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