MTV: the bane of my existance

Remember when MTV actually COULD call itself "Music TV"? I remember back in 1999 right after moving to the US and finally getting cable, Mom picked us up from school and was telling us all about the different channels and I distinctly remember her saying: "and there's this one channel that only plays music all day." Those were the days.

Soon MTV got the Reality TV bug and from there it was only down hill. Here are a list of some of the worst Reality TV shows known to date on the MTV channel.

1. Laguna Beach. Yes, I agree it was entertaining and for a while I tuned in every week to watch the next episode. But seriuosly, could high schoolers really ACT real when they were followed around my cameras every day? Besides the fakeness of the show, I honestly think Laguna Beach had something to do with the demise of the American youth. Everyone wanted to act like the popular group out there in Orange County.

2. Next. Honestly, how are there so many retarded people in America? Per capita the US definitely has their fair share of idiots, and all of them somehow manage to find their way onto the Next show. And what is with the lines at the end of each show? I mean really??? Who writes this junk? The cockiness is over-exaggerated, and the fakeness has been taken to a new level. My suggestion: the script should be burned, and the participants shot for even considering to go along with the stupidity. Anything for their 10 minutes of fame.

3. ALL the finding-love-on-MTV shows. A Shot at Love. I Love Money. The list goes on. Finding love on MTV is basically searching through America's rejects.

4. South Park. On Wednesday I was shocked to hear two boys in my English class mimicking the South Park characters. They were 9 and 11. There is no hope for the future of this nation when 9 and 11 year olds look up to South Park, repeat (word for word) the episodes and try to act just as the annoying little characters do.

5. Parental Control. I admit its a clever idea: I'm sure many parents would like the opportunity to choose who there children date, and then they ruined it with the scripting. Number one qualification to work as a script writer on MTV: Bachelor's degree in the worst come back lines known to man. "Uh, whatever" went out about a gazillion years ago, people! The teens think they are so bloodly smart but all I hear when I watch the show is "blah blah blah I am not a man, blah blah blah." And honestly, if any kid talks to me like they talk to the adults on that show, I wouldn't simply have a shocked look on my face... they'd have a shockinly red handprint on their left cheek. Just watching the show makes me want to throw something at the TV. Won't someome please tell these imbecils that they are 1. not funny and 2. in no way clever with their comebacks.

6. The Real World. All I have to say is that they have redefined the word 'real'. Its sad how there really are no wholesome young people left in America.

7. Whatever retarded Jessica Simpson show is on now. As if we didn't get enough of her lack-of-cerebral-matter on Newlyweds and the other 12 shows she has tried (and failed) at. Her lack of respect for foreign countries and their cultures in her new program is sickening. Not everyone is cut out to be an entertainer. She should have been told that no one likes her years ago.

8. My Super Sweet 16. This show really only deserves two words: Spoiled. Brats.

The list can go on, of course. Every 30 minute block on the channel is filled by a program that deserves to be put on this list. Maybe we should just do away with the entire channel and replace it with a wholesome educational channel that will teach America (and all the other countries poisened by MTV) that being cool does NOT mean trying out for a MTV Reality TV show.

Hello, Gorgeous...

The sun is here! The sun is here! A full 8 days after my dreadfully late arrival to Costa Rica the sun has finally shone (hehe, how clever) its beautiful face. After 8 long days of bitterness and restlessness I was finally able see blue sky, put on a summer dress, and spend a few hours soaking up the sun in Central Park. I can without a doubt say that every soul I know here is just as thrilled as I am for the sun to have come out, just for a different reason of course (I've been told I'm not the easiest person to be around when I'm in a foul mood hehe). My mood has lifted! My gloomy mood brought on by day after day of dark rain-soaked clouds has blown away with those same clouds and I'm smiling, and even hummed to myself as I sat in line at the bank waiting to pay the rent.

Dreading the thought in the morning of opening the curtains and seeing, once again, the rain, I slept in until 9. Less conscious daylight hours meant less hours of gloomyness. When I checked my phone however, I had received a message at 7 am: ...salga, esta haciendo un sol increible! (Go outside, the sun is incredible!) My first thought was "why the hell would I be up at 7 am, let alone ready to go outside?" but then I thought, "maybe the sun is still there!?!" I opened the front door and low and behold, the spiral stairs leading down to the first floor were bathed in yellow light and the potted plants outside my door had cast shaddows across the veranda. I immediately grabbed my cup of joe and sat, pijamas and all, on the steps, soaking up the glorious warmth.

