5 week (minus one day) anniversary!

I have been doing an absolutely terrible job of updating my blog with life here. I sincerely apologize, especially to the wonderful friends who "stalk my blog daily." Which is very sweet. I will try to be a more interesting target from now on.

I'm sitting in the student office, enjoying an afternoon off from class and killing time before I have a phone interview for a possible summer job, and there is really so much to life here that I don't even know where to begin with an update!

The past couple of weeks have passed ridiculously quickly. I wound up missing out completely on the campo trip due to my wonderful case of strep, that got worse and worse every day for about a week. I got to make a few trips out the the Vivian Pellas Hospital, which is the snazzy private place all the Nica Ricas and foreigners get to go to. It was bizarre - it looked as nice as UCLA Medical Center or Sedar Sinai. Luckily I was feeling well enough to head out to Matagalpa for the night when everyone else on the program was returning from their campo adventures. There I learned about the beauty of how good batidos really can be.

Since then, I've just been here in Managua, sinking in to some semblance of normal life. Nobody left town last weekend because we had tons of homework and everyone was tired, so that gave us a chance to feel out the weekend life here (and by that I mean we spent one night watching The Dark Knight in the office, and two long days working on homework, but also got to go out to this really awesome bar to see an afro-cubano band play with our conversation partners, which was one of my favorite things here yet).

Somehow, amazingly, tomorrow is our LAST DAY of spanish class. I honestly dont know if my spanish mastery has improved much, but I'd say what has improved is my fluidity, my willingness to take chances and sound ridiculous in order to communicate. Which, really, is essential when you're trying to survive in a foreign country and have some experience beyond simply being a tourist and a foreigner.

Next Tuesday we leave for El Salvador. El Salvador! AND - get this- we are going to be official election observers, complete with t-shirts and clipboards and probably an aire of foreign superiority, but it is so amazing to have a chance to be involved. These elections are really important. Basically, around the same time of the civil war here in the 80s there was a much bloodier, inhumane civil war in El Salvador. Since then, the same people have remained in power, and most agree that most of the elections have been frauds. This election is the first time that their revolutionary party is considered to have a viable chance of winning, especially because there has been SO much emphasis on the elections being clean. The FMLN it seems to me is more reliable and trustworthy than the FSLN here, and maybe it really is a chance for popular change in Latin America. We'll see! But this is exactly why I am so excited to be a part of it.

I'm starting to hone in on a topic for ISP, and it is TERRIFYING, but SO exciting and interesting. I think I'm headed to the RAAN, which is the northern autonomous atlantic coast, to research indigenous rights and autonomy. There has been a strong history here, like everywhere, of abuses to indigenous peoples and their land, and the whole concept of autonomy and political power is a little shaky here. I haven't really decided what my emphasis will be, and nobody from the program has gone there since 2000, so this really is kind of uncharted territory.

Tomorrow a friend and I are going to go to Granada for the weekend, the beautiful, colonial, tourist headquarters of Nicaragua, and we're going to do a boat tour of the Isletas! I will fill you all in on how it goes.

Okay, time for my interview! It's been so bizarre to be down here and have to think about summer and coming back... my mind keeps this world and the world of home very separate. Hopefully my English will hold up.

Love to everyone!