El día tercero

Today was another long day. I’m currently in an Internet Cafe (which took me about half an hour to find after getting some bad directions and getting lost in the dark), and it’s getting a bit late, so I’m worried about getting home safely. Luckily there are very cheap taxis I can take. Wish me luck! At least I’ll be spared the heckling (“China, china, chinita!”) that guys yell out sometimes as I’m walking in the street. Actually, the culture of “machísimo” isn’t too bad here, especially since Granada is a very tourist-y city and they see a lot of foreigners from all over the palce, including East Asia.

Café Euro

My delicious chilled Chai Tea.

I woke up at 6:45 (the rest of the household wakes up at 5 and starts school/work at 7) and went to four hours of Spanish class, 8-12, at the Palacio Mundial, a Spanish school on the Parque central in front of the yellow church. For breakfast, all I had was a bowl of fruit and a mug of tea flavored like strawberries...by 10 AM I was famished. I was worried that Nicaraguans ate very little, given how small the portions had been for dinner and for breakfast today, but my worries were assuaged when I came back for lunch and Juana had prepared “choxsi” (spelling I made up myself) that tasted a lot like Chinese stir fry with crunchy, dry noodle. 

Inside Nicaragua Mía, the english school I go to in the mornings from 8-12. 

At first, and I’m still feeling this way a bit, I felt like my home stay situation was not ideal. The family consists of one mother and her son, Edgar. Her sister  and the hired help, who are treated like a part of the family, are constantly around and their children are as well. However, during the day, Racquel is working and the children at school, so the only people around are the hired help. They tend to be shyer about starting conversation, so I have to initiate, rather awkwardly at that, conversation. I did ask Juana to bring me to the market later this week and help me pick up some movies and telenovelas. Unfortunately, Racqul does not watch telenovelas (she’s too busy, understandably so) but she was completely welcome to me watching in her room. 

Playing a game called "quien soy," which is a lot like twenty questions.

All of this is an effort to learn more Spanish, because my brain seems to freeze up as soon as I begin talking to people in Spanish. I can’t understand what they are saying, and the words freeze in my mouth as I try to utter a few basic sentences. My spanish teacher told me “for a chinese person you speak Spanish very well,” and I think I’m one of the more advanced speakers in the group of fifteen here. However, I still feel completely out of place when speaking in Spanish and people always have to dumb down things and repeat them slowly to me for me to catch on. Additionally, my home stay mother still uses vosotros to talk to me and Marisol, so I’m worried that we haven’t broken down barriers and really become closer to one another. Likewise, I still call her usted. 

I guess I’m just being way to judgmental on myself about what I should be accomplishing after only three days here. Fingers crossed for major improvement by the end of eight weeks!

After our Spanish lessons, I had two hours for a lunch at my homestay and then I spent the last hour at a wonderful Internet cafe, called Café Euro which caters to foreigners and sells wonderful cold drinks like Chai lattes and iced coffee. The wifi is free with a drink. The inside is also wonderfully decorated and contains a courtyard, open to the air. Best yet, it’s right next to my Spanish school in the afternoons, which I go to at 2 PM for orientations lessons. We go over things like what our missions, methods for achieving our goals, developmental work, etc. Pretty crucial, but boring things. At the internet cafe, some guy named Bosco struck up a conversation with me. Bosco had an informal office of sorts in the cafe, where he advertised and picked up customers for a transportation company he owns that also gives tours. Impressively, he spoke some German and English and could understand French and Italian. Because I’m Chinese, he asked me  if I knew how to play ping pong and ended up being more skillful than I was the game. By the end of the match, he was teaching me how to play in “el estilo chino” he had picked up on Youtube, instead of the other way around. 

The exoticness of Chinese people here is hilarious. Maria Jose, a woman who helps around the house, asked me if I had chopsticks and whether I could teach her how to use them. I guess I’ll just have to leverage the apparent uniqueness that I possess for engaging people in conversation and opening doors. 

Hasta luego!