I’ve been researching Nicaragua and found this documentary recommended in the back of my old Moon guidebook. I couldn’t find it in any Los Angeles public library (obviously my first go-to source), so I Googled it, and lo and behold, some kind and wonderful soul has put all 82 minutes of it on YouTube. Isn’t the internet great?

The World Stopped Watching is a sequel to the 1980′s documentary, The World is Watching. The first was made when the world was watching Nicaragua, to Nicaragua’s ultimate peril, when the fate of the Cold War seemed hinged on a triangular shaped country in Central America. The sequel is an example of journalism at it’s finest: two of the Contra war’s very involved U.S. correspondents returned to Nicaragua in 2003 to find out what had happened since the world had stopped watching. Life had gone on, they find. They tracked down the very same campesinos they interviewed nearly two decades before, showed them pictures of their younger selves, and asked, simply, how they were, how life had changed, before and after. After a jubilant and hopeful revolution and then a senseless Contra war, everyone had left; had stopped paying attention. How had the country changed? How life had gone on.

Not to simplify this thorough and complex piece of reporting, but, a quote: “We came back to see the price they paid for the revolution. Is life getting better for them and I think obviously its not. I think their situation is worse than it was 15 years ago.”

This journalist interviews a group of Nicaraguan men. One of the men fought for the Contras; the other for the Sandanistas. “Now, we are like brothers. For me, there were no winners. There are no winners for me, because we were killing our brothers.”

I just finished watching the documentary and was about to dive back, for a refresher, into Blood of Brothers, my favorite book that I read sweating in a hammock exactly a year ago, when I realized, coincidentally, or maybe not: today is Nicaragua’s 188th Independence Day.

They didn’t say anything for the first hour.

Then, our gate agent says: “Attention passengers of Continental Airlines Flight 1472 service to Houston. Please have your boarding documents ready and available when we begin the boarding process in fifteen minutes.”

And then, thirty minutes later she says: “I’m sorry for the delay. We will begin boarding the aircraft in twenty minutes.”

We gather around the ceiling-floor windows to watch three then five then eight mechanics and professionals in suits cluster around an open engine and scratch their heads. One whips out a cell phone and walks away.

And, then, an hour later: “Again, I’m sorry for the delay. Twenty more minutes and we will begin the boarding process.”

The man sitting across from us keeps talking. He’s talking to a poor girl sitting next to him—she’s traveling alone and he’s been talking non-stop since announcement number two, why doesn’t she just move—but due to his volume, he’s talking, by proxy, to all of us. He tells of an infamous flight in India where the gate agent told the waiting customers that the flight would depart in fifteen minutes again and again for six hours—so the mob attacked her.

I meander around the duty-free store until another woman makes an unrelated announcement in Spanish and a man in a leather blazer (airport or not, we’re still in Managua…) glares at me and drawls in a thick Texan accent, “Do you speak English?” Rather taken aback (not a question I get so much) I say, “Yes…”

“Did she just say our flight was cancelled? That damn flight is going to be cancelled.”

“No…I don’t think it’s cancelled. Just mechanic stuff. Delay. Nothing else.”

I arrive back to the gate to our familiar gate agent announcing that our flight would definitely be taking off today. Well, yes. Obviously. What an odd announcement. It’s 3:30 in the afternoon. Why wouldn’t it take off today?

I get myself another Subway sandwich (was it dinner time yet? When you get to the Managua airport at 4 a.m., somehow going to Subway three times by 4 p.m. seems perfectly normal. I got my same sandwich and realized I had in a day consumed 18 inches of Chipotle chicken fiesta.) And it was only when I overheard a man in a Continental uniform ordering 100 ham sandwiches behind me did I get an inkling that our flight was definitely not going to take off today.

And so, a long story short, I got to spend in a night in Barcelo Managua, a five star hotel in the wealthy, housing development outskirts of Managua, above the city, on Continental Airline’s dime and my time. We awoke bright and early (5) to try again, find a second flight cancelled, and a hop skip and a hissy fit later, on a mid-day American Airlines flight home via Miami. And the name of that chapter is: 20 hours in Augusto C. Sandino International Airport.