It wasn't enough for me though and I quickly showered, cleaned the bathroom, swept the floors, and ran my errands at the bank, and then walked over to Central Park, found an empty bench and read in the sun for the next hour and a half. Glorious, glorious sun!

Along with the first day in over two weeks that I have seen the sun, yesterday I was given a bouquet of seven gorgeous yellow sunflowers, my favourite flower. There is just something about them that makes me smile. Between the two, how in the world can I be having a bad day?

Now the clouds have returned, something I had expected since the moment I first saw the sun today (there is no getting around the tropical rainy season climate), but I'm happy. My spirits have lifted and I'm ready to tackle another day of teaching Intro English.

Sunless days, sleepless nights...

The clock has just ticket 2 a.m. and I am as wide awake as if it were 2 p.m. This is night two of my insomnia. Yesterday I spent it watching pointless episodes of any comedy I could find on t.v. between 1 and 3 a.m. Today I've spent it on Facebook and once that got boring since there are no status updates at this normal hour of sleeping, I have moved on. To here. Maybe extracting my thoughts on this here blog, will clear my mind for what I really need it at this moment... blissful sleep...

After a very, nay, too short vacation to California I am back in Costa Rica, ready, yet not eager, to begin semester 4 of 4. My 10 day trip to CA consisted in not much else than laying around reading. The sun, regardless of what they say about 'sunny CA' was not out for about 7 of my 10 day stay and, just my luck, it hasn't been out in Costa Rica either since my arrival on Sunday. The gloomy days have definitely not brightened my spirits. Speaking of arriving... the good ol' USA made my life miserable again. I've been trying to figure out what I've done in my life for Karma to have kicked me, again, while I'm down, but I haven't quite come up with anything good. My trip to immigration this time was extended beyond the usual checkpoint as Ms. Butch didn't believe I was the lovely face smiling back at her from my Green Card. Maybe I shouldn't blame her... it was 11 p.m. when I pulled up to her drive through window. After playing 20 questions she led me away to magic door number two where I had to sit and wait while Antonio Banderas and Jackie Chan talked about their big guns. After another fun game of "Avoid telling the whole truth to the immigration agents" I was given a pass to rejoin the milling masses eagerly awaiting to see if the airline managed to screw up the baggage. I'm not bitter. The best part of my trip however, was by far the uber-cute flight attendant who, seeing me staring longinly at the conveyer belt pleading for my bag to come around, fed me the line "You have gorgeous eyes, don't ever cover them up." There is no sarcasm in that last line. I flew with TACA and I have to say, unless their tickets end up way more expensive than Priceline.com I'm picking them for all my Latin America to US travel. Direct from CR to CA, zero baggage fees, great flight attendants, extra legroom, free headphones and alcoholic beverages, and meals! whaaaaa??? ... all in economy class.

The second part of my trip was not without its 'fun' shall we say. My flight left LAX at 1:35 a.m., a time of the morning when I thought the airport would be empty. Guess again. An hour after joining the line, I managed to get to the check-in counter only to find out they had over booked my flight! I was offered a $600 voucher to fly the next day and, if it weren't the World Cup final I would be missing, I would have taken it. Instead I waited an extra 10 minutes for the computer to spit me out a seat number. Armed with my seat number and dangerously low on sleep, I make my way down the plane aisle, plop in my seat, and close my eyes. Ah sleep... wrong. TACA shows a movie and the t.v. screen just happened to be right above the seat in front of me. All movie long I had flashes of light penetrating my eyelids. When we were all finally woken up at 6 a.m. for breakfast I was about ready to use foul language on the very next person who spoke to me. But luckily... no joke here... it was another good looking flight attendant offering me a much needed cup of joe. Cafe Britt, Costa Rica's best coffee. Yum. We were an hour and a half outside of Costa Rica making a 'quick' pitstop in Guatemala to let people off and pick up others. A scheduled 4o minute stop though turned into a fun packed 3 hours of staring out the airport window at the menacing black cloulds and, no joke here, the only two airplanes that landed in the entire 3 hours I was there. Our plane had managed to catch itself a faulty landing gear somewhere thousands of miles above the earth and we had to wait while the genius mechanic stood looking at the plane and scratching his... uhh... head. My 9:35 a.m. arrival to Costa Rica turned out to be a 1 p.m. arrival when I no longer had a ride home, or made it back in time to catch the plans I had made for the World Cup. Nor did I even WANT to watch the damn game. I got home, threw myself onto the bed, and fell asleep to the sound of pouring rain.

