"You look pretttttyyyy happy" ~ Miguel

Random picture of me doing homework at UCA!!

Wow, so a LOT has happened in the past few days since I updated. So, Friday night we went out to a discoteca called Hipa Hipa. After literally being on the phone relaying messages for 2 hours between Greisy, Lora and Carlos, we finally figured out our plans for the night. The son of Greisy’s host father was going to the disco with his girlfriend so he ended up driving all 6 of us Fairfield people. We continued the theme of not having enough seats in the car for the number of people. Actually on Sunday night when we finally had enough room, it actually kinda felt weird to not have anyone sitting on top of me hahaha. They don’t have transit police here, so kinda everything goes…We didn’t bring cameras to Hipa Hipa because apparently they are a hot item in Nicaragua, but it turned out it was a very nice and safe disco, so next time we will definitely take pictures. The cover to get in was about $7 and with that you got free drinks/soda, etc. all night. That ended better for some than others. Needless to say, we were politely asked to escort one of our friends out of the disco around 130. Thankfully, all of us were able to get a ride back with the boy that lives at Greisy’s house and give our friend lotsssss of water. Despite that setback, we had a great time. We saw a German boy that’s in our Spanish class, and 2 boys from Spain that lived with Lora and Sarah (but they left to go home yesterday). Hopefully next time we go, some of our Nicaraguan friends will be able to come too!


Saturday, Greisy, Kristen and I took the bus into Granada with Alex and Dave. Alex and Dave spent the night and went to the volcanoes I think, but the three of us just walked around and toured the city. Granada is one of the oldest cities in Nicaragua and a lot of the houses are colonial style since it was colonized by Spaniards.



One of the first things we did after walking through the park and one Cathedral (there are 12 in Granada!), was take a horse and buggy ride tour of the city. (this is Greisy and Kristen in the buggy).


We had an awesome tour guide/driver that spoke slow and annunciated so we were able to understand him and learn a lot about the city. We drove to the edge of the city where to the shore of Lago Nicaragua which is a HUGE freshwater lake (that takes probably 8 hours top to bottom by boat). Fun fact - it is the only freshwater lakes con tiburones (sharks!). Inside the lake there are a lot of small islands. Next time we go to Granada we hope to go to one of the small islands. There is also a bigger island near the center of the lago called Ome Tepe which is supposedly BEAUTIFUL and very safe / touristy. That will defintiely get a whole weekend to itself.

After our tour we looked at some souvenirs at the tables set up around the park. Finally for lunch we decided to splurge and eat at the really nice restaurant. And by really nice restaurant I mean it was the most expensive restaurant and I spent $9 on 2 bottles of water, salad, garlic bread, and a nice big bowl of spaghetti with marinara sauce. After lunch we bought a few souvenirs and caught an early bus back to Managua since it was so hot and we weren’t sure what else to do there. Next time we’ll bring our book and stay over night because it’s sooo beautiful there. On the bus ride back, I called a few Fairfield friends to catch up and enjoyed the nice breeze from the open windows on our 1-hour, $1 bus ride home. I’m a huge fan of the exchange rate if you haven’t noticed.

Saturday night we were pretty excited, so we just hung out at our house. Sunday morning I woke up early because I was determined to find mass. I was out the door by 8 to walk to UCA. My plan was to walk to the church and sit there until more people started coming and that’s how I would figure out what time mass was since no one seems to know. My plan failed almost immediately when all the gates were locked. I’m not sure if I just went too early or if they were closed because school isn’t in session or what. Needless to say, I missed mass AGAIN. Next weekend we’re most likely going to be traveling again, but we’re not sure where since it is organized by UCA’s tourism students, but hopefully if it’s anything like Granada there will be a bunch of cathedrals where I can go to mass…

Around 11:30, Rebeca came to pick up Greisy, Kristen and I to go to her house. Again, we squeezed in the back since Rebeca also picked up another friend and her cousin. At her house we were greeted by Miguel and Rebeca’s dad who we had already met. We also met some of her friends, a few of which spoke perfect English which of course was both good and bad. We were able to understand each other, but we spoke a lot of English. Her house was also probably the most beautiful house ever, and definitely way bigger than most houses I’ve ever been in, no matter the country. She had a pool too, so we were able to cool off for a little bit. Towards the end we were able to practice a little more Spanish with her family, who mostly only spoke Spanish. That was a lot of fun, and her dad remembered me from when Rebeca was at Fairfield! I guess she mentioned coming to my room a few times…Also, for a while we were a little confused by the very white-skinned blonde-haired lady who didn’t speak English, but we later found out that Rebeca’s uncle is married to a lady from the Ukraine. After hanging out a little more and finding out that Miguel (Rebeca’s boyfriend) is extremely locooooo, they drove us back to our house where we waited for Carlos to pick us up. He was having a little reunion at his house with some of his friends from high school. We couldn’t stay long because Greisy had class at 8am this morning and still had some homework to do but it was good to see him again and meet some new people. We felt bad that he kept driving us everywhere, but we apologized profusely on the ride home and he really didn’t seem to care at all. I’m glad we already made such a good friend ☺ I think Kristen is going to try to have lunch with her language partner again soon so hopefully we can become friends with her too!

Today we slept in a little because we really couldn’t think of anything else to do. We attempted some more laundry although apparently so did everyone in the house because we ran out of room on the clothesline. Then we headed off to UCA for lunch before class. We tried a different place for lunch today and there weren’t really any vegetarian options, but after a while I got up the courage to ask for a quesadilla “sin pollo, solo queso” (without chicken) and the guy understood me right away and said it was no problem. Sooooo I had a delicious quesadilla for lunch and the only thing that would have made it better would have been a little salsa which they apparently don’t have here. After lunch we had class. The time is starting to pass by a little faster in class, but I’m still not really learning anything new…and we have the most ridiculous homework ever. I already wrote about our assignment to talk about a picture for 10 minutes. For today we had to think of “If I were a tree, what kind of tree would I be and why…” also, what animal, what famous painting, what famous person from history and what book we would be…not even our favorite of those things, but why we would want to BE one of those. Sounds like OBoard/Kairos style interview questions if you ask me…and as you know, I am not a fan of those questions. We ran out of time to do them for today but that should make for some funny situations tomorrow…and tonight’s homework…pick a song in Spanish and SING it in class tomorrow…not read the lyrics, we are required to sing the song. eff my life. Now, we are allowed to do an English song and translate it into Spanish, but I don’t think that will work very well, and no judgment allowed – but the only song I really know in Spanish is Frankie J/Baby Bash – Obsesion. So, I will be rapping/singing in Spanish in class tomorrow. Ohhhhhhhhh boy!

Sidenote-I also got heat exhaustion today. It came on all the sudden and I got really cold and was sweating a lot and had really severe stomach cramps for like the last 45 minutes of class. Right afterwards I went straight home and turned the fan on high and drank a lot of water and Gatorade. Kristen brought me 7-up to help my stomach and then we googled heat exhaustion and I had like every symptom, so yay for us diagnosing and treating the problem. I feel mostly better now but I also don’t really think there’s anything I could have done to prevent that since I already drink a ton of water and stay mostly in the shade…hopefully that doesn’t happen too many other times, though it has happened to me before so I wouldn’t be surprised :/

I’m loving all the Fairfield pix and I miss all of you guys! I have new pix on facebook too so check them out!