Summary of Friday and Reflections

Well, guys, we made it through the first school week, and since we leave on like a Tuesday or Monday night or something, this means that we're 25% done. Friday felt like a rather busy day even though we didn't actually do that much. We went to our four hours of Spanish classes in the morning, and then stopped by the hotel we were supposed to stay at to see if we could move in yet. We've been staying in a hotel near the beach but pretty far away from the library and the Spanish school because there was a problem with the air conditioning at the hotel we were supposed to stay at. The people at the hotel told us that we could finally move in (initially, we were supposed to move in on Tuesday, then it became, Wednesday, then Friday), but we had to wait until 2:00pm, and it was only 12. Considering the fact that we have more bags than we do people and the bags that we have weigh about as much as a small child, we weren't quite sure how we were gonna move everything across town by ourselves. We went back to the hotel by the beach and asked if anyone could help us move our stuff, and a guy said that he could, but it had to be at 1:00 because by 2:00 he would be gone. We decided to just go with that because there was no way we were gonna lug enough bags for a small army across town by ourselves in the stifling humidity. Working extremely quickly, we managed to repack all of our crap in about 40 minutes, and have it loaded up in the truck by 1:00. The guy from the hotel by the beach drove us over to the new place, and took all of our stuff up to our room, and they ended up just letting us move into the new place an hour early. The new place isn't much bigger in terms of size/number of rooms, but it feels more homey because there are big couches and a somewhat proper kitchen and whatnot. 

Anyways, after moving into the new place, we unpacked everything and put all of our food into the cabinets and made it all real nice and proper. We then headed over to the library to fill our more late notices for about two hours. This is rather dull and mindless work, but for some reason I kind of like it. It's easy, doesn't involve any movement, and it's indoors so there's no sun demon trying to fry you the minute you step outside. You know how there are lizards or snakes or something whose internal body temperature relies on their environment? So if it's really warm, their internal body temperature is warm, so they can move around super quickly and get lots done in their little reptile world. Or, if it's really cold, their internal body temperature is cold, so they can't move much and just kinda have to sit there until it warms up. I'M THE OPPOSITE OF THAT. When it's warm, it's like my limbs shut down and decide that they aren't gonna function at the normal rate, so if I'm gonna try to make them move, it's gonna be slow and painful and nobody is gonna like it. However, if it's cold, I'm good to go, because there is always a way to escape the cold. You can always put more clothes on, or use those little hand warmer things that are like small beans in a bag that somehow heat themselves up with your body heat, or you can start a fire or something. HOWEVER. You can never escape the heat. It doesn't even matter if you walk around completely butt naked, it will still be hot, you will still sweat, you will still get sunburned, and you will still hate every second of it. Reason number 5,987,436,219 why cold weather is better than hot weather. 

I got sidetracked, that's my bad. Back to the story of the day. After we wrote a bunch more late notices, we went to the grocery store. This trip was actually an organized one: we had a list and extra money just to be safe, etc. Seeing as how we went to this store every day this week, we thought we'd already seen everyone who works there. Yesterday, though, we were checking out, and there was a new lady there. She looked at us with an odd look on her face when she was tallying up the cost of all our stuff, and then she said, "I think I know you guys. I've seen you before." To which we replied, "Well, yeah, we've been here every day this week, so you've probably seen us earlier this week." She shook her head and said, "No, no I've seen you before, a long time ago. You've grown a lot though. Have you been to San Juan del Sur before?" She also asked who Katie was, to which I stuttered out the response that she was an old friend (saying old babysitter sounds weird and from my experience merits lots of weird looks). My eyes were probably the size of potatoes by now, because what are the chances that this lady would remember us from 3 years ago?! I told her that we had indeed been to San Juan del Sur before, but it was three years ago. She told us that she remembered us from then, and that we've grown a lot, and she asked if our parents were with us too. I told her they weren't here yet but they would be later, and she sent us off with like 6 bags of groceries and a general wtf-just-happened look on our faces. Three years ago, I still had braces, my hair hadn't quite settled down yet, and I still looked like a kid for the most part. Now, my hair is a solid 4 inches shorter than it was then, I got my braces off which changed the way I look quite a bit, and I look (so I've been told) like an adult. I still can't believe that lady recognized us after all this time, especially given the number of random gringo tourists this lady's probably seen during the past 3 years. 