I cried that day. I didn't want to be here. Maybe the exhaustion was part of it, but somehow I had managed to distance myself from everyone down here in the 10 days I was home, and when I arrived it just didn't FEEL right. I have fought with my best friend every day for the past week, and now lying here I can't help but wonder if being on bad terms with him isn't affecting my sleep.

I began teaching on Monday. I work evenings teaching English now to earn some extra cash and hopefully save up for a down payment on a car when I get back to CA. I was a little nervous my first day but after a few minutes of the first class I got into it. It helped, of course, that that class already had a pretty high level of English. At the end of the day, though, three classes down, I enjoyed it, which was a surprise for me. My bosses have graciously kept me away from children which I can only be thankful for. As the semester progresses, I'll reevaluate my skills as a teacher. A couple of weeks ago I was so worried I wouldn't even be able to explain the difference between a verb and a noun, but maybe I won't be that terribly bad. It helps, of course, that I speak Spanish.

I have two weeks until my classes at the University begin up again. So in the mean time I'm just taking it easy, sleeping until 10 (mainly because I'm up until 3), working every now and then on my thesis, and praying every day that today will be the day that the sun comes out and lights up my life.

A love/hate relationship...

Yesterday, semester three of my four semester Masters program came to an end. I turned in the first final draft of my thesis, took the most pointless final exam I have ever had to endure, and when I put my pen away and stood up to leave, a wave of... disappointment washed over me. 'But why disappointment?' you may ask yourself. The answer isn't clear to me either. I have had one of the most stressful semesters to date. It had been long and boring, and to some degree, I felt it was even a useless semester. But finishing it means a year and a half has gone by and I only have six months left. How do I ever pack my life up (once again) and move away from the people I have grown to love with all my heart. And yet, the answer is simple. Just do it. I did it before, after graduation at Mars Hill, I did it when I moved down here in January of 2009, and I can will do it again because that is what I do. That is what is expected of me. I will leave with a part less of me though, a part that will forever stay in Costa Rica.

Of course, the hardest semester of all still lies ahead of me, and the scariest thought of them all: presenting and defending my thesis. I in no way regret deciding to come down here to do my Masters, even though this presentation will be in Spanish. I am grateful for my two years here and for the opportunity I have had to perfect my grasp of the language more than I would have done in a program in the U.S., and believe it or not, I have come to love Spanish even more than I did to begin with. That being said, it's all sunshine and summertime. Below and the five things I dislike most about language and the five things I love about it:

5 things I HATE about Español:

5. The me gusta and me encanta constructions. Sure, saying me gusta el cafecito comes as naturally as saying 'I like coffee' in English, but when it comes to saying, for example, 'you don't like me' my mind still automatically wants to say no me gustas which actually would be 'I don't like you' quite the opposite of my actual intention.

4. The difference between este/esta and ese/esa. This equates to the same difference of 'this/that' in English, which as a native speakers comes naturally, but try getting it right right off the bat in a foreign language is impossible. It is further complicated by the fact that it is gender specific and a neutral eso/esto doesn't always work.

3. The difference in the pronunciation of 'rr' and 'r'. This really applies more to the Costa Rican way of pronouncing 'rr' rather than the general pronunciation in which one rolls the tongue for a second to add extra emphasis to the double r. I can do that perfectly fine, but in Costa Rica the sound is more of a vibration than an actual roll and for a native English speaker with no similar sound in our language, sometimes I could out sounding just that: a gringa speaking Spanish. I hate it.

2. Gender specific words. Why can't all objects be neutral like in English? It makes learning the name of the object 100x easier. Words that end in 'o' or 'a' are not the problem, its the words that end in 'a' but are actually masculine, or words that end in consonants like 'l' and 'n' which, unless you already know the gender, can't really be guessed. And then there is the distinction between the same word which has both masculine and feminine forms which mean two completely different things, or when adjectives, pronouns, determinants etc., all have to agree with the gender of the noun. It makes life for an English speaker very difficult.

