helllllo! wow- thanks for still checking this.

so, the news is that i left Granada! i´m still recovering somewhat from my illnesses (seriously - don´t get parasites) so the past few weeks i´d been taking it slow, and when my mom came out to visit (which was awesome!) she helped me realize i may need a change of scenery and climate to get better. so, after throwing myself a few goodbye parties (one of which included giving my host mom a ¨portrait¨ i had done of her family. the picture is above - i never realized how tall i am!), i headed north with the help of high school and college friends Lauren and Jonathan. they have turned out to be excellent traveling companions - helping me mount my GIGANTIC traveling backpack and teaching me the art of hostel cooking.

Leon was our first stop. i´d heard it´s just like Granada, but bigger and more dirty. though it is bigger, i thought it was gorgeous, more real, and definitely more inspiring. it felt like a bustling central american city that had better things to do than cater to tourists (which i was sick of!) but also with the decadence of amazing churches around every corner. we spent our time mosey-ing (which is all you can really do in the crazy heat there) around, sitting in churches, and visiting museums of the revolution and war heroes (as we head north, those get more abundant). a special treat was a trip to the museum of ¨traditions and legends¨ - which was located in a creepy building where Somoza used to torture people and is now filled with old stuffed carcases of animals to graphically relay legends of nicaragua. we couldn´t understand much, since it was all in spanish (ahhh - don´t be dissapointed in me - it was really strange vocabulary!), but we did enjoy the mosaic wall outside (see pic above).

our hostel experience was quite eventful as well. we were fortunate (?) enough to be at our hostel during a huge reggae performance in the lobby, which of course filtered out into the dormitories, including ours. i was awoken at about 1am to the sounds of vomiting and spitting, coming from the bunk above me (!). AHHHH! i flipped on the light, saw puke on the floor (and on my sprawled out luggage!) and cautiously looked on the bunk above me to see a passed out person who wasn´t even staying in our room. ugh. so, it was super gross and lauren and jonathan stayed up and cleaned my things for me (really, they are EXCELLENT traveling companions). so hopefully that was the one hostel story of the trip...

i just arrived in Esteli yesterday and so far am loving it. i think the cooler weather will do wonders for my health, as medieval as that sounds. :)

more soon!

hi guys! i'm feeling almost 100% better. YES!!! the parasite is gone, and now i'm on lots of vitamins and liquids. hurrah! also, to help with the healing process i went to the beaches San Juan del Sur and Playa Maderas and took it easy for a few days. it was beautiful and actually turned into somewhat of a silent retreat when my friends i was traveling with and i chose different hostels to stay at and were kept apart by a high tide from about 3pm to 11am the next day. ha! but it was a good chance to recoup and think.

i returned from my trip to a very somber neighborhood - two neighbors had passed away over the weekend from different illnesses. one of them was a young mother, leaving behind two little children. when people die here all their friends and family gather in and around their house and sit all night with the body until the funeral the next day. when the carriage came to take the mother to the cemetery a band began to play a very melancholy tune and refreshments of a small cup of soda and a piece of sweet bread where handed out. then the crowd followed the carriage by foot the two miles or so to the cemetery. i was very touched by the event and couldn't help but think that if these neighbors could have afforded the $15 doctor visit i had just bought myself things might have been different.

yesterday afternoon i was able to accompany a new friend of mine who is working in a poor neighborhood outside of Granada to see the projects she's working on and meet a family that lives out there. the neighborhood is about 10 minutes from the heart of town by car, but it feels like hours away. the people live in shacks that share a large piece of metal for a roof and the families make a living by collecting plastics and selling them to be recycled. 2 pounds of plastics (roughly a large potato sack full) is worth about $0.07. the family we met showed us around their "house" and the rusted metal bins they hold their water in (as water only flows there 2 days a week). my friend was traveling in Granada last summer, saw these people's situation and decided to go home, raise money, and come back and start several projects (and she's only 25!). we visited the neighborhood's school and heard her plans for planting trees (so the kids wouldn't play in the direct sun all day with no water to rehydrate them) and build better bathrooms. while it was definitely another sobering experience to see just how many people live like this, i came away feeling really inspired by my friend. the picture above of the little girl is from this neighborhood - right at the base of the volcano Mombacho. 

needless to say i have a lot to think about this week. thank you guys for your thoughts and prayers while i was sick. i'm starting school again with 3rd graders tomorrow and am really excited about it. i'm more comfortable speaking to the kids and teachers now and have gotten to know a lot of the neighbors around the school well over the past 4 months. it's definitely starting to feel like home. 

~hasta pronto~