Upon returning to our new condo thingie, we unpacked the groceries and sat down for a little bit. Suddenly, Katie had a craving for chocolate chip muffins, the mix for which we brought with us. I decided that I would go ahead and make them cause some chocolate chip muffins didn't sound so bad at that moment. However, much to my dismay, there was no muffin pan, so I couldn't make them properly. And, there were no bowls that were any bigger than what you would use to eat cereal, so I wasn't sure how I was gonna mix up the batter either. Fear not, though, creative thinking and desperate times calling for desperate measures came to the rescue! Using a pitcher and a spoon, I mixed up the batter with minimal difficulty. Then, after consulting my mom and my aunt, I decided to make the muffins in a cup in the microwave. I dumped some batter into the cup, stuck it in the microwave, and cooked it in 30 second intervals. Surprisingly, it worked out beautifully, and we ended up with some chocolate chip muffins to eat with our scrambled eggs (made by Katie also in a cup in the microwave because the stove wouldn't turn on) for dinner. Pretty solid problem solving, if you ask me. While eating dinner, we watched Legally Blonde on VHS (lolololol so old school), which was comforting because it's a chick flick in English and what have you. 

Later in the night, we were greeted by some friends in our condo. Amara encountered a lizard (small, like the size of your index finger, unless you have really huge hands) in our bathroom, and her and Katie tried to catch it under the plunger, leading the lizard to eject its tail and run far far away somewhere. I was downstairs when all of this happened, but we couldn't find that lizard after that. When I came back upstairs, after I took a shower, Katie found another lizard in her bedroom. However, thanks to my ninja skills, I was able to catch it on her wall under a bowl. Then, very slowly and very carefully, we slid a folder under the bowl and then threw it outside. It was rather intense and there was a lot of screaming and Amara was just sitting there recording the whole thing and cackling at us. 

