Dirty underwear & gay horses

This week has been very, very busy, so much so that I had almost given up on washing my underwear (nearly deciding to resign myself to recycling), updating this blog, and hammock sleeping. But, luckily for you (with regards to blogging), my housemates (with regards to stinky underwear), and me (with regards to hammock sleeping), I was stood up today. That’s right, stood up. My 7:30AM appointment to visit a community was a no-show. I would have phoned, but there is an awkward thing with time here where people are generally 30 minutes to 1 hour late for things, so I didn’t want to phone (and seem impatient) until about 8:30. When 8:30 rolled around, I thought that I could at least give them a grace period of another half-hour or so. Unfortunately, during that time I thought of all of the things I had to do so I eventually made a half-hearted attempt at a phone call at 10:00, when it seems that they were already out of cell phone range. As a result, however, I did have a remarkably productive day (just look at this blog!).

Before continuing, the underwear comment deserves some elaboration. With Doña Carmen helping us around the house three days every week, I could in theory guarantee myself perennially clean underwear but I feel strange giving her two clothing items to wash: my socks and underwear. I don’t want to give her the socks (or leave the socks in the communal hamper) because of their horrendous, horrendous odour (they are double-sealed in plastic bags until laundry day). I don’t want to give her my underwear because that just seems dirty and oddly private. It’s one thing to throw underwear into a laundry machine, transfer it to a dryer, and be done with it, but it is completely different giving someone underwear to hand-wash. It seems like an invasion of my privacy. That does leave me with my own underwear and socks to wash, though, and being out for most of the day, almost every day of the week, things started to get dicey (this week I was already recycling socks and had only about two pairs of boxers left). I do get to continue to practice my hand-laundering techniques and I must say, I give myself a firm pat on the back for my efforts. Well done, Vince. Hand-washing laundry is also oddly zen-like, sort of like collating (that’s a Dead Like Me reference that exactly zero people will understand).

But, all work and no play, yadda, yadda, yadda, so despite the busy week, I have still been watching TED talks and playing Yahtzee, Minesweeper, and Solitaire. Two fun facts and one update arise from this. Fun fact #1: More money is put into research into baldness drugs than into malaria. Fun fact #2: The two things that teachers are generally rewarded for (the possession of a master’s degree and seniority) have virtually no measurable effect on their teaching quality. I would like to thank Bill Gates for those two tidbits. Update #1: My Yahtzee score remains a paltry 426. I think that this might be because I don’t keep Yahtzee in the bathroom like we do at home. Apparently my housemates think that this is “unhygienic”. Whatever.

This past Saturday, I went to a beautiful nature reserve called Miraflor with Xochi, a teacher from the Spanish school, and three other students. It was spectacular. It was incredibly green, lush, and we ended up with a beautiful, cloud-forest-esque morning that later turned into a blue sky and sunshine day. We took the bus to Miraflor and, possibly because of the 5:50AM departure time, Xochi and I got confused and went to the wrong bus station (wrong in that we were going to meet the others at the South bus station and we went to the North bus station. The actual bus route goes through both.). Not wanting to worry our companions, we decided to walk from the north station to the south station. We were a bit off with our time, though (again, this was about 5:45AM and I have a condition), and ending up having to excitedly flag down the bus on the highway. It was thrilling. The bus ride was cramped, but more or less unexciting (especially compared to the way back!). When we got off the bus, we had horses waiting to take us on a trip around Miraflor. When we informed the guide that most of us had only been on horseback once or twice before, his response was a shrug. It did not inspire confidence. My horse’s name was Mariposa, which, if you remember my Spanish class about “straat-taal”, I had learned a few weeks earlier can mean butterfly or homosexual (in a derogatory sense, not a descriptive sense). My horse had a baby, though, and horses don’t adopt so either it was on the DL, or it really did mean butterfly. My horse was also not a butterfly, though. Hmm. My horse’s baby was actually quite funny because it hadn’t had its breakfast because of our early start time. As a result, it kept trying to drink its mother’s milk while we were riding (with me on top). I felt like a really awkward third wheel.