1. The subjunctive tense. The only example we have of this in English is the 'if I were' construction, however, in Spanish it is used for a million different reasons that to a Spanish as a second language student are impossible to get right all the time. Luckily though, getting it wrong doesn't change the meaning of a sentence or impede its understanding, it just simply isn't right.

All the above are cancelled out though by my love for the language, especially the following

5 things I LOVE about Español:

5. Pronunciation = spelling. And visa versa. Looking at an unfamiliar Spanish word one can pronounce it correctly by simple pronouncing each letter individually. An 'i' is always pronounced the same as is 'a', 'e', 'o', and 'u'. Much easier than in English.

4. Noun constructions. If you ever don't know the name of an object thing about its function and bam! 9 times out of 10 you can guess its name. Matamoscas, for example, literally means 'fly killer' or juntabolas means 'ball gatherer'.

3. Diminuitives. English is really lacking in this fabulous way to easily show the difference between a rather large object (add -ote at the end of a noun) or a really small object (add -ito). Not only does it give an idea of the size but it always has affective meaning. It shows the speakers feelings to an object. Diminuitives is just a very caring way to describe an object.

2. The difference between te quiero and te amo. Both mean 'I love you' just with different intensity. Amo a my parents, or the guy I will one day be in love with, but quiero a my best friend or the guy I like, etc.

1. Spanish speaking Latino men. The dark hair, tanned skin, coffee coloured eyes... Anyone that knows me knows my obsession for what I have just described. Being here has not changed that in the least, rather one could say it has solidified that obsession. Sure I find the occasional blue-eyed, blonde-haired European attractive, but I'd take a dark-featured Latino over him any day.

It's true love...

Today I rediscovered the love I used to have for Costa Rica. The love that, little by little, I had been losing. My life here had become the same monotonous routine, day in and day out. My days spent indoors working on endless amounts of translation homework and thesis writing, an afternoon of rain, clear but cold nights, ESPN right before turning the light out only to wake up in 8 hours to do it all over again. I was always surrounded by the same people, always in the same places and last night I felt suffocated. The feeling started at dinner at a lovely Italian restaurant by the university. There were too many tables crammed into one dinning room and the room was packed. One one side I had a piller, behind a party of two, to my left a party of 8 and in front of me the bar. It was stuffy and hot, the only ceiling-fan being situated tables away from mine. I couldn't wait to leave, to be able to breath again, but when I got outside I realized it wasn't just the restaurant, it was my life.

I went to bed last night with a million thoughts rolling around in my head. And when I woke up at 6 am to the sound of a text message I couldn't even remember if I had dreamt anything. Two hours later I woke up again and turned on ESPN. My day was about to be as monotonous as the rest when a friend said: vaya afuera, es increible hoy! Go outside, its gorgeous today. I turned off my computer, grabbed the January edition of Fitness magazine, and headed to Central Park to enjoy the sun. I bought an iced cappuccino and a chicken empanada, and sat on a bench for the next hour and a half soaking up the amazing Central American midday sun.

Central park was packed with families: children running around after the pidgeons, parent's holding up their toddlers to see into the fountain, clowns trying to sell bubbles and blow-up toys, an indigenous flute musician playing along to Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On." The sky was the magnificent blue colour of Costa Rica's still-undamaged-by- tourists Rio Celeste and the puffy white clouds were scarce. From where I sat, I had a view of the ancient Catholic church hidden partially by the tall palm trees blowing gently in the breeze. A grandmother, her daughter, and her grandson sat next to me on the bench, speaking the beautiful Spanish that I love, Tico Spanish. Across were two teenagers in-love, locked in embrace, him kissing her on the forehead. A gorgeous black labrador jumped into the fountain to cool himself off. A toddler cycled by on a green plastic tricycle, followed by his young father in faded jeans, a airy white button-up shirt, and his dark shaggy hair bouncing as he jogged to keep up. And as I watched a beautiful little girl in a pink dress and white sandles, with thick, long, dark hair chase the bubbles her mom blew I realized, this is the Costa Rica I love. Just five blocks from my apartment I found my escape and I fell back in love with Costa Rica.

I came back to the apartment, slightly burnt, but content. The sun is shining in my world again and Costa Rica is truly the love of my life.

Reading material to put you to sleep...