I went downstairs to the lobby at around 9 to get closer to the wifi router and talked to my mom for a while then Skyped with my boyfriend. The talk with my mom helped me realize that though this trip isn't exactly turning out how I wanted it to, it's ok, and there are still many things to be learned by this experience. My four week curriculum that I slaved away at was cut down to three weeks because nothing was actually organized when we got here, and then I was informed that they have a break during the school week from the 8th to the 12th (Mon-Fri). I won't be able to teach during that week either, so my four week curriculum that turned into three weeks has now been turned into two weeks. If you know me really well, you know that I hate skiing. I've done it a few times and have never liked it. But, the reason for that is because though I'm very mellow and usually easy-going, I'm a control-freak. I don't want to control other people, not that kind of control freak. I'm the kind of control freak who needs to have complete control over herself and what she's doing at all times. It's for this reason that I don't like skiing. I feel like I have absolutely no control over where I'm going because I suck at it, and I hate the feeling of not being able to control myself. So, imagine this situation from my shoes. I've worked so freaking hard at writing all these lesson plans and raising money for the instruments thanks to the generosity of my friends and family and coworkers of my parents, etc. I've learned how to say "quarter note" and "eighth rest" and "trombone" in Spanish so I can teach these kids what I know about music. I have flown to Miami and then hurried to catch the connection to Managua in order to get here, to San Juan del Sur, where everything promptly fell apart. Though we were being continually assured that everything was organized and would be sorted out by the time we got here, this was not true, causing me to lose the first week of teaching. The library basically didn't have anything for volunteers to do, thus leading them to give us late notices to fill out as busywork (not so bad but not exactly life-changing). Then I find out about this break that the kids have, which is apparently their first somewhat long break in a long time, and there goes another week of teaching. Can you see how someone who needs to have control over herself and what she's doing would start to go a little crazy with all of this? I told my mom all of this and told her how I was really disappointed that this isn't turning out how I wanted it to and how I just felt like everything was completely out of control and how I really really hate that. But, as mothers tend to do, she helped me see another side of things. Though it sucks a lot that this whole experience is turning out to be less than favorable, there are still lots of things to be gained from this. Our Spanish is still going to get a lot better while we're here, regardless of how much we teach, because it's total immersion basically the minute we step out of our condo. We're here in a foreign country in a weird little town, and that gives us the chance to people watch, explore, and get to know the culture of the town. I love writing, as you guys can probably tell, so when I'm not teaching, I'll probably be focusing a lot on writing and bettering my writing because it's something I really like and I think I'm pretty good at it. As for not dealing well with the whole having zero control over anything situation, that's a good thing for me to experience. At some point or another I'm gonna have to accept the fact that not everything is in my control, and I'll have to learn how to deal with that. It's hard, and I really don't like it at all, and I don't think I'll ever like it, but it's a part of life that is gonna come up again, and if I can somehow manage to handle having no control over anything in a foreign country, it'll make it easier to handle this kind of thing in the future. This experience has made me learn a lot about myself already, and I know more of that will come. I've learned that I am DEFINITELY staying close to home for college (call me what you will but I love my parents and I don't like being this far away at all). I've learned that I feel pretty empty and incomplete when in the absence of my parents and boyfriend. I've learned that all Spanish all day is mentally exhausting. I've learned once again that we have so much back home and a lot of times we don't even realize how lucky we are. I've realized that I'm very dependent on technology, though I think a large part of this is because of the fact that the only way I can communicate with my people is through the Internet. The list goes on, and I know there will be more revelations to come. I guess what I'm trying to say by all of this is that sometimes, things just aren't gonna go your way, and that's something that we all (unfortunately) have to live with. 

Before school got out, I watched Forrest Gump for an extra credit assignment in history. I wasn't expecting to get much out of this other than a bump in my grade, but I actually gained a lot by watching that movie, aside from just a boost in my grade. Two of the lessons that I took away from that movie were as follows. At the part where Forrest is running across the country for no particular reason whatsoever, a guy comes up and runs next to him while asking him some questions. While they're running, Forrest steps in dog poop. The guy says something like, "Dude, you just stepped in dog shit!" Forrest casually responds with, "It happens." The guy asks, "What happens? Shit?" Forrest says, "Yeah. Shit happens." I'm realizing that this is more true than I ever thought it was. Sometimes, stuff just happens, and there's not really anything you can do about it, because it just happens and you just have to deal with it. The other lesson that Forrest Gump taught me was the infamous "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." I feel like this just goes to show you that you never know how things are going to turn out. Things will pan out for the best but it might be a rocky road to get there. I'm still having some trouble accepting this but it's a slow process and I'm trying. So, to my history teacher from the 2012-2013 school year, thank you for putting that assignment out there, because I gained more from it than I thought I would. 

This wasn't actually supposed to be such a long post but I guess I had more to say than I thought I did. Thanks for reading, guys.

Aneesa

Still in Nicaragua, Still Sweating, Still Spanish-ing, etc

The wifi in our hotel decided to stop working for a while, so I couldn't post anything for a couple days. One of the guys who works here, bless his soul, informed me that there was another wifi router on the fourth floor that belongs to a guy who is paying for a room but isn't there most of the time (not sure what that's all about). He knew the password and told me, so at night I would go up there and sit in the hallway of the fourth floor while being preyed upon by mosquitoes and eyed skeptically by ants for the sole purpose of being able to use Skype and talk to my parents and boyfriend. Oh, the things we do for technology.

Anyways, I used the Notes app on our laptop to write things down so I didn't forget, so here are the things that happened on Tuesday and Wednesday, and then I'll add the things that happened today at the end of that.