The flight-canceling ordeal was not inandof itself traumatic except for the extreme exhaustion I packed in my carry-on bag along with 3 weeks worth of dirty laundry and bed bugs. (Yes, I got bed bugs at our second hotel. And they stuck around in my clothes. Icky.) We arrived at the airport at 4 a.m. to send off the teens—without a hitch, I may add—and then commenced our wait, echoes of the week and the negative space left by all those people reverberating around us.

Generally speaking, the trip was a roaring success. A mere three weeks before, Jesse and I headed to the airport in our matching grey t-shirts and nervously awaited for a grey t-shirted mob to emerge from customs. We held our group sign and waited. It was peculiar to be on the other side of the glass—welcoming rather than arriving, as I had almost a year before, nervous and alert, searching and alone. It brought me back to the beginning: to when I burst forth from customs at midnight, and nearly cried when I saw a man holding a sign with my name on it.

But, anyway: no time for nostalgia. The Nicaraguan sky thundered and lightening flashed. Twenty-one teenagers stumbled through the sliding glass doors with ungodly amounts of luggage; the sky exploded with rain, torrents of Nicaraguan rain. Through the warm downpour (welcome to the tropics) we shuttled them on to our bus and inched through the water to Granada, got all 21 students in the door with their respective kilos of luggage and: the power went out (darkness and no go on the mandatory phone calls home tonight, kiddos). The adventure began.

We spent two very exhausting days in Hostel Oasis in Granada, orienting the kids to each other, to us, and to the great country of Nicaragua. I learned 21 names in a day and then, shockingly enough, had to use them, had to call them up within a moment of seeing a face, a task exhausting enough without having to exert any sort of influence over these names and faces.

The three other leaders were fantastic and the kids were, for the most part, a lovely and diverse group. We spent a week in a town outside Esteli, a town in cool and mountainous northern Nicaragua, and then headed to la Isla de Ometepe, an island in great Lake Nicaragua, directly east of Rivas. I’d been to both destinations before, in the epoch of ‘backpacker Megan’, traveling with girlfriends and being allowed to drink beer, so it certainly was interesting to roll up with so much and many in tow.

It was exhausting work—up at 6 a.m. every morning to knock on doors with a jolly ‘good mooooorning’ until bedtime at 10 p.m. with a less than jolly ‘lights out, guys. Goodniggggght. No seriously. Goodnight.’ I’ve never fallen asleep so fast or slept so hard—consistently, night after night, to wake up in the morning and start it all over again.

I had a great time with the 14-17 year-olds. I’m thrilled that I myself am no longer in high school—my god, the awkward agony—but I really gained an appreciation for the things they say and do. They’re totally un-edited and blunt in some ways (‘No! Go away! screamed one tall blond to a leering man, a reaction I never had the audacity to preform), and touchingly honest in others (‘they sure use everything they have,’ said one student without a touch of irony, upon seeing the hodge-podge shack that served as the cafeteria at our first school). They’re also surprisingly resilient little suckers, taking the horrible food situation at our first residency in stride with all sorts of positivity. (Whilst I, in my ripe age, almost threw a hissy fit when after an eight hour day I was served, again, a plate of white rice, white bread, and pasta with oil.)

I wouldn’t say I left Nicaragua on a bad note, but I was pretty thrilled to be leaving when I finally did leave. It was nice to be reminded, through the fresh eyes of a few well-traveled teenagers just how beautiful a country it is, and how amazing its people are. I got to notice all the things about Nicaragua I sort of just stopped noticing, the colors and air and sounds and language. To be consistent with the diction of my traveling comrades, I was reminded that Nicaragua is ‘like, the best country ever.’

It’s interesting how you assume rolls given the circumstances you’re thrown into. For three weeks, I was ‘leader Megan’: I was the adult, the authority, answering questions (and my oh my do teenagers ask a lot of questions) and giving directions and advice and medicine. I was, for lack of a better word, an adult. Now, I’m back at home, living again in the parents’ house, and although they aren’t actually even here, I’m just a little less adult, a little more the Megan I’ve always been. I lost the appendage of 21 teenagers, so I’m relishing independence and alone time, silence and structure-less days, but… it’s a little eerie, coming back to the real world of different problems and solutions and ways of going about all that. The real world of emails and health insurance and careers, where the things I have to do seem to be more nebulous than those of a service project in Nicaragua. (Plywood, screws, sandpaper, blue paint, 43 desks without seats or backs + 10 students who need something to do…ready, organize. Or, student A with diarrhea, student B with a rash…fix me, Megan! …Rifle through med kit, Imodium and Cortisone. Concrete stuff, a million little decisions in an afternoon.)

