Let them have paint!

Repainting team hard at work...

Yup, 4 ladders. San Miguel boasts the largest world map in Nicaragua, so this was necessary

Sunrise on Lake Cocibolca

O. Henry didn't coin the name "Banana Republics" a propos of nothing. Lots of cargo aboard the ferry. 

Las Isletas de Granada...apparently there are 365 of them, although I couldn't independently verify that. 

A view of the city of Granada from the ferry

 

Some nice cloud cover, drifting over from Volcan Mombacho

Chilling in expat heaven, Granada en route to go work at an English camp. I want to hate it for being so touristy and fachenta, but also things are really nice here. I'm hanging out in a sweet cafe and there is so much internet here!!!!!!! Hence I went a little bit overboard on the pictures. (As usual, click on them to make them bigger.) Also I just had real coffee for the first time in like 3 months (!!!!!!!!!) and waffles with chocolate for the first time in like 6 months. This is basically the best morning ever, despite its unpropitious start during my 12 hour with a "storm" squall on the lake at 2 am. Nothing like a little motion sickness early in the morning. Luckily, I can fall asleep on pretty much every surface as long as I can lie prone, so I managed to fall back to sleep again pretty quickly. Basically, despite the perpetual motion, I enjoyed the boat road much more than a bus ride, even though it took twice the amount of time. I did, however, have to question their movie choice- it's unclear how a very bad zombie movie set in Africa and an even worse terror movie were supposed to be conducive to sleeping.

Anyways, a few highlights from this week:

-New Years Eve and Day were quite enjoyable and very relaxed.

-An RCPV (Returned Peace Corps Volunteer aka Former Volunteer) who left San Miguelito 3 years ago came back for a visit and I met her on New Years. Having her around was really reassuring- seeing how quick and comfortable with local slang, even after 3 years, hearing that she cried all the time and hated her first month here (mine was nowhere near that bad), and seeing the relationships she was able to build was really comforting. During her in San Miguelito, she had worked on a world map, that sits near the muelle, wharf. Her goal for the visit was to repaint it. Seeing how my schedule had a lot of free time in it, I came down to give her a hand, which was great, because I met a lot of cool people, some of whom I might even be able to work with on projects. And it looked really good with a fresh coat of paint, although after 2 full days of work,they were still far from being done. It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint (all) of it. Bad drumroll. Anyway, the map repainting was really inspiring too because there were several 14-18 year old boys involved, and some older seemingly vago dudes who turned out to be really cool. It was a great reminder to not judge by appearances. It was so great to see what everyone was able to do if just given a chance to blossom, a task to do, a brush to paint with. One of the saddest things about human societies in economic difficulty is the way so much potential is wasted, especially for teenage boys, who often fall into trouble because they have precious few legal or productive outlets to fill the human urge to create, leave a mark, fight the boredom of day to day. .  Working on this has really made me interested in trying to work on a map project in one of the comunidades, as the settlement outside of the "urban center" of San Miguel are referred to.

-This was an interesting week for wildlife sightings. San Miguel is full of garzas, herons, so there were lots of those. I  saw a monkey, except it was actually a really awkward situation. I was trying to go running when I ran into my sitemate, Christina, at her Spanish teachers' house. I hung out for about a half hour but then I really needed to go running because it was getting late. As soon as I left, Christina called me to tell me to come back to see a monkey. I had just rounded the corner when I saw a monkey fall straight and stiffly down from the power lines. It looked dead for a good minute. Then it kind of dragged itself up a tree, slowly. So that was pretty shocking. Yesterday I had my first big spider in my room sighting. Nice little half dollar sized body on that thing, and some legs on the slightly chubbier side. I'm surprised I hadn't seen one up until now but I guess I've mellowed out because it didn't phase me that much. Although it was hanging out on my bra and it would have probably be a bigger deal had I actuallly gotten dressed in my half asleep state without noticing. Lastly, I ate a giant fish with its head still on, when my sitemate and I went out to eat one night and due to inquiries using incorrect vocabulary were told that the restaurant only had fish. It's convenient that I like fish, because that is definitely one of the upsides to living in a fishing village.