just like spring......

The weather in San Cristobal is warming, slowly but surely. Spring is identifiable in the sudden and brief sicknesses of several people that I know and in the alternating brightness and stormy rains of the days.

Despite all changes and newness, I have myself wrapped up in a tranquil and steady life, which involves work, puppy, roommates, books, and the occasional film. Excitement comes in the form of Tuesday 2 for 1 sushi day and Samba's ever-rounder belly, or the occasional bottle of caña.

I like my new work. It's quiet but with enough unpredictability to make each day worth getting up at 7am. I like making carrot juices for people who display such open eagerness when they ask for one. I also like the staff breakfast that we all get around 11am and which is always a complete surprise. There are nice little surprises too, like today when a woman came to drop off a granola sample for the restaurant owners and she gave me my own little bag to try too. A little later an older woman asked me if it would be safe for her to take a taxi after dark in San Cristobal and I assured her completely that it was.

It's nice. And home is also nice too. My roommates are becoming quite dear to me and I much prefer staying at home to going out these days, a sentiment we all seem to share.

It feels very good to just wake up every morning, breathe and smile all day long, and fall into a warm bed at night. Sooner or later I'll get restless but for now, it's just what I could want.

ain't no fool...

Today I spent a hot, perfectly cloudless day harvesting wheat with nothing more than a common kitchen steak knife. At first I started out with scissors, but the knife let me move more swiftly and our little cream-colored wheat piles grew and grew. Later we bundled them and tied them with pink string but even after six hours, among eight people, we were still only half finished by time we left for lunch.

Though I would be very happy to return to the garden tomorrow and finish the harvest, instead I am going to start working at the restaurant that receives the garden's bounty. The atmosphere is bright and airy and laidback, I already feel very comfortable there.

But, at the moment, I feel uncomfortably full, having just over-enjoyed the Casa del Pan buffet..crema de chayote, ensalada, gnocchi, y pastel de zanahoria. Time for a nap.

And, our home has swelled quite nicely in the past week. We added an Argentinian gal and a couple from the States to what was before only Josue, Samba (the boxer puppy menace), and I. All of us found jobs on the same day and are looking forward to sumptuous home-cooked dinners in the near future. Speaking of home, it's really time for a nap.

night snacks

In the corner of a park, just down the block from where the mariachis practice and wait patiently (despondently?), there is a small, wooden quesadilla stand on wheels. Last night we visited, I unfortunately without hunger, and while the couple inside the stand prepared mushroom and chorizo quesadillas, they told us about how the police have been trying for the past couple weeks to remove them from the park. The first time the police came, there were a lot of people waiting for quesadillas and they began to shout at the police, "Get out of here!" "We want to eat!!" Since then, the police have returned several times, each time without success and the couple have gone to the city to see what sort of deal they can work out. "Either way, we're not going anywhere," says the woman, with a huge smile on her face.

I just have a blackberry atol and watch the incredible loyalty and comraderie among this one lone stand's clientele and among the vendors themselves, as lovely and sweet as the thick purple atol in my hand, which is also the perfect amount of warm on a chilly San Cristóbal night.

bad seeds

News:
Mexico allows planting of genetically-modified crops
La situación de los presos políticos en huelga de hambre en Chiapas
What is happening to our dear bats?

More from Nicaragua:
Change of luck in Leon
Bureaucracy and beer
And finally, leaving...

Nicaragua

Well, I want to be able to write about things that are actually happening currently, so here's the rest of our Nicaraguan adventures:

On to the Isla de Ometepe
Volcano Climbing, Volcán Maderas on the Isla de Ometepe
One more day on the Isla
Bad luck
Visiting the police station

home?

Well, after almost a month on the road I am back in San Cristóbal de las Casas, México. More stories from Nicaragua to come, and following will be my adventure in finding paid work (HA).

Fotos from Nicaragua, uploaded graciously by Abigail.

Departure, for now

Leaving is always hard, I should know this by now, right? Yet, I also knew I had to get back to Mexico or I wouldn't make it out of Nicaragua ever (though actually, and unfortunately too late, now this idea appeals to me). I said good-byes, bit my lip, and got on any bus I could find heading north, north, north.

My exit across the Nicaraguan-Honduran border was very surreal in its contrast to our arrival. Rather than being on a noisy bus with films and a large group of people, it was just me, my bicycle taxi driver and his companion, and an eerie silence only disrupted by the soft sound of gravel under the bicycle taxi tires. Over a bridge, Honduras. The Nicarguan immigration attendant is coincidentally also the attendant for Honduran immigration and doesn't hesitate to charge me twice. When I accidentally and unsuccessfully attempt to steal his pen and am caught, I am indignant and feel that by this point he owes it to me. Whatever.

More buses, more dry and dusty countryside, more solitary travel, more swindling money changers and I arrive at the border of El Salvador, not having eaten or drank water the entire day. I am covered in sweat and dust and begin asking how to find a bus to the capital, San Salvador. People point at the grandiose King Quality coach that is parked at the border, going through the immigration process, and I figure I may as well pay a little bit more and actually get to San Salvador today rather than wander around by myself at night in this unfamiliar country. The luxury of the bus astounds me after being on chicken buses all day, do people really live like this? I feel out of place even though it's just as likely that I would have taken a bus like this had I had the money. A young bus attendant offers me a pillow, blanket, coffee, juice- do people really live like this? Of course they do, I know that they do, but after such a long day, I am struggling to take all of it in.

In San Salvador, my communication with my potential couchsurfers falls through and I spend the night in the bus station. Rain! I haven't seen rain fall in a long time, and it makes for a nice background to the mild chaos unfolding in the early hours at the bus station. It reminds me of how I'll miss taking cold showers in the middle of a brutally hot day. At 6am I board a bus direct to Mexico, missing Nicaragua already, but knowing I'll be back. That land of lakes and volcanos took bits and pieces of my heart at every turn, so of course I'll be back.

Migración

Well, to wrap up her trip in Nicaragua, Abigail apparently wanted to spend several more hours involved in bureaucratic nonsense, because once again we found ourselves (this time three of us, Abby and I and our dear law student friend Carlos) in Managua, in a big office, waiting in line. We were lucky, though, that when we got to Managua, the hostel we planned on staying in was full and Carlos once again displayed his endless generosity by offering us beds in his family's house. Mom fed us again and Carlos helped us navigate the madness of Managua.

The immigration office is hot and jumbled and filled with confused and exhausted people, mostly Nicaraguans. Under the poorly translated sign that reads "Attention Foreign Visitors," we are relieved to find the line is very short. That is, until the stout clerk informs us that first Abby has to fill out a formulario, which must be bought at the cashier's window. The line for the cashier window wraps around itself many times in the sweltering and crowded building (it's so hot they even have an ice cream stand inside). Abby's face falls. Carlos sighs, and grins while softly singing the famous Carlos Mejía Godoy song, "Ay, Nicaragua, Nicaraguita." I am more or less accustomed to Latin American bureaucracy and, though I don't want to wait for another few hours in the trapped heat, I am quite fond of the company I am in and it's hard for anything to take a smile off my face these days.

After we escape with Abby's immigration exit stamp in hand, we realize that it is St. Patrick's day and we must absolutely have a beer. We knock back a few liters of Toña in a bar nearby to Carlos' house. And it was good that we drank, not only because of the relief it brought after the chaos of the morning, but also because the terrible Hollywood movie we saw afterwards in the air conditioned mall cinema could only have been tolerated with a healthy amount of alcohol.