Brille hermosa la paz en tu cielo

Peace shines beautiful in your heavens (Nicaraguan National Anthem)

Friday was the Conmemoración Fiestas Patrias at the American Nicaraguan school. I was one of a handful of parents who watched with the entire Secondary School. Noah was playing in the band so I went to see what it was like. Each class did a presentation, skit, musical number or dance and the performances were of the highest level. The band played the national anthems of the US and Nicaragua along with a few rousing Sousa numbers. Students sang Carlos Mejia Godoy’s revolutionary folk songs with true campesino feeling. A group of sixth grade girls whirled in a Nicaraguan folk dance called el Sapo (toad, I think). The Chinese class led the crowd in a round of happy birthday in Mandarin. Then two girls hobbled out wrapped up in butcher paper to look like candles. Their teacher, a Chinese lady wearing a Nicaraguan folk dress, ripped the paper off their bodies leaving them standing before the whole school in Chinese silk halter tops and very tight white pants with paper birthday tiaras on their heads. They laughed nervously, but without embarrassment the way teen age girls do then they are standing before a crowd doing something that seemed funny when they thought of it.

I stayed for about an hour, but then I left to go to PriceSmart. Noah was sitting in a stupor in the band section. I snuck over to where Jules was sitting with Alex and Pia, Alex’s brother’s girlfriend. Jules didn’t even seem that embarrassed to talk to me at school. Angel had been watching from the back of the room. As we headed to do the shopping, he recounted his days as a champion marimba player traveling across Nicaragua with his brother to compete during the early Sandinista years.

Weekend Trip Day 1 - Tisey Reserve and Esteli

We took advantage of the four day weekend to do some exploring and headed up North. We couldn't very well stay home anyway, because our staff also had a four day weekend and we would have had to cook and clean up after ourselves. Our first stop was Sébaco where the vegetable market lines the street and you don’t even need to leave the car to buy stuff. We ate lunch at a nice clean comedor with delicious tostones. On the highway to Estelí, we stopped at Ciudad Dario. We felt it was our duty to visit the birth place of the father of modern Spanish poetry and Nicaragua’s most beloved son. There is nothing there. The statue of Ruben Dario had been knocked down and the street outside of his natal home is torn up. The museum was closed. There is nothing else in town.

Then we turned off the road to look for the Salto Estanzuela. We got sort of lost driving around an a very rutted road, but in so doing we stumbled upon Garnacha, a tiny little community on the edge of the mountain where they make the best cheese in the world! I have eaten a lot of cheese and I feel I am a position to judge. It was very beautiful. Some Swiss people had come along about 20 years ago and brought the cheese recipe and the appropriate bacteria. Now the town has a tiny but thriving Tilsiter goat and cow cheese business. The priest is Italian and lives in a little house next to the cheese shop with a colorful garden.

The road out of Garnacha wound down around small farms and coffee plantations. We took one of the ladies that worked at the cheese shop down to her little town. She usually walks an hour up and down the mountain to work. We drove further down the mountain and found the waterfall. Amazing. It was like Costa Rica without the crowds. We met a lot of cows along the way so we didn’t swim in the water, but it was refreshing to look at.

The road ended shortly right in Estelí. It seemed incredible that you could go so quickly from such a remote area – reachable by bus – to a thriving commercial center. They have a very big commercial road. Estelí felt a little more affluent than other cities, but because of that, not as beautiful.

We stayed at the fanciest hotel in town – Hotel Los Arcos – which is run by a Spanish development organization. It was a very pleasant hotel, but there was a lot of extremely disturbing free Christian literature in the room and in the lobby. A book in our room promised to tell the “real story about Islam that the liberal media is keeping from you.” I was really shaken. So we put it in the garbage in the bathroom. If you are familiar with bathroom garbage cans in Nicaragua, you will understand that it was right were it belonged.

We ate in a nice little Cuban restaurant. Estelí is the cigar center of Nicaragua, so there are quite a few Cuban’s there. One is reported to be Jewish! We don’t really care about cigars, so we left to visit the mountains on the other side.

Blog photos

Call me spoiled, but I am really used to the drag and drop interface of arranging things in my handy dandy mac applications. I am so frustrated working with photos in these blog posts! I've been studying the tutorials, as much as my non windows, non html little mind can handle it, and still after arranging all the little bits of code exactly as they are in the examples, it doesn't work! Or it might work mostly, and then I make one little change to something not even related and everything changes.

I am just a WYSIWYG girl and I cannot deal with this. Now I understand why people arrange photos and text in word documents and send them to their friends instead of dealing with the blog. I must be missing something. Or maybe it is just the Mac, Firefox Blogspot incompatibility. I hate to do this but, please give me some suggestions if anyone has any!

Another Parade

Monday there was another parade. This one was in honor of academic excellence as part of the build up to the Independence Day Celebrations throughout Central America.


This is the group from Maria Auxiladora that I have heard and seen practicing for weeks in my neighborhood.


I was so intent on taking a picture of the nun (each catholic school had at east one nun with them), that I missed my neighbor Isabella right behind her carrying the flag. Isabella was first in her class and that is why she got to carry the flag. She had to assemble at 7 am and they weren't done marching until 10!