About an hour ago I realized that it has been two years already since I graduted from Mars Hill. Two years... seriously, where did the time go? It just sort of struck me out of no where. As I was watching the 4th game of the Magic-Celtics series I was thinking about when it was that I was sitting on my couch with Char'lee in Bailey Mountain watching J.J. Redick play for Duke. Then it hit me, and I just sort of sat there open-mouthed for a few minutes as it soaked in. And then, I got over it and continued screaming at the TV. But it must have worked, because the Magic won :-).

Another shocker is that we are already nearing the end of May. I complained so much about the start of a new year and look at us... just a few days away from the middle of it. And thankfully, that means just a few short weeks away from the end of semester 3 of my Master's. And it is NOT coming fast enough. Although today I made a list of all the final projects I still need to get STARTED on. 5 to be turned in sometime in the next two to three weeks. The hardest of them all, of course, is all the corrections to my thesis I should have been making all semester long but that... well... let's face it... I've been procrastinating on. I turned in my last chaper on Saturday. I'm not saying it was good... but it was done, and for me right now, that is what counts. I realized though that the three weeks that I have off from classes come July will be basically spent as a full time job researching and fixing up that damned thesis. Why, oh why, did I think this was a good idea? I have to say though, that I really enjoy my topic, which I guess is a blessing. I couldn't imagine working on it as much as I have had to and not enjoy what I'm doing... or maybe enjoy isn't the best word... believe is more like it. I believe that what I'm working on is worth my time.

Let's see, other than that, I've been giving private English classes lately, to try to earn a few extra colons. Its not much, but I guess it pays for an extra hour of tennis per week. Not that I have been playing. I had so much trouble with my back for so long I couldn't play. Now it is finally feeling better again but the guy I play with has been ridiculously busy with a thesis-like project he had to complete in less than a month. I guess I just have to wait until June. Which is only... a week away.

I really wish I had more interesting things to write about... but somehow the time goes by and I have nothing to show for it. What did I do last week? I worked on my thesis like a mad person... that, of course, because I had to turn in a new chapter on Saturday. My Saturday's are finally shorter. My Translation into English class is no longer in-class so I get to come home at 12:30 and relax for the rest of the day. Or... I'm not sure if I'll be relaxing. I tend to get lonely on Saturdays so I suppose I have to find something to do. That's the one blessing about having class all day on the weekend. I don't get lonely because I'm not with my family.

My new roommate is good. She's from Chicago and a Bears fan, which pretty much makes her one of my favourite people right off the bat. Even though she's a little older we get along well so that's a plus. I'm working on being more positive since people have told me I'm way to negative. I guess that's the side-effect of being a cynic. Random thought, I think I might have a cavity. I've been having a lot of shooting pain when I drink or eat cold foods. It's not pleasant.

Anyway there isn't really much of substance to this blog, that's because there really isn't much substance to my life right now. Today I woke up at 9:15, watched the French Open for about three hours, worked on a translation I have to email to a professor on Wednesday, ate lunch with my roommate, showered around 3:30, made coffee and a tortilla before class and went to French at 6. See? Nothing. I'm not lying to you. I might be living in paradise, but my life is anything but exotic.

I got the travel bug again... so I went to Nicaragua

So last week was Semana Santa or Holy Week. Like all the universities in the US we got the entire week off as our "Spring Break" and it was definitely a welcomed break. Classes have been getting me down lately, especially my Friday night Consecutive Interpreting class. By 7 pm I am ready to walk out of the class, walk out of the program, pack up my life and move back home to California. I don't like interpreting. I like translating. I can take my time to find the perfect work or the perfect way to say a sentence in the other language. My Saturday classes aren't that great either. Of my four classes this semester I DESPISE two and TOLERATE the other two. Its just a bad semester overall it seems. So come spring break and I was ready to forget about the university for as long as possible...so my roommate and I headed to Nicaragua.

