And suddenly I’m gone.

8 months in Nicaragua, and I say goodbye to the Pacific and Brio and Gigante and my friends. Mostly I say goodbye to palm fronds bobbing in the wind; dirt roads; clouds; my runs and the random smells and cows and chickens and the old lady that always waves and smiles at me when I walk to the beach. 

See, it’s already so far away. Gigante exists so completely and thoroughly that when you’re there, you can’t fathom any other way, any other place where it isn’t sunny and where the Pacific doesn’t sparkle ahead; any other day except how the days are there; any people except the people there.

And here I am, in Antigua, Guatemala, in another world. A 55 minute flight out of Managua, I breeze through customs and meet at just the right moment a nice fellow from New York. We share a cab to Antigua, and suddenly instead of seeing banana trees and feeling warm breezes, it’s cold and misty and I’m peering out the window at a cathedral lit by yellow lights above a cobblestone road and snuggling into a bed with blankets.

I’m living a different day now, sitting in a generically funky coffee shop that could easily be in Boulder, drinking amazing coffee and typing away and watching so many people come and go. Antigua is SO touristy, but… I’m totally enchanted. It’s adorable and cloudy, cool, colorful, and it is all the things I want right now. Hot shower and new people to meet and stores called “The cookie shop”. Writing in a coffee shop—isn’t this the day I pictured for myself so many months ago, planning an escape from the States to write.

It’s fun and I’m loving it today, but man is Antigua overpriced. I assume the prices are in cordobas, and then I remember they aren’t, and so I find myself converting quetzals to cordobas to dollars and really have no clue how much things are. (I love their currency name—quetzals. That’s a strong name for a currency. Got some oomph.) I ordered carrot and ginger soup and a spinach salad for dinner, had a brownie for dessert (um, yay) and just realized how much money that was. Oops. 

I taught my last two WOO English classes on Monday and Tuesday. I spent hours planning the perfect last lesson, which obviously did not result in a perfect lesson but was nonetheless fun. The last lesson? Karaoke! “The Yellow Submarine” to be exact. (note to self: when planning a Karaoke lesson to be taught to two classes back to back, remember to chose a song that you yourself can stand listening to twelve times in two days. Yellow Submarine that is not.) I started off the lesson asking if they knew who the Beatles were. Nope. Ok. They’re a band from England. Do they sing in English, one asked me. Yes, I said, because they’re from England. And then I realized what I should have covered on the first day in class: the countries in the world that speak English as a first language. The United States they got, as well as Enland. But… then I prompted them for other countries and man did some wild guesses start coming out. Brazil? No. Ecuador? No! They speak Spanish in Ecuador. New York? New York isn’t a country. Oh. Miami? Miami isn’t a country either. They hadn’t the foggiest idea. Interesting insight into the Nicaragua educational system, quite apart from English… We had a rousing time singing “Yellow Submarine”, and then I allowed them to request one more song to sing. Unequivocally chosen by everyone: “My Heart Will Go On”. And thus did I find myself belting Celine Dion with 15 high school students in Nicaragua. A last sunset walk on the beach, several (several) beers with Juan and Nestor and a few others, and then my last chicken bus ride: to the airport, hot, windy, colorful, punctuated by volcanos and cloud, beautiful. 

I wrote a ‘to-do before leaving Gigante’ list and on it said ‘closure—blog’. I don’t really know what that means, but I think it means a reflection upon a very interesting chunk in my life. I don’t know how to do that right now, but I do know it’ll come. As a response, or in light of, the video I posted of the a fisherman reflecting on the good life: I think the good life has something to do with a day that allows for an awareness of the sun’s rising and setting, of it’s movement through the sky meaning something (instead of the digital clicking of time). I’m aware of the luxury of having a day where you can plan around the sunset, where you can say at 5 p.m.—I’m done. I’m done and it’s time to go running, time to go swimming, time to be aware of time because in an hour it will be dark and we won’t be in this day anymore. There is a way to live life in a town of 500 people, and I want to hold on to some of this way. There is a lack of options. I’m acutely aware of that here in Antigua where there are a ridiculous, a hilarious, amount of options. (I must have gone into 15 tour operators today.) So, life is simple and stark and very much outside. Cold showers and no makeup and a comfort with myself that comes from lack of mirrors. I became one with the bugs (speaking of which: I made it out of Nicaragua without getting stung by a scorpion! Heyoooo). I want to hold on to it, to the landscape and the equilibrium of twelve hour days and nights, and even it’s already slipping as I realized it’s already 7 o’clock, the sun has set, and I didn’t notice it. 

