Extraño... that was the word of the day yesterday in Spanish class as I tried to explain to Lussi, my teacher, how wierd it feels to be here in Matagalpa for two weeks of Spanish lessons with no friends; no family; no comfort of the known; no sweet, sweet, English in my ears; and no great task, opportunity, or work waiting to fill my time outside of classes. Strange.

Of course I haven´t been doing nothing here. I have found much to occupy my time over the last week and a half. For example, I´ve read two and a half books. I´ve watched two Driscoll sermon series. I´ve enjoyed some amazing spanish kids´ television shows. I´ve wandered the streets exploring to the point of stressing my knee, gotten lost once, e-mailed some friends and family and compared the internet speed quality in nearly every internet cafe around. (Heck, it´s super cheap. Usually my usage needs for the day max out at an hour and a half, for a cost of just under a dollar.) Oh yeah, and I´ve studied some spanish, too.

But there comes a point where your brain gets overtaxed by the conjugating of the past perfect and the imperfect, and the gerundio, too. Yesterday in class I thought my brain would explode when Lussi revealed to me that the entire population of Nicaragua doesn´t use the regular "tú" form as all of Spanish-dom uses it, but instead has their own slang word for the singular "you" subject, known as "vos", and is not to be confused with the spanish plural "you" subject, "vosotros," which the Nicaraguans don´t use.

The thing with the whole "vos" form, is that it subtly changes the conjugations regularly used for basically every verb in the Spanish language, somewhat following the "tú" rules but changing the emphasis from the second-last to the last syllable. Now folks, I know what you´re thinking. You´re thinking, "so then they use an accent to emphasize the last syllable, as is generally the rule in all of wide, wide, Spanish-dom?"

There, my quick-thinking, surprisingly language-perceptive friend, you would be wrong. Nope, you´re just supposed to know. Hello, it´s SLANG. Let´s not make this too easy for those extranjeros!

I spent the rest of the day trying to wrap my mind around the usage of "vos", and shaming Lussi for all the guilt I could extract for not telling me about the whole "vos" thing earlier.

After classes like that, my brain just needs a nap.

The other thing that I´ve been doing here in Matagalpa to fill my time is seeing various points of interest in the Matagalpa area, which is a part of the package offered to Spanish students of Matagalpa Tours. There´s kind of an interesting dynamic to going out on regularly scheduled one-on-one outings with a 24-year-old latino guy, though. Not that Hector is at all unprofessional, it´s just that his job at present is to take this chela out to places like the local chocolate factory, and of course, he pays.

My new latin-american television guilty pleasure is the amazing Mexican tourism show, GEM: Gringo En Mexico, a show hosted by an American guy with an interesting grasp on the Spanish language... he knows all the words, but not how to speak it. There´s nothing more for me to say about than that to me, it is pee-your-pants hilarious, and to refer you to this youtube clip for reference.

Okay... maybe I´ll add just this one thing. The episode I saw the other day included him creeping out an indigenous family far up in the mountains of Mexico, trying to interview them on-camera and shake their hands, as the children ran away timidly to hide, and the mother turned her face away. Eventually a Mexican man came along and explained to him that these indigenous people:

a) don´t speak spanish, and
b) are very unused to seeing strangers (probably much less so white people), and thus are very distrusting of outsiders.

Way to do your homework, GEM.

Today was the parade for the Virgin Mercedes, and the third holiday we´ve had since I came to Matagalpa. For some reason, each town chooses their own Virgin to honour in the Catholic Cathedral... to me it comes off like the "patron saint" or the "local god" of the town... it´s a very strange Catholicism you find in Central America, a fine blend of paganism and Catholic tradition.

Tomorrow I have eight hours of spanish classes, and if my brain makes it through intact, by tomorrow night I´ll be at the orphanage in Jinotega, meeting the kids I´ll be caring for for the next three months.

Yesterday I hit home in Nicaragua. Sweet, sweet home.