So. Day two. We went to the library at which we're volunteering (not that I need to specify anyways because there's only one in this town) and they spontaneously decided that we should see some rural schools to decide if we wanted to teach our respective arts (music for me, paper quilling for Amara) there or at the local public school. They loaded up the Biblioteca Movil (mobile library, which is actually just a truck) with big tupperware containers full of books and we hopped in. We drove for about twenty minutes until we got to the first school on the route. The kids were really sweet, and as usual, very entertained by our foreign-ness. We talked to them, or tried to (they were a little shy), and asked them about what they were learning, etc. We repeated this process at the other two schools that we went to, while the three library workers that came with us took the books being returned and checked out new ones to the kids. The excitement was visible on their faces and in their eyes when they came back into the one-room school cradling a new book or two and smiling from ear to ear. It never ceases to amaze me how grateful these kids are for things that we take for granted every day of our lives. Be thankful, y'all, that's the moral of this story. 

After returning from our mobile library excursion, we headed over to Spanish Ya for our four hours of Spanish classes. Not gonna lie, four hours of Spanish class is pretty difficult, even for me, and I love Spanish and usually find it pretty easy. It's like a block day on steroids (my fellow highschoolers feel me on this one). Difficult though they may be, these classes are very helpful, and I can already see/hear the progress that we're all making. Following our four hours of classes, we went to the little grocery store one block down from the liquor store and bought water and bread and other various groceries. By the end of this trip, the people at that store are gonna know us by name, because we drink so much water that we have to go there pretty much every day. Oh, and the reason why I specify that the store is one block away from the liquor store is because we always think we've arrived at the store when we're actually at the liquor store and then we have to awkwardly walk past it while a bunch of dudes taking swigs from a bottle of vodka stare at us. Yeah. That pretty much sums up day two.

Moving right along, today was our third full day in San Juan del Sur, and holy DAMN was it hot. On Monday and Tuesday, sometime in the late afternoon, clouds and a sweet breeze would take over, and that brought it to a pretty tolerable temperature. But today? No such thing occurred. From moment one of the sun's presence in the sky, it was a scorcher. We left decently early in the morning to go to the library and be put to work, and the job they gave us the worst job possible given today's weather. We got the pleasure of delivering late notices to people all over San Juan del Sur. Allow me to elaborate. What this means is that we take these little red or white quarter sheets of paper and we read them. On these sheets of paper is a name and a list of books that are past due. Because San Juan del Sur is such a small town, between the two library workers that are doing this job with us, we can get to the person's house just by knowing their name. Upon reaching the person's house, we go up to the door and say, yo, we're from the library, and we're here to tell you that you have an overdue book, so if you could find it and bring it back, that would be great, and if you can't find it, just bring us a different book and we'll call it good. In Spanish, of course. Basically, to sum up this job, we walk all over the town giving people little slips of paper and telling them to bring books back to the library, some of which were checked out as early as 2006. I don't know about y'all, but if someone came up to me today and told me that I needed to turn in a book that I checked out in 2006, they'd be out of luck. I actually have to think about how old I was and where I lived in 2006, so there's no way I'm gonna know where a book is that I checked out 7 years ago. Anyways, we're walking around delivering late notices, and this is all fine and dandy for about ten whole seconds, until I start to sweat in places that I didn't know could sweat, and my clothes start to stick to my body, and I can literally feel the sun eating away at my fragile skin through my thick layer of sunscreen. We saw some pretty interesting houses while doing this, such as one that was down a crumbling dirt path, past a few pigs and chickens, over a sewer, and up a small hill. Another one was down a backroad and up about 40 stairs of varying heights (I tripped many times). 

