Granada Continued

So the name of the place from Thursday night was Café Nuit. Glad I got that cleared up. So Friday ended up being a hell of a day. Four people missed the bus, which left at 730 am, including the birthday girl. She ended up (apparently) passed out in one of the numerous hammocks in the hotel lobby with her dress on backwards (400 am swimming) and puke on herself. I wasn't feeling that great myself, but at least I made it home at a decent hour. I was kinda pissed we left a couple of the guys (two of them were actually attempting to get their lives together before the bus left) because we ended up waiting for like 30 minutes at a gas station to meet up with some Nicaraguan students. We could've spared a two more minutes, but the bus ended up leaving really late anyways, and I gave them a few last warnings.

Another couple hours on the bus on dirt and gravel roads, one forged river, and a sweaty, humid, hot, thirty, slightly-hungover-but-mostly-just-hungry me, we arrived at a little Nicaraguan...village. Or a school yard area. It's kind of hard to describe. There were lots of oxen on the road, pigs, baby pigs, ducks and chickens, wild dogs, and lots of little chicks everywhere. There were a few pastures with barbed wire with manure pastures. The rest of the land was just dry, dusty, and dashed with the occasional cactus, rock, or weed. It was very desolate. This area was the school that eight different tiny Nicaraguan communities met to learn. They only had one actualy school building, which was a square. No walls inside. Instead, each corner had a blackboard, and each corner represented one of the four classrooms in the school. They did have real desks. I liked it when a chicken or pig or dog would wander in to see the people (e.g. beg for food). I gave the pig some bread but he got scared when everybody clapped and he quickly waddled out the door to safety.

We all made introductions, which took along time, and the head school teacher talked to us in Spanish mostly, even though he spoke English. But that's not what annoys me. What annoys me is that a few of my group members pretend to understand everything by nodding, even though they don't have a clue what is going on. Of course, when the professor would pause (this isn't just referring to this instance, but anytime we have a Spanish speaker) and ask if there are any questions, nobody says anything. Whatever.

We all headed out to fix up a run-down playground a couple hundred yards down the road. We picked up tons of rocks, sanded and repainted different playground toys, uprooted slides that were in four-foot concrete foundations, and hacked cacti with machetes, among other things. I was really impressed with how hard Emily worked during the whole time.

A lot of the girls are complaining, whining, bitching, moping, etc. at this point in the trip. I would like to send a couple of them home personally. But Emily worked her butt off, as did maybe half of the group. A couple of the girls hid by the van the whole time and drank water.

Lunch break in the school house followed by the most awkward experience on the trip. They were playing music on the sound system and a girl, who is about to turn 15, started dancing in the middle. And I mean dancing. In a skirt, with her shirt hiked up. She kept grabbing different guys (and a girl or two) from the group to "dance" with. Then older men were going out to dance with her, including the priest. It was really uncomfortable for all of us, and later I found out that she wasn't supposed to be dancing that sexually, to put it lightly, and the Nicaraguans were embarassed. Anyways, she tried to pull me out of my chair but I wouldn't get up, so I ended up getting a fricking lap dance, with my girlfriend next to me. Awkward.

After lunch we listened to a few speeches from locals, and ended up playing another soccer game with locals like at Bribri. We played on a dirt field with all the little kids watching, laughing, and interacting with the girls. We had the side with wind in our faces, and I had brown spit after the game. I also cut my leg on a tree stump. All sorts of obstacles on the field, and our goal was between two rocks. Theirs was a tool shed. We lost 3-2.

Back on the bus. I have never been so damn hot, tired, and sweaty on the entire trip. It took a few paper towels to get the sweat off my body. I really can't stress enough how fricking hot Nicaragua is compared to Costa Rica. Stuffy and humid, yet no precipitation for weeks or months at a time. It reminded me of how my clothes would stick to me in Rome after ten minutes on the street.