getting around in central america

Its hard to believe, but we have only one week left in school. We are still far from fluent, but our spanish is improving daily. I´ve almost worked through all of the tenses and, i have to say, that being able to talk in the past tense, and describe conditional actions is VERY liberating. That being said, there is a bit of sadness here as we wrap up our third week. Only one more week. it goes so fast.

Tomorrow we plan on travelling to Isla Ometepe for the weekend. It is a large island in lake managua that is built of the cones of two volcanoes. çwe plan on spending saturday climbing one of the volcanoes. They are both active, and apparently are frequently smokin.

I´ve included two photos. The first is a photo of one of the many modes of transport common here - the panga. We took this panga to a local beach as an afternoon activity with our school. I include this photo because I also filmed a little video in the transportation depot in Rivas, the larger town near to san juan del sur. I love the variety of transportation options that one has there. Evertyhing from taxis and chicken buses to boats, bike rigs and coches with horses. In fact, we took our first trip by coche, being pulled by a little horse, in Rivas a few days ago. The video i shot includes them all, and also gives you some flavor of the dust, the noise and the vitality of travelling here. It is often a perplexing mix of joy, curiousity, discomfort and amazement.

Find the video here...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B6Y4Li-Z2M

I´ve also included a photo of Christine and I all dressed up for a school event with our family. The mother is a teacher and was hosting a graduation for her kids. We got all gussied up for it, which was fun.

All is well otherwise, and we hope everyone is doing well...

ian

we are spanish nerds

we´ve come to a paradise - broad beaches, verdant monkey filled forests, warm water, nothing but sun - and we spend our days sitting in school. But, to be honest, our school ain´t that bad. We´ve posted previously describing our school, but we´ve created a little video to give you a bit more of the flavor of what we are about every morning, every day, for the past two weeks and the next two weeks. I think we are getting better??? Check out the school by clicking here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isRi4Y-mI7Y

We went this morning for a trip to Laguna Apoyo, with brief visits to Granada and a volcano park outside of Granada. It was nice to get away, and we even stayed the night on the laguna at a gringo hide out. nothing but english spoken and the food could have been from any restaurant in the states. kind of weird. We even met a fire-fighter from detroit there, and he and christine got to talk the tigers for a little while, and devils night. We don´t have that where I am from. At the volcano park today we didn´t have time to go up the volcano so instead we spent an hour exploring their butterfly garden. They had something like 50 species in this little enclosure. It was pretty rad.

Laguna Apoyo is a relatively small lake (at least compared to lake nicaragua, which makes everything seem small) lake formed in the caldera of an ancient volcano. Volcanoes litter the landscape here, the place is sick with them. It is considered amongst the cleanest of nicaraguas lakes, and was ridiculously clear. It was also ridiculously warm, something that I still can´t get used to. You can just swim in the water here, for as long as you wish. We somehow managed to drag ourselves from bed this morning at the ungodly hour of 6 am for a 2 hour kayak across the lake. Despite the early hour, i still fried myself pink.

Ian

Our day to Conquer

I nearly forgot until I opened my email this evening that it is the day of "engorgement" in the states. Many of you are at this very moment are feasting on turkey, fattening up for the impending cold winter, while nestled at a table amongest friends and family, and hopefully giving thanks for the joy of your days. Indeed we are thankful for all of you and hope you are warm, healthy, and happy.

We are all of the above at the moment. Though, the locals have been complaining about the "clima fria", (it is a frigid 70 degrees here) we find ourselves quite content with the temperature. On the happy and healthy front, we are both very happy to have endless time for play. As Ian says sitting beside me, "we´re frickin´kicken it!" Ian has been surfing nearly everyday and I have finally gotten up the courage to ask the men playing soccer on the beach if I can join them. Despite their hesistent yes I am excited to get out to play. Women tend to be less physically active here and therefore such things as running, mountain biking, and sometimes soccer seem to produce a fair amount of stares. Yesterday, I was excited to encountered my first group of women playing soccer on the beach.

Today, had the opportunity to take our first ever canopy tour, which essentially consisted of 15 smail zip lines through the forest. It was a bit ridiculous but we couldn´t help ourselves. I found it difficult not to critique the equipment and was mildly disconcerted that we were using our gloved hand on a metal wire as a brake! Aside from this small issue the views were beautiful and it is always fun to play in the trees. check out the photos.

