Una despedida a los pinoleros

I'm writing this from the Aeropuerto Internacional Augusto C. Sandino in Managua--long story but let me tell you, nobody (and by that I mean me by myself) is getting mugged today.

Playing pickup on the basketball court near the cathedral, played a bit with some street
boys who had bottles tucked right under the collar of their shirts the entire time to sniff glue.
The court was the site of the 1959 student massacre

From a teeny museum of fallen revolutionary heroes originally run by their mothers

Our last week in Nicaragua, Sara, Hannah, and I went to the Thursday salsa night at La Olla Quemada one last time.  It was the perfect Latin American experience.  We officially became friends with our two Zumba instructors when they showed up to take turns dancing with us and showing us moves.  And then we learned that they were actually dating, and to no one's surprise they made an unbelievable dance pair!  I always love watching the dancer pairs at the club anyway because everyone is superb and so willing to dance with everyone else in the club.  About Zumba here: super fun, extremely sensual, learning of legitimate steps to different Latin dances.  I've never been in the U.S. so I can't really compare, but I can't imagine any American man's butt moving quite the way our instructor managed to move his.

Our very last night in León was equally wonderful. We spent all day with our Nicaraguan friends, and after dinner sat in the outdoor seating of a nice restaurant in the central plaza.  The cathedral was all lit up and the plaza was hoppin'.  So many families were out, as well as street vendors.  There was a small bouncy house, two trampolines, fire-throwers hordes of ice cream carts, and models dressed in amazing costumes for a fantasy contest that happened to be going on.  Street musicians had come up to perform for us, and at one point some high school kids jumped in and started freestyle rapping to the beat of the drum.  One of the musicians we recognized from Granada!  It would not have been a real Nicaraguan night without having fireworks go off way to close too to my person, so some neighborhood kids did us the favor on the other side of the street when we were walking home.  The morning we left, Nicaragua said its farewells via a scorpion in Sara and Hannah's bedroom.

I like Nicaragua because street vendors call you mi amor at first site.  They hop onto packed buses right as they are pulling out of the terminal in case any passengers had wanted to buy anything.  They walk the streets with tortillas, fruit, or Wii controls balanced on their heads yelling out whatever they are trying to sell, in the hopes that people will come out of their houses to buy.  That is why all ice cream carts, biked to the most rural corners of this country, have bells on them.

You don't hail taxis here; they hail you, chela.  So when I walk down the street I hear a cacophony of drivers honking at me, harmonized with men shouting rude things and making kissing noises at me.  And also the song "Eye of the Tiger" because it is BIZARRELY popular here.

Unexpectedly, I have seen so many men out and about dressed as womyn, or wearing makeup and gender ambiguous clothing.  Like, more than I see at Yale, and that's saying something.  It has been tough getting a clear understanding of the phenomenon, but a lot of my Nicaraguan friends just consider dressing feminine and wearing makeup to be something gay males do; it doesn't necessarily mean they are gender ambiguous or transgender.  Just like the U.S. gay community developed a unique tight-knit, flamboyancy after being underground for so long, I think the Nicaraguan gay community similarly has its own way of expressing itself amidst a society of opposition.  As of 2008, homosexuality is finally legal, but gay people can't get married or enjoy the same legal benefits.  They have no explicit protection from discrimination.

Latin America time is real.  Believe it!  I have to stop feeling disappointed in friends for showing up forty-five minutes late for a lunch date, professors for showing up two hours late for meetings, and nurses for showing up three hours late for work.  A friend of a friend was an American marrying a Nicaraguan and put two different times on the wedding invitations for each side of the family.

You know how people say you catch colds easily during the summer because you are constantly going from extreme heat to extreme air conditioning—yeah, Nicaragua doesn’t have that problem!  One of the perks of there never been air conditioning at all.

Nicaraguan grafitti is nice

Even through exploring just one small fraction of Nicaragua, I have found it is truly the poetry-obsessed land of volcanoes and lakes.  It is a place where horse-carts share the roads with trucks, and friendly faces are always willing to pick up hitchhikers.  It is a place where the people don't take themselves too seriously, and everyone knows how to salsa.  I have loved living in Spanish more than anything, and I am reaffirmed of my deep passion for foreign languages that I know will propel me peripatetically for the rest of my life.  However, because of how the culture treats womyn here, I don't feel like I'm leaving a piece of my heart in Nicaragua.