well, we're its halloween and we're wearing orange t-shirts...

Happy Halloween! I am imagining all of you dressing up in ridiculous outfits, eating candy corn, and enjoying lovely cold weather, and I’ll admit, a little bit of jealousy is eating my heart away. Its tearin up my heart, like the backstreet boys said. The other day Bree and I got to really impress a group of nicaraguan teeneagers with the fun fact that not only did BSBs Kevin and Bryan grow up in Kentucky, but Bree went to their very high school.

As for Halloween here, it is celebrated with about the same enthusiasm as St. Patricks Day or Cinco de Mayo is in the US- a select group goes to bars as an excuse to celebrate, but I think the festivities are pretty limited.
Bree and I will be spending our Halloween with her host family and thousands of other Nicaraguans converging upon the center of town for a Nicaraguan political folk concert. The Vice Presidential Candidate for the party that everyone who knows anything supports (or this is the impression that bree and her family have brainwashed me with and strategically gotten me to wear a tangerine neon tshirt in support of)….he is a folk singer, Nicaragua’s most beloved, actually. It’s a bit rainy outside, so I hope it all works out.

The upcoming presidential election on Sunday here is all anyone cares about right now, I’ll admit the hype is pretty exciting. They say leftist Daniel Ortega is about to pass by any minute now, actually. Its what we talk about at dinner, at lunch, at breakfast, waiting in line, on the bus, you get the point.

I last updated Friday morning, and soon after left on a bus with Bree for the weekend to a small northern city called Esteli. It was a quaint little town, easily walkable and bikeable, but the best part was that it was nice and cool, and wearing pants and even long sleeves was not a problem. We ate a refreshing and wonderful dinner at a little place run by a swiss guy that had fresh whole wheat bread, tomatoes, brie cheese, homemade yogurt, hot chocolate, and muesli. So that is what we ate, savoring every moment of those scrumptious foods that are so rare in this country. It was a real treat.

The next day we took a two hour ‘expreso’ school bus that looked like a recent candidate on MTV’s Pimp My Ride, decked out with plush seats, curtains, and a full set of speakers with blinking lights. It cost approximately 75 cents each. Nicaragua is the cheapest country ever, and the statistics say that the average Nicaraguan is living on only 2 dollars per day. Today I bought a McFlurry in a moment of homesickness for approx. 2 dollars. Shameful, no?

Anyway we took this bus to an Eco Reserve called EcoPosada and stayed there for two days. Although the service could have improved… (this was the kind of place where if you don’t go into the kitchen and demand a coffee, you will never ever ever ever get one, but the people were nice about it once you were back there). This place was absolutely incredible and gorgeous and magical and everything you can imagine that can not be summed up in my humble words. I told bree at one point that I felt that I was not walking through a natural environment, but a painting that I was foreign to, full of shades of green and blue that I did not recognize as familiar. I took tons and tons of pictures and left there with a dead battery, but I still do not feel that I did it justice. We spent our time there taking pictures of everything, hiking a whole lot, snuggling our woolen blankets in our log cabin beds by the candlelight, listening to folk CDs that Carrie Ann Welsh made me, and smiling.

Oh, and eating gallo pinto. Gallo Pinto is beans and rice, and it is all you can bet on here. You can bet that at least one meal per day will be gallo pinto, which is essentially fried beans and rice. As Bree said, for lunch you eat fresh beans and rice, for dinner leftover beans and rice, and for breakfast they fry them together with some other stuff and you eat gallo pinto. Not to say that is ALL you eat. There is a yummy dairy product that I cant remember the name of, similar to cheese, there is guava juice, a cacao and corn drink, bananas, pineapples, apples, coffee, fried plantains, bread, tortilla, chicken, eggs, etc. But gallo pinto is the basic existance of life here.

Yesterday we came home to Managua (haha, where IS my home now? I feel now when I come to a small brick house in nicaragua that I am home, when I arrive to a pink and teal concrete house in Chiapas, I am home, when I arrive to a brick lovely two story in Kentucky I am home….ayayay it is just that I have been traveling so much that I am craving something, anything, familiar.) Anyway, we came home and there was, per usual, no electricity on our street, so after a bucket bath and washing our clothes by hand, we ate a yummy squash supper. Then we sat outside drinking coffee and talking about politics and Nicaraguan vocabulary until brees family had an official political meeting. I swear, the entire political party arrives at her house to ‘discuss’. Hmm, we think she is planning a coup.

Nothing much worth writing about happened today. I bought my ticket to return to Mexico. In case you need to know, mom, I am leaving at 5 am on Thursday, spending the night in San Salvador, Leaving Friday at 5 am and arriving in Guatemala City, leaving Guate at 11 and arriving in Tapachula, Mexico at 5:30 pm. Then I will take a seven hour bus back to Tuxtla Gutierrez.

I will probably come visit you, Mckinley and Ami on the 8-10th, but Ill email you about that.

Thanks to all of you again for caring about me!

Peace, love, etc.