I had heard word that there was a play being performed this Saturday night, at a place very close to my home, by a theatre group from Managua that was commended to me as the best theatre group in Central America. So of course I went.

It wasn´t just a play. It was theatre. A beautiful play, with a beautiful, important message, with incredible movement work, about the issue of domestic violence in Nicaragua, complete with a talk-back by the cast after the show. I was so in my element. It was entitled "Sopa de Muñecas," or "Doll Soup," loosely translated.

I loved every moment of the piece, understood in a way that gave major props to the actors, as well as to the power of art to cross the barriers of language and experience. I looked at the actors like they were my long lost cousins; these were my people.

Even now, as the magic of last night is fading, I´m frustrated with myself for not having the words to properly express that feeling of glow in one´s heart, knowing that they are known, that they are home, that they are with people that they understand perfectly, that they respect deeply, that they relate to fundamentally.

I sat there for the duration just soaking up the magic that the cast laid out before my eyes, laughing at the funny bits, grieving at the tragedy, and loving the feeling of understanding and being communicated with. In the talkback, one of the cast members talked about how the purpose of theatre is not to give solutions to issues like domestic violence or inter-family violence, but to be a mirror for society, to bring forward the issues, to spark thought and conversation that might move people towards drawing their own conclusions and solutions. For those of you who understand or subscribe to the Lucy Maud Montgomery concept of kindred spirits, these people were mine.

A spanish student from Austria that I had met earlier in the day had planned on possibly meeting me there, but in the end she went to a rock concert that a member of her host family had an extra ticket to, and I sat there alone, conspicuously blond as usual, and conspicuously solo as well. So began an exchange with a guy named Norlan sitting about a row back that at first felt a little something like this*, but took a definite turn for the better when Norlan´s friends Juan and Jimmy showed up. I felt a little less like prey at that point, and my discovery that Juan and Jimmy were both actors whose group had recently disbanded and theatre enthusiasts in heart changed everything. I found it very endearing as Juan tried with a fine mix of social reservedness and uninhibited passion for his art to explain that he and Norlan were poets, and that he very much wanted to share with me the verses contained in the leather-bound notebook that he carried with him.

As someone who lives off of deep connections, good conversations, and common ground with the people around me, I´d been feeling a little bit dry and deserted since arriving in Matagalpa. Kindred spirits for me are the heart of life. And I found Juan to be a kindred spirit. (Norlan was kind of still a bit of a player... I found out later that one of the first things he had said to me was a lie. He told me he was 22 when I said I was 23, but he´s actually 26. He defended himself profusely by saying he didn´t want to come across as old. I laughed pretty hard when Juan unintentionally outed him.)

Realizing that these two guys were harmless, and better yet, that they were people with whom I could relate, I took the liberty of hanging out with them for awhile after the play, explaining that I was craving one of my Canadian customs of seeing theatre with friends and then going out after to discuss it. In the end, it didn´t turn out to be all that I was hoping. Both Norlan and Juan mumbled so much and spoke spanish so informally that I could barely understand them most of the time, and Juan was so obviously smitten by my gringa-ness that he couldn´t and wouldn´t talk at first, trying to get Norlan to re-explain everything (still in spanish, of course) when I couldn´t understand him instead of just repeating himself more slowly, and then eventually wouldn´t stop talking at all and would go on for 10 or 15 minutes at a time about his ideas, his thoughts, and his dreams about life, the world, art and theatre. It was the language barrier that destroyed us, because the conversation held loads of possibility and interest, but was irretrievably lost in translation.

It is nevertheless still a very good thing to sit for a couple hours in the middle of a central park in a latin-american country in another part of the world with some generally good guys - poets, dreamers, actors, etc - and to be completely, hopelessly unable to understand the words being rapidly flung at you by way of conversation, and at some point realize that Juan was just quoting Constantin Stanislavski, is now giving you his thoughts on Grotowski and the Poor Theatre, and recommending you read ¨Manual Minimo del Actor¨(in English The Tricks of the Trade) by Dario Fo, an Italian contemporary working in the field of commedia dell`arte. That´s the sort of conversation in which it´s a beautiful thing to find yourself lost.