Something that I've observed is that San Juan del Sur is actually very similar to Bangalore. This is true in many aspects: the architecture, the dirt roads, the little shops, the stray dogs, the pushy vendors, etc. It's also true in that even though the people are very poor and don't have much, they're generally pretty happy. Granted, I think that many of them live in a drunken haze judging by the amount of liquor bottles everywhere and the fact that I've seen people walking around with shot glasses full of suspicious liquids many times since being here. Regardless, though, they all seem pretty happy. And then I think of my fellow Bellevue kids (no offense meant by this, don't take it personally) who can't live without the internet (not gonna lie, I'm including myself on that one) and have to have the newest iPhone and need to wear brand name clothes all the time, etc, and I wonder how we became like that. I think it would be worth our while to stop and think about how little that all means, and how the things that should actually make us happy are the love of those who we love and simple things like music and the beauty of face-to-face interactions. I should take my own advice, because I'm the one who's sitting here complaining to myself about how obnoxious the shotty internet connection is and how stupid it is that it's so freaking hot here (the list goes on, you get the picture). But when you're faced with a situation as difficult as this one, it's really hard to man up and take it like a champ and be happy with what little you do have. It's a slow process, this whole being appreciative thing, and it's something that we should all work on, myself included, of course. 

I hope you're all enjoying your comfortable lives back in the good ole USA, because trust me, it would be extremely great to be back home right now. Revel in the glory of the Washington weather for me if you're in the Seattle/Bellevue area, and somebody please watch an episode of Weeds while eating Cheetos on my behalf. 

Today was kind of a combination of Tuesday and Wednesday. We went to Spanish school for four hours in the morning, and then went back to the hotel and had some lunch and relaxed a little before heading over to the library to fill out more late notices. Today the weather wasn't as bad as yesterday, but we got lucky in that all we had to do was sit at the library and fill out the past-due book notices instead of frolicking all over the town delivering them. After rereading that sentence I realize now that frolicking was absolutely not the right word choice, as it was actually closer to very slow walking while dripping with sweat and cursing the evil sun. Think of the way that green slug lady in Monsters Inc. moves, and that's a pretty accurate representation of us. Anyways, we got to sit in the library writing late notices while enjoying the wifi and shade, and we made a pretty hefty amount of progress. Though it sounds tedious, I actually don't mind writing late notices, it's kinda relaxing and entertaining (one guy checked out 4 books about sex all on the same day....hmmmmm). 

I think that pretty much covers Thursday, so I'll leave it at that. 

Oh, and in case you're wondering, the feelings of terror and worry and loneliness and whatever else still persist for the most part, but they're becoming more manageable with time. Or maybe I'm just getting used to it, who knows. 

Thanks for reading,

Aneesa 

Perhaps our Craziest Experience Yet

Yep, that's right. Crazier than a year in India...I think. This is it: right now, Amara, my younger sister, and I are here in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua for a month without our parents. Katie, who used to babysit us when we lived in Kansas, is here as our adult supervision for the first three weeks until our parents meet us here for the 4th week. I'm here to teach basic music concepts to 3rd/4th graders at the local public school, and Amara is here to help me with that and teach paper quilling (you should look that up if you don't know what it is because it's pretty cool). I wrote all the lesson plans by myself and it was mostly my idea to come here and actually carry this whole shenanigan out. And at first, I was pretty confident that this would be super great and mostly easy and not scary at all.

I was wrong.

I'll start from the beginning. Our flight from Seattle to Miami was supposed to leave at 9:30pm (or sometime thereabouts), putting us in Miami with a five hour layover until our flight from Miami to Managua, Nicaragua. Five hours is annoying, I know, but at least it gave us lots of time. We got to the SeaTac airport nice and early to be extra safe. Then, our flight got delayed to 10:30. Still ok, though, because of the 5 hour layover. At this point, we're still fine, we just have some extra time to hang out at the airport (oh joy). But THEN, plot twist, our flight is delayed to 1:10am. Our five hour layover, giving us lots of extra time, has now disappeared, and the flight to Miami lands at the same time as the flight to Managua boards. This is when the panic sets in. Those of you who know me personally know that I'm usually a very calm, levelheaded person. Those of you who know me personally, then, would probably not believe what happened next. I lost it. I panicked hardcore. I have no idea what happened, but I freaked out like never before. I was terrified that we would miss our flight and be stuck in Miami for who knows how long. But then I started thinking about what exactly we were going to do in Nicaragua, and I started to freak out about that too and I started to think that maybe being stuck in Miami for who knows how long wouldn't be such a bad thing after all.

