Garbage and the Queen of Sweden

There are a lot of ex-pats here but you can tell the Italians.  They speak Spanish to you right away.  Non-Nicaraguans from almost any other country will usually start off in English but not the Italians. And why should they?  I just discovered I have an Italian neighbor in a mostly Nica neighborhood.  I discovered this because we were both waiting for the garbage truck to come by.  We knew it was nearby-  they come MWF at around 8am and yell, "basura" and everyone runs out with their garbage. In a place where you can't flush your toilet paper and where the ants come marching in (and not two by two) as soon as you set down the mango peel, you don't want to miss a garbage pick-up.  Anyway,,,, even people from Spain will often greet you in English.  The other day I met a Spanish woman (who greeted me in English) and her two sons and I assumed her husband was Spanish until I heard him tell the little kid, "Pojd' sem",  I asked him if he was speaking Czech (he was!) and then attempted to speak Czech with him.  I had managed English, Spanish and Swedish already that day and I have to admit that adding the fourth language turned out to be a little beyond me.  Yes, I could say a few sentences but not without interjecting Spanish.  

If you are not interested in languages you should TUNE OUT NOW.  

Here's what happened: In both Spanish and Czech (but not Swedish) you would use a polite form in asking someone's name (assuming they are not a kid).  In Czech and in the Spanish the Czech guy had learned in Spain you would use a plural you form.  But in Latin America (with a couple of exceptions), Spanish-speaking people use the third person singular as the polite form.  So it ends up sounding a little bit like you're saying "How is s/he?" if you are not used to it.  Having been used to speaking Spanish and using that form I then asked this Czech guy, "What is his/her name?" and he, understandably, thought I was asking his kid's name.  But I wanted to know his name.  I eventually got that out of him but I must have used 4-5 Spanish words in the 2-3 sentences I attempted in Czech,  Incidentally, if not interestingly, I made a similar mistake when I was living in Prague.  I met a Swedish person on the tram and as I was so used to using the polite Czech form (the plural), I was using the 2nd person plural for this woman and she finally stopped me and said, you really don't need to be that polite.  I am not the Queen of Sweden. 

What to do when there is a blackout

1. Find the flashlight that your kids love and have cleverly hidden.
2. Kick yourself for not having downloaded a new book from the library onto your kindle.
3. Do NOT clean.  Scorpions lurk.
4. Go to bed early so that you can wake up before you have to rouse your kids at 6am.
5. Write a blog entry that you won't be able to send until there is power again and by that time you'll dislike what you've written and want to do a rewrite.

This is the best meal you've ever made!

This is how Calhoun described a meal I made the other day.  It was rice and beans, french fries and raw cabbage.  Ari rolled her eyes as she dislikes beans.  I'm pretty sure it was just the french fries he was over the moon for but his enthusiastic accolade made my day.

the Mareks out there

I was visting a Nica friend the other week when her husband came home for the noontime meal.  We’ve spoken before and have had at least mildly interesting conversations. This day he had heard that women were more intelligent than men and we started talking about generalizations and stereotypes.  I made plenty of mistakes and there were lots of pauses while I figured out what I was trying to say but we weren’t exactly talking about the weather.  Then I mentioned trying to improve my Spanish. He took my interest to heart and immediately became the schoolteacher.  But he started by asking me if I knew how to say, “Hola”!  It is, of course, POSSIBLE that I would be able to hold a conversation but not know the very basics but it struck me as so funny that, after a half an hour of conversation, he really thought I might not know how to say “Hi”.  Since then, I’ve noticed that he is just the type of person who really wants to make sure you know exactly what’s going on in a conversation.  He checks in with me and checks to make sure I know each word.  I remember this kind of person from other countries I’ve lived in.  In Kenya it was my host father, in the Czech Republic it was always Marek and in Sweden it was an Anna (not Myrén).  I remember often being annoyed, since most understanding happens in broader terms (i.e. it’s not necessary to understand every word to understand a story) but I have come to appreciate it.  In part, I appreciate it now because I am better at accepting help in general but also because I recognize that understanding every single word is NOT what I’m good at and so I could use the pressure.  So thank you to the Mareks out there.  

Return of the milkman

I have been back in Nicaragua for weeks and haven’t put my figurative pen to the (also figurative) paper.  I don’t have any good excuses.  Stories have been built up and been sorted in my mind but I just haven’t managed to restart the blog.  So here goes…

We arrived back in Nicaragua in the wee hours of New Year’s Eve Day. We slept in, had an unexpectedly wonderful (at least to me) time walking around Managua and then spent the night watching fireworks from the tower at our hotel.  It was a modest hotel but the mirador made it worth it on the 31^st.  We had fireworks going off everywhere we looked. 

The next day we set off to meet our friend Gretchen who was spending a week at a resort (I use that loosely) to learn to surf outside of a city called León.  We swam in the ocean, played on the beach and got to help release baby turtles in the sand and watch them make their way back to the ocean. The resort, Surfing Turtle Lodge, buys turtle eggs from poachers and then keeps them safe until they start to hatch.  It was pretty cool.

