My semester in NICARAGUA.: "Gracias Dios"

The title of my post is referring to many prayers I have heard in the bible study groups I have gone to with mi mama and cousin. At the beginning of each meeting they start with a prayer. The prayers are very unique in that one person starts praying but then everyone joins in outloud saying their own prayer. It gets pretty loud but it is very neat to be a part of. It is very powerful, and the words that I hear most are, “gracias Dios, en el nombre de Jesús, gracias El Señor” which means “thank you God, in the name of Jesus, thank you Lord”. Oh, and these prayers are said at the end of the bible studies too so I think I will hear many of them over the semester. Who knows, I might even join in the prayers by the end!

Well as the 10^th anniversary of 9/11 was just yesterday, I was thinking about all the reminiscing and such that would go on in the U.S. on this day. Although 9/11 was a tragedy, it did in time bring the country together. It made me question what things in Nicaragua bring them together as a country. Well for one, there is an election coming up in November, and it has opposite of brought the country together. This election is pretty controversial as there are 2 candidates, and the younger generation is for one and the older generation is for the other. I don’t understand too much of it (I’m excited to learn more in our history class later in the semester) but mi mama and papa were trying to explain their government a little to me. It generally seems to be really selfish and not looking out for their people. The money that comes into the country is not used wisely for the good of the community and that is much of the reason their people are not improving their situations. As their government has absolutely no benefits for these people to help themselves, there isn’t much else a lot of them are able to do with their limited resources. There isn’t much togetherness in this country at the moment, so I hope in the upcoming election a much-needed authority takes charge to bring the country together.

In the Midwest we go sledding down hills of snow, in Nicaragua they go boarding down volcanoes of ash and on Saturday, the other students and I got the chance to do this crazy thing known as volcano boarding! This was so worth it. We went through a tour company and our guide was full of interesting information about the line of volcanoes at Cerro Negro. He lead us to an area of 13 volcanoes, the one we hiked was an active crater, erupting last in 1992. We first hiked up this volcano, it took about an hour! It was a tough hike because we were carrying our boards and protective suits and there was absolutely no shade the whole way up. Our guide who was leading us takes the trip up the volcano twice a day, I don’t know how he does it! We were so tired when we got to the top but it was all good news from there. We got a beautiful view of the other volcanoes and then we got to slide down the very steep incline, after first gearing up as to not get terrible burns! It was a crazy awesome experience, and it was too bad we only got to go down once.

Just a little story…On Friday night the 6 of us were sitting on the corner of the street by my house talking before we all parted for the night and we were, as always getting many comments and stares because we are North Americans; very much in the minority, we’ve realized this. We have been getting pretty good at ignoring these comments as it happens quite often. Some of their comments are just very creative, especially when some of them try to speak in English and you can barely tell what they are trying to say. But this one was very unique. There have been many trucks with loudspeakers driving around the city lately announcing Presidential campaigns and such. This particular truck driving past was one of those. As we heard a pause in the loudspeaker and a distinct whistle, we stopped for a second and wondered if the people in that truck did indeed stop their announcement to whistle at us on the corner. We confirmed this as true and proceeded to crack up laughing. As Nicaraguans are very obvious in showing that they notice us, as this example shows, I’m sure we will get many more creative comments/whistles! Ha.

This is our last week of Spanish class, and I think we are all ready to get started on our other classes. Spanish class has been super helpful but it has been a long 3 weeks of cramming in lots of Spanish knowledge and conversation techniques. It has really given me a good boost to understanding the basics of this language though and I will continue to put these to use in everyday conversations. I think practice is a valuable way to learn and as I don’t feel amazing at Spanish, I have confidence that if I keep practicing with my family everyday and with Nicaraguans I interact with, it will continue to get easier. I watched the movie “Los Pitufos” (The Smurfs) with mi familia the other night and it was fully in Spanish so that was actually really good for me to force myself to read the subtitles. I was surprised at how much I did understand! I think I like the Spanish name for smurfs better too, its very fun to say!

Some of my Spanish mess ups: They were both in Spanish class, so not too embarrassing but still! Our teacher was asking us what we did in the afternoon the day before and I said I went to a party instead of saying I took a nap. The Spanish word for party is fiesta and the word for nap is siesta, so they are very similar, but I should have known! In class another day we were talking about some activities we do at college. I was trying to say I dance with my friends but instead I said I dance with myself. That was interesting and I’m sure I’ll have lots more times of messing up because I am still learning! You just have to learn to laugh at yourself which we have gotten really good at.

Some PHOTOS>

This was before the loooooong hike up the volcano. that thing on my back is the board we "sled" down on...