Flashbacks to Little Feet

Sorry I haven´t written more lately...the comps are being a little screwy here, but I was able to spend last weekend at a beautiful resort in San Juan del Sur with Elena and her fam (pics to come on Facebook).

I thought I would write today about something I´ve secretly enjoyed here in Nica...the popularity of 80´s and early 90´s love ballads, dance jams and other ¨what were we thinking?¨ songs from the U.S. (Little Feet, from the title of this post, was the dance class I attended in elementary school that involved the running man, the grape vine, and lots of other too-cool-for-school moves.) You can find these songs on most radio stations here, and once you are spotted as a chela (pale skinned one) in a bus or restaurant, these songs and sometimes even music videos (some buses have tvs!) are sure to follow. So here is my David Letterman Top 10 Gringotastic and Currently Popular in Nicaragua Songs that I have been blessed to hear frequently during my time here:

Top 10 Songs

10. The Greatest Love of All—Whitney Houston
9. Come Baby Come—k7
8. Remember the Time—Michael Jackson
7. My Heart Will Go On—Celine Dion
6. Man I Feel Like a Woman—Shania Twain (The Brazilian dancers two-stepped to this at Noche de las Damas! hah)
5. End of the Road—Boyz II Men
4. Total Eclipse of the Heart—Bonnie Tyler
3. The Search is Over—Survivor
2. Ice, Ice Baby—Vanilla Ice

And drumroll, please............

1. Ebony and Ivory—Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder...Yes, this little gem of a song is a frequent hit on local Managua stations. Though I can´t for the life of me figure out why, it also happens that BBC 6 Music listeners named it the worst duet in history in October 2007.

Hope you enjoyed the list and the totally rad videos from Youtube! lol

On a side note, one of the translators here, Julieta, gave me her extra cell phone to use while I am here, and Ana just sent me my first text message lol, so I am feeling very cool right now. Also, I am now taking salsa and meringue classes with Elena and Ana, so hopefully I´ll have some fun moves to bring back to the 889 Fam...

Also, please leave in the comments section which 80´s-early 90´s song you hope I hear while I´m down here =) I´m going now, because I´ve spent entirely too much time on this post, but I just couldn´t resist the opportunity to ¨pump up the jams¨ and put up visuals for these songs, so you can get the full effect of the glory of a bumpin´ Nicaraguan bus... =)

Drinking with a Priest

Tonight I drank Flor de Cana (Nicaragua's national rum) with Father John and 2 of his church members from Kentucky who are staying at the Center. It was great! It was made even better by the fact that he was bashing on another priest from the community they went to visit. Father Victor, as can be surmised from the summary, does not want anyone else in the community having power, so the delegation of 3 from Kentucky spent five-hour long meetings listening to the Father ramble on about stealing "back" members from the Evangelical church. Meanwhile the other Nicaraguans, some of whom had ridden 2 to 3 hours on horses or the bus to be there, sat around and listened. At lunch they were finally able to talk to the community members a little bit, sitting around a table that had plastic chairs for everyone except Father Victor, who had the throne of a wooden chair at the head.

Then he took them out for a tour down a bumpy road for the afternoon. As they were just getting ready to pull into the driveway, Father John made the mistake of asking how enviromental issues in the area were being handled. "Horrible!" screamed Father John. "Here, I'll show you," then proceded to drive them 20 minutes away so that they could see the tree that was killed because someone made a fire beside it to burn their trash. While there, David, one of the church members, made the mistake of asking about the bells that had been donated to the church. "They're too short!" Father John exclaimed, then drove them clear across town to the church, so that they, in fact, could see that the tower was only 25 feet high, when it clearly needed to be 35 feet high to produce the right tones. By the time they got back to their house, their free time had dwindled from an hour and a half to 15 minutes, during which Father John went into a discourse about how he had no idea how the community would survive if he was assigned anywhere else.