Anyways, now having felt very blessed by the much-craved taste of home and familiarity, I´m able to enjoy a laid-back, spanish-school free Sunday morning. I´ll be going to Catholic Mass this afternoon with the family I´m staying with, doing a bit more reading, sending a few e-mails, maybe watching me some Driscoll, and waiting in eager expectation to meet the kids at Hogar Amistad in Jinotega in a week.

*if you missed that link, go back and click on the link attached to the word ¨this,¨ and by all means, enjoy watching one of my favorite comedic sketches ever....

I´m doing these snapshots the John Mayer way*, for those wondering why I haven´t posted any pictures in this post.

Today I learned a new word: chela. It means blondie. Add that to my vocabulary list of the things men are calling out at me as I walk through the streets. The most memorable of the day was ¨chelita linda¨, a phrase I was very happy to at least be able to understand. Additionally, I was inexpressably comforted by the knowledge that this phrase sounds equally as creepy when translated into English as it does in Spanish when called out by some gruff, 50-something latino walking by you on a sparsely-peopled street: pretty little blondie.

Sometimes the latinos suck you in, though. If they can blurt out enough English words convincingly enough, you hestitate just long enough that they´ve found an in. Like one guy I met who used to live in California, and wanted to know if I had a boyfriend, because I am so pretty.

In those circumstances, I often lie. However, it´s difficult (and usually a bad idea) to lie to someone you have any sort of a relationship with, and so today became the day for personal conversations. Like with Hector, my tour guide today through the streets of Matagalpa, who also wanted to know my relational status. Reluctantly, I divulged the information. However, a great conversation ensued, the kind I always enjoy having, and the kind I´d hoped to be able to find my way into despite the language barrier here in Nicaragua.

I told Hector I prefer walking with him as opposed to walking alone because walking alone, I am just another gringa. He understood.

It´s nice to be understood.

Today in Spanish class I asked my teacher (also 23) if one of the other teachers there was her boyfriend. She said no, and wanted to know why I thought that. Those of you who know me well can appreciate how difficult it can be to relay to anyone why I think the way I think in English, much less in Spanish. However, it was fun to try, although I might have stirred up some drama there, as she´s now giving their relationship more thought.

Today I was introduced to Matagalpa´s Catholic cathedral, central park, main street, and the market here. I´m very happy that I can now walk down more than one street and still know where I´m going.

Apparently the color of my shirt and the color of my eyes are a good combination. (The color of my shirt is aquamarine.)

I´m starting to think in Spanish again. That´s comforting. I´m starting to be able to guess the answers on ¨Ruleta de la Suerte¨, Spain´s edition of Wheel of Fortune.

I´m actually really enjoying the melodrama of the spanish soaps here. I find them honest in their indulgence. They know exactly what they are for; they are television´s equivalent of the Harlequin romance; and they make no bones about it. Soaps in America (from my limited knowledge) get tangled up in all sorts of crazy crimes, murders, and impregnations. I´m sure Central American soaps have their share of these, but so far it´s just been glorious hook-up after glorious hook-up. Actually, they´re probably about the same, but it´s less burdensome to be able to ignore all of the finer details that come with actually understanding the dialogue.

And now I´m going to find my way back up the hill to my house, watch some Driscoll on the iPod I strategically loaded up with unwatched sermons, do my homework so Lussi doesn´t kill me tomorrow, and go to bed, since it´s already been dark for about two hours here.


Listening to: City and Colour - Hello, I´m in Delaware

*3x5 talks about leaving one´s camera behind in order to see the world with both eyes open, and taking the opportunity to tell others about these excursions through the act of losing one´s way with words - a well-known experience to me at the moment.