We were on our way to Nicaragua by ourselves, where I would be teaching music. I've been playing viola since I was 4, so the music aspect of that really isn't what worried me. What worried me was the "Nicaragua" part of that whole scenario. Nicaragua = Spanish. Teaching a curriculum that I've never taught before in Spanish. What also worried me was the "by ourselves" part of that scenario. Traveling in the US by ourselves? No problem. But flying to a third world country whose main language is not English? PROBLEM. Granted, I've been taking Spanish for a really long time, like seven years or something, but I was still scared sh*tless.

I was panicking a lot. We called our parents and got the whole flight situation sorted out, and we ended up making our connecting flight to Managua with no problems. However, I was, and still am, scared to death. We made it to Nicaragua. But this whole being here alone thing? It's terrifying. It's like that first day of school excited but scared feeling that you get, except really heavy on the scared side and add the deathly hot temperatures and stifling humidity and what you have is a horribly terrified, sweaty, frizzy-haired 16 year old girl and her younger sister and used-to-be babysitter. Yeah. And I'm the only one who knows enough Spanish to communicate and translate.

I feel lost, worried, and lonely, and did I mention terrified? This trip, a whopping two days in, has made me realize that I think I have mild separation anxiety, no lie. I really don't like being this far away from my parents & boyfriend with no way of communicating with them unless I have the internet (yes, we do have internet here, obviously, or else how would I be posting this, but it literally works in one specific place in our bedroom and in the lobby, which is not air conditioned therefore it is very very hot). This whole situation is just incredibly scary. I want my mommy and daddy. There, I said it. I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't know how I'm gonna teach these kids anything, because I've never done it before and what if they hate me or they learn nothing or my curriculum fails or any other horribly bad thing that could happen. It's so scary. And yes, I know, anything that I teach them will be more than what they already know, and it'll be valuable because it's a once in a lifetime thing for them. And yes, I know, my Spanish is pretty good and has been good enough to get us around this far. And yes, I know, my parents are only a Facebook message or a Google Hangout away. And yes, I know, a month isn't that long and it'll go by really quickly if I just don't focus on how long a day is. But that doesn't help! It's still freaking scary and I literally feel like I have no idea what I'm doing any time I try to do anything and I have this permanent pit in my stomach and that pit is where all the emotions and overwhelmed-ness and worry and nervousness live. ahhhhhhhhhwdruwoidfusoiahwwfhewailurg

Anyways. Today was our first full day in Nicaragua, and it was a holiday called San Juan Day. There was some crazy stuff going on, such as parades and dancing and a few guys climbing up a very smoothed down tree with no branches that was covered in oil. Yeah, I don't really know what that's all about. It was cool, though, and I now know that if there are no other musicians in this teeny tiny beach town, there are at least 2 trombone players and 4 trumpet players, all of which were surprisingly good, considering the fact that they probably haven't had any formal training. We've walked the majority of the town a couple times already because it's so small that basically everything is in walking distance here (which is why I find it odd that there are so many taxis here). We've reconnected with the people we knew from last time we were here in 2010, and that was good because it helped us not feel so out of place.

To sum this all up somewhat quickly, though I am usually a very calm, stable person, this trip is bringing out a side of me that I didn't even know I had--the very fragile, scared, nervous side. Turns out that traveling to a third world country with no parents as a teenager is really overwhelming--who'da thought? Nicaragua is extremely hot and today was a holiday (the history of which I really don't know) which was interesting and I learned that there are at least 6 musicians in this town. Also, before I started typing this, I only had one mosquito bite, and now I have like 6. This experience is insane. I'm sure that by the end I'll see it as a good insane, but for now I'm gonna leave it at that. It's insane.

And I'm scared.

Thanks for reading, yall, more later.

Aneesa