So, besides losing that giant appendage of 21 teenagers, nothing’s really changed… summer in LA tools along as normal.

I’m sitting at Hotel Brio, looking out upon my favorite horizon.

Yes sirebob, I am back in Nicaragua. I begin my position as a guide tomorrow, when 22 high school students stumble out of the Managua airport into the muggy landscape of Nicaragua, through which, accompanied by 3 other capable leaders, I will guide them.

The folks who are organizing and funding this trip allowed me to come down a few days early, and thus I siezed the opportunity to return to my favorite small fishing village and say ‘ello and ‘surprise!’ to all my friends I left less than two months ago. I emailed Juan and Rob to ask if I could stop by for a few days, and they generously offered me a spot in a volunteer room bunk, my home in the days of yore.

So, I arrived on Tuesday afternoon after an all-night flight from Los Angeles and found Gigante to be humid, green, and teeming with life. Tuesday was Juan’s birthday, and I arrived just in time for a big birthday celebration, cheerful and happy and full of people I had missed.

However, as I contemplate the horizon and sit under the fan, I realize…It’s bizarre to be back here and not working. I woke up Wednesday, had a leisurely breakfast, and thought: huh. What next? What does one do in Gigante on vacation? And, then I realized how awesome Gigante is when you´re on vacation. I wandered around town and waved at students who thought I was long gone. Thursday morning, I went on an epic walk along the beach (eight miles, three hours, and one sunburn). I explored farther north along the coast than I had ever ventured before. I hit the northerly edge of the Colorado beach and decided to push around the perverbial riverbend, and thus clambered over some boulders, pranced along a flat rock plateau under a sharp clif, and arrived at a really, truly deserted beach, a quick arc of white sand sloping up to a dune, and I claimed it for my own.

It seems that I’ve gone soft in the 2 months I’ve lived at home. When I arrived in August, I spent my first two weeks doing nothing but itching and slapping, as my skin turned into one swollen, red mosquito bite (or rather, amaglamted into one from thousands of little ones). But, after a few weeks of this, the skin toughens up. It gets used to the buggers, to the point that I never really noticed them. Uh. Not so. I’m covered in welts and I can´t seem to stop itching. Additionally, although I’m constantly freezing at home, I have lost my tolerance for heat, and therefore am constantly sweating here. Most likely, my body will acclimate to it’s happy-Nica state in a couple of weeks, right before it’s time to leave again. My mushroom fungus was in remission in the States, but I´m just awaiting for it to sprout up again in all its white spotted glory.

Also, it appears, I´m no longer Nica-tan. The first thing Juan and Isolina said to me was: you’re so white! (rather excited about the fact) while the first thing a surfer friend said was, man… you got pale. Ha. Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I am a shade or four lighter than when I left, which is incidentally what happens when you don’t live by the beach and in your swimsuit. But, Isolina did say I looked much better ‘so very white’, so apparently life indoors agrees with me.

On my meander through town, I found Ernesto, one of my favorite English students who works at a gringo-owned surf camp  (as if there is any other kind), and had a nice chat with him. We caught up on the usual: life, work, family (his wife is preggers, very exciting) and of course, English (he´s going to be taking Saturday classes in Rivas, also very exciting). He asked me about my family and my writing, etc., questioning about things he knows I´m passionate about. And then I asked him how things were at his church, since I happen to know that it is a big part of his life.

¨It´s good,¨he says. ¨Very good. We´re busy. We´re planning an Evangelical mission for the people of Gigante.¨

Ernesto is an Evangelical Christain, and a very devout one at that.

¨Oh yeah? That´s great, Ernesto,¨I said, expecting to move on.

