I´m sitting here in the house enjoying the cool air from a hurricane force rainstorm, in my long underwear shirt (side note it´s at least 72, but feels cool to me!) and sipping my favorite Nicaraguan beverage, fresco de cacao (basically cacao, milk, and cinnamon. tastes like chocolate milk but better!)

This weekend was really great. Cat and I left early saturday morning for San Juan del Sur. We found a nice hotel there, $10 each for a really small but very nice room for the three of us. We spent most of the day swimming, lying in the sun, reading and chatting with a restaurant owner that Cat is friends with. When Rachelle got there we had a delicious early dinner of some amazing fish (of course) and went for a swim before the sunset. We had an equally relaxing evening chatting on the beach and then went to a bar called La Iguana for some dancing. That was a strange experience because the majority of the people there were foreigners and we actually did not stand out at all! We met some nice people from England, Australia, Seattle, etc. and definitely had fun. After a good night´s sleep we set off in the morning to find breakfast and stumbled across a coffee shop called El Gato Negro (The Black Cat). It was a hippie-ish coffee shop and bookstore and some readers of this blog will definitely appreciate the connection I felt to this place so similar to the beloved Black Cat in Ashland... wonder if there is any connection? Anyway, I´d list it on the better breakfasts I´ve had in my life, so I have to describe it. I had a bagel with cream cheese, egg, cucumber, onion, tomato and avocado on it. Those of you who know me well can probably picture how much I was drooling, and that was actually ON the menu - someone thinks like me! In addition I had fresh squeezed orange juice, with no sugar or any crap like that in it, a big plate of fresh fruit and amazing coffee. I WAS IN HEAVEN.

Okay enough about food. Unlike my unfortunate sister on this same beach last summer, I did not get stung by a jellyfish nor lose my swimsuit as a result while at San Juan del Sur, BUT I did have the cool/terrifying experience of seeing giant manta rays flying towards my face. While about to jump into a wave, I suddenly saw through the clear turquoise water a huge manta ray riding on top of the wave flapping its wings (whatever those are called). It was actually surfing! It´s kind of hard to read the emotions of manta rays but it was blatantly obvious that these sea creatures really enjoy surfing, you could almost see the elation in their flat little ray faces. They are harmless but I have to say it was REALLY terrifying seeing them in the waves flying towards me!

Overall it was a relaxing weekend and Cat and I figured out with all the stuff we want to do while I´m here I will only be spending 2 more full weekends in Jinotepe. I´m very excited and am currently working on planning a weekend in the mountainous, quiet Northern region. I´m even more excited to start work at the orphanage on Sunday and to be really busy.
I can´t believe that I´ve been here for almost a month already. Time is starting to go a lot faster - already on Friday there will be new volunteers! It´s funny because I feel like I am starting to fit in here but the truth is I´m not - I still am such an oddball in Jinotepe. The weird part was, even just being in the tourist town of San Juan del Sur felt like culture shock after just three weeks. It was like, wait, someone is speaking ENGLISH to me?! These people LOOK like me? I already know that going back to the states is going to be sooooo weird.

It´s really cool to be somewhere else for long enough to be familiar with it, but it has also made me appreciate some things about home more, among them seatbelts, NPR, recycling, peanut butter, and my house - how it´s dead silent at night, with a fireplace and no cockroaches and the radio with six different bluegrass stations on it. I think that is part of the point of traveling though - to get to enjoy somewhere new and exciting and then to be able to have a deeper appreciation of where you live too. At least for me.

Some interesting perspectives I have noticed recently: talking to a couple of Israeli guys and Cat on the bus, and they all said they hated Costa Rica. All of them had been, and none of them liked it! I was surprised because even though I knew right away I wanted to come to Nica and not go to Costa Rica, I thought it was supposed to be some kind of paradise, but all I´ve heard here so far is that it´s not that great, and I was surprised.

Also something that is pretty frustrating that I realized I haven´t discussed is the amount of sexual harrassment of women that goes on here and probably in a lot of Central American countries. Women are basically viewed as a lower life form. It´s the kind of thing where I wonder if I had grown up here if it would seem more normal to me. It actually doesn´t make me that angry because it´s the way the culture is and you can´t just get mad about stuff like that because then you will be angry and not enjoying your travels. But, it is very weird. The machismo attitude, blatant sexual harrassment of all girls and women every day on the streets and statistics of domestic abuse are staggering to someone who grew up in a society where women are both respected and powerful in comparison to much of the world. I feel extremely lucky, and also highly appreciative of all of the guys I know back at home! It´s reassuring to know what I won´t have to deal with walking down the street back at home.

So, basically, what I´m learning is that there is no place in the world that´s better than any other despite what everyone seems to think. There are things I like about Nica a lot more than the States, and a lot of things about home that I never thought to be grateful for until this trip. It´s also made me want to go a lot of other places, because this has been the only long-term international travel experience I´ve had before. But it´s also made me want to spend time with my family and at home too. I´m not about to say that this is a paradise and that I want to stay forever or just take off across the globe with my backpack - I have met many who are doing that - but for now I am enjoying it a lot and definitely getting better at Spanish gradually.

So three more days of Spanish class, next weekend I start what I really came here for... Leon this weekend should be a lot of fun. That´s all for now but hope you all are doing well! Send me e-mails, I love hearing from all of you probably more than you realize: setaylor@pugetsound.edu