life in granada

so i finally just found the supermarket, pali. well, i wouldn´t call it all that "super", but mostly convenient, it is.

along the way back, we passed a group of boys playing a game - checkers, but using soda lids as markers. blue vs white, 2 lids on top of each other make a king.

in the regular market, where stalls and stalls of everything a nican could want are all under the same thatch roof, the girls ask, "¿que busca?" - what are you looking for? nada, i say, just looking. thanks.

they drop the "s" off the end of words, so it´s "adio", not adios. and "gracia", not gracias. it works for a lazy tongue like mine.

a normal sight: a donkey cart loaded to the hilt with packages of paper towels and toilet paper. it has to be tied down to stay on the cart.

most of the people i´ve met are solo travelers. there are far more women than men traveling. most are crossing a huge chunk of central america, such as belize to panama, panama to LA, or even NYC to panama. of these travelers, the americans travel the shortest trips, 40 days being the shortest i´ve heard so far. the europeans, such it´s such a far way for them, usually take at least 3 months. i´m amazed that i speak the most spanish of them. but then again, spanish is touted as the easiest to learn in schools in america, and it´s certainly more prevalent in some areas than it is in virginia beach.

i mentioned to one of these longer-term travelers today at lunch that i´m impressed that they are taking such long trips. he replied that he was more impressed with people who are in nicaragua (or any place, really) for a specific purpose, such as to learn spanish or do social work (like my missions trip would be considered). the grass is greener, i suppose.

then again, there doesn´t seem to be heaps more to do around here. i just created things to do today, and i dno´t know what i´ll do tomorrow. i´ve been to mombacho volcano, where my canopy tour was. i went to the masaya volcano with the group on saturday. i went to the masaya market then, too, and as much as i´d like to go back, i don´t have the budget for it.

i had planned to go kayaking at las isletas today, but the other 2 backed out. one of the islands is "monkey island", and they heard that the monkeys living there were caught in the jungle adn sent there to live in exile so that their owners can make money selling tourists bags of crackers to feed the monkeys. they weren´t down with that, so they decided not to go. i have no idea of ths validity of this argument, but i´ve got a decent sunburn, so i´m not sure i would have wanted to go, anyway.

yesterday i went to laguna de apoyo, a crater lake. it was beautiful there, and i enjoyed lounging and swimming and reading, adn i did take a short kayak trip there, too.

around town, i went up in the bell tower of one of the churches, walked around teh sensory overloading market, been for a swim in the hostel pool, and hung out around the central park a bit. the only thing i still want to do is go to mi museo, which i´ve heard is small and won´t take long.

if i had longer here in nicaragua, i wouldhave gonesouth to san juan del sur, a surf town, to lay on the beach a bit and go down to the national park where teh turtles lay their eggs. i also would have gone north to the highlands to see a coffee plantation and perhaps "volcano board" down the slopes of a volcano near leon. but that´s about it. so i think i´m glad i´m not backpacking teh length of central america, i think i would get bored quickly. in accordance with this, bookstores cateringto backpackers adn book exchanges are in great supply. one guy i´m hanging out with the most just lounges around the hostel most of the day. i can´t imagine spending 40 days doing teh same thing in a different hostel.

anyway, i´m glad to be coming home. i don´t want to feel like i´ve wasted my last 5 days here, and i don´t, but it´s borderline. i´m very thankful for the first part of my trip wheni was legitimately doing something productive, and i had a better look at the culture. maybe it´s just that i picked the most gringo-filled town in all of nicaragua, and no where else is like this.

thanks, friends, for reading more of my ramblings!

611 spam emails later....

ok, so here i am in nicaragua! i doubt many of you will even read this, but i thought i´d share, anyway.

the trip with the team was awesome. God really did a lot in and thru us. it is amazing to me the team unity that formed, especially with the costa ricans.

i´m slightly out of sorts right now... the american team left last nite, the ticos left this morning, and shortly after that, i said goodbye to alan and susan and hopped a microbus to granada, where i am now. i got here, found a hostel, locked up my bag, read a bit of the postings around here (and made a reservation for teh shuttle ride to their sister hostel on the edge of a lagoon for tuesday), and started to check email. lots of emails, including 611 spam messages, and I´ve just traveled the world.