To top it all off, Nicaragua has a largely Catholic-backed law that says women are not allowed to have abortions, even in life-saving situations for the mother. "It's a good law," said Father Victor. "Here, let me give you an example." Apparently his mother was warned that her pregnancy was very complicated, but that she went ahead with it anyway and that the world was so lucky because he could be born. When asked what happened to his mother, he added, "Oh, she died shortly afterward." Minor details apparently.

The men are going to attempt to call Pablo tomorrow, one of the "subversive" community members who is too empowered for Father Victor's tastes, to see if they can arrange a meeting without the head honcho, or at least hear how the situation really is. Apparently Pablo actually gives detailed, itemized reports about the community's work. I hope they are successful in reaching him!

La Vida Loca

WHAT!?!? So after 49 years Castro is resigning? Hmmm....I wonder what his motivation was and I will be interested to see how this will affect Nicaragua, as well as the U.S., or if things are going to pretty much remain the same if they put lil bro bro and sidekick Raul in charge...We´ll see...Here´s a link to the Post article: Fidel Castro Stepping Down as Cuba´s President

A Scorpion, a Wedding Invite and Sherbert with Mixed Canned Fruit on Top

Q: Has Amanda finally lost it?
A: No. (At least not completely.) Amanda experienced these 3 cosas/things (and many more!) during her final night in Esteli.

I knew it was going to be one of those "Twilight Zone" days from the beginning, when our section of town lost all electricity and water. Businesses were closed, there was no Cybercafe, and, horror of all horrors, the kids, Diana, Dona Alicia and I had to find a way to entertain ourselves without television. Dona Alicia and the kids gave me a tour of her patio (backyard), which Diana not-so-lovingly referred to as "The Farm," but I really enjoyed it. In it we encountered a lemon tree, a mango tree, a banana tree, cacti, begonias, roses, and even a coffee tree, as well as some haphazard gallinas (roosters) running about. After going inside, Luisito and I played Hide and/or Catch the Lemon for about half an hour while Diana and Michelle bucket showered. We got power back around 2 pm (but not water--you can't ask for too much), so everyone else got their daily intake of Rosalinda (which, by the way, has a very catchy theme song that repeats her name over and over) while I bucket showered. It's amazing how good dumping cold water on yourself can feel, even though it feels a bit like bathing a toddler when you have to tip your head back and use the bowl to get the soap out of your hair. The kids were very excited that they would not have to miss Patito Feo at 5 pm, which also has a very catchy theme song and opening dance number reminiscent of First-Album, innocent-but-destined-for-something-not-so-innocent-in-the-very-near-future Britney Spears. During the show Diana re-French manicured my nails and painstakingly put a flower on each (not entirely my style but I do feel bien elegante when I catch a glimpse of them now).

Then Diana's very talkative and fun friend Giovanni and her fiancee stopped by while Diana is in the process of painstakingly straightening and curling every piece of my hair (which, as you probably already know, is thicker than some small countries). Giovanni is my age and is getting married in April, and, I won't lie, I really want to go to the wedding. So I shamelessly sucked up to her for a little bit (I really like her anyway, so I didn't feel THAT bad), and she and Diana then said how I should come to the wedding if I could and I feigned surprise and said that I of course would love to come. I gave her all of my information--which at this point is the office number at AKF, my email address, and a jumbled mess of words that somehow qualifies where the AKF office is located. She gave me her correo y numeros de celular y convencional--e-mail, home and cell #s--and I'm hoping one of our modes of Spanglish will work (Me being the only one speaking Spanglish, of course). She is always very eager to talk to anyone, myself included, so I think this might actually work.