I can't say I had ever been really interested in traveling to Nicaragua. It wasn't ever on my life of "places to see before I die" but, as I found out in 2007 I have to have a visa to travel to Panama and that visa takes way too much time to get and costs way to much money. Nicaragua, on the other hand, is open to pretty much anyone and me with my South African passport could basically walk right in for 8 US dollars...which ironically turned out to be about the most expensive part of the trip. Of course no one had to tie me up and throw me in the back of the bus either to make me visit Nicaragua. Traveling is in my bones and after about a year of being no where but familiar places, I was dying to experience "new" again, unfamiliar places, unfamiliar faces, unfamiliar cultures. So Tuesday night I was packed and headed out the door with Kristina at around 5 a.m. on Wednesday morning. We got to Nicaragua about 11 hours later with no problems at the border (except maybe the ridiculous amount of people). The trip by bus was long and tiring, but just finally being in a new place gave me energy. We stayed the first night in Managua, the capital, and the next day we took a tour of the "sites-to-see" which didn't turn out to be much. There are basically two parts to Managua: old Managua and new Managua. Old Managua was pretty much destroyed by an earthquake 30 years ago and hasn't ever been rebuilt. New Managua is, well, new and totally Americanized.

As we were site-seeing I was immediately struck by the amount of begging children on the streets: offering to watch parked cars for a small fee, selling flowers and hearts made out of some kind of leaf, or just simply begging for a dollar or even a single córdoba (around 5 cents). To them there was no shame in doing it, and being children I would even venture to say they make a good living out of it, especially when targeting the gringos (Americans).

After Managua, our tour guide took us to Masaya, location of the Masaya Volcano. I guess the glamour of seeing a Volcano dies after the first experience because it really wasn't that exciting and being around the smell of sulfur for even 5 minutes was about enough to kill me. They say the volcano is active though, although it doesn't spew out fire and lava, rather just sulfur smelling steam. After the volcano we drove to a small tranquil town that overlooked the Laguna de Apoyo. Besides having crystal clear blue water, there wasn't much to see, except the beauty of the landscape from up high looking down. Its obviously a spot couples go visit and there were scores of local music groups offering to play a few pieces of Nicaraguan music in exchange for a "donation." We then had lunch at a local restaurant and then made our way to Granada by public transportation, which, as always, was a journey in itself. Our tour guide dropped us off at the "correct" bus stop but after a while of waiting we grew a little uncertain and asked a woman at the stop if we had the right one. Of course, we didn't and she sent us across the round-about to another stop. Right away I asked another lady there if this was the right one, which it was, but as [my] luck would have it, that day there weren't any buses passing through that stop to Granada. She said we would have to take a bus back to Masaya (right were we were to begin with) and from there catch another bus to Granada. Again, she sent us across the round-about. There we waited a good 20 minutes before a bus pulled up, only to be told that although that bus went in the right direction, it detoured off before getting where we needed to be. I could only laugh, really. Not wanting to wait any longer we got on the bus and walked the extra half a kilometer to get where we needed to be. Fortunately, as soon as we arrived the bus for Granada pulled up and 30 minutes later we were in Granada ready to begin our search for a place to stay (every place I had called before going either didn't take reservations or were booked because of Semana Santa). On our third try we got a room. I'm not the hostal type, but when faced with the possibility of not actually finding a place, I sort of sucked it up for two nights and stayed in a private room at the hostel.

I was immediately taken aback by the beauty of Granada, a colonial town. In the main square all the buildings have been recently painted, all in different, bright colours. The main street was paved in coblestone and alive with restaurants, coffee shops, bars, music, and street vendors selling jewelry, ceramics, paintings etc. On Friday we rented bikes and rode down to Lake Nicaragua (so big its practically a sea). Afterwards we walked around the city, got massages, ate local foods, enjoyed the music and street performers throwing fire or breakdancing. I fell in love wiht Granada, there is simply no other way to say it. Being there made me wonder if I've been wasting my time here in Costa Rica, and my money, when I could be using it to travel around central and south America, meeting new people and learning new cultures. There is always so much more to see than the small world that we surround ourselves by.

I was honestly sad to have to leave Nicaragua. I would have loved to stay an extra day to two, gone to the beach and taken a boat tour around the islands in the lake. Fortunately, as cheap as it is, there is always the possibility of going back for even less than it would cost to take a weekend trip to the beach in Costa Rica. A typical meal cost us only $4, and it wasn't a hamburger and fries, but meat, plantains, rice and salad. Hotel rooms cost as little as $20 a person, a frozen cappuccino $1.50 and a back and shoulders masage only $10. Hopefully before I leave here I will be able to make the trip back for another weekend. I now know some Nicaraguans who are already insisting I go back and they'll show me the "real" Nicaragua.

Of course, as the saying goes, all good things have to come to an end, and classes started up again with full force. I had two midterms and two presentations the weekend I got back, with no end in sight really...until the end of June.