Our first stop was a small farm for breakfast and tea, where I took the opportunity to abuse my camera’s macro-zoom capabilities on every flower I could see. I was so successful in this endeavour that my laptop has a new background. After that stop, we rode off to the orchid garden and forest walk, where I continued to macro-zoom, climbed about two storeys up the inside of a 250-year old hollow parasitic fig tree that had killed the original tree, and stared in awe at trails of leaf-cutter ants carrying leaf chunks four times their size. Also, in the only horse-related incident of the day, my dear Mariposa kicked at Xochi’s horse (maybe he made homophobic remarks?) and, as a result, kicked Xochi. Luckily (very, very luckily), the horse kicked the bottom of her foot which, if I know horse-kicks (which I don’t), seems to be one of very few places to get kicked without snapping bones in half. In an awful follow-up to that, our guide was walking us down the path when, the second that we were out of eye contact with the horses, he said “oh, I forgot something back there.” He then went back to the horses and we could hear whipping and we’re pretty sure that we saw him throw rocks. It was really sad (both because of what he was doing and because he thought he could fool us).

After the orchids and forest, we rode down to a waterfall which was delightful. Mariposa’s baby had taken advantage of our last stop to feed so he/she was incredibly less annoying on this leg of the journey. After the waterfall, we rode back to the farm where we had beet juice (Dwight Schrute would be beaming), and the freshest lunch I’ve ever had. Seriously, during our first stop at the farm, we watched someone pick a handful of carrots and beets out of the ground, those became our juice and veggies. There was also one chicken missing when we returned. I have reason to believe that became our protein source. It was all delicious. So delicious, in fact, that I spent the next hour (while we waited for the bus) snoozing in the hammock. Now that is a good meal.

The bus ride home was thrilling for one reason and one reason only- I got to fulfill a lifelong (actually 2 month long) dream of being a bus attendant wildly swinging outside of the bus at ridiculously high speeds. When we got on the bus, it was already almost full and I ended up standing in the aisle at the very back of the bus (an old school bus that probably had “Tallahassee School District #4” stamped on the side). When someone near the back had to get off of the bus, they whistled at the bus driver, who promptly stopped the bus, and then the passenger jumped out of the back door. Instead of closing the door like a normal person might, this person just sauntered off and the bus roared off down the road, back door flapping in the wind. I sensed panic for several reasons: 1) The lady on the back seat holding two chickens in a shoebox looked concerned, 2) if anyone was going to fly out of that back door and die a long, painful death, it was going to be me, given that I was standing directly in front of the open door, with no barriers and dicey handles, and 3) the actual bus attendant who would normally address matters related to door closing was at the very front of the bus. I decided to jump into action. I grabbed onto a handle near the door, swung my body out, grabbed the door handle, and slammed and locked the door in place. The chicken lady nodded her approval. I nodded back. It was epic. If this master’s degree doesn’t work out, I may pursue the wonderful life of a bus assistant.

Hey, have I told you about our evangelical church neighbours? They are louder than anyone should be allowed to be, they scream every word, don’t breathe between sentences, nominate the loudest lady with the worst voice as their lead singer (I believe the word is cantor?) and they do this four times every week (sometimes more). I hate them. Enough said.

One thing that I won’t miss when I leave Estelí (in addition to the church. I most definitely will not miss the church) is the stray dogs roaming the streets. Let me recount a few dog stories:
- I get to see dogs having sex almost every day. When I’m lucky, I might even get to see a dog orgy. I really wish a vigilante veterinarian (that sounds like a terrible movie, doesn’t it?) would roam the streets at nights neutering and spaying the stray dogs here. One of the hippies (remember them? Sigh. I don’t miss the sound of their pee, but they were fun, weren’t they?) had offered to do it with a bottle of kerosene, a knife, one other ingredient, and an extra set of hands. I offered him my hands but our plan never came to fruition.
- I saw a dog nearly knock a person off of their bike yesterday. While he stayed on his bike, he did get bit, which should mean a rabies shot. Maybe I should have gotten the rabies vaccine after all… I wouldn’t want anyone to have to organize a fun-run-pan-am for me. I do miss The Office.
- Many kids enjoy throwing rocks or kicking at the dogs. That is not a funny story and no matter what one’s position is on PETA (ahem, Rebecca Ross, ahem), it’s sad to see. That sounds like Rebecca is pro-animal abuse. That is entirely untrue. She’s just vehemently anti-PETA (and if you knew everything there is to know about PETA, you would be too. Did you know that they are against guide dogs? Who the hell is against guide dogs?).
- You know how they say that you can tell who is local in Paris because they are looking down in order to avoid the dog poo. Here you can tell who is local because they don’t bother looking down, knowing that the chance of stepping in dog poo is about 87%.

Wow, this is getting long. I was going to write about announcement cars and people’s driving habits. Those will have to wait.