I’m back in Granada! It feels good to be home. No one was home except for Aida, the maid of sorts, when I got back, so I had a good few hours to get my bearings, unpack and buy a few necessities. At the very last minute of the two weeks in Matagalpa and León, I left my umbrella AND facewash (gasp!) in León. While the umbrella isn’t completely necessary, my face wash was and there’s no way I can find a replacement for it here in Nicaragua. I set off immediately to buy a papaya (I’ve been craving one), get some toothpaste, run to the bank to replenish my funds, and send some mail back home. The toothpaste and papaya I bought pretty easily. The facewash I had to go to the pharmacy to buy, which was located in the middle of the market about two blocks away from the supermarket. The market is not exactly the safest nor classiest environment in Granada, so I got heckled pretty heavily as I made my down to the pharmacy and made my purchase. Upon returning to my house, I realized that I had bought face cream and not face wash (not a fault of my spanish, but a fault of the sales person’s listening ability) and had to go back and buy the only face wash they had, which comes in bar form. Ugh. It works fine, so I guess I can be happy for that. 

Seeing the family again was great. Maria José gave me a hug, Horacio seemed less than excited but then asked me to watch a soccer game and Harry Potter with him, and Edgar, the precious thing that he is, looked all surprised and gave me a huge hug. I love that kid. We played volleyball and soccer for a good 45 minutes, just like old times. Apparently Racquel is really upset about Marisol, even though Marisol was great with the kids. The original request of her program was that she be housed by herself, with no other exchange student but at one point two others (including myself) were staying with her. I don’t take Marisol’s complaint personally, because I know she enjoyed having me there after a while, so I don’t blame her when she talked to her school’s principal immediately after arriving. Now Racquel is facing some talking down to, because she initially agreed to have only one exchange student, but broke the agreement because she needs more students to pay her bills. Messy, ugly stuff and if it came down to it, I’d side with Marisol, but I certainly can’t say that to a ruffled Maria Jose and Racquel while I’m living with them. 

Granada is just as I remember it. Being someone who has no sense of direction, it’s wonderful to be able to find your way around things. The post office gave me a bit of trouble however, even with a map. On my way there, one of the street urchins approached me, asking for money for food. They can get pretty demanding once they sense that you’re not going to give them anything, and so he began pointing to food joints and demanding I buy him food from there. As a compromise, I told him that if he led me to the post office, I’d give him 5 cordoba, which I eventually did above his pleas that he really needed 50 cordobas. Sometimes you just have to be firm and mean, but I wonder if giving him the money was the right thing to do. 

Home sweet home!

Speaking of giving street people money, when the entire group (both teams) went out again after dinner to catch up, one of the ubiquitous kids who folds reeds into clever little shapes and figures approached us. Seeing that one of the people in our group was giving me a massage, he joined in,  massaging my shoulder at first and then forming a massage chain. He was incredibly cute and charismatic, which also made me sad because both the older and younger sellers circling the area, seeing Eddison’s success (his name was Eddison) quickly approached and tried to push their goods on us, without success. I wonder what Eddison will do when he grows up and loses his cute factor, and whether it was too touristy and demeaning for us to give him money for entertaining us. 

Now its off to a meeting in the Palacio! Hasta luego.