I love you, mata-g / let's hear it for the girls

Well there it is.  A month entirely dedicated to one single academic pursuit (well, with a few necessary weekend trips, but you know...) reduced to 41 pages of processed tree pulp, bound with a tacky yellow plastic cover.  I am incredibly thankful to the oodles of people who helped me along the way, and I am rather proud of it.  [If you're interested, it's available here.  I'm gonna work on an English version in the next few weeks hopefully.]

I'm also grateful to La Buena Onda, the bangin' hostal I stayed at in Matagalpa while I was writing.  If you're ever in a situation where you have to perform a large amount of academic grunt work in Nicaragua, I highly recommend you check 'em out.  For $8/night, I got a bed, a host of beautiful patio writing locations, unlimited coffee (we're talking real coffee, not the instant kind that is ironically incredibly popular here, seeing as Nicaraguan coffee is considered extremely high quality and exported all over the world), and an extremely friendly group of employees and guests to distract me (Jenni and Tricia came up to work too later on which was great).  Also, Matagalpa is just a marvelous city.  Well, I don't know if it's actually that great, but the fact that it was not 100 degrees, soulless, and filled with trash made it seem like heaven.  The five days I spent just writing, relaxing, and socializing with the locals were among the best I've spent here.

The afternoon receptionist, Scarlette, invited me to be show-and-tell in the 11th grade English class she teaches one day, which was a blast.  The main activity consisted of me talking about myself very slowly while the one kid who had decent English skills loudly whispered a Spanish translation to the rest.  Then we played a game that involved shouting the names of various obscure professions in English (which I doubt they understood) and running around the room.  And then they were fluent.  Just kidding!  Man, was it perversely satisfying to be on the other end of poor-second-language skills. 

And now we're all back.  Even though it was only a month, in this study abroad time frame, it was a long time apart, and it's so nice to see everyone again.  Tonight is my last night with my family here.  I'm gonna write that again because it hasn't really sunk in.  Tonight is my last night with my family here.  Which means I'm about to go eat my last authentic home-cooked Nicaraguan dinner, watch my last Canal 2 telenovela, wash my last batch of clothes by hand, listen to my last snow jokes from Tío Alan...  It took us a little while to get close, but man, I'm gonna miss Mama Eva and co.  Tomorrow we move back into the hotel we stayed in for orientation, which should be surreal.  A dis-orientation, if you will.

There's one not-so-sweet thing I've been meaning to write about, something that hasn't affected me directly but deserves mentioning.  And that's the crap that the girls on this program have had to put up with over the last 15 weeks from the males in this country.  The worst we guys have had to deal with is the occasional hoot while running shirtless in the morning, and so I'm just starting to notice exactly how bad the constant barrage of whistles, derisive comments, sexual innuendo, uninvited advances, and general ungentlemanly behavior that my female friends have had to deal with is.  In some of the more abhorrent cases, guys have tried to jump into girls' beds in hostals, stalked them threateningly in the street, and touched them inappropriately and repeatedly.  There's just a different culture here about how you're allowed to treat people you consider to be sexual objects here, and it's not acceptable.  So here's to the girls of SIT: Nicaragua - Spring 2010.  Y'all had to deal with one of the grosser sides of this country, and you managed to make it through with dignity.