Early departure....

Buenas,

My apologies for the long delay in posting but the delay came in part because after agonizing over the decision all of last week I decided to return back home a couple of weeks early. So this past weekend I traveled into Managua as planned but instead of heading north to study more Spanish I changed my flight and flew home on Sunday. I am not going to get into the details of the decision here since I sincerely believe that blogs are not really public journals so if you are interested in more info please feel free to call me or send me an email.

But, I did do some more interesting things before departing so here is one last post along with some photos!

Last Thursday afternoon, my fellow students and I decided to make an afternoon trip into the city of Granada. At one time I had been thinking about doing a week of study in Granada but since I was planning to go north I wanted to at least get in to see the place. Granada is touted as the most beautiful city in Nicaragua and it certainly has very impressive colonial architecture. It is situated on the gigantic Lago Nicaragua and for a time was the national capital. It was also frequently burned to the ground in the past by pirates since it's location on the lake makes it accessible via the Rio San Juan to the ocean, and thus, was a central trading hub - and apparent bull's eye for pirate pyromaniacs!

After waiting a quite long time to hail a cab from the middle of nowhere (we were told it was easy to pick one up and then told it was near to impossible....but thankfully the locals helped us out with a phone call!), we made it to the city where we spent a few hours wandering around, seeing the sights, and treating ourselves to some non-traditional food at a restaurant (hummus....yummy.). Granada is also very touristy so I saw the largest number of gringos that I had seen in some time.

Here are some photos from Granada:

Some fellow students: Emil (from Denmark), Ali (USA), and taking the pic, TJ (from Australia)

The next day I left the Laguna and headed for Managua where I met up with Jes Buller, a '08 GC grad! She was in town doing orientation with the MCC SEED program which she now co-coordinates in Colombia. We ended up doing some sight-seeing with the SEED group as we visited. It was delightful to see her.

We hit up the standard views in Managua which included the empty and somewhat run down National Cathedral, the Palace, and a mountain top view of the city where a large silhouette statue of Sandino stands. Managua's city center was destroyed by an earthquake in 1972 and has never been rebuilt so it is a bit of a stark city and not particularly beautiful but here are a few photos from my two days there. Oh, and one of the bus terminal in Masaya that I bused through en route to Managua:

Sandino and a view of Lago Managua with distant volcanoes

The national cathedral (has not been restored since devastating earthquake)

Well, I guess until my new travel adventure - this is la Viajera signing off!

Be well!

La Laguna

After a number of days without access to the internet, our electricity is finally on at the same time as the interet is working!! I am now almost finished my second day of studying Spanish at the Laguna de Apoyo but I have been at the lake now for 4 days. I came to this gorgeous volcanic crater lake on Saturday already with the Goshen SST crew to finalize details for 3 student service sites and then spend some time lounging and enjoying the lake.

Swimming in the lake is phenomenal. It is cool enough to be refreshing but stunningly warm to this Canadian´s touch. The water is clear and at points you can see quite far below the surface. Jen, Lisa, and I went for a night swim after we were convinced by locals that the hundreds of fish we could see by the dock lights would not in fact swarm us upon entry into the water! We conquered our squeamishness and had a lovely dip. On Sunday, the students also came out and joined us for a day at the lake.

I then said farewell to the SST group and struck out on my own although still at the same location. My spanish school is at an ecological research station and it is VERY rustic. I confess that it is a little less exciting than I had imagined and I have decided not to stay for two weeks here. It is beautiful, there are howler monkeys howling in the distance as I type (and I have seen a number of these monkeys in the trees) but I am feeling restless and have decided to head north to the city of Esteli for my next two weeks. The GC students highly recommended it and I´m excited about cooler mountain air. It has been very humid here and while sleeping has not been too bad, I think that a week of this will be enough.

Here are some photos from around the station:

The daily swim continues to be lovely and tomorrow we will make an excursion to a look out over the lake and a small town that is known for its ceramics. I already visited San Juan del Oriente on Friday with the students but I will be happy to return again. This will probably be my last blog post until I am established in Esteli since the internet service here is so spotty.

Hasta luego!