Wait.  

I tempted you with the return of the milkman and he hasn’t shown up yet in this blog.  Well, our very first morning in San Juan del Sur I woke up earlier than the rest of my family.  I decided to take a jog.  I ran up the hill first but quickly ran into dogs. They were friendly but insisted that they accompany me so I went back to the house, hid for a few minutes until they lost interest and then went back out to walk DOWN to town.  That is also how I deal with unwanted advances from men.  I hide for a few minutes until they go away. ANYWAY, I walked into town, went to market, found I was RIGHT ON TIME to order milk for the next day, bought some delicious pineapple (mango is out of season currently L) and ran into two familiar faces on the walk back. It was a happy return to life here.

I should also note that I have learned of and have purchased milk from a lechero (milkman) who passes through the adjacent neighborhood at about 8:30.  The upside is that you can get the milk without ordering ahead and that it is not as far to walk with a bag of milk in the heat.  The downside is that it costs 20 cents more per liter, he is not stationary, and that you are expected to bring your own container. 

But with two excellent options for milk we are much happier.  Ari is particularly thankful.  Around Thanksgiving at Ari’s school in Minnesota, her class wrote things they were grateful for on colored paper turkey feathers. One of Ari’s feathers read, “I am thankful for milk in cartons instead of in bags.”  I think she might be changing her mind.  

2nd place

May 30^th is Mother's Day here. There was a celebration at Ari and Calhoun's school last Friday to celebrate us mothers. There was no school on Thursday because of preparation for it and no school in the morning. We arrived at 10:30 for the celebration. Everyone had to bring something. My job was to bring toilet paper (I was grateful since that is hard to screw up). Ari asked me why all the MOTHERS had to bring something for a Mother's Day Celebration. A good question but who else was going to bring things? And I am sure that parties and celebrations are not in the Nicaraguan education budget. So no complaints here. The festivities started (about half an hour late) with some clowns who interviewed kids. I missed a lot of the jokes and those I understood I was trying to translate to Ari (who wanted to understand everything). Then there were a couple poems read by kids. Very cute. There there was a “national dance” by a 5 year old. Either she had stage fright or the national dance entails standing in one place and swinging your dress back and forth. I suspect the former. Then they asked for four mothers to come up.

Crickets.

They asked several more times. There is something about my personality that cannot stand it when no one volunteers and I wanted to fill the gap but refrained because I probably wouldn't understand the directions. I don't really mind embarrassing myself but it seemed a little much to be the first volunteer. Finally two mothers volunteered. And once one person volunteers, usually many follow. But no. Crickets again. So, against my better judgement, I started walking up. I get up there and they ask whether I want to dance or sing. What???? I just volunteered for a contest. I swear they didn't mention that before. Probably to lure innocent mothers to the microphone. I chose singing (obviously- have you seen me dance?) Two of the mothers went in front of me. I had no idea what to sing and not a long time to think about it so I chose a song Ari likes to hear as a lullaby. The words are a silly rhyme but it is about me loving my kids so I thought it would be appropriate. It was the first time I have seen Ari embarrassed of me. She was actually hiding her face. The contest was judged by audience applause. Another mom and I tied. And then she won in the tiebreaker. Maybe I should have sung in Spanish? There were several more contests and games. I did not volunteer again. A couple of classes did little performances and then it was time for the 4 year old beauty contest.

It took me a little while to realize that the 4 year old class was not just going to do a dance in bikinis but that they were pretending to walk down a runway and doing head tosses and hip pivots. In bikinis. And the audience was judging by applause. There was also an evening gown portion but we missed it. The kids had been clamoring for ice cream (the ice cream vendor stands just outside the school gates) and although I had said were not going to get some I decided that it was the perfect time to leave for a few minutes.

We came back and there were a few more (less offensive) contests. At the end we went into our kid's classroom (in my case, Calhoun's) and each mother received a take-out box with delicious chicken, french fries, rice, salad and a piece of cake. I looked around the room. Most mothers were forfeiting the majority of their food to their kids. A pretty appropriate celebration of mothers. :)

Refrescos

The other day I was listening to a young man speak and I realized that 1. His accent was fairly easy for me to understand 2. The speed of his speech made him nearly incomprehensible. Turned out he was Mexican. It reminded me of my friend Monica, also Mexican, who was an exchange student with me in Sweden (now over 20 years ago!). Once she spoke Swedish, she spoke it about twice the speed of Swedes. I loved it.

The Nicaraguan accent is harder for me to understand although I am getting used to it and enjoy its quirks. Nicaraguans drop the 's' sound a lot. And Calhoun, though he doesn't say much in Spanish at this point, has of course picked that up. The other day he said something about how sometimes they have 'refrehco' at his school and took me a minute to understand that he was saying 'refresco'.

He also corrected me the other day. We were walking and saw a couple of dogs (one little and one large). I said, “Hola, perrito!” (speaking to the little one) but Calhoun said, “No. There are two dogs so you have to say 'perritos'.