This may finally be the country where I learn to keep my mouth shut

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Everyone that sees me here (despite the presence of Bessie, the largest backpack ever created - and the obvious mark of a tourist) thinks that I´m some sort of native Spanish speaker and I´ve decided that the less I open my mouth the better off I am. People that know me in real life will probably expect this new attitude to last all of three hours and they are probably right, since I haven´t even left the airport yet.

A big thank you to my parents and sister who were complete superstars in helping me get out of the country with most of my possessions and sanity intact. Unfortunately that book that I made you go get out of the car, after I abandoned it in the car on the way into the airport, the one about the ¨girl´s guide to catching good waves¨was left on the plane on the way to Houston so it was obviously just not meant to be. Also I somehow lost my toothpaste on the flight to Managua so the first thing I learned here is that although they sell American ¨colgate¨it´s pronounced like a McCafè drink ¨colgatè¨.

I spent last night in the Houston airport and arrived here in Managua at local time 11am and am about to try to find a taxi to Mercado Israel Lewites (pronunciation unknown) and then catch an expreso bus up to Leòn which should take less than two hours, and if I have time catch a bus from there over to the beach at Las Penitas for a few hours. I feel both more and less prepared then last time, the overwhelming feeling of terror that I felt as I left the airport in Seoul is definitely absent but I seem to have neglected all sorts of the preparations I usually take that is making me feel a little off balance. I have no proof of my return ticket, no copies of passport, credit card, health insurance (thank god for being able to retroactively elect COBRA!) and I seem to have packed anything useful waaay down in my bag. But Im feeling pretty relaxed about my schedule so no matter what I should really be fine. I think it was Kim that told me as long as I have my passport, ticket and money everything else is just incidental.

Caroline - I don´t know WHAT I would do if I had to use these keyboards at work like you do! The experience is reminding me of the time I spent almost an hour in the airport at Seoul trying to convince the computer to type in English instead of Mandarin, Japanese or Korean. I guess I assumed a country with a similar looking alphabet would have easy to understand keyboards, but obviously not!

Love and miss you all.

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Comments

[Caroline]

a quiet shoshana is about as believable as a quiet caroline
i too was SILENT for the first 4 months of my job, it was really strange. like, didn't utter a word. then when i'd meet up with my american friends i'd talk about three times as much just to make up for it, yeah i feel really bad for them. the keyboards do take some getting used to, i still often type "_" when i want to type a question mark and there's a random portuguese letter that i always press instead of enter, but that might just be in argentina. on the note of forgetting things, i realized on the way down here after christmas that i didn't have any of my flight return information and had to call my mom from the plane to get my flight number and date only to find out that they didn't care and didn't ask me. ohhhh foreign country customs. i also forgot my bag of makeup when i came down for the first time. despite all that stuff, it sounds like you're off to a good start! keep us updated.