Poesia

Yesterday we went to Granada, a colonial town on Lake Nicaragua, for the day for the poetry festival. Granada is beautiful although very touristy...at least a lot more so than I am used to. Some of us ate lunch at this quasi italian place that had delicious calzones for only $2.50 that were pretty much the size of my head. Suffice it to say I couldnt even finish mine. We sat there for a while drinking cold beers (not many of the drinks here are very cold I have found...some superstition they have) and working on our calzones and then walked down to the beach of the lake. It was gorgeous and windy with a lone dude lying in the sun. After that we went up to see the parade against ignorance which was quite an ordeal. There were different bands playing one right after another in the parade which was comical. At every corner the parade would stop and a poet (many were from all around the world) would get up on the podium and recite a poem. It was a lot of fun, tons of people, tons of Nicaraguans dancing and singing and it went on for about 3 hours. The Nicaraguan girls competing for Miss Carnaval Nicaragua were there too...They were all quite scantily clad, especially the girl from Bluefields. We didn´t get home until about 1030 though and had to be up early for class today. Three hours of class in Spanish is a little overwhelming in the morning after not getting much sleep. I still have to get used to my brothers waking up at 4am to shower and the walls aren´t very thick and water makes a lot of noise.

I am excited for the weekend to see what my family does. I was going to go to the beach but because we are leaving on Tuesday for the campo I want to spend some time with my family. My next free weekend though I will probably go to the beach or to the volcano of Concepcion. One of the best parts about being here though compared to New York is that I can buy lunch for $2 or under and water is barely 50 cents. It´s a really nice feeling although I can forsee coming back to the states being very difficult!

Thanks for the emails and comments...they make me very happy!