Then I told Dona Alicia that I wanted to get pizza for our last night and the floodgates of party-town broke loose. She ran five streets over to get ice cream (which we will encounter later) and then we called to order Hawaiian (yes, that's right) pizza for delivery (yes, that's right as well--the address for their house, from what I heard, involved a school, lots of cuadras, gold doors, and a tree, as you may remember from one of my first posts about addresses here). They told us 35 minutes (and amazingly it was right on U.S. time and not on Nica time), and more drama unfolded as we heard Diana scream from the bathroom. "Mama, Michelle, vengan/come here now!" she was screaming, and, as you may remember, she is 8 months pregnant, so I'm thinking her water broke. Of course then I start thinking about the stupid little things that shouldn't matter at that time, like, what are we going to do about the pizza? But then we go in the bathroom, and it was there that I witnessed my first alacran/scorpion. There are 2 things I am very glad I know now:

1) They are easy to kill (I thought they had a hard shell, but evidently you can just smack them with a shoe to knock them off)

2) They will not kill you (They can paralyze you and leave you in severe pain for a day or so, but in comparison to dying I can tell you this was pretty exciting news to me)

I also found out that the number of links they have in their tail indicates how old they are...Alden, the 11-year-old nephew that lives there, wanted very much to show me exactly how many years this one had, but I took his word that he was either 4 or 5 years old. Meanwhile, the pizza guy shows up and we all enjoy the pizza (except Michelle, who only wanted her pizza with soda, and couldn't for the life of her understand why I did not like soda, which Dona Alicia used to set the example that if I wasn't drinking it, they shouldn't be either). Then I had to run, because a group of us from the Spanish school had decided to meet at 8 to go to an Art Gallery opening. Sharon and I took a taxi and met up with Jess, his Nica girlfriend/friend for the evening, and a couple from the hostel he was staying at. The guy was from Michigan, the girl was from England, and they met while being camp counselors in California, and were spending 6 months traveling thru Latin America before counseling again this summer. I really love international couples (aka guy and girl are from different countries), and they were no exception. Together we all listened to a mariachi band and checked out the artwork from local artists...very cool! Flor de Cana sponsors the majority of the events here (including several Nocha de las Damas nights and a Mass service?? if I read the sign correctly, which I probably didn't), so there was free rum flowing, as well as appetizers, which was also nice.

We headed home around 11, and upon getting back Diana pointed out that we forgot to eat the ice cream. (I felt horrible because I knew they wouldn't dream of eating it without me, and it's a fairly special commodity.) So, ONLY to make them feel better, I suggested we eat it right then. Watching some strangly dubbed movie about cloning that had Sandy from the O.C. in it, Diana and I sat around in our pjs and ate the tutti frutti sherbet, complete with canned mixed fruit on top, which I would never have thought to do, but now highly recommend! I was a bit nervous beforehand watching my 8-month-pregnant host mom and 74-year-old host grandma open the mixed fruit can with a carving knife, but, though unconventional to me, it worked, as do most things in Nicaragua!

In closing, I loved my host family and will miss their warmth and affection, but I'm hoping that Adam and I can go back in March and visit with the new baby! Sorry for the rambling, I worked in the kitchen today for 12 hours, so I needed some decompression, but writing may not have been the smartest/most logical outlet lol...you are a saint if you have borne it til the end, and I will now provide you with the answer to my poll: A telenovela star. Love you all!

The Passing of the Children

So, Miraflor was fab-o, as you will see on Facebook hopefully next week. I took 431 pictures and then my memory was full, so it was a hard choice deciding which photos of crazy looking flowers or animals to erase. We stayed at this awesome cabana in the middle of nowhere, and on Saturday swam in a little cascade and climbed inside a hollowed-out 250-year-old tree using its vines. I stayed with 2 women in their sixties, Nancy and Sharon, who were very sweet, but guaranteed entertainment on the bus ride back to Esteli.

To begin with, Sharon bit it butt-first into a creek we were crossing. It was one of those moments where you can´t stop laughing, precisely because you know you shouldn´t be. It didn´t help that she fell in once, then went deeper as she tried to get up. Luckily she had an extra pair of pants with her that she was able to change into in the brush as Nancy, a Nicaraguan teenage boy we met up with on the walk, and I tried not to watch.

Then, the bus shows up (half an hour late, of course/claro) and it is jammed packed. You have probably seen it on the Discovery Channel, or some travel channel--the bus is a recycled US school bus from the 70s, painted in rainbow colors and literally dripping with people. Ours already had about 12 men seated on the top. So, they open up the exit door, but there are already about 10 men crowded behind the seats and they are screaming at us to Dale, dale! Go, go! and Nancy is like oh, hell no, but really there is no choice because this is the last bus of the day, and there are certainly no taxis around.