Street Scenes

Without having the luxury of photographic support, here are a couple of observations from the streets here in Jinotepe:

Cambistas:
Yesterday afternoon, Austin, one of the GC students, helpfully showed us the way to the main market where we could change our American dollars into the Nicaraguan cordoba at one of the many 'cambistas' that station themselves at the street corners. These men stand with large wads of cash in their hands, often waving the bills at passersby as they solicit business. 22.5 cordobas buy you one American dollar so you can imagine that changing money can lead to very full wallets.

Funeral Observances:
As a couple of us were returning from the afternoon lecture (Goshen students study Spanish in the morning and then often have an afternoon lecture on a variety of subjects), we noticed a procession passing a few blocks ahead. In place of our kind of limo-hearse, there was a small pick up truck with a coffin placed in the back. It processed through the streets slowly as the mourners followed behind on foot.

Whistles in the night:
Our first two nights in the country were quite quiet and pleasant. Nicaraguans have a penchant for fireworks so other than occasional blasts sounding off, the night has not been too noisy. Last night however, our attempts at falling asleep were interrupted by shrill whistles from out on the street. These whistles would continue for a number of blasts followed by silence until another round of blasts sounded again. When I looked out the window, I saw what looked like our hotel's night security guard pacing the street with a rifle slung over one shoulder and a whistle in his mouth. After a number of sleepless hours, I finally made my way downstairs around 1:30 a.m. and I guess the hotel staff asked him to stop because thankfully silence soon followed. I'm hoping for a quieter night tonight!

Arrival in Nicaragua

Hola Amigas y Amigos!

After weeks of feeling great anxiety about how hot Nicaragua was going to be, I have been pleasantly surprised to discover that it is quite comfortable here right now. To be sure, I am still happy to indulge in a few nights of air conditioning at our Jinotepe hotel, but in general, the weather here has been beautiful thus far.

Upon arriving at the Managua airport, Deanna and I were first greeted by an old 'boss' of mine, Gonzalo Duarte, who I worked with back in Ontario for a summer. In one of those classic small world moments, I discovered last year that Gonzalo has moved to Nicaragua to further develop his non-profit organization, Companeros, and this is the organization that employs Goshen College's SST in-country coordinator, Dalena.

It was lovely to be greeted by a familiar face and we spent the night at his house and enjoyed a brief intro to Managua before traveling south to Jinotepe. We began our visit with the SST unit by attending their afternoon lecture on Nicaragua's relationship with its neighbouring countries. By far the highlight thus far was our evening last night when the whole group went to one of the students' host families for a surprise birthday party. Her host sister had organized a number of games including a fabulous pinata, a Spanish version of 'Fruit basket upset', pin the tale on Eeyore, and a particularly amusing dancing lime game! The whole evening was quite entertaining and the food was delicious. I am already enjoying the proclivity of tropical fruits.

Nicaragua is a beautiful country and I am looking forward to seeing more of it on Friday when we travel to Volcan Masaya for a field trip. I am afraid that I will not be able to post photos as I left my camera cord behind at home. Sorry!

Hasta luego.....

re-entry

So now I'm back in Goshen and working at re-entry. I was ready to return and the 30 plus hours in transit helped increase my relief at seeing my house. The laundry is done, the mail is all opened, tomorrow I deal with the few bills that need paying and other such fun. Two months, of course, flew by, even though I was ready to return by the end. Returning home is often an unpredictable experience for me. at times I'm resentful of home, and want to return from where I came. sometimes it is an intense relief and reunion. this time, it was almost nonchalant. a kind of, heh, home, this is normal. 

Right now, I don't miss things about Ecuador, or Paraguay. I'm guessing that stage will come. Probably once I get around to organizing photos. And maybe once I'm feeling overwhelmed by work I'll be ready to be free and traveling again. All in all, it was a wonderful summer. I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to do this, and I'm already making plans for future summers and ways to return to South or Central America again, maybe to Colombia next time. I am hopeful that I will keep working at learning Spanish but I also recognize what a challenge it is to keep at it, especially with what will surely be a crazy schedule for me this coming year. 

