On to the Second Week

After our stay in Managua for two days of our orientation we went to tour Ciudad Sandino, where I currently am with Emily and Jolie, and Masaya. We walked around ciudad sandino in the extremem heat and I was like ahhh. There are no pretty buildings, everything is someone run down but here I feel like you get to really experience the heart and culture of Nicaragua. Huge families of seven or so live in little three room houses. The power comes and goes here too. During storms and when when people don´t pay for the electricity they cut it.
But this really nice woman named Katie, from the midwest, who works at the hospital here and is part of the FSD program but arrived here like six months ago, gave us a tour of the city and told us how much she liked it. It is a little dangerous though, like I would not go walking about at night here.
Then we drove in our rented micro for the week, a little van, to Masaya about 30 minutes away, where Wade lives, to go the market there. In pairs we did an activity where we all had two dollars a day adn we had to spend that for our family´s given the situation we had. I was with one of the workers from FSD who is Nicaraguan adn lives in Ciudad Sandino named Anabelsy, so we had a family of five kids and they all went to school. So one was in the University of needed money for the bus, which is about 50 cents here and the other four ended up sharing two notebook and two pencils between all of them. Then for food for the day we bought a pound and a half of rice adn half a pound of beans for everyone. That was all two dollars a day could buy us at the market in masaya. Thank gosh none of our kids had medical problems because we would not have been able to afford that. If they did though it would have come down to food or medical treatments. Amazingly enough about 46 of the population in Nicaragua lives on the poverty line which is two dollars a day. Incredible. I definitely feel guilty for buy a pair of 50 dollar shoes back at home when people only have one pair of shoes here and don´t make that much money in three months. Life is hard here.
After touring we went to a place near Masaya called La Laguna de Apoyo. We stayed for three nights at this outdoorsy cabin place near the lake. It was so beautiful. We were surrounded by green mountains and were pretty much in tropical forests, meaning lots of bugs and rain. It is a nice place though. They cooked pretty Western meals there, which put us at ease since our foreign stomaches cannot handle the food here too well. We are not supposed to drink the water here, so anything that is washed by water too, like fruits or veggies is no good, basically our stomaches are sensitive to everything and it is not fun when you have to go the bathroom when your stomache is upset, on top of having your period and haveing to remember to put the gross toilet paper in the smelly trash instead of down the toilet (cus the pipes cant´s take it). But I am not speaking from personal experience, so don´t worry (wink wink). During the three days we were at the lake in the boones, by the way you have to drive down a windy road for like ten minutes to get to the dirt road that will then eventually take you to the main wooden building. It was a nice escape. Its actually a biological research place. They research plants and rare fish in the lake, I don´t know what else they do. But they pay for th research by hosting foreigners and giving them spanish lessons. Its a nice little community there and everyone is super nice. They have a domestic boar on their land, I was very surprised to see him roaming around the first day and then opening his mouth and grabbing Simba, the boxer dog, by the neck and playing, he probably thinks he is a dog. We also saw owls and beautiful birds in the trees.
The first day we were told we were going on a hike. Cool, I thought, maybe around the lake or something. But, no...we hiked up the tallest mountain near us basically in the rainforest. It was amazing, but i was exhausted after it. I was thinking oh this is easy...when were were on the semi paved road that led to the path, i didn´t know about. Then we get to this steep path where we kinda have to climb up rocks and I was like man. So about half way up we started to see beautiful views of the mountains and lakes. Our guide, Pedro, was an expert in plants and birds and shows us a lot of both on the way up. He could do bird whistles which were cool. I heard some screetching and mentioned to him that that was an awefully wird noise for a dog and he says, no, those are monkeys. Haha, yup there were monkeys climbing the trees. The higher up we got the more stops we took. Two thirds the way up, a dog that was coming down with some other tourists starting following up. He was a great guide until we got to the top. The top was amazing, and there was a little town called Catarina with great plants and artisans in the stores there. Walkign through the town the dog was with us and was barked and growled at constantly by dog after dog. There were really defending their territory. It was scary to have these dogs come up to us an bark repeatedly, since the dog took refuge between our legs the vivious dogs were very close. I was thinking about how you can die from rabies the whole time. Anyways, after sitting for a while at the top admiring the view and drying ourselves we got into a micro, the little van, to head back since we had been gone for about three hours and it was time for lunch back at the lake. Because the dog would be attacked and an outcast if we left him, we had to take him with us in the car. Dogs are not worthy to go in cars here. Everyone sees them as dirty, ugly, stupid and another mouth to feed, though they are good protectors from intruders. So he came home with us in the car and since he liveed near by we dropped him off at home, though he loved emily and had a hard time saying goodbye. It was cute.
Then, the last day we were there, it wouldn´t stop pouring. That us when Hurricane Alma hit. We got out okay but were defnitely drenched with all out suitcases. That´s when we made out way to our host families.