So, Sharon runs up to the front of the bus to try and cram in there, and Nancy and I are shoved into the back. Nancy is screaming to me thru another guy´s armpits about how she has no place to put her head, and of course I just can´t stop laughing and keep erupting in fits of giggles, which of course makes me look even more strange. Eventually I find a way to perch myself on the side of a seat that already has 2 women and 3 kids in it, and Nancy quiets down. Of course then I have to pee, so everytime we hit a bump I am in agony and then my water bottle that I am gripping up on the top pole starts leaking on the family of 4 to the other side of me, so I have to find a way to shove that in the bag under my feet as well. We load up about 3 more times at different points along the mountainous path, because no one else wants to ride on the roof. Nancy at this point is screaming that there is no space and I want to scream that they don´t understand English and are not going to listen to her anyway, but instead I try and pretend I´m not with her lol. This works until she tries to speak English with the boy we walked the path with who speaks a little English. I am feeling good helping her translate certain words, until she asks me, Amanda, what does hallido mean? And I ask the boy what he is saying and he says, Como estas? And I am like Oh, lord, I have to tell her that he is saying How are you with an accent haha. So that was fun.

We finally make it into the outer limits of Esteli, and this is my favorite part--the passing of the children. When the women have to get off they kind of wiggle their way into the center aisle holding their kids and then the men grab the babies from their arms and start an assembly line to get the children out the back door. It is a very quick process, because the bus will take off in mid-passing if you are not fast enough. So, the men are literally tossing the kids into some other strangers arms below, who then receive the luggage in the same fashion, and, miracurasly, it all works out and the mothers climb down the exit and are reunited with their children and luggage.

If you come visit me in Nicaragua, I will have you ride the city bus with me, so that you, too, may be blessed enough to see the awesomeness that will inevitably ensue.

Ramblings and other Assorted Nonsense

Hi all! So I am headed out this weekend to Miraflor, a natural reserve with waterfalls in the mountains outside of Esteli, where my language school is located. I have decided that Managua is like the LA of Nicaragua, and Esteli is more like the Denver, Colorado--cool weather, laid back people, nestled in the mountains. Also, I was having lots of zen-like thoughts running thru my head this afternoon while reading The Road Less Traveled. In it, it talks about how it took the author 37 years to realize that often we think we´re not good at things because we don´t take adequate time to learn how to do them. For example, the author, M. Scott Peck, was talking about how he could never do mechanical things or assemble anything from an instruction booklet. He was talking to a neighbor about how great it was that his neighbor could fix his own lawn mower, saying gee, I wish I could do that...I wonder why I can´t. And his neighbor responded by saying, you can, you just haven´t taken the time to learn. And it was true: when he took the time to try and fix a simple problem with someone else´s car, he discovered he could do it.

This got me thinking about Kendal and my conversation with him in October.
Me: It´s so awesome you´re volunteering here in Nicaragua. I wish I could do something like that.
Kendal: You can.
Me: Yeah, but I have a lease and a dog and people I love in the U.S. and...
Kendal; Yeah, but if you don´t do it now, you´re just going to keep having more of those responsibilities and things that pull you farther away from doing it.
Me: Yeah, but...
Kendal: AND, you can only avoid doing what you´re supposed to be doing for so long. Eventually IT WILL catch up with you.
Me: OK, I´m coming.
So maybe this isn´t exactly how it went, but it was something like this, and it worked, and I am grateful! Thank you, Kendalario! I don´t think we realize how much we affect one another´s lives, but I´m beginning to understand...