This Monday night I was strolling down the steep streets of Matagalpa, Nicaragua, to get my first view of the town that would be my home for the next two weeks while I study up on my spanish language skills. Suddenly the cell phone in my purse starts tolling the hour of 5:20, a fitting addition to the disorderly events of that day, and my Nicaraguan experience thus far.

My last entry ended with me stranded in the Managua airport with no sign of my Seattleite friends Karel and Myra anywhere. I took my time through the airport, exchanged my American cash for some Nicaraguan Cordovas (at a rate of 1:20, I was pretty loaded afterwards), and made my way through a pretty lax security gate, to find myself with no remaining menial tasks to distract me from the absence of my friends. Oh, great. Stranded on the other side of the world. Even worse, I could hear all of my parents´ paranoid concerns echoing in my head... ¨Oh, shut UP!,¨ I was thinking.

My feelings of abandonment lasted only about an hour before I saw the face of one of my favorite gringos, Karel, coming through the airport´s sliding doors. I hopped in his vehicle with my luggage and was greeted by his two adorable daughters, the oldest of which, Addy (5) was dressed as a princess. Both were very excited to see me, although I´m not sure whether or not Rylee (3) would have legitimately remembered me, but they were sweet and welcoming, and as usual, pretty darn cute.

Back at the Normans, Addy and I decided to take a nap, but what was probably a light one-hour nap for Addy was a full-on, four-hour, dead-to-the-world crash for me. (Apparently they tried to wake me to see if I wanted to go swimming... I was not responsive.)

That evening we had a barbeque with the Normans´neighbours in their apartment complex, primarily American missionaries involved with various projects in Managua. The Normans had made arrangements for two friends of theirs to drive me up to Matagalpa at 6 in the morning, where I would be enrolled in Spanish school for the next two weeks and living in a Nicaraguan home.

After Karel and Myra went to bed, I realized my alarm clock had no batteries in it, so I set the clock on my Nicaraguan cell phone for 5:20 AM. Pleased at my ingenuity, and praying I would wake up, I went to bed.

At 9 AM the next morning, I woke up. In Managua. At Karel and Myra´s place. Hmmmm..... oops? I had definitely missed my ride. Apparently, a week of late-nights, packing, saying goodbye, road-trips, concerts, and 2AM Denny´s visits can really tire a girl out.

We decided that I would go to Matagalpa by bus, a plan that quickly fell apart when we realized that no busses would be running due to the fact that Nicaragua´s Independence day was the next day, September 15. Next we attempted to contact a taxi to take me to Matagalpa, but Karel and Myra were unable to locate the numbers of any trusted taxi drivers. Finally, one of Karel´s neighbors contacted a driver who often drove for them when they had American missions groups coming down to help out. Guillermo came around one in the afternoon and we had a great visit while he drove me up to Matagalpa. I learned a lot about the political situation in Nicaragua and the Sandinistas, and tried to explain the political climate in Canada as best I could.

We found my school, Escuela de Español Matagalpa, and there was not a soul to be seen. All was locked up for the holiday, and we were about an hour and a half late for my 2 o´clock lesson. After a bit of searching, we came across a woman from the school, and she helped us find our way to the house where I would be staying. After some dinner, I decided to set out down the street and try to orientate myself in the town of Matagalpa.

This is the point where my cell phone went off, letting me know that somehow I had set my phone for 5:20 PM, and not AM as I had originally thought.

Here´s the view of Matagalpa from the end of my street:



I returned to my home, unlocked the door to my room to which I had been kindly given a key, checked my stuff, and discovered I was missing $60 American, a fair chunk of the cost of my tuition, which I hadn´t been able to pay up front since the school was closed. It´s never wise to keep such large amounts of money in one´s possession when being billeted out in Central America, but I had thought it might be less wise to carry it on me in the streets. I guess you live and learn, though. So now, $60 short, and conspicuously blond amongst a sea of latinos, I find myself with two weeks of spanish studies ahead of me and a cheap and accessible internet cafe just down the street.


Listening to: Regina Spektor - The Call