Que tal? See, the Spanish is slowly coming through. I just finished up my third lesson and I think I'm progressing nicely. It's a combination of lessons, living with Spaniards, and being put in situations where I have to construct Spanish to get by. I wouldn't be surprised if I learned more Spanish than my students learn English during my English classes. Necessity is a great motivator in learning languages.
I've been doing what I can to stay busy and to stay on top. This past week has been especially jam-packed with volunteering action. There is a volunteer here named Milan who is an electrical engineer and he has been in charge of wiring all the houses in the project. I know it takes some sense of adventure to come out here to Nicaragua, but it takes a little something extra to bring your entire family, including a bratty little 6 year old, to volunteer. More on his family later. The problem is they are leaving tomorrow and there is no one else around who is qualified to do electrical work. This being the case, I've been promoted to electrical engineer in training, La Prusian certified. Milan
has been training me for the past couple days in how to wire the house and install lights and outlets. As technical as it sounds, here it is rather primitive and quite manageable. On Monday, I get to wire an entire house by myself from scratch. Hopefully it's not too enlightening of an experience.
Oh but the volunteering doesn't stop there. Although less of my own volition than those of others, I've become the assistant coach for the local kid's baseball team. It's that sport I played for maybe a season about ten years ago. Remember? Holding an American passport comes with certain responsibilities I suppose. The team consists of a haphazard group of ten 7-year olds. For me they are rebellious, stubborn, insubordinate, ADHD'd, sugar-fueled band of rascals who just want to play in their own little way. For Hugo, the head coach, they are an organized group of kids who want to practice and then play a good game. But then again, maybe it's all about the approach. Hugo has been doing these practices for quite awhile now and is a big guy who can easily command authority. This past week when Hugo wasn't there, I was
accompanied by 4 other gringos who had no real knowledge of baseball and could barely compose a whole sentence in Spanish. I guess it's hard to listen when they don't know what they are saying or how to say it.
But I think I'm making it sound a lot worse than it was. We had a lot of fun on Tuesday. It turned into a rather informal practice and into a semi-legit game. Kids everywhere can be difficult and I believe that universally you can never create two even teams of kids where everyone is satisfied. One of the other volunteers had the wonderful idea of having all the children play on one team and all the volunteers present on the other. What volunteers were present you ask? One Korean (who did know more baseball than I did), one Scot, one Englishman, me and another American girl. To say the first inning was an embarrassment would not quite capture the moment. Overthrown balls, missed catches, big falls, made a single into a home run. But as the game went on, we pulled through and beat a bunch of kids a third our age 4-2.
Every week I teach
two English classes to a local family. The wife wants to go to school and learn English. The husband wants to become a civil engineer and he needs to learn some termonology to understand the classes. Tutoring doesn't get more interesting than this. I teach them at their house underneath the mango tree. The problem with mangos is they are heavey and they have an attraction to the world below them. About a second before they make contact with your head, they are sweet enough to russel the leaves to warn you. And then there are on average two kids running around naked demanding attention. Oh and we can't forget all the chickens, dogs, cats, pigs and horses that make a sympony of noise. And then there's grandma yelling in Spanish about cheese bread. But they are both focused on their desire to learn so the distractions tend to wash away.
Last weekend turned out to be fairly exciting. On Friday, a group of the volunteers went to go see Las Isletas, which is a cluster of small islands of the coast of Granada. There are several hundred little islands that were formed when Mombacho, our local volcano, blew
up. The islands are very beautiful and are loaded with mango trees. Many of the islands are owned by rich Nicaraguans and Americans. Although you can take an entire day or so to see all of them, we only did an hour tour. There were two real points of interest along the way. The first was an old Spanish fort that was formed to stop pirates from attacking Granada and its merchant ships. However, the Spaniards couldn't take the heat, as we've learned, and for the most part failed to protect. The other interesting part was the monkey island. It was a very, very small island that was full of spider monkeys. Well, I think they were spider monkeys. But we could take our boat right up to them and feed them. It was kind of cool to see monkeys up close like that.
The following day, one of the volunteers from Scotland, Paul, and I went to Nandaime. It's a tiny town with not much in it ordinarily. But on this particular day there was a grand fiesta for St. Ana. People were dressed in flamboyant costumes and had native dances. The Nandaimes paraded their dances through all
the streets and in no particular order. There then followed a horse parade with riders as young as a year old. To top it all off, Paul and I were the only gringos in the entire town. It was sort of nice to be able to enjoy an experience like this and not have it spoiled by a bunch of tourists gawking at it. Hypocritically speaking, I prefer to be the only gawker around.
So one of my favorite meals here is a classic Nicaraguan dish. The best are provided by the local street vendors in Granada. They serve you a huge piece of grilled chicken, gallo pintos (a rice and beans mix), banana in chip or sweet fried form, fried cheese, and a vineger salad. They slop it all on top of one another and wrap it in a couple giant banana leaves to carry it in. All for 2 bucks. It's so good I think I'm going to go right now and get some. Until next time, adios!
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Mangos?
How can you hear the russel of the mango trees above the noise of the chickens, dogs, cats, horses and the grandma yelling in Spanish about the cheese bread?