Christine

ps - if anyone can email us with a concise explanation of the difference between the imperfect and preterite verb tenses in english we could really use it....

our house, in the middle of the street

I don´t have a bunch of time, but wanted to post a blog about our house and where we are living. As mentioned before, we are with a family that, while still not rich, would be considered relatively well to do here. They live in a house just off the central part of town. Like most of the houses here, there is no yard, and the house fronts right on the street. It is cement block contstruction, with tin roof. There is no hot water. The house includes an incredible five rooms and four bathrooms, as well as a large central living area and small adjoining kitchen. It also has an entrance room with attached office for the dad´s medical office. We made a little video of the house at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csFXgfRuQM4 . Up next, more about our school!

As before, we are doing great, learning much, and are very healthy.

estoy creciendo in nicaragua

the verb ¨crecer¨ in spanish means to grow. and i think i am growing. we are doing well with our family, eating three squares a day. beans are common, as is rice. Gallo Pinto (made with beans and rice) is a staple here. Christine is laying off the meat, so our family compensates with things like fried cheese. FRIED CHEESE. I love it. We were fortunate to be placed with a family that is very interested in healthy foods. they eat virtually nothing packaged, make all of their own fruit juices, and almost never have desserts around the house. We´ve been forced a few times to make secret missions to the ice cream shop for little treats. Ice cream makes you happy, like this little boy that we met at an orphanage we went to with our school. He ate ice cream and became my best friend.

Breakfast, or desayuno, is each day at 7:30, and consists typically of beans, rice, eggs, sometimes fruit, and coffee. we come home for lunch, or almuerzo, which is the heartiest meal of the day. it typically includes rice, beans, a fruit drink of some kind and a meat. We get every kind of meat - pork, beef, fish, chicken. i even ate liver the other day. Christine didn´t have that.

Dinner, or cena, is around 6 pm and is typically rice, beans and a small bit of meat (or, for christine, fried cheese). we typically have coffee again for cena.

no snacking here in nicaragua. somtimes at school we slip a snack in though. but rarely.

ian

our new family

not that our old family needs any replacing, but we´ve moved in with our new family. Hector Luis, the dad, is a doctor at the local medical clinic. his wife, Secorro, is a teacher at the catholic school down the street. They have three kids. Anielka is 19 and studying economics at the University in Managua. Elba is 15 and Hector is 10. They are a wonderful group, GREAT at working with us slow gringos and we feel blessed.

we had our first day of school today, which went well. One of the downsides of school is that it makes you realize just how far you really are from fluency. But such are the costs of learning. We also made another trip to a beach in the afternoon. I have a feeling that our days are going to look very similar for the next few weeks. School, beach, repeat. Maybe a few days with something different. We shall see. At the moment, and given the warm water and decent surf, I am pretty pleased with that scene.

On Saturday we walked up to El Mirador, a look out on a hill over town and shot a video to give you a better sense of where, exactly we are. Not shown by my fat finger pointer in the video is our school, which is on the beach near to the fleet of pangas anchored in the bay. Its a pretty sweet view during class, but disctracting at times. Get the video by clicking here or cut and paste this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PTUQYy5tjQ

Just a reminder that we are now in a place that we can set up and use skype on a regular basis. However, at this moment we have only TWO skype contacts. Something is clearly wrong here. Please request us to be your friend. We want to be your friend. Either email me your skype address or request ours through skype¨. Our skype name is SOULCEDAR.

ian

we´ve landed

Travelling is a fascinating and conflicting expeience. Simultaneously it can be fun, guilt'inducing, rich and horribly difficult. Two weeks ago we arrived in Mexico City after biking down the west coast of the U.S. 14 days later we are in San Juan Del Sur on the west coast of Nicaragua (yes, thats it there, on the tiny sliver of land separating gigante Lago Nicaragua from the Pacific Ocean) and are settling in. This will be our home for the next month, at least.

Yesterday, after visiting every school in town and talking with numerous school directors, we decided to enroll in the SSS Spanish school. Like all of the schools, they offer a full immersion program combining four hours a day of spanish instruction with a homestay and afternoon activities. In half an hour we will goo to the school to meet our family and move into our new digs. On Monday we start classes. We are both excited to kick our language skill up a notch to more deeply engage with the places we are visiting.