 …

“But we come into the world with a ball of yarn to weave the fabric of our lives. One cannot know exactly what the tapestry will look like, but at a certain moment one can look back and say: Of course! It couldn’t have been any other way! That shiny thread, that stitching couldn’t have led anywhere else!”

-Giocconda Belli, The Country Under My Skin

Now that’s a woman with pride for her country. Makes me proud to be a woman, and proud to have lived in Nicaragua, makes me appreciate the beauty of an under-appreciated country. And also the under-appreciated beauty of how live moves us about. 

Winter shifts in, or at least warns that it’s coming. The threat of rain is overhead, omnipresent in gusting winds, except it’s a welcome threat, a promise that our beating down bright hot sunny days, monotonous as they all feel the same, will be replaced by wet and green rain. Clouds whip in, hiding the sun, and you can feel the barometric pressure changes, rising and falling.

I sat eating lunch with several clients yesterday when, with a burst of wind, the temperature dropped ten degrees, clouds rolled in, and we got our first spill of moisture, a minute or two of light rain. Hair blowing every which way, I went to the patio to have a feel. Very light, teasing me, and the sun came out before we even finished the meal. I’m waiting for rain, for a thunderous downpour. Juan says the first rain of the season is always a celebrated occasion, rejuvenating and cleansing after such long dry months of dust. Right now, it’s the buildup to that rain, the tension as it inches in, and we can all feel it. Last night, cooler than before, we sat on the patio and commented that it smelled like rain.

It’s appropriate, it seems, that things feel different, since things are different. Secundino says the first rain of the season always falls on May 3rd (really? always the 3rd?, I said). If so, my hopes for a rainstorm are in vein, since I depart Nicaragua on April 29: Wednesday! I bought my ticket, and with a very anti-climatic confirmation email, things are different. 

Yes, indeed, my time in little Gigante is coming to an end. By the time of my departure, I will have spent eight months total in Nicaragua, six in Gigante, living in my little bunk at Brio. It’s bizarre to think of not being here, sad because of the friends I’ve made that I have to leave behind (and the promise of Spanish every day), but mostly refreshing and exciting like the promise of rain as I consider the prospect of different days in a different place. I’m excited to see my friends and family. Unlike in December, I’m calm, which must mean I’m ready. 

I’m also stopping for a week in Guatemala and am very excited about a new adventure and some Megan solo travel time (I’m also very nervous for a solo Megan adventure in a country I’ve heard is alternatively amazing and dangerous. I intend to stay firmly on the gringo trail.) And then… I’m savoring the thought of home and all the comforts and people that await me.

Last Saturday, restless after a very quiet week with no clients, Juan, Nestor and I went out on the town of Tola. Jessica and Dorman are friends of Juan, a married couple who are just great. I’m partial to Jessica; she has an energy and outgoingness rare to many Nicaragua women. And, she loves to dance. I first met her when she and Dorman came to Brio a couple of months back for the Gigante party at the ‘discoteca’—the one that emerged from no where. We were waiting outside to enter the disco, for Nestor to buy cigarettes, and a good song came on inside, and we both immediately started dancing, right there on the street. Once inside, she grabbed my hand, introduced me to various cousins and family members, and we all danced the night away. Anyway, Jessica runs a bar next to her house, and so we wandered in, grabbed a table and Victoria Premiums for 15 cordobas each (75 cents) and started chatting. And there we stayed ‘til the wee hours. It was so much fun, jodiendo y reindo con mis amigos, todito en espanol. Jessica proudly gave me a tour of her modest home that she shares with her husband and brothers, showing me photos on the walls and trinkets around the house, and appologized that the outhouse bathroom wasn’t as nice as Brio. “I don’t care, it’s great,” I said, meaning it.

She brought up her May 5th birthday, and asked my opinion on cakes and colors. When she invited me to help her cook, dismayed, I had to tell her that I would in fact not be in Nicaragua for her birthday, and that I was leaving the following Wednesday. “Nooo, Megan,” she said. She jumped up from the table, went to her house, and came back several minutes later with a silver butterfly ring and insisted I try it on. Ok, I said, and slipped it on.