this hostel reminds me of cairns, australia and verona, italy. it´s gorgeous. a pool in teh courtyard, hammocks lining another courtyard with a huge (50ft x 15 ft) mural on the wall. amazing. not to mention the town. it reminds me both of antigua guatemala and el cercado, mexico, where i lived for 5 weeks with my mexican host family. i received emails from friends heading for china, describing small-town kansas with clarity, traveling in india, traveling in western china, the housing coordinator in california, and more. i´m sitting next to a german, i hear english at the other end of the computers, and, of course, i´m actually in nicaragua. really? am i?

my spanish, thankfully, has come back to me, at least when people speak slowly. i have learned a bit more and grown more confident in what i am remembering.

on the drive from managua to granada, we passed a gate to a home with a banner over it, flapping in the (delicious) breeze: "here lives doña maria, the best mother in the world."
a woman took the seat next to me who had a huge platter of nicragua peanut brittle and 3 other treats that she sells and carries on her head.

2 men got on the bus carrying roses - one a bouqet of 6 colors, the other an arrangement to lay flat somewhere. considering all the smells i´ve encountered in many places, i could not ask for anything better!

children, maybe 8 and 10, shovel dirt into the many potholes, then beg for change from passing cars. alan keeps a jar of coins (tican, nican and gringan) for such ingenuity and hard work.

susan told me this morning of a 12 year old girl she prayed for a few weeks ago. she was in an abusive situation, and social services came that day to place her with her aunt and uncle. she also received Christ in her heart and left with a huge grin on her face. it was the first time susan had seen such a visible transformation from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light, both spiritually and physically. she cried as she told me.

i had planned to go to selvanegra, a coffee plantation and organic farm in the highlands, where it´s cooler, but then decided to come down here to granada. tamara must have been praying for me.

i went shopping for most of my souvenirs yesterday and was able to send them home with tamara, so my bag is teh smallest it has ever been. i had to devise a new way to tie it all down so that there wasn´t a lot of extra room in it as i traveled. it actually fit between my legs in the microbus, with my day pack on my lap. and i still had room to wiggle my toes.

cattle and horses graze anywhere and everywhere. if they find a green patch, they´re there. on the island, pigs did the same. in the country side, add goats to the mix.

the plants here are amazingly beautiful. tall palm trees, fruits i´ve never seen or heard of. simply amazing.

dave gave me one of the biggest compliments: "you enjoy this sort of thing, don´t you? traveling, the lifestyle here? it doesn´t seem to bother you mush. it seems like you were cut out for a life like this."

by the end, i grew tired of the arrogance of our american selves. but all in all, i was very impressed by the team and how well they all seemed to go with it. our 2 first-timers were some of the best on the trip! they did great!

i got to stay with tamara in both hotel istiam and the orphanage. she makes a great roommate. i think we kept each other both sane and silly.

susan let me read one of her books, the end of poverty. interesting stuff. i only got maybe 1/5 the way thru it. i find myself thinking more and more in terms of economic development. i bought a whole bunch of jewelry from the orphanage, made by the kids, to give as gifts. why not support places that i know that the money will go to a good cause and won´t be squandered?

there are 7 active volcanoes here in nicaragua. one of them, volcan concepcion, is the northern half of the island where we were for a week. the first half of the week we stayed on the isthmus between the inactive and active volcanoes, with a great view of both. the second half of the week, we were on the edge of the active one, but with so much foliage, i didn´t ever get a good look at it except for the ferry ride to and from the island. one of the other active volcanoes, masaya, we went to yesterday. both masaya and concepcion constantly spew gases that cause some awesome cumulus clouds.

a few times (very rarely) i have smelled people burning their trash (the best way to get rid of it on the island). when i did smell it, it reminded me of the fires back home and how thankful i am not to have dealt with them these last 10 days. when i was in VA, smelling the smoke, it reminded me of people burning trash in mexico. full circle, in a way.

i´m kind of surprised at how rich this country seems. not really rich, but better off, at least. there are a fair share of luxury vehicles and haciendas tucked into hillsides, but i´m just surprised that i don´t see many slums or any extreme poverty, really. i´ve seen worse in other countries, places that officially aren´t as poor as nicaragua (the 2nd poorest in the western hemisphere).

i expected mostly beans and rice for every meal. we usually got beans and rice, but we also got so much more, i was so thankful for it! some of the best chicken and beef i´ve tasted. and fried platanos that ended up like french fries. just add salsa de tomate!

THANK YOU for your prayers. they were so needed and i know accomplished so much. keep me in your prayers as i travel these last 5 days, and the teams as they debrief. and me, as i debreif alone.

even so, come Lord Jesus!