All levels of accomplishment were celebrated, but only the best students were asked to march. This girls scarf says - I know how to read now!


Girls from San Antonio, better known as the school with the hot uniforms.


If you look closely in this picture, you can see that each girl is marching with her little sweat towel rolled up in her hand or tucked in her waistband to be used whenever needed.

I thought there was a shortage of boy best pupils, but I found them all crowded around the craps table in the park.

These girls weren't in the parade, but they got the day off of school!

School Finally Starts in the States

Now that school is starting in the Northwest, maybe my children will feel better about going to school here and complain less. They have already been attending the American Nicaraguan School for a month. Not a day goes by that they don't mention that none of their friends are in school yet.

Things seem to be going well. Jules had to adjust to 7 classes instead of six, but then again, only 3 AP classes as opposed to the 4 he signed up for at Garfield. Both have had to adjust to the different expectations at their school. Jules somehow made it to Junior year without learning how to make an outline, which is something he is expected to do every week for AP US History. Big irony is that both of my kids are studying US history and American Literature here because of the way the curriculum is designed. I sure wish it was Nicaruaguan history and literature!

Noah is definitely under challenged. He's able to take advanced math and that is the only class he likes. I think Spanish is ok too. Science is really boring, so he has started to read Jules' Chemistry text in his spare time. We must find him some more stimulating science books.

Jules is taking drama and its challenging because so far they seem to be studying US movie and TV actors which is something he knows nothing about. For him, international issues has been a timely course where they discuss what globalization really is.

I had a nice chat with Deb tonight; her kids start school tomorrow. I was so jealous of Charlie being able to run out at 8:00 and get school supplies at Walgreens. But then again, I can walk across the street any time of day and get one of those little bottles of Coke made with real sugar. Or five cents worth of laundry detergent.

Bad Voodoo

It is Sunday night and Moni has the day off so we were forced to go to a restaurant. Despite the fact that Granada has a tons of restaurants, there are only a few that meet our criteria - good food, reasonable prices - so that means only Eurocafe, Kathy's Waffle House, Garden Cafe, Mona Lisa, Tercer Ojo and Chico Tripa. Because now, we have to strike one from the list. We had previously enjoyed the delicious french fries and fish po'boys at Voodoo, but tonight, everything was off. We walked in and the barstools were filled with the kind of ex pat drunks you don't want to be around - loud, negative and bizarrely dressed. Noah and I debated whether the woman in a red halter top, tight pants and bleach hair was in drag, but I'm afraid she wasn't.

We sat down in the dark and airless courtyard with the florescent light from the kitchen shining in our eyes. Noah said, look at that and we watched a rat, a big one, scuttle out of the kitchen, across the wall of the courtyard and up an electrical cord to the eaves. We ordered our usual, but the food was awful, over cooked french fries with no taste. Fish not quite done. Tasteless philly cheese stake.

The wait staff was lovely, friendly and attentive, but it couldn't make up for the overbearing presence of the big, fat, drunk at the bar. Does he own the place? He is always there. Blech.

Visit with Edith

I was talking to Sylvia’s niece Edith yesterday who is expecting her first baby in a couple weeks. She’s 22 years old. She is already on leave from her job (high school social studies teacher) and will be home with the baby for 3 months after the birth for a total maternity leave of 4 months paid at 65% of her salary – which is only $150 per month. She’s had a few problems – high blood pressure and pre eclampsia earlier, but now things seem fine. She’s going to see the doctor on Tuesday to see if they think she needs a cesarean. She feels lucky to get her health care from the government hospital for teachers and public employees because it can be a little more attentive.

Sylvia and I told our birth stories, sparing her the most disturbing bits. She was astonished to hear that I had my first child when I was 29 and laughed out loud in disbelief when I told her I was the youngest in my child birth class. It seemed bizarre to her that women in the states routinely have their first child over 35 or even 40. Neither Sylvia or Edith could imagine what it would be like to have a baby and take care of him or her all by yourself without your mom, aunt or sisters nearby. Well you had a nanny didn’t you. Sylvia asked. She knows I employ about 5 people to take of my tiny family in my small house here, so it was a reasonable assumption. Oh no, I said, too expensive. I was all alone everyday with the kids.

Edith confided that she is afraid of having the baby. Normal feeling for a soon to be new mom, but she said she was afraid “they will kill me in the hospital. Sometimes you get a good doctor and sometimes a bad one that isn’t paying attention, and who knows what can happen.” There has been some bad press lately about horrible hospital treatment so I thought maybe she was just responding to that. But I looked up some health statistics that point out some basis for her fear. The per capita expenditure for health care in Nicaragua in 2007 was only $92. The maternal death statistics aren’t too bad, 170 out of 100,000 (by comparison, US is 11) but it is better than the world average. But the life time risk of dying from something related to childbearing is 1 in 150 versus 1 in 4480 in the US.

I take so much for granted. Despite all the problems in US health care, I don’t fear for my life when I go into the hospital. The amount of education, experience and advanced equipment is so much higher in the US. We always expect the best, even though many times we don’t think we get it. Other places, you just hope you get the doctor that is paying attention.