Greetings from Managua! (From Sept 2 email)

Buenas!

I arrived last week in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua for my semester studying abroad. I´m in a program called "Revolution, Transformation, and Civil Society" through the School for International Training, and so far it has been amazing.

We (that is, the 18 US American students who are in the program) arrived last week in muggy Managua, greeted in the airport by our enthusiastic program director, Aynn Setright. Right away, she began speaking to us in rapid Spanish with frequent assurences in English that everything would be ok. She is a truly amazing woman who I am excited to get to know better and to work with. We spent our first five days in orientation in Managua and León, going over ground rules, meeting the staff and faculty, getting placed into Spanish classes, and getting to know our classmates. The staff and faculty are all amazing, wonderful people, US American and Nicaragüence alike. Probably the coolest person, along with Aynn, is Aynn´s husband Guillermo who was an officer in the Sandanistan army for 20 years, and is a revolutionary poet (literally). Really, all the folks are amazing, and I can´t wait to know them better. The program is grounded in popular education (read: Frierian! :) ), anti-colonial and anti-oppresive philosophy, and cultural immersion, and though it is uncomfortable and completely terrifying, I´m loving it.

Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the western hemisphere, and as you can imagine, the scale of wealth is quite a bit different than any place I have ever lived. Just walking around and seeing a half-kilometer long fence with posts that are clearly hand carved gives you a very different sense of who does the labor and and how things occur here.

I am living with a family in Colonia Máximo Jerez, a neighborhood in Managua, which is the capital of Nicaragua. (If you want to know what this is like, take a look at the book "Life is Hard" by Roger Lancaster. It´s about my neighborhood.) My family has been hosting US Americans since the revolution in 1979, and has hosted some amazing folks like Noam Chomsky, Pete Seeger, and is even where Salmon Rushdie was living when he wrote "The Jaguar´s Smile." As you can guess, the family is wonderful, with my host mom, host dad, abuelita, and four siblings providing lots of love and a great home. It is a very different life style than I am used to, though. The water is only on in Máximo from 2am-7am, and the Nicaraguan accent is very difficult for me to understand, especially on top of my limited Spanish.

The first few days have been very exciting. One of the days in orientation was an "drop-off" where pairs of students are dropped somewhere in León with the name of a location and a field study question and told to meet at the location in 5 hours. That was the day where I got to find out how bad my Spanish truly was. Luckily, most people here are very patient and my partner and I fulfilled the task (finding out local legends of León) and made it safely to the pick up point. The legends were great and I got to talk to a lot of locals about how they are echoed in current international politics.

We had our first day of class yesterday, too. The rapid discussions of politics, history, and culture in Spanish are difficult, but I´m adjusting. The teachers are all great: very patient and concise in their explanations. I love it, even though it´s incredibly difficult and sometimes frustrating.

I miss all of the people in my life in the States and I can´t wait to talk to each and every one of them upon my return. Be well, do good work and stay in touch!