Sunday 3 July 2011

Estelí, Estelíta

I am writing to you from Esteli. I don't go on the Internet as much as I thought I would so I'll make this succint: Another week of Spanish classes and art classes and after that I will be placed in a public school to sort of guide children through selfesteem inducing art.

I am eating foods that before I only ate with my family like dragon fruit and taro and chaote. It's pretty cool to see these foods being used elsewhere too.

I am picking up Spanish surprisingly quickly, gallo pinto is good but there are many beans and you know what beans make you do (not what you'd think), the weather is cooler than I thought, and I learned one thing so far: in movies, roosters crow only in the morning but in reality they can keep you up all night with their crowing, especially if they on the other side of the wall where you sleep. I'm thinking there are two roosters because there's a crow with a particular fundamental frequency (F0) and then a higher pitched crow following that. There are no streetlights but somehow all the traffic manages to be controlled at intersections. There are dogs all over the streets but I don't touch them because they might have rabies! Both dogs and cats, even as pets, are very skinny. Normal sized Canadian pets are obese compared to these!

Finally there is so much street life. Here people live closer to, what can I say, a more natural way of life. At my homestay I have to relearn everything from the beginning. Instead of throwing clothes into a laundry machine, instead of having differences in air pressure powered by electricity suck up the dust, instead of electric stoves, they use more of their hands, less water and less electricity. I feel so incompetent and my counterpart laughs at me because I don't know how to do much.

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