I also went out for my first surf yesterday. After lugging my board all the way down the isthmus, shoving it in bus luggage compartments, dragging it along dirty cobblestone streets, it is finally paying its due. The water here is WARM, which is a delight in and of itself. I am VERY excited to try to experience this ocean in as many ways as I can. One of the selling points of the school we selected is that they do a lot of beach trips AND send their students out on fishing trips in the panga fleet that fills the bay. I am desperate to get on the water and see what I can learn.

I´ve uploaded just a short video of Christine walking on the beach to give you a bit of the flavor of where we are. Indeed, palm trees, a nice beach, the whole bit. We´ve run into a snafu with photo uploads, haven´t quite figured it out. sorry about the delay. and i continue to intend to edit some of our extensive video collection for upload. just haven´t haad the time. Watch the beach video by pasting this location into your browser http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAqe9p1iJHw

If you are interested in our school, they have a website here http://www.sjdsspanish.com

A quick shout out for my country and my state for doing the right thing with this election. At the risk of alienating our readers of the conservative persuasion, I have to confess my delight. I think the u.s. was journeying in the world in a very poor way and I feel that the democrats winning control of congress might do something to remedy that. Locally, I can´t even begin to express my happiness at the loss of Initiative 933 in Washington. It was an evil initiative, and it lost resoundingly.

hope everyone is well! Ian

If I'm Not With Them, I suppose I must be un-patriotic

The Nicaraguan election is proving to be a center-piece of our existence right now.

Well, I should preface that by saying that it dominates our thinking only after the simple day to day tasks that, as a result of our language deficincies, can at times be so challenging.

We spent much of this morning looking at the newspaper, english/spanish dictionary in hand, trying to work out the intricacies in meaning included in the election coverage. Daniel Ortega's election does not represent a leftist revolution of any kind in Nicaragua. In contrast, it is clear that, like the 2000 election in the u.s., the only reason he won is because there were two right leaning candidates that opposed him. They effectively split the majority vote to the right and ensured his victory w/o a run-off election.

Regardless, one of the most fascinating components to the election for us has been the clear U.S. intrusion into the process, with threats of cuts in foreign aid and remittance rights made by congressman and national leaders should Ortega be elected. Well, he was. Given the situation I thought it timly to submit the following to the NY times and the Washington Post. I have little hope of publication given that it will have to compete with domestic election shenanigans. So you all might just be the only audience to see it. Here goes:

"As an American citizen travelling in Nicaragua I can't help but note, once again, my own government making a farce of its own oft-stated celebration of democracy. The election of Daniel Ortega, so long as the voting process proves to follow standard norms, should be respected and celebrated as the outcome of a democratic process in a sovereign nation. Well before Monday's election, however, high level U.S. officials and national conservative leaders started issuing a litany of threats designed to derail an Ortega presidency.

Ortega MAY represent a threat to U.S. interests, especially given the spectre of him allying Nicaragua with Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba. However, as a democratically elected leader he deserves the oppornity to demonstrate the course on which he will set his nation.

As for the United States we clearly do far more harm than good to our leadership potential in the world by meddling with the sovereignty of a democracy. Our government's threats towards Nicaragua show disrespect towards the people of Nicaragua and their democratic processes. By taking pre-emptive punitive actions towards Nicaragua we are creating conditions that can only drive Ortega into alliances with other countries. To secure our own future and protect our interests we simply must work to be better neighbors to the world.

As an American I certainly hope that the Nicaraguans prove to be as forgiving towards us as they are proud. I know that, as a travelling American, I grow weary of being made a de facto representative of a government that insists first on protecting its right to do what it will in the world while ignoring the sovereignity of effective democracies."

Ian

Another day, another bus ride

We've put in our time now, worn down the threads on a few of Central America's buses. After three long days we've made it to Granada, Nicaragua. Only two more hours, by colectivo and/or "chicken bus" will bring us to San Juan Del Sur where, we hope, we will spend the next month in language school. As documented in this blog our first leg took us from San Cristobal in Chiapas to Guatemala City, a total of 14 hours on the bus. That was on Friday. On Saturday we "hopped" from Guatemala City to San Salvador, putting in another 10 hours. And today we left San Salvador at 5 AM, drove through Honduras and arrived in Granada (after a transfer to a colectivo in Managua) around 6 pm. Another 11 hours. In total, for both of us, these trips cost us about $125 in fares.