Also, another thing I am getting used to is never being alone lol. I was reading my book in the room they gave me, which I basically only use to sleep in, and my host grandmom walks in (and catches me cramming down a Zone bar, of course lol) and was like are you lonely? Do you miss your family? And I was like, yeah I wasn´t thinking about it but I do! How did you know? And she was like, well because you are solita (alone). Here, that´s about one of the strangest things you can be caught doing lol. And I think I am growing as a person and in my interactions with others because of this consistant togetherness. The warmth of the people here is shocking, and I´m appreciating it more every day. OK, that´s it! :)

Language, Schmanguage

OK so I am halfway thru my first week of language school! I am loving my host family (whom I´ll describe later), but the actual language school part of it feels a little like a ridiculous 2 week cram session of my past 4 years of college! My teacher (whom I´ll also describe later!) is a bit of an old school drill sargeant and isn´t so much interested in talking as having me read entire short stories aloud, or completing, oh like 20 worksheets a day. Worse still, Elena called and talked to the director to be like she needs to practice talking more, so now my teacher´s like, but isn´t this helping? and drilling me at twice the speed to MAKE me understand why I need to have grammar drilled into my brain first. So, that´s that! Here´s a little bit more about my life at the moment:

1) My host fam: Diana, the mom, is awesome. She is 8 months preggers with a very active baby boy, and yet has time to introduce me to all her friends and paint my nails in a French manicure with flowers! Straightening hair is also a big thing to do here, which I am very grateful for lol. She really understands my Spanish as well, so that´s a big relief. Her husband is currently working in New Jersey in construction until April, but she lives with her mom Alicia, who is also very sweet and always make sure that I am eating enough. Diana has 2 children: Michelle (who at first I thought she was saying ¨My chela¨ or ¨chele¨ like my light skinned one lol but it is just a coincidence that her name is Michelle and she is light skinned) and Luisito, a very rambunctious 3 year old. Michelle, who doesn´t have much interest in talking to me, loves the show Patito Feo (The Ugly Duckling) which seems to be the Spanish version of Hannah Montana, only with more girl fights. Luisito only eats Cornflakes, likes his bottled milk with sugar, and drives his toy cars over everything. I am interested to see how he will fare as a middle child!

2) I am very excited that they have re-runs of Third Watch and the OC here lol. Only Third Watch is called Urban Emergencies and The OC is called Youth Beyond our Control lol. I am also surprised that I didn´t see Eddie Cibrian in any of the preview commercials--I figured they would have him plastered all over like a Latin American billboard. Oh well.

3) My teacher--her name is Sandra Lopez and she is very sweet. She wanted to be a journalist but when she went to college in 1990, it was right after the war so her mom basically told her she wouldn´t pay for her to go into a profession that she would more than likely be assassinated for. So, when I told her I was a journalism student, (and this happens frequently) it´s kind of like, oh well you´re lucky. And then I´m like yeah but I´m not really doing anything with that at the moment and they are like, Oh. Ok. (Followed by a look that basically translates to, Oh these ridiculous gringos.) She is also a teacher at the high school and so I think her style of teaching just emanates from that. The majority of my practice actually speaking Spanish comes from being with my family and translating for Shannon, a woman here thru AKF that is learning the language, but her difficulties are compounded because she has a Spanish accent and doesn´t pronounce her ¨r¨s in English, so the double ¨r¨s in Spanish are pretty much out.

4) For Lent, I am giving up speaking English lol. We´ll see how it actually goes. Writing in English and talking on the phone are going to be my guilty pleasures, but I really want to be able to speak with ease, so I´m hoping this helps! It´s do or die time, kids. Sink or swim. Mas o menos. (OK the last one doesn´t really make sense, but I can pronounce it really well, dropping the ¨s¨ like a Nicaraguan pro lol) I am also excited because they use the Spanish Vosotros, or vos, here in place of tu, so maybe when I travel to other countries they will think I´m from Spain! I´m crazy, I know lol. OK, Hasta luego!

Go Barack!

A) Noche de las damas did pay off with free entry, drinks, and crazy Brazilian Backstreet Boy like dancers lol.

B) Kelly, I hope your bday was great!

AND C) On this, the eve of Super Tuesday, I thought I´d get a little political and post the link to an awesome Obama video that Keri passed on to me. Enjoy! AND VOTE!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1yq0tMYPDJQ