¨Yes. So that we can save their souls,¨he said simply. I nodded. And then, ¨Do you know where you´re going when you die, Megan?¨

And thus began our hour long conversation about religion, standing on a muddy path under bowing green trees, in Gigante. And, of course, when I say conversation, I mean that Ernesto preached and I listened, and when I say preached, I mean he tried to convert me so that I would not go to the firey depths of hell because, as he said, that´s where I´ll end up. Although I don´t know exactly what I believe in, I know that I don´t believe, with every fiber of my being, in Ernesto´s brand of religon. However, I really like Ernesto, and I think he has a great energy about him, so I listened and nodded, detaching myself from my mind and place, and just enjoying his passion and his very ernest attempt to save my soul. From the point of view of the monkey barking in the tree above us, it was probably a very funny scene. Ernesto concluded with,

¨And my duty is to tell you of the word of God, and even if you don´t believe it or follow it right now, you can´t plead ignorance. The day of ignorance has past. When you arrive at the gates of Heaven and God asks you why you didn´t follow his word, you can´t say that you didn´t know about it. Because God will say: I sent Ernesto to tell you about it.¨

And then he asked me what time it was, and being four o´clock on the dot, he gave me a hug goodbye. Time to go surfing! he said, and jogged away, pulling up his sagging board shorts as he ran.

And I wandering along the sparkling blue beach, panted up the hill to Brio, perched, as always, over the little town of Gigante, and watched the sun dive through beefy clouds into the ocean.

-   Eckhart Tolle

Standing on top of a fifty meter tall Mayan pyramid; late at night; wind lifting away heavy tropical air; a full moon; it’s hard not to believe that the world moves you, that the world moves, in exactly the way it should.

I spent my first full day in colorful Antigua intent on inquiring of every tour operator in town their price for a 2 day adventure to Tikal: quite an undertaking in this town of Spanish schools and foreigners. My first visit of about twelve to come was with a jolly, cleavage-bearing, artificially-blond Guatemala woman. We chatted for awhile and I got a great vibe from her. She offered me a reasonable price for airfare and lodging. Did I take her up right then? No. I wandered around the city for hours on end and only in the waning hours of the afternoon did I return deciding to book my very expensive splurge trip through her. Well, by four o’clock on Thursday, the Saturday flight sold out. So I was forced to waver a bit, change my plans, and push the Tikal trip back until the end of my Guatemala sojourn. Frustrated with my indecisiveness, I went to bed early, intending to get up the next day and catch a bus out of Antigua in the afternoon. 

The next day, I wandered out early and bought a to-go latte (a novelty these days) and wandered through the leafy and beautiful central plaza. And then I heard: “Megan? Megan!” I turned to see a former DU professor, the very professor who in fact introduced me to Rob via email and set this whole crazy year in motion. How appropriate; and so I said ‘okay then’ to what life was throwing at me and stayed an extra day in Antigua to go out to dinner with the crew. Matthew was in Guatemala beginning a research project with a colleague, and had brought three DU undergrads along with him. They were headed to northern Guatemala to take core samples from hundreds of year old trees and then analyze to find historical climate patterns and make projections; and so I got a fascinating crash course in climate change studies. We dined at a delicious Guatemalan restaurant, the very same one that President Bill Clinton patronized in his presidential days (indeed, they commemorate his presidential rear end with a plaque on the very chair he sat in).

Saturday morning, I headed to Lake Atitlan, a ‘magical’ lake in the highlands of Guatemala. There are about ten little cities scattered around the lake, accessible by winding roads or by little speed boat taxis tearing across the cool blue waters. I chose San Marcos, one of the smaller villages nestled among coffee and banana trees. San Marcos supposedly has an enchantment that draws all sorts of hippie types, people like one girl in my hostel who paid for an hour-long course to determine the color crystal that corresponds with her spirit. I, for one, did not indulge in the crystal healing course, nor any of the plethora of other options offered (acupuncture, meditation, with perhaps some drug induced healing as well).

