Word of the Day:
la sombrilla- umbrella/parasol. Or literally, little shade.
It's easy to become accostomed to things, and stop even noticing them. I'm writing this post about some recent changes, and some staples that I have never described, but would like to share before I get used to them.
-It's sort of spring here, roughly. Everyone refers to it as summer, but it seems springish to me. There's bright yellow and pink flowers blossoming on lots of the trees, although many of the deciduous trees are still bare. However, compared to the Pacific Coast of Nicaragua which is very brown right now, there's much more green here, from all the palm trees and there's still a lot of green grass. Since it's dry season now, we haven't had rain for two weeks. Since there aren't clouds hanging around at night anymore, the stars are incredibly clear and bright now. It's incredible. Supposedly you can see 88 constellations in Nicaragua. I'm excited to do some stargazing. The sunsets have also been incredible. The sun is setting closer and closer to the two volcanoes of Ometepe island, a brillant, gigantic orange orb descending into sparkling blue.
-It became hot this week. We had been blissfully enjoying at cold front that had blown down from Mexico. Mexico's been responsible for a lot of great things in my life lately, namely cold fronts and the telenovelas I watch most days, Abismo de Pasion (Abyss of Passion), Porque el Amor Manda (Because Love's in Charge) and Amores Verdaderos (True Loves), although I don't always manage to stay up late enough to catch this one, since it starts at 9:30 pm and isn't very good. Anyway, I walked out of the shade of the classrooms on Monday morning into the midday heat and was like, "O, now I understand, this is what hot feels like." To prevent the lobsterization of my skin and create my own shade, I've picked up the Nicaraguan custom of bringing along a parasol. Unfortunately, my umbrella is one of the least functional umbrella in the history of umbrellas, and already has metal bits sticking out, even though I just bought it. It also flips up at the slightest opportunity, no doubt providing entertainment for the locals, amused by such incompetent umbrella usage.
-Geckos run wild in the houses here, eating bugs as they wander around. At night, since the bugs are drawn to the lights, the geckos roam there too. Since the house where they live has white ceiling tiles, the random distribution of geckos always reminds me of Geometry class in high school, when we had to make graphs with Cartesian coordinates. Or maybe like an M. C. Escher lizard tesselation. In other amphibian sightings, we have a small frog that lives in our kitchen.
-Speaking of bugs, these weird little bugs that sort of look like miniature lobsters have showed up en masse. I literally massacred thirty bugs the other day, in the span of about 5 minutes, because they seem to be attracted to white things, like Borges short story collections and grammar charts and notebooks.
-Pineapples cost a dollar here. They have white flesh and aren't as sweet, but still. NOMzzz
-My house now has Rastafarian plant containers to hold the ferns on our porch. They are unbelievably rad.
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