“Does it fit?” she asked. “Yup.”

“Keep it. As a gift. To remember me by,” she said. “It’s silver. Seriously, you can put alcohol on it, I’ll show you.”

I laughed. “No, I believe you! But, I can’t keep this! It’s yours.”

She insisted (it doesn’t fit me anyway, she said), and I looked down at my hand now adorned with a silver butterfly ring given to me by my Nicaraguan friend Jessica, and around the table to Nestor, Juan, Wilfredo, and Dorman, and smiled.

I gave her a hug and tried to express in Spanish the sentiment “I’m touched” but could at best manage “You touched me” (which certainly has a different ring to it) and so we had a nice laugh.

I told Rob of my departure and he wrote back with various things to say, and ultimately signed his email, ‘savor your last week and make good memories.’ And thus do I focus: making good memories. Three more English classes yet to teach, two to the high schoolers and one to my adult class of four. Beach walks, swim, howler monkeys, my last bit of time mingling with those darn surfers. And most importantly, chattering in Spanish with Juan and the gang.

And, I can now finally post this, twenty-four hours later, as the power went off and stayed off all day yesterday. And so I savor the blackouts, too, scrabble with Nestor and Jackie (Spanish scrabble is hard!), sitting in a chair watching the stars come out for hours, getting ready to head to bed at 8:30. And then the power comes back and life springs back into activity, lights ablaze in our little house on the hill. 

: was crazy.

The parable of the fisherman…and here I sit, in a fishing village where this isn’t a parable but daily life. This is Gigante (but maybe a little less Latin, eh). And, so, isn’t this appropriate as I plan and dream of what comes next. And, so, still we wonder…what is the Good Life? 

Thoughts?

I’m feeling a little homesick on this sweltering Sunday. Word is that it’s supposed to reach 100 F, but who really knows. The sun is strong, bright and it’s hot, enough that even Juan says you have to be careful in this weather. 

Rainy home (mmm cool, cold, sock weather) and a blond doggy. 

I miss my watch. I keep glancing down at my left wrist, feeling an absence there. I didn’t realize what a watch-wearer I was until my lovely watch (Christmas present) and lovely wallet (full o’ cash) was stolen right out of my nice little hip purse in San Juan del Sur. For some idiotic reason (or because we were running out the door to catch the sunset and I didn’t think, just grabbed), I went out to a gringo bar (pickpocket haven) with a wallet loaded with too much cash, a debit card, driver’s license and health insurance card. My wallet also contained–in a spectacular show of skewed logic–my watch and a charm necklace with marginal price value and loaded with emotional value. To even further tempt the pickpocketing gods, I blabbered on to Kara and to generally anyone who would listen about how safe I feel in Nicaragua. So, obviously, two hours later I feel a tug on my purse. A rush of going-to-be-sick, I plunge my hand into an empty purse and say the only word that comes to mind. Turned around to see five Nicaraguan men staring at me and… what could I do? Go to bed and brave the streets of San Juan the following morning to find an open internet cafe during a city-wide blackout to call Bank of America (and wait on hold for 30 minutes, watching the time clicker count up my minutes and counting the borrowed cordobas clutched in my hand). So the wallet-wrenching (gut-wrenching losing that damn necklace, I didn’t realize I was so sentimental [yes I did], my connection to home/family) was a little traumatic, but I tried very hard to adjust my attitude and enjoy my time by the beach with visiting Kara. Ignoring the wallet…

I couldn’t have asked for a better week. Life chats and skipping rocks on the beach, somewhere here who knows me, knows me so well from outside of here and suddenly I can re-calibrate myself (the Megan I am, want to be) to this weird and different place. Figure out where to move from here and I’m figuring it out, things are moving, shaping, and it’s all very exciting.

Plus, we did a zip line! Tallyhooooo. 

We’ve officially concluded four weeks of WOO classes, and I’m still getting used to writing with chalk on a chalkboard. It’s an odd experience, writing in front of a class this way. Primitive, or perhaps just simple. Visceral—writing words and letters deliberately. Markers on a white board flow effortlessly, glide across a glassy surface. Chalk scratches. I realize that even to pause and reflect on the experience of chalk on a chalkboard dates me in the opposite way, as part of some ‘new generation’ reared on whiteboards and powerpoint presentations. Indeed, my classroom in the Gigante elementary school sure is a long way from the climate controlled classrooms of my past, from ol’ Palm Crest to tech-loving DU. I’m remembering now a day in sixth grade with Mrs. Healey attached her laptop to the projector and showed us how to Google search. I was in sixth grade more than a decade ago; and still I scratch on a chalkboard in a sweltering classroom in Gigante. The power went out during class yesterday and I didn’t find out until I arrived back to Brio—demonstrative of how much we rely on it in gringo-Brio and how superfluous it is in the fan-free, bright afternoon classroom of Gigante’s elementary school. I tell ya—those classrooms are stifling.

