Happy Easter!!
Can I just reiterate how much I love my site sometimes? Semana Santa is the week leading up to Easter here, and it’s a big holiday. There’s no school all week long (so we work on side projects of course), no buses on Thursday or Friday, and many fiestas. It’s also a tradition all over Nicaragua to go to the beach for Semana Santa, and the island is no exception. It’s interesting because if you go to the beach here normally, there’s almost no one there – just people washing clothes or taking a bath, but this week, people were swimming, kayaking, chicken-fighting (but they do it standing up on each other’s shoulders), or just hanging out.
One family also set up a fritanga (place to buy fried foods) on the beach. They also had ripe, delicious mangoes. One of my friends gave me one, which I promptly chowed down on. Two hours later I learned yet another valuable lesson in humility when another of my friends informed me that I had orange mango stuff all around my mouth. I had talked to like a million people, and no one told me. Ah well. Here’s the fritanga lady.
One of the brother’s from my Mérida host family owns 1/3 of a restaurant, bar, kayak rental, soon-to-be hospedaje on the Mérida beach, and as part of getting their business up and running, they have decided to embrace being an active part of the community. Therefore, this year there were also soccer balls and a volleyball net provided by them. I love this soccer picture because check out the kid on the post.
There were people at the beach pretty much the whole week, but the biggest days were Thursday through Saturday. Friday and Saturday, I participated in a Plan Playa brigade, which basically meant I received a cool T-shirt and picked up garbage all day. We were also there in case anyone got hurt, but we only had one tourist with a not-so-terrible motorcycle burn on his calf. It was a great opportunity to meet people, and hung out on the beach all day, in the shade of course. Here’s two members of the brigade, searching the beach for trash.
This is Karen, the only other female in my brigada. We were very happy to have each other!
After the beach day yesterday, there was a folkloric theater, dancing, music, and fiesta. I missed a good bit of the cultural stuff because after being on the beach all day, my head hurt quite a bit and I needed to go home and rest for a while. Hence, no pictures.
Then today, my friend Edubigas invited me to her church’s celebration on the beach. They had lunch and people swam, played soccer, and socialized. I went and played chasing, splashing water games with all these little kids. I still find it fascinating how so much of life is different here, but the role of the church is very similar to its role at home. Being there today, listening to Spanish gospel music blaring from enormous speakers, eating platano, and hearing all these families chattering around me while understanding very little of it, it still managed to feel so much like home that it hurt.
I also saw this, which I thought was funny.
And, completely unrelated, it occurred to me that there might be people out there like me who don’t know what bananas look like while they’re still on the tree. I had never seen such a thing before, so this was pretty interesting for me. Here they are.
Can I just reiterate how much I love my site sometimes? Semana Santa is the week leading up to Easter here, and it’s a big holiday. There’s no school all week long (so we work on side projects of course), no buses on Thursday or Friday, and many fiestas. It’s also a tradition all over Nicaragua to go to the beach for Semana Santa, and the island is no exception. It’s interesting because if you go to the beach here normally, there’s almost no one there – just people washing clothes or taking a bath, but this week, people were swimming, kayaking, chicken-fighting (but they do it standing up on each other’s shoulders), or just hanging out.
One family also set up a fritanga (place to buy fried foods) on the beach. They also had ripe, delicious mangoes. One of my friends gave me one, which I promptly chowed down on. Two hours later I learned yet another valuable lesson in humility when another of my friends informed me that I had orange mango stuff all around my mouth. I had talked to like a million people, and no one told me. Ah well. Here’s the fritanga lady.
One of the brother’s from my Mérida host family owns 1/3 of a restaurant, bar, kayak rental, soon-to-be hospedaje on the Mérida beach, and as part of getting their business up and running, they have decided to embrace being an active part of the community. Therefore, this year there were also soccer balls and a volleyball net provided by them. I love this soccer picture because check out the kid on the post.
There were people at the beach pretty much the whole week, but the biggest days were Thursday through Saturday. Friday and Saturday, I participated in a Plan Playa brigade, which basically meant I received a cool T-shirt and picked up garbage all day. We were also there in case anyone got hurt, but we only had one tourist with a not-so-terrible motorcycle burn on his calf. It was a great opportunity to meet people, and hung out on the beach all day, in the shade of course. Here’s two members of the brigade, searching the beach for trash.
This is Karen, the only other female in my brigada. We were very happy to have each other!
After the beach day yesterday, there was a folkloric theater, dancing, music, and fiesta. I missed a good bit of the cultural stuff because after being on the beach all day, my head hurt quite a bit and I needed to go home and rest for a while. Hence, no pictures.
Then today, my friend Edubigas invited me to her church’s celebration on the beach. They had lunch and people swam, played soccer, and socialized. I went and played chasing, splashing water games with all these little kids. I still find it fascinating how so much of life is different here, but the role of the church is very similar to its role at home. Being there today, listening to Spanish gospel music blaring from enormous speakers, eating platano, and hearing all these families chattering around me while understanding very little of it, it still managed to feel so much like home that it hurt.
I also saw this, which I thought was funny.
And, completely unrelated, it occurred to me that there might be people out there like me who don’t know what bananas look like while they’re still on the tree. I had never seen such a thing before, so this was pretty interesting for me. Here they are.
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