Granada (Nicaragua, not Spain)

Hello from Managua! A quick little update on my life here.

Tomorrow, we head to the Carribbean Coast (I know, right? I lead such a hard life here...) to learn about the Autonomous Atlantic Region of Nicaragua. As you might be able to figure out from the name, the region is autonomous, and Nicaraguans keep telling me that the Atlantic coast is "a completely different world." I´m not sure what that means, and nobody seems to want to tell me if that´s a good thing or a bad thing, but I guess I´ll soon find out? In true SIT fashion, we know nothing about what we´re about to experience... but we leave at 5:30 am tomorrow morning, and return on Sunday. In the meantime, no internet access.

This past weekend, I travelled with a few other students to the colonial town of Granada. There is much that I could write about this experience, but let´s just say that the day began at this wonderful little breakfast place where I had (wait for it) CHOCOLATE CHIP PANCAKES. Best meal of my life. We then indulged ourselves as true tourists and went on a "canopy tour" in the Mombacho rainforest. For those of you who don´t know what this is (as I didn´t until I was in the bus on our way there), it is essentially a series of zip lines through the trees of a rainforest. (Actually, for those of you who watched The Office this past week, it is what landed Toby in the hospital for five weeks while he was in Costa Rica. I didn´t find this out until Sunday when we arrived back in Managua and all crowded around someone´s laptop to watch the season premiere... and I almost fell off my chair when I saw that because I had just done it 24 hours earlier.) Anyways, I´m not going to lie... it was absolutely terrifying. At times, we were at least a hundred feet in the air. I really had no idea what I was getting into. On the bus ride over there, someone found out that I was scared of heights and said, "Well good for you for doing this, then!" I asked what she meant, and she said, "You do realize what a canopy tour is, don´t you?" ...It was then that I found out I´d be spending the next two hours of my life hanging from ropes in the jungle. Perhaps the most terrifying part, however, was that our little Nicaraguan guides only had two rules for us... and one was "to have fun." That should have been my first clue that this wasn´t a good idea. But we survived, and lived to tell about it. (Actually, when we told Aynn about it today, she said, "YOU DID WHAT!?" ...Apparently, it´s against the rules of the program. Who knew?)

Other Managua news:

-I finally found/visited the neighborhood bakery... Let´s just say, it´s a good thing I didn´t choose my study abroad country based on their baked goods. But I do enjoy the pan dulce (bread with a little sugar sprinkled on top).

-I shared the rice krispy treats I received in the mail (thanks fam fam) with my host family. I think they liked them, but mostly they were just really intrigued by them. They asked me how to make them, and I tried to describe it to them, but that was a trainwreck. As it turns out, "marshmallow" doesn´t really translate to Spanish, so I had to leave that ingredient out, and ultimately left them feeling very confused as to how to cereal and butter turns into THAT.

-My house has rats (shoutout to Courtney). I still have yet to see them, but I can hear them scampering across our tin roof. At night, when I lie in bed, I try to decide if my mosquito net would catch a rat if one were to fall through a crack in my roof.

Ok, that´s all I have time for! More to come when I get back from the Caribbean. Love to all!