April heat is upon us. I had heard that April was the worst weather month—the end of the dry season, before the rains offer some respite. Yes. I am here to tell you, sweating and heat-ridden, that it is true. April is hot. Going on four months without rain makes for a very dry, dusty landscape, scorched from the heat. I realized several days ago when I saw a cloud that I hadn’t seen a substantial cloud since my arrival. I got up at 5:30 (still dark) today to go running and returned by 6:30 absolutely dripping in sweat (I’m sorry, too much information?) and had to have a Gatorade to revive myself and my electrolyte count. So… that sucks, eh. Good news is the water temperature is back to tropical and I’ve been going for an afternoon swim everyday, complete with a leisurely stroll along the beach.

Back to the sweltering classrooms: it’s hard to teach melting teenagers, even harder when you yourself are melting. But… I love teaching with WOO. This, I finally realized, is teaching. As opposed to the haphazard classes of Brio English days, my classes are structured, I have authority, and, more importantly, I have resources and support. I write lesson plans for each class (in Spanish!) and actually follow them. (It’s incredible—and incredibly obvious—how lesson planning and an eye to the bigger picture make teaching so much easier!) We’re even doing ‘units’, as opposed to week-by-week sort of rambling progressions. I planned out units for the next six months, down to weekly themed lessons. This first month’s unit was ‘about me’, and yesterday, in culmination of the ‘about me’ month, we made ‘about me’ collages! I brought in magazines and markers, tape and glue, and paper and crayons and my sample ‘about Megan’ collage which I spent the morning working on (and probably had more fun doing so than the kids did…).

Teaching is definitely still hard, made harder by the large class sizes and rambunctious restlessness of after-school teenagers. Yesterday, rather than share his collage with the class, Roberto decided to throw it away in the bathroom and sulked in the back. I reprimanded him, but even better, Adam swooped in after class and gave him a talking-to. Again—why it’s nice to be working with other people instead of alone.

For the most part, when they aren’t being sulky teenagers dripping with additude, the kids are fun. Recently they’ve been in on a kick of adding ‘ation’ to the end of every Spanish word. Apparently, perhaps in their school English class, they noticed that many English words end in ‘tion’. And, just as non-native Spanish speakers note that many words end in ‘o’ and speak Spanglish by sticking an ‘o’ at the end of English words (booko, shirto), these creative teens did the same with ‘ation’ (por favoration, camisation) and thus created their own sort of Espanolish. Hilarity for the first five minutes quickly turned into something else, but I do appreciate their creativity. 

I know more than half the kids from my Brio English classes, and I will say, to be immodest for a moment, their performance in the English realm is incredibly validating of my Brio classes, the first chunk of time I spent here teaching alone. The group of six or seven that stuck through until the end are without a doubt the best English students. So—although, in December, I felt a bit like we hadn’t progressed at all, taken in-context and compared to peers taking the same English classes at school: well done, Meg. (Although, I do realize that those that took it upon themselves to come to my English classes are those who were already interested in English and therefore probably already outperforming their peers in the subject. However, I still think it’s a worthy accomplishment.)

I’m also working on giving an English evaluation to all the students, as something tangible to leave behind when I myself depart, and to help any future teachers. One of the hardest things thus far has been the huge array of levels in English acquisition among the students; accommodating those in a single class that can carry on a full conversation with those who don’t know how to say their age. So last week I gave the same multiple-choice test to everyone and plan to somehow record their varying levels to 1. assess what we need to learn and 2. assess in the future if we have in fact learned such thing. It was a hard test, but they succeeded/failed at it in very erratic ways, so I’m unsure at this point how to use it as an evaluation tool.

In any case, despite and perhaps because of the challenges… it’s fun. And so do Wednesday and Thursday afternoons now find me merrily sweating away at a chalkboard for several hours in WOO-nderland.