Thanks for reading along with me, whatever amount you did, and this will be the official end to this blog, at least for now. Perhaps I'll pick it up again when I am 'viajera-ing' (as Jana puts it) once more.

red soil, trampolines, dialects and more

As promised, I would like to reflect a little bit more upon my experience of visiting my family in eastern Paraguay. It was one of those life experiences where it's really incredibly fascinating and important but at times, from moment to moment, also incredibly boring! The challenge for me of course was language where the majority of the conversation was in low German and my mother and I traded roles as translator and one in need of translation. The most interesting aspect of the language piece for me was finding that, not surprisingly, the men were the ones who spoke Spanish while the women had little opportunity to learn Spanish because their lifes were centered in their German colony with little interaction with Spanish-speaking Paraguayans. So here I was in a culture that still separates the men and women more than my own culture, only able to communicate with the men. I really enjoyed my conversations with my cousins, especially the sons of the cousins we were staying with, but it felt really strange to be cut off from direct communication with the girls. Although I think I managed to still bond with the youngest cousin through games and random faces!

while on the gender theme, one thing I noticed here in the Paraguayan Mennonite communities, as well as in the indigenous communities in Ecuador was how women were the ones who maintained traditional dress. The men in most of these communities showed the most signs of westernized dress. And while the Old Colony community had started to allow things like cars and cell phones, as far as I know, nothing about the position of women in the colony had shifted. I'm sure there are essay length reflections in here so i'll just leave it at this basic observation.

I learned quite a bit more about how the colonies work and they certainly are much more communal than we are. Dairy farming and cattle are primary vocations in this region and we got to see one of my cousin's yogourt/milk processing factories - yummy! 

Our visit to Iguazu Falls was fabulous - a wonderful day. We started the day with a boat ride that took us to both sides of the falls and at the end took us 'into' the falls. Needless to say we got soaked but it was a great time and we got to see the falls from views that wouldn't have been possible from anywhere else. Along with various trails and lookout points, the park has a long, long walkway that you take to the point where you are literally feet away from the top point of the falls where the water begins to rush over the edge. Phenomenal. That section is called 'Devil's Throat' although it's more dramatic in spanish I think. 

We were hit by an incredible cold spell our second night in Brazil so I was ready to get back north to get warmed up! Since most of the buildings don't have heat we had two night of layers of blankets and staying curled up to keep warm. Once we were back in Paraguay the temperature almost hit freezing! Apparently this is very unusual even for their winter.

new kind of mennoland

Hello everyone! Since I last posted, my mother and I made it safely to Paraguay where Mennonite World Conference has come and gone and now I´m writing from just inside Brazil at a hostal close to Iguazu Falls. MWC was a pretty good week. I will admit that it was not as good as I was hoping. I really enjoyed getting to see a variety of people that I have not seen in a while and live a world away (literally for some), I attended some fabulous workshops and enjoyed seeing some of the Paraguayan Mennonite context. However, the plenary sessions were disappointing and at times just downright boring. Part of this was due to translation challenges, part was due to what I thought was an excessive amount of talking and quite frankly, not very good preachers - although I found 3 speakers to be very excellent. The biggest issue that came to the fore for me at MWC was the imbalance in attenders. There were almost 2000 North Americans and not even 200 Africans in attendance which is in opposition to the number of Mennonite living in these continents, respectively. I am hoping to reflect on this further with other participants and consider how we might work at changing this for next time, if there is another world gathering planned.

I am now visiting my mother´s cousins in one of the Old Colony Mennonite colonies in Rio Verde, Paraguay. My uncle, aunt, mother and I are staying with cousins for our final week here. It has been quite fascinating so far. The majority of the family is still a part of the Old Colony church and we have spent the last two days hopping from one home to another, meeting people, eating good food and me listening to a lot of low German and observing what life is like here. The family we are staying with is no longer a part of the Old Colony group so this has also been very interesting. They are the ones we are here in Brazil with. I am really enjoying getting to know them. An example of the many paradoxes of life here is last night at dinner when one of my cousins pulled out there laptop and I found out that they have wi-fi set up in their house! So in addition to everyone having cell phones, here we were in a home with pretty basic hydro with women still in traditional dress checking our email and adding each other as friends on facebook.

I will reflect on this experience more once I am back in the States. For now I will stop here to let others use the internet. We are headed to the Argentinian side of the falls tomorrow and I´m pretty excited to have another day of hiking and exploring the jungle around the falls. Friday we head back to the colony for one more night, then into Asuncion for our final day before heading back to the States. I look forward to seeing many of you soon!