leon, nicaragua

this city is amazing. i would really love to live here. in contrast to granada, which was so touristy and sterile, this place is so alive with actual people and whatever they happen to be doing with their lives. leon is a really progessive city with a major sandanista past. everywhere are che guevara bumper stickers, but right as i´m about to think it´s really typical or something there´s a building for disabled revolutionaries and a bunch of people in wheelchairs trying to get down the street. the spanish school i´m at is really professional and i´m learning so much, although i´m at a frustrating point where i can understand a fair amount but can´t really communicate it back. i´m staying in this awesome house with this woman who´s a dance teacher and her very punk rock 19 year old daughter. i´ve been hanging out with this community development-y guy from london and the "mom" in my house (she's like 40) and last night we all went out to hear some salsa bands play, it was awesome. felt like i actually lived here, aside from the fact that i´m so far behind everyone with my spanish.

ok here are a million photos of leon. the first few are of this torture museum i went to yesterday with the other students at the spnish school. it was really intense, considering people my age were murdered there 26 years ago. below, there is a drawing of someone being dangled off a tree into a well. below that is the tree they were hung from.

here are some shots of the house i am staying in. it´s perfect. this beautiful shabby colonial house with tons of rocking chairs and a gorgeous courtyard that opens into the house. below is sam, the new love of my life and strangest dog i get to stay with. below that is the window in my room. this place is like the kim pierce dream house. i love it.

some snapshots of some amazing churches and murals and scenes around leon. it´s so lovely here. the first shot is of the largest church in central america, which is right off the parque central.

some street shots of leon. in the next photo you can see the school i´m studying at.

today i went to this fortress outside of leon. it was another former prison and from what i got out of the tour, tons of people were killed here.
now teenagers come to make out and drink fanta.

cockfight!

yess. the vegetarian at the cockfight. it was pretty hilarious. i am in leon, nicaragua right now which i absolutely LOVE. on sunday night i stayed at the hostel and a few of us found our way to a real live pollo brawl. nuts! here is a picture of the blade they tie on the chicken´s leg, a picture of the rink which is in someone´s backyard, a picture of one of the chicken owners sucking the blood out of the chicken´s head and much much more...

photos! granada & laguna de apoyo, nicaragua

i spent last sunday at the laguna de apoyo, this amazing crater lake about 20 minutes outside granada. here are some photos of it and then some shots of granada from a bell tower.

mural in granada

today was awesome.

here are some photos of this mural i helped out on today. it's a map of the world on the wall of this elementary school in a crappy neighborhood in granada. this guy at my school was assisting some peace corps volunteers with it and said they needed more help. so i borrowed this hilarious bmx bike from the 10 year old boy who lives in the house i'm staying at and rode off to paint venezuela, china, bulgaria, uganda and new zealand pink. teenagers on the street seemed to think the gringa on the bmx was a pretty funny sight.. since school's out for summer, there were kids hanging out near the school playing around us and vying for a paintbrush. i loaned them my digital camera for a few minutes and they took some amazing shots of themselves and the whole scene. i peeked in the school and found a students' bill of rights, which apparently is the norm at schools around here. also the norm is the lack of paper. there are no worksheets or anything like that and kids have to pay to take tests. we were out in the sun for about four hours this afternoon and the mural is almost done. going back tomorrow to help them finish it up.

also, when kids get their pictures taken here, saying "cheese" doesn't fly. these kids yell "whiskey!"

ometepe & granada

spent such an amazing weekend on the island of ometepe. it was sad to leave san juan, but i caught the ferry over to the island on this boat filled with people and livestock and made it to the island two hours later. on the ferry i met these two guys from france who are in central america making a documentary film about kids' perspectives on education. we met a couple from quebec, so the five of us hopped in a van and two hours later (while listening to 'take my breath away', among other smash hits) on this bumpy road we'd made it to hippie heaven. finca magdalena is this awesome cooperative organic coffee farm that also has a hostel (i got my own room for $3 a night) with a restaurant, and is partway up one of the volcanoes. there are two volcanoes on the island as well as tons of banana farms, coffee farms and petroglyphs. the island is in the middle of lago de nicaragua, this enormous lake in the middle of the country. my two canadian friends i'd hung out with in san juan met me there that night and the next day i met some other great people from holland and humboldt county and we got a group together to hike to the petroglyphs and swim in the lake. i think i've definitely slowed down since.. so gorgeous there. we could hear the howler monkeys in the evenings, and just like on the osa peninsula in costa rica, they sound like some enormous beast hiding out in the forest. after having a totally relaxing weekend hiking and drinking rum and watching the stars and listening to the french hippies have an acoustic jam sesh, i made it back to the ferry the next day and promptly left my ATM card in the bank machine in rivas, this town near the ferry. uhhh. since i was just 30 minutes from san juan del sur and it was sunday and i couldn't get back to the bank, i decided to head to san juan for the night and try to get my card back in the morning. it was actually nice to go back there for a day and run into some people that i'd spent the last week with. ended up getting my card back too!

(wow, they are totally playing purple rain in this internet cafe!)

so now i'm in granada, which is gorgeous and colonial and colorful. it's the biggest place i've been to in awhile and it took a few hours to adjust. i am staying in this amazing colonial house in this private wooden bungalow/shed in the back. i have my own double bed and bathroom and i am psyched. started spanish school yesterday at this fancy school where they switch teachers each hour. it was pretty overwhelming. however, i met this awesome woman from bethlehem, pennsylvania (jameson, are you reading this?) who's a lawyer in her 50s and we spent the entire afternoon together walking around this town. she convinced me to take some dance lesson with her yesterday but when we showed up it had been cancelled. so beers and a walk worked out fine too. the spanish is starting to sink in: when she asked me a question yesterday i immediately responded "como?"

also, you know you're not in san francisco anymore when you get cat called by a cop with a machine gun. yes.

ometepe pics

top to bottom: the view of ometepe´s two volcanoes from the ferry, the amazing view from the organic coffee farm & hostel i stayed at (for three dollars a night), hiking through banana farms looking for the petroglyphs on the island, going swimming in the lake with my new pals from holland and humboldt!, finding the petroglyphs and celebrating with some rum, eating pineapple on the petroglyphs, one of the petroglyphs