Tomorrow marks 2 months here in Nicaragua. Prior to leaving, my hope was that I would be fluent in Spanish at 2 months into my trip. I’ve discovered, though, that Spanish language, like anything else in life, presents the opportunity for constant learning. That is to say, there’s always more to know!
However, I am pleased with my rate of learning. I’m happy that I can understand the majority of a conversation when the speaker slows it down for me. I’ve even found that I can translate when a native Spanish speaker is speaking to an English speaker. (Again, speaking very slowly!)
Granada is blessed to have animals everywhere you turn. Cats on the roof, dogs on every corner, goats, horses, and cows, all wandering the streets, negotiating traffic with buses, people in cars, on bikes, and on foot. Below is a small sampling…
The Motmot, the national bird of Nicaragua. This guy had a broken wing, and was being cared for by friends.
Hally – this dog is lucky enough to have a place to call home and regular meals and human companionship, but there are many street dogs in Nicaragua. So many, in fact, that a local artist was inspired to create a series of portraits of them which grace many restaurants, businesses, and homes in the area. Continue reading “Animales en la Calle!”
Nothing gives a sense of place so much as food. What food is naturally available in a region, and how do the people of use that food to nourish themselves? What’s a special treat versus everyday fare.?
Here in Granada, Tostones con Queso is ubiquitous. On my first visit here, I kept ordering this dish accidentally. In my mind, tostones was tasty toast, and queso referred to the cheese I know and love from the states, not the thick and salty squares of fried cheese that landed in front of me each time I ordered the dish. “Oh this again,” I would sigh to my friend, unenthusiastically picking up a tasteless round of fried plantain.
Roosters in Nicaragua behave much as dogs do in the States. When one crows, they all begin cock-a-doodle-doodeling up and down the street. There’s one rooster that appears to come from next door and has a voice that sounds like a person doing a poor impression of a rooster. He’s always second to chime in when the string of cock-a-doodle-doodeling starts up. Between these guys and the geckos that sound like knuckles rapping at my door and mangoes falling on a tin roof, I slept poorly last night.
My alarm went off early, but I was long awake gazing at the sun shining in the patio garden and the mosquitoes fighting for entry on the opposite side of the mosquitero. I whirl-winded myself up and to the bathroom, dressing fast so that I’d be ready for the taxi driver at 7:15. On a whim, I opened my front door at 6:55, and the taxi pulled up 5 minutes later. Hola! Continue reading “Un Dia en la Vida”
Weaving through the market, clutching my backpack. Stepping carefully lest I step on something that squishes. Avoiding potholes full of muddy water, avoiding lines of horse dung and the gray water running down the sides of each road. Stepping around people, feeling the gentle ebb and flow of a moving crowd. Pausing while 2 large vehicles, both going the same direction, attempt a u-turn on an impossibly small road crowded with people, bicycles, children, and tienditas.
The small list of necessities in my pocket reminding me of my new spanish words. Papel higenicia, afeitadora, queso, platanos, frijoles. Comida for a small feast. Then finding my head turned by the lady selling tupperware for 20 cordoba, by the bag of nachos at Pela. Continue reading “Shopping”
It was a morning like any other. I woke at 6:30 and got some tunes playing by plugging my kindle into some speakers I had borrowed from Pure. I sang as I prepared to leave for my morning yoga class, then set off biking to the gym, enjoying another morning in Granada. I returned to la casa around 11 am, and was perplexed when my key wouldn’t turn in the lock of the front door. I tried and tried, as I find that the humidity here often makes locks stick. Finally, I gave up and asked the security guard next door if he would let me in so I could hop the fence dividing our houses. He told me that las muchachas who clean the house were also unable to open the door one hour prior. He let me and my bike into the home he was guarding and showed me where the fence was loose and it was possible to shimmy behind it instead of climbing over it, thus avoiding the electrified barbed wire. (Daunting even with the electric turned off!)
“I’ll meet you in front with your bike,” he told me in Spanish. I then struggled with the padlock on the other side of the gate to the patio I entered from, and was finally able to enter the rest of my home. The first thing I noticed was pillows on the table. How odd. Continue reading “Compassion and Release”
Pictures just don’t do Nicaragua justice. Instead, I wish I had a recorder with me so I could share the sounds of life in Nicaragua. If I did, then right now, you’d hear the whirring of the abanica as it keeps the heat away, a knife chopping as the amazing ladies here at Pure cook up some almuerza, and the sound of many birds singing their songs. On any given day, you’d hear vendors calling out their wares in Spanish.
“Queso, queso, queso,” calls one man who I saw a few times this weekend. “You want cheese?” he asks me, en ingles. “
“No, no gracias,” I reply.
“You want doodie?”
“What?” (Doodie! Is he playing with me?)
“Cookies! You want cookies?”
Ah, entiendo…”No, no gracias!”
We had this exchange a few times on Saturday, as we both made our way through the streets and markets of Granada.
“Somewhere there is a place that will change my life. It’s physical beauty will shock me into seeing my world in a wholly new way. The lives of the people there will be so sharply different from mine that they will be a mirror to me, and in that mirror I will see all my faults and fears, and gather the courage to eradicate them. This place will be so untouched by my civilization that I will be renewed just by coming to know it. To visit it will be a once-in-a-lifetime adventure, a necessary adventure of the soul…”
~ Charles Monaghan, “A South Seas Adventure.”
In an effort to reach this soft place in my heart that yearns to live in a different culture, under a warmer sun, a life with minutes that seem to pause and stretch and last a little longer than the minutes here in North America, I have spent the last few months letting go.
The release started simply enough. The clothes in my closet that didn’t get as much mileage as others, pictures in boxes that hadn’t hung on any walls for months, and jewelry and kitchenware all gathering dust. Then, I began to get a sense of my attachment to the material when it came time to release items associated with precious memories: gifts given to me by people dear to me, t-shirts and letters from old loves, souvenirs from life-changing moments. The commercial below seemed to mock my efforts, proclaiming that “you are your stuff,” so you’d better protect what you’ve got. After all, once you let go of your stuff, what identity can you claim?
In yoga, Patanjali speaks about the Yamas and Niyamas, simple rules designed to address the basic human condition, and assist us in living a happy, healthy, and holy life. I’ve often felt my life swing like a pendulum from focusing on one or two of these rules to another. Continue reading “On Ego & Attachment”
