the rainy season

So you know how in the states when seasons change and it happens gradually? like, one day you wake up, and the snow is mostly melted, and then a few days later there is a little bit of bright light green popping up, and then a week later a tree starts to bloom, and then the sky is blue, and then maybe a month later you can actually wear shorts? yeah, it does NOT work like that in Nicaragua.

The night before last after dinner I was suddenly startled by an incredibly loud pounding on the roof. it has barely stopped since then. and let me tell you, I LOVE rain! Although, currently it is sort of preventing me from getting any work done, because I was planning on walking around town hunting down a couple NGOs I still haven't spoken with today, but that is much too adventurous of an attempted activity with what is going on outside.

But that is I think my favorite thing about the rain: it really makes everything feel much more connected for me. No matter where I am in the world, rain like this just makes me want to curl up and listen to pretty music and read books and drink chamomile tea and hot chocolate. and watch grey's anatomy. all of these things that, until recently, have completely disappeared from my life, but the comforts of my wonderful hotel here have given me the ability to watch tv and listen to music on my computer and make warm drinks, although I feel slightly guilty doing any of it because it seems so against the lifestyle I've learned over the first three months here.

Besides my weather excuses for the past two days, the project is coming along. Conducting interviews in Spanish tied between being extremely pleasing and extremely frustrating... pleasing that it is actually something I am somehow incredibly able to do, frustrating because my Spanish can't keep up with my academic standards for my brain. there are so many rich complexities that I'm only able to scratch the surface of because of language barriers. I never really had any idea how much I rely on my ability to communicate for my self worth, and it can be really rough to walk away from an interview feeling like you blew an opportunity to get at something deep because you had no way of getting at what was in the other person's brain and accurately expressing what is in your brain. Another huge difficulty is my inability to escape my appearance... something tells me people aren't too keen on being honest with a silly white college student who really has no justifiable reason to poke around in the hard lives people live. I've really struggled with this concept of "reciprocity" that we try to achieve with SIT, because I honestly can't think of anything I have to give to the people I'm asking things of.

The outside world is doing a great job of tugging me out of Nicaragua. Besides episodes of grey's anatomy, I am heading back to the states in three weeks exactly, I had to register for next semester's classes last week, and I keep getting emails about applications for post-graduate research fellowships, all of which are reminding me that I am all-too-soon graduating from college, and I have NO idea what to do with this fact... I just don't have a tangible enough grasp to know what I'm going to want a year from now. Unfortunately, if what I will want is to go back abroad to research or volunteer or if I want to go straight to grad school, I am going to have to decide that pronto. Here's to hoping being in Bilwi in the rain will help me meditate on the future!

I'm hoping next week to take a bus up to Waspám on the Río Coco, the hub of all the indigenous communities up there, to do a case study of a community (if I can maybe find some women who speak spanish and will be willing to help me). I am getting to a few conclusions, but really only from the perspectives of women who have somehow overcome the barriers and are in positions of power, most with NGOs who are working to empower other women. But I really still just want to talk to some of the women this all affects, women in communities that, fortunately, have decentralized power which, unfortunately, doesn't belong to them. So hopefully that little field trip will work out! Its about a 5 hour bus ride, and probably longer now that the rains have started. Forms of travel in the states are going to feel so luxurious after Nicaragua!