In spite of my skepticism (and lack of dreadlocks), I settled nicely into the pace of the town. I stayed in a leafy lodge called ‘La Paz’ (peace) and it sure was. I woke up slowly, did two hours of yoga in a thatched-roof veranda, strolled back to the hotel in windy green paths of purple begonias, and then ate wonderful yogurt with granola and honey and drank coffee and read Steinbeck. La Paz offered communal vegetarian dinners, so every night at 7, the long yellow table in the quiet and verdant living room came alive with chattering and steaming veggies. I sat between a spunky Israeli girl and an Argentinean-French girl who spoke no English, so I ended up being the default facilitator of the conversation. At one point, the Israeli girl—Jasmine—started chattering away in English to a Canadian woman (who was sitting next to her young children and simultaneously smoking pot and talking about acid trips?), and my Argentinean-French friend looked at me lost and said, translate please?

After 3 days of yoga and banana bread, I felt like a vibrating golden ball of Megan energy. I will admit, there are certain parts of yoga I normally have trouble swallowing with a straight face; but—perhaps I needed someone to tell me to harness the energy of the sun and draw it around my body, and then to have to do it, and after enough permutations, sun salutations and being told to be aware of the sun and moon and shadows and rain, and to be on a lake in Guatemala under a thatched roof in a garden, to maybe believe it. 

The golden ball of Megan energy arrived back to Antigua in the pouring rain, and became a little less golden and a lot more cranky when I had to walk clear across town weighed down with two backpacks, cold water dripping down my nose. I awoke the following day at a painful 3:30 a.m. for my treat trip up north, a flight to the ‘king of all Mayan ruins’ (thank you LP)—Tikal.

My tour of Tikal was at first frustration and exhaustion and humid heat. But it soon became silly and then completely inspiring. I stayed in the park in my very own hotel room, and napped in a double bed in a corner below two windows, yellow light (or maybe the walls were painted yellow) pouring through green and birds chirping. Staying in the park allowed me access to a sunset show on top of Temple IV, which in turn introduced me to my guard friend, who offered me the chance to meet him at 8 p.m. for a tour of the park under the full moon. Bring friends, too! and you can offer me a tip, he said, maybe 100 quetzals? Or 50 for you? So, no, this was not an authorized tour. It was a bribed tour. And it was the breathtaking. It was—the world has a plan for you. I stood atop the Lost World pyramid (normally forbidden to climb during the day) in the wind and saluted the full moon and believed in the way that world moves me, so that I was in Tikal tonight and here, just where I was, when I was, and there wasn’t any other way it was going to be. (So, the threads…a sold out flight and a random encounter and thus I had to be in Tikal on Wednesday otherwise the moon wouldn’t be brilliantly shinning down on thousand of year old Mayan ruins, and I clambering up a steep and crumbling stairs to breath in ancient air.)

So…a beautiful country.

I arrived back to the same hostel in Antigua (‘ah, home’ it was becoming) and in a fit of boldness, decided to try the bar across the street for dinner… by myself and sans book. So, unshowered and in my wrinkled traveling pants, I ventured in, took a seat at the bar, and ordered myself some veggie soup and a beer. Now, I realize this does not seem much of a feat, but I’ve never actually ‘gone out’ by myself. So, I drank a beer at a bar where I knew no one, and soon enough, I was engaged in conversation from all sides, perched on my little bar stool. The bartender is a fellow from Guatemala City and he kindly started chatting with me whilst I awaited the arrival of my soup and stared blankly into space. Turns out, he studied Latin American literature at university, so we got to chatting about Latin American studies curriculums and generally literature. He invited me to coffee the next day and we spent a lovely couple of hours discussing literature and his dreams to open a publishing house/coffee shop/bookstore to house translated literature from Central America, so I told him to call me when that opened—like, seriously. 

And now…I’m on the plane heading home. Were half an hour into the flight; the attendant walks through and hands out masks to protect us all from the swine flu molecules floating throughout the cabin. Or, to protect us from the unknown infected person who could be sitting next to us. So, yes, I am typing this wearing a surgical mask, although I am aware of the complete nonsense of wearing it: thirty minutes into a flight, were I going to get swine flu, I would have gotten it by now. Additionally, the drink cart is coming through, so unless I get creative real quickly, I’m going to have to take it off to sip diet coke and eat my crackers.

I can’t wait to be home.

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.