Hello! Goodness, I have ever so much to say! Be forewarned, this will be absolutely horrendously long. I’m back in San Jose now, but I’ve been in Nicaragua for that last week and I had an absolutely incredible trip. I hardly know where to start! The Saturday before I left, I went into downtown San Jose with Brenly, Alex, Rose and Christina (girls in my program) to go to the National Yoga Festival of Costa Rica. It was a blast! Once you get in and buy a ticket ($3.50), you can take as many classes as you want, but we got there a bit late and by the time we got there the only class available was acroyoga, which turned out to be just what it sounds like: acrobatic yoga! We did handstands and flips and flew on each other’s feet and stuff. It was insane but really fun. Then, Sunday morning at 6:00 a.m. we set out for Nicaragua! It was a long trip and customs was a bit of a pain, but we arrived at our hotel in Managua by around 7:00. Our first morning, we took a bus tour of Managua. I felt kind of weird about it because we were in this bus that said “Turismo” on the side and we were driving through people’s neighborhoods and gaping at them like they were in a zoo or something, but I did learn a lot about the political and social history of Nicaragua, which is fascinating! They have statues of Sandino everywhere, and huge Daniel Ortega billboards in which he tries to convince everyone that he is still the face of the true Sandinista party, but apparently they aren’t buying it. That afternoon, we went and met with a group of about 70 former banana plantation workers who have literally had their lives (and the lives of their children) ruined by a chemical called Nemagon that was banned in the United States twenty years before it was banned here because it was found to be so highly toxic. Some of the workers worked with the chemical for up to fifteen years, and all of the workers have severe medical problems, many have died, and most of their children have some sort of deformation or mental condition. They have camped out in a sort of permanent shanty town across from the Nicaraguan Congress in order to try and force the government to pressure the banana companies (Dole, Shell, Chiquita) to provide them with medical services, which the workers can’t afford. They have been living in absolutely basic conditions (corrugated cardboard/plastic bag houses, no running water, etc) for over five years, and so far almost nothing has come of it. We went around and interviewed various people, and they were all excited to talk to us to get their story out to a broader public. It was incredibly sad, but some of the people had hope that Daniel Ortega could get something done. After we met with them, we got back on the bus to head to Matagalpa, a city higher up in the mountains (and mercifully cooler - Managua was truly the hottest place I have ever been, even including that hideous stop at Las Vegas) where half of our group met with their families that they were going to live with for the next three days. The rest of us headed to a small town outside of Matagalpa called San Ramón to meet our families, and I am so glad that I got to be there! I absolutely fell in love with the town. It was beautiful, nestled in the mountains with flowering trees and chickens everywhere and horses instead of cars. My kind of place! My family was a woman named Aracely, her husband Augustino, her sons Eric and Elvis (25 and 18) and her daughter Rosa (16). That night, I went with Rosa to watch Elvis play in a volleyball tournament, and the entire town was there. Very fun! The next morning we had nothing scheduled, so we spent the morning with our families. I had an absolutely fantastic time! Augustino let me ride his horse Paquito up and down the road – only the second time I’ve ever ridden a horse!! Then, Elvis and his friend Alberto took me and Shulpa, another girl from the program who lived down the street from me, on a hike to a waterfall, where we went swimming! There were those giant blue morpha butterflies fluttering about everywhere! I saw the largest spider I’ve ever seen in my life! It was incredible! Then we met up with the rest of our group and we all hiked up a mountain to visit a cooperative of families (UCASAN, but I don’t remember what that stands for…) working to grow coffee and perhaps start some sort of tourist operation. We took a hike around their farms way up in the mountains, and we saw howler monkeys!! It was fantastic, but also a bit scary, because they apparently didn’t like us tromping in their territory and screamed at us like they were about to come down and rip our heads off. The next day, we stayed in the San Ramzón/Matagalpa area and went to the headquarters of the Movimiento Comunal Nicaraguense and heard a talk from their President about their project, which is fabulous and works to improve public health and basic services, with a strong influence on women’s rights in Nicaragua. Then we heard another talk by one of our program directors called “Retail-led Restructuring of Agri-Food Systems in Developing Countries,” and I am a bit ashamed to say that I didn’t listen to a word of it. I was tired! But I’m sure it was fascinating. In the afternoon, we met with the Nicaraguan counterparts of our ICADS program in Costa Rica to discuss internship options in Nicaragua, and I’m torn! I don’t know where I want to do my internship – there is a wonderful one in Ostional, Costa Rica where I could work with a small reading library and help biologists with sea turtles (yesss!!), but I fell in love with Nicaragua and would also love to work with a library here. Hmm. We’ll see! The next morning, we got back on the bus and headed to Granada, a beautiful city with a lot of colonial-style architecture, though it is very tourist-oriented. It is also an interesting city to look at because it has virtually no middle class; the center of the city is set up for tourists and rich people, with air conditioning and pools, but radiating out from the wealthy center are all of these really poor barrios (many of which don’t even have electricity) and there isn’t really much in between the two. On the way to Granada, we stopped in Chaguitillo, an indigenous community that has set up a museum and a walk for tourists to go see indigenous petroglyphs. I love petroglyphs. In the afternoon, we went to a volcano! A real live huge one called Volcano Masaya. Very exciting! We got to Granada that night and stayed in the swanky tourist area in a really nice hotel called Hotel Cocibolca, which had a pool and turtles in the fountain. Real turtles! Oh boy! The next morning, we visited La casa de la mujer, an organization that works with women in the Granada area. They’re having a bit of a struggle, because they work with reproductive/sexual rights of women, but under Daniel Ortega abortion is now illegal for women in Nicaragua even to save the life of the mother, so they are no longer allowed to counsel women about abortion. It was very interesting, and some of the people in our group want to go back and do their internship there. In the afternoon, we went to a humungous covered market and did some shopping – fun, but also kind of stressful, it was huge and dark with tiny passageways and everyone screaming at you to buy their stuff. That night at the hotel, we had a talk by two men who were around during the 1979 Revolution, Francisco Jorge and Elvis Fernandez. I was really excited for the talk, but I was a bit disappointed, for they mostly just went over the bare facts of the history of the Revolution, which I already knew. But they did tell a couple of really interesting personal stories. The next morning, we woke up at 5:00 and headed back to Costa Rica, and here I am! Whew! I’m impressed if you’ve made it this far. I suppose that I don’t have to recount every single thing that I did, but I’m excited about all of it and wanted to share! So congrats if you read the whole thing! Now, I have two weeks here in San Jose to decide what internship I want to do and then I’m off for the next eight weeks on a new chapter. Love you all! Missing you! Oh, and the pictures are of a howler monkey, the Masaya Volcano, me with the Nicaraguan parents, and a statue of Sandino. Yaay!