I've never been south of Guatemala City so i couldn't tell you how things have changed here in Nicaragua or El Salvador. I've been surprised though, by the quality of the buses that we've been able to get. Por claro the "chicken buses" that I used to get to Guatemala from Chiapas in 1998 are still here, but they are no longer the only option for most long trips. We did the entire journey from Mexico City to here, a total of about 65 hours in transit, in relatively nice buses, with clean reserved seats, bathrooms, even though they aren't always the most pleasant places, and even movies. Central America is changing. To be honest, the bus from San Cristobal to Guatemala City was the worst - not very nice and with the smell of puke to make the trip go slower. But still, it had movies, and I didn't have anyone leaning on my shoulder except Christine.

Most of Guatemala still seems like it did when i was there 8 years ago - dusty and broken. But south of Guatemala City one enters some very beatific countryside that extends all the way through to Nicaragua (and probably further into Costa Rica and Panama). My greatest anxiety along the way was that we were observing this entire region throught the window of an air-conditioned bus. The houses and fincas that we passed looked well-kept, the country-side relatively intact, the rivers and watershed somewhat pristine. I wanted to get out and walk and make conversation with people in my stilted "don't know enough Spanish" way. Travelling by bus like this means that your experience is roughly confined to cities and air-conditioned buses. That will change as of now, with no more long bus rides to get in our way.

Our travelling companions have been a mix of locals, mostly middleclass or wealthy mexicans and central americans, and foreigners, primarily europeans. Its been a pleasure to talk to the Europeans for me because they are so language savvy. Most have a good grasp, if not fluency, with at least three languages. It is inspiring.

And with that, I think i need to retire for the evening. Tomorrow we start to work out details regarding school. We've got a bunch of photos to upload, but need to find a fast enough connection. For now, words will have to do.

Ian

three days of halloween ... who could ask for more?

At the moment we find ourselves in San Salvador, El Salvador. Our days since leaving Mexico City have been filled with long bus rides, beautiful vistas amidst chilly highland colonial cities, night time debauchery, rainstorms, and three full days of halloween costumes. Upon leaving Mexico City we decided to go to San Cristobol in Chiapas Mexico rather than Oaxaca. As some of you may be aware there has been ongoing protests and escalating violence that has lead to a number of deaths and the entry of the Federal Police into the center of Oaxaca City. Therefore, we decided it would be safer to head to Chiapas to take in the Day of the Dead celebration.

What we found in San Cristobal was lovely cobbled streets jam packed with travelers, a thriving mayan community, and children eager to trick or treat. Kids get to trick or treat for 3 nights- on Halloween, All Saint´s day and Day of the Dead. Some even tried to stretch it to four nights. I found myself a bit sad that for the first time in my life I would not be dressed in a costume to offically celebrate Halloween. Instead we were consigned to make the best of it by buying candy and sitting at a park in the Centro to hand out to the passing trick or treaters. Upon recieving candy the kids would yell ¨"Viva La Tia!!!" which means long live the auntie or... even better, long live those who spoil you best.

Halloween lead into Day of the Dead. We struggled to get a sense of the day by simply wandering the streets along side all the other tourists and so we took a tour to the indigenious community of Chamula. At first we worried we had signed on to a guided shopping trip but things quickly inmproved as our guide once prodded with questions was extremely knowledgeable and very giving. We visited several churches and a cementary where hundreds of people were gather around graves, temporary food booths set-up, and an endless expanse of marigolds lay before us. Indeed a beautiful day to see the way in which others honer their ancestors. In hopes of further understanding this unique day we went to mass. I will say that again, we went to Mass in a Catholic Church.... with no new revelations to behold but just as I remember. Wondering if there was something more we were missing in this day we found ourselves in a Dance Club where the waiters all wore the image of skeletal death, painted faces, black clothes, flaming drinks and .... coreographed dances to boot.
Having taken all that we could for the day we lumbered off to our hostel for a few hours rest before catching the morning bus to Guatemala City. 13 hours of bus travel and we arrived travel weary in a damp and dirty city. Note to self- tequilla in never a good idea before a long bus ride on winding roads climbing off into the horizon. that´s all for now.

photos to go with christine´s blog

a few photos with christine´s blog. a gem from halloween, and two from dia de los muertes, one in san juan de chamula outside san cristobal and one from a door in san cristobal

oh yeah, this is the farthest south i